Flac 16 bit or 24 bit Qobuz

[71 dB]

Classical music requires fidelity because the instruments are acoustic and have a baseline sound in reality that has to be matched to sound right. Electronic music doesn’t have that. A synth can sound like anything.

Baseline is a good point here.

A synth can of course sound like anything from technical point of view, but from subjective point of view it has to sound "good" to justify its existence. Fidelity is needed to keep the synth sound good, as intended. However, the requirement for fidelity may not be as demanding as it is for classical music.

 

[bigshot]

They depend on salesmen to figure it out for them. If they aren’t interested enough in figuring out what the numbers on the spec sheet mean, they shouldn’t even look at the spec sheet. Just buy an inexpensive system and be happy with it. Thankfully, odds are good that even randomly chosen equipment will sound good if you keep it simple.

 

[Vamp898]

I highly disagree with classical music being the most demanding.

According to the LAME Developers, classical music is one of the easiest music that you can compress without loosing fidelity because the signals are not really complex.

And if you analyze a classical music piece in audacity and compare it to a modern, overproduced rock/pop, you will instantly notice that. Classical Music uses much less of the frequency range and is much more predictable. Of course this depends on the artist and the room and lots of other things, but i never heard any classical recording where i would say "Wow, this is so high fidelity"

In a modern studio recording, you have almost no distortion, no issues with phase and so on. You have all these issues in an classical recording and not just in an recording, you have these issues when you're actually there.

And a modern studio recording doesn't mean top 10 pop and not electronic music (even though most electronic music also often uses voice and acoustical instruments too)

I've been in the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, in the Konzerthaus in Beriln and many others and high fidelity (or the better word is high quality) is the last thing that comes into mind when listening to music in there.

Calling classical music the highest quality music is a bit a snobby and elite opinion and nothing objective that you could measure. As a big fan of double bass, i never heard a really good double bass in any concert hall recording. Never, ever. But i heard a lot of absolutely amazing double bass in studio recordings. If an Instrument turns into mush and muddiness because the room and the constellation and the constant fight against tons of other instruments doesn't allow it too, then where is the high quality/fidelity.

Calling a classical recording the highest fidelity is a very typical audiophile opinion but nothing i would have expected in the sound science forum.

This is a topic for an distinctive thread, but we first would have to set metrics on how to measure sound quality. By what metrics is classical the best? And so on. Maybe an interesting topic to discuss

 

[bigshot]

Massed strings can be very difficult to compress. My “killer track” that I use to check lossy codecs is a string section. The history of classical recordings is the history of the progress of sound fidelity. Classical music has been at the forefront of recording technology from Caruso to Living Stereo to the earliest digital recordings.

 

[Vamp898]

I never heard of that one. I checked for it on Qobuz but did not found anything. You have an link?

 

[bigshot]

What, my killer track?

 

[Vamp898]

What, my killer track?

Massed Strings

 

[danadam]

Massed Strings

I think it only means "a lot of strings at the same time"

 

[Vamp898]

Oh, i thought thats the name of an very famous piece or so i just happen to not know. You never stop learning

 

[eq1849]

Can you hear the higher quality of a 24 bit flac?

I find I enjoy 24bit audio more than 16bit.

 

[71 dB]

I highly disagree with classical music being the most demanding.

Among the most demanding. That's why the acoustics of concert halls where classical music is performed is so important.

According to the LAME Developers, classical music is one of the easiest music that you can compress without loosing fidelity because the signals are not really complex.

That only tells how easy the music is to data-compress. Encoders react to certain type of complexity in music. If the music contains different kind of complexity (musical complexity such as J. S. Bach's contrapuntal mastery etc.), the encoders don't find that particularly difficult. Pop music for example is much simpler from musical complexity point of view, but various ear candy sound effects and production tricks can render to music much more challenging for encoders.

However, that's a bit different than fidelity as a whole.

And if you analyze a classical music piece in audacity and compare it to a modern, overproduced rock/pop, you will instantly notice that. Classical Music uses much less of the frequency range and is much more predictable. Of course this depends on the artist and the room and lots of other things, but i never heard any classical recording where i would say "Wow, this is so high fidelity"

Interesting. Out of my music collection, those releases offering the highest experience of fidelity are the best classical music recordings. Try contemporary classical music (even stuff written in the last 25 years!) which uses the orchestra in modern ways that may sound more "fresh" to you.

In a modern studio recording, you have almost no distortion, no issues with phase and so on. You have all these issues in an classical recording and not just in an recording, you have these issues when you're actually there.

