[Music Alchemist]

I don't respect your motives.

 
If you don't respect the pursuit of science, you are under no obligation to spend your time in the sound science forum.
 

 
Good call. Perhaps I should compile a list of master resources and instructions in the first post.
 

 
Your posts have always been insightful and to the point. Thanks for helping.

 

[daltonljj]

   
My intention was not to offend, but to scientifically investigate whether people who claim to can actually hear a difference between playback of lossless formats, whether it's WAV vs ALAC or 16-bit vs 24-bit.
 
If you claim to hear a difference, you should be able to demonstrate this with statistical significance via a series of tests, such as the ABX tests mentioned throughout this thread and others. If you fail the tests, it means you were merely guessing and can't actually hear a difference. But the first step is to determine whether you are willing to conduct these tests in the first place.
 
If science offends you, perhaps it would be best to avoid the sound science forum. Some of the more experienced members here are less polite than I. If you're fine with the pursuit of science in relation to sound reproduction, I suggest reading through this thread to get a better idea of what is going on in digital audio.

 
Hey bro i nvr said sound science offence ... i said your tone is offensive. let me quote you
 
Interestingly, a few people have claimed to be able to reliably hear a difference between 24-bit and 16-bit audio as well.
 
@daltonljj @Existence @RUMAY408
 
You are hereby invited to strut your stuff and show us if you can demonstrate this with statistical significance!
 
(Or if you've done tests before, you can present documentation.). 
 
That tone of yours is sounds offensive. strut my stuff. And firstly I did not come here on my own accord. You brought me into it. I love the science of sound.
 
Yes if i claim a difference i should be able to prove it through abx test. Correct but tell me the point if i tell you the test and you conduct the exact test and you can't hear the difference??? Are you saying the test is flawed??? Like I mentioned in the previous post there are too many factors. To have a scientific test to conclude this. Please read carefully. And like I mentioned earlier the sensitivity of humans are all different. And if you read my post in the other thread, I said it depends on the music(specific song) that you're listening too. Some songs benefit from more bits some don't.
 
There is one very big problem with you. You claim to be a man of science but you don't come to it with an open heart.

 

[daltonljj]

to add to my point to why i say you are rude. Who are you to demand that I prove my point to you. You could nicely ask and I would be perfectly fine with sharing what i feel. And throughout this entire thread all i've observed from you is more like disrespect to other users.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Hey bro i nvr said sound science offence ... i said your tone is offensive. let me quote you
 
That tone of yours is sounds offensive. strut my stuff. And firstly I did not come here on my own accord. You brought me into it. I love the science of sound.  
Yes if i claim a difference i should be able to prove it through abx test. Correct but tell me the point if i tell you the test and you conduct the exact test and you can't hear the difference??? Are you saying the test is flawed??? Like I mentioned in the previous post there are too many factors. To have a scientific test to conclude this. Please read carefully. And like I mentioned earlier the sensitivity of humans are all different. And if you read my post in the other thread, I said it depends on the music(specific song) that you're listening too. Some songs benefit from more bits some don't.

 
I meant that in a lighthearted, encouraging way. I could have just as easily worded it in a cold, calculating way. I didn't mean to offend anyone, so I apologize for not wording it as carefully as I could have.
 
You don't "tell me" the test; you document and share your results with the use of software. Otherwise, it's as useful as mere hearsay. So basically, you would take the 24-bit files you perceived a difference with, convert them to 16-bit, and compare via the ABX test.
 
The purpose of the test, as stated before, is to determine whether you can back up your claims by demonstrating it with statistical significance. We'll worry about whether other, hypothetical people can hear a difference after we see whether you can. That's how the burden of proof works.

