Question about downsampling audio files

[goodyfresh]

   
Downsampling lowers the bit rate (kbps) automatically. You're probably thinking of bit depth. (24-bit, 16-bit, etc.)

Yeahhhh I'm a liuttle bit of a dumbass, I TOTALLY DO ALREADY KNOW the difference between bit-rate and bit-depth but simply typed the wrong thing, twice, in my post.  LOL.

Anyway yeah if he's going to be lowering the bit-depth by any chance, then dithering is something that certainly can't hurt.

 

[professorwiki]

I meant both bit depth and sampling rate, is there a different word for reducing bit depth?

In any case, since I figured out that I can use USB audio with the android box, and found the Kodi settings which produce the best sound, I think I am getting bit-perfect audio, and if not, it is at least downsampling very well and certainly sounds really nice. At this point I'm not worried about it because the problem has either fixed itself or sounds good enough not to make me care

 

[goodyfresh]

  I meant both bit depth and sampling rate, is there a different word for reducing bit depth?

In any case, since I figured out that I can use USB audio with the android box, and found the Kodi settings which produce the best sound, I think I am getting bit-perfect audio, and if not, it is at least downsampling very well and certainly sounds really nice. At this point I'm not worried about it because the problem has either fixed itself or sounds good enough not to make me care

Ah okay, glad you're enjoying your listening!  That's what's really important.

If, in the future, you do decide to convert some of your files to lower sample-rates and/or bit-depths, the program I would recommend is dBpoweramp.  Incidentally, it was Music Alchemist, who posted above in here, who introduced me to that truly excellent audio-conversion program, and I am most certainly grateful to him for that!

That being said, if you use Foobar2000 for playback, it has a pretty nice built-in converter of its own.

 

[RRod]

  I meant both bit depth and sampling rate, is there a different word for reducing bit depth?
 

 
Quantization

 

[TheTrace]

Ah okay, glad you're enjoying your listening!  That's what's really important.


If, in the future, you do decide to convert some of your files to lower sample-rates and/or bit-depths, the program I would recommend is dBpoweramp.  Incidentally, it was Music Alchemist, who posted above in here, who introduced me to that truly excellent audio-conversion program, and I am most certainly grateful to him for that!


That being said, if you use Foobar2000 for playback, it has a pretty nice built-in converter of its own.

I've been reading around recently and I've found complaints about dbpoweramp not being as efficient as Sox when it comes to downsampling / bit depth reduction and something about causing distortion.

Would you or anyone else have a take on that? It would be most unfortunate if that were true, that's how I've been handling my hi-res music for a majority of this year.

 

[RRod]

I've been reading around recently and I've found complaints about dbpoweramp not being as efficient as Sox when it comes to downsampling / bit depth reduction and something about causing distortion.

Would you or anyone else have a take on that? It would be most unfortunate if that were true, that's how I've been handling my hi-res music for a majority of this year.

 
For a sample rate reduction from 96 to 44.1, they both look pretty good; see here. Bit depth should be non-problematic, but I haven't seen what options you can set in dbpoweramp. SoX by default will use triangular dither when going from 24bits to 16, but unless you're doing multiple quantizations the artifacts of triangular vs. shaped vs. pure truncation should be only academically interesting.