Distortion? Sure, take an old mono recording from the 40s and you have nothing but distortion, but classical music recordings of the last 35-40 years hardly suffer from distortion. What issues with phase? What issues when you're actually there?

And a modern studio recording doesn't mean top 10 pop and not electronic music (even though most electronic music also often uses voice and acoustical instruments too)

So what does it mean? Fusion jazz? Ska? Soft Rock? What?

I've been in the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, in the Konzerthaus in Beriln and many others and high fidelity (or the better word is high quality) is the last thing that comes into mind when listening to music in there.

Really? That bad?

Calling classical music the highest quality music is a bit a snobby and elite opinion and nothing objective that you could measure.

I said the demands of fidelity for classical music is among the greatest and you turned it into this. "Quality of music" is a completely different thing, a can of worms. What matters is how much the music gives you enjoyment and how much it improves the quality of your life. I listen to many types of music from Katy Perry's bubblegum pop to Nicolaus Bruhns' baroque cantatas to King Crimson's prog rock to Autechre's "music of the future/other planets", because all of them give me joy in their own way. Who cares what the elitists say? Nobody needs to defend his/her favourite music and taste, because if you enjoy it you are doing it right, aren't you? The only mistake you can make is to not expand your music taste by exploring new music, because that limits your ability to enjoy music. If you only listen to say 90s Garage House, almost all music in the World, all the goodness it has to offer is worthless to you because you don't have the ability to appreciate it.

As a big fan of double bass, i never heard a really good double bass in any concert hall recording. Never, ever. But i heard a lot of absolutely amazing double bass in studio recordings. If an Instrument turns into mush and muddiness because the room and the constellation and the constant fight against tons of other instruments doesn't allow it too, then where is the high quality/fidelity.

Clearly you have a preference of how you want double bass to sound. What you call lower fidelity might actually be just mismatch of tastes. The whole sound signature (target sound) for classical music is different from more modern genres of music. I don't expect classical music to sound like it was mixed by an EDM producer. That would be silly.

Calling a classical recording the highest fidelity is a very typical audiophile opinion but nothing i would have expected in the sound science forum.

Among the highest quality. Of course a Reggae album can have very high fidelity also.

 

[eq1849]

Hi everyone, I've been subscribing to Qobuz for some time now to listen to quality music. I've done several tests but if I listen to the same songs in 24 bit and 16 bit I can't hear the difference, it seems to me that both have excellent quality. I entered the qobuz account in the USB audio player PRO app and listen to everything in bit perfect. As headphones I have the Beyerdinamic DT 770 pro and the DAC is an Ibasso DC06pro. Can you hear the higher quality of a 24 bit flac? or am I the one who has hearing problems?

Here is some peer reviewed research with real actual scientists involved in studying the effect that various audio formats have on the brain via EEG measurements. I think that you might find it informative.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28203213/

 

[bigshot]

Massed Strings

There are sounds that are hard to compress because the codecs weren't designed for it... audience applause, the sound of crashing, and sometimes massed strings. In the 50s, there were a bunch of ways that engineers would mike and mix the sound of a violin section. Most of them compress fine, but I found that there is a very specific sounding way that Decca recorded strings on the Sammy Davis Jr sides that can cause codecs to artifact at a higher level than most other music.

 

[gregorio]

I've done several tests but if I listen to the same songs in 24 bit and 16 bit I can't hear the difference, it seems to me that both have excellent quality.

There is no audible difference at any reasonable listening level. You might find this post helpful/informative.

... probably I could, but... my guess is it depends on the music style.
If a classic piece is mastered with huge dynamic range, then 24bit recordings will probably have a sound quality advantage in quieter passages.

It doesn’t really depend on musical style. To hear a difference you have to find a particularly quiet part of a recording (in any style) and whack the volume up. Of course though, that does not constitute a “reasonable listening level”, listening at that “whacked up” level to the whole piece will damage your hearing and possibly your equipment.

High Fidelity and classical music are like oil and water

That is pretty much the exact opposite of the truth/facts! In actual fact, high fidelity technology has always been pioneered with classical music because that is the genre of music most demanding of high fidelity. Digital recording, then digital mixing and mastering were first widely employed commercially for/by classical music because of the demand for high fidelity and these are only some examples. Low noise/distortion mics and mic pre-amps are almost exclusively used by classical music, whereas with rock and popular music genres coloured mics and mic pre-amps are preferred. Mixing and mastering of popular genres always involves deliberately adding significant distortion, while classical music always involves minimising distortion. The reality is the opposite of your claim!

If an Instrument turns into mush and muddiness because the room and the constellation and the constant fight against tons of other instruments doesn't allow it too, then where is the high quality/fidelity.

What do you mean where is the high quality/fidelity? Obviously it is in precisely recording and reproducing that “mush”, capturing the subtleties of the room acoustics and the “tons of other instruments” fighting against each other. This either doesn’t even exist with other genres, such as electronic music or isn’t important with other popular genres. In classical music it’s important if the room is the Musikverien, the Concertgebouw or Suntory Hall. In electronic and popular music the room acoustics make absolutely no difference whatsoever or little difference respectively. In fact it makes so little difference albums are often recorded using a mixture of different rooms/studios.

You don’t seem to understand what fidelity is! Fidelity is NOT how much or little “mush” the music or a recording of it contains, neither is it the complexity of the music it contains. Fidelity is the “faithfulness” of the recording or reproduction of the music event/s, completely regardless of how mushy or complex that music event/s was. The only time “mush” or “complexity” have any relevance to fidelity is if a recording or reproduction adds mush or complexity that didn’t exist in the musical event or reduces/removes mush or complexity that did exist.

Here is some peer reviewed research with real actual scientists involved in studying the effect that various audio formats have on the brain via EEG measurements. I think that you might find it informative.

It may be mildly interesting to some but I don’t see how it’s informative (in the audio field) and in fact, it’s more likely mis-informative! That effect on the brain it’s talking about is measurable on an EEG but is not perceivable, neither does it cause any physiological effect which might have allowed it to be perceivable indirectly. So it informs us of nothing at all as far as creating or listening to audio recordings are concerned.

You might find this later paper by the same author more relevant.

G

 

[Vamp898]

There is no audible difference at any reasonable listening level. You might find this post helpful/informative.

It doesn’t really depend on musical style. To hear a difference you have to find a particularly quiet part of a recording (in any style) and whack the volume up. Of course though, that does not constitute a “reasonable listening level”, listening at that “whacked up” level to the whole piece will damage your hearing and possibly your equipment.

That is pretty much the exact opposite of the truth/facts! In actual fact, high fidelity technology has always been pioneered with classical music because that is the genre of music most demanding of high fidelity. Digital recording, then digital mixing and mastering were first widely employed commercially for/by classical music because of the demand for high fidelity and these are only some examples. Low noise/distortion mics and mic pre-amps are almost exclusively used by classical music, whereas with rock and popular music genres coloured mics and mic pre-amps are preferred. Mixing and mastering of popular genres always involves deliberately adding significant distortion, while classical music always involves minimising distortion. The reality is the opposite of your claim!

What do you mean where is the high quality/fidelity? Obviously it is in precisely recording and reproducing that “mush”, capturing the subtleties of the room acoustics and the “tons of other instruments” fighting against each other. This either doesn’t even exist with other genres, such as electronic music or isn’t important with other popular genres. In classical music it’s important if the room is the Musikverien, the Concertgebouw or Suntory Hall. In electronic and popular music the room acoustics make absolutely no difference whatsoever or little difference respectively. In fact it makes so little difference albums are often recorded using a mixture of different rooms/studios.

You don’t seem to understand what fidelity is! Fidelity is NOT how much or little “mush” the music or a recording of it contains, neither is it the complexity of the music it contains. Fidelity is the “faithfulness” of the recording or reproduction of the music event/s, completely regardless of how mushy or complex that music event/s was. The only time “mush” or “complexity” have any relevance to fidelity is if a recording or reproduction adds mush or complexity that didn’t exist in the musical event or reduces/removes mush or complexity that did exist.

It may be mildly interesting to some but I don’t see how it’s informative (in the audio field) and in fact, it’s more likely mis-informative! That effect on the brain it’s talking about is measurable on an EEG but is not perceivable, neither does it cause any physiological effect which might have allowed it to be perceivable indirectly. So it informs us of nothing at all as far as creating or listening to audio recordings are concerned.

You might find this later paper by the same author more relevant.

G

That is why i said that Quality is the better word. In terms of playback, higher quality means higher fidelity but in terms of the actual sound, there is no highger fidelity than being actually there.

Except that fidelity is in relation to the sound of the instrument. If an double bass in a perfect treated recording room has the highest quality and seen as the reference, high fidelity means getting as close to this sound as possible. In that way, an orchestra has very low fidelity in terms of single instruments.

Fidelity is always in a context of an reference hence i think it is not the best word to describe what i mean.