 

[Head Injury]

   
Yes if i claim a difference i should be able to prove it through abx test. Correct but tell me the point if i tell you the test and you conduct the exact test and you can't hear the difference??? Are you saying the test is flawed??? Like I mentioned in the previous post there are too many factors. To have a scientific test to conclude this. Please read carefully. And like I mentioned earlier the sensitivity of humans are all different. And if you read my post in the other thread, I said it depends on the music(specific song) that you're listening too. Some songs benefit from more bits some don't.  
There is one very big problem with you. You claim to be a man of science but you don't come to it with an open heart.

We're not going to conduct the test on ourselves. We don't think there's a difference, so we'll be biased against finding one and will fail even if there is a difference. We need someone who believes there is a difference, and believes they can reliably hear it, to take the test if we want any meaningful results.
 
If you pass the test we've already outlined for you, we'll examine your methodology to make sure you're not doing anything that could sabotage the results, and if everything checks out we'll try to figure out why you were able to hear the difference.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  to add to my point to why i say you are rude. Who are you to demand that I prove my point to you. You could nicely ask and I would be perfectly fine with sharing what i feel. And throughout this entire thread all i've observed from you is more like disrespect to other users.

 
I don't remember demanding anything. If a person claims to be able to hear a difference between two things that, scientifically speaking, have been established to be impossible to distinguish between under normal circumstances, it is up to that person to prove their claim. If you don't want to prove it, that is fine, but in that case, no one who understands how audio works has a legitimate reason to take your claim seriously.

 

[daltonljj]

ok fine then. How i test is that i will have the exact file encode it into 16bits. Do an ABX with the 2 files. And let me repeat my previously mentioned point. Most music don't make a difference whether 16bits or 24bits. But for some where its in a well recorded space, there seems to be more space in the sound. That is what i can explain from my experience. And I even invited friends over and let them hear the 2 files of same song without telling them what they are hearing. And asked for their experience to see if what I heard was partly placebo. Had 2 friends and both on separate occasions. Both claim that it sounded more spacious.
 
So tell me have i done it correctly?

 

[daltonljj]

   
I don't remember demanding anything. If a person claims to be able to hear a difference between two things that, scientifically speaking, have been established to be impossible to distinguish between under normal circumstances, it is up to that person to prove their claim. If you don't want to prove it, that is fine, but in that case, no one who understands how audio works has a legitimate reason to take your claim seriously.

The way you ask me to strut your stuff sounds like a demand to me. See the problem here is perspective. If you're too arrogant to see it from my point of view, you will never see it as a demand. So really suit yourself.

 

[castleofargh]

  First and foremost, I really don't know what your intention of this post is. Because you sure come off very offensive as if you're trying to dis people of their beliefs be it real or placebo. Not a very nice thing to do in a forum imo. 
 
Anyway back to your topic does 24bits matter? if so prove how you can test it? A least that is what i understand you asking me.
 
To tackle the problem I will first ask you. Assuming all thing equal. Same DAC  and same media player. If you were to play the same file (both in 16 and 24bits or even if 32 bits if you're so anal about it) and use like some device compare their analog signal wave forms when played. Is there a difference? The answer is gonna be a yes and also depending on the DAC that you use this difference will vary.
 
As of how to prove humans can hear it I would have to say that IMHO there is no way to scientifically test and prove that I can hear it. Reason is that there are no 2 human beings in the world that are identical. They way we perceive sound is different. Take for an example. Having a flat freq response. What may seem flat to one may sound bass heavy to another.The perception of sound is attributed to a lot of factors. On the human it could be the shape, size of your year canal and even the sensitivity of the individual's hearing. Another thing is that the difference with are talking about here is very minute. So an analogy that I can come up with is if I were to give you 2 identical balls, one 1kg another 2kg can you tell the weight difference? Obviously you can else something is really wrong with you. Now same experiment. with mass 2kg and 2.1kg can you fell the difference most probably still yes. Guess what some ppl might tell you they don't feel the difference. They start to dis you and ask you to prove how you can feel that 10% change in weight when you are not even a weighing scale. Point i'm trying to put across here is that human sensitivity varies too. So frankly I think its hard to scientifically prove that human's can tell the difference between 16bit and 24bit.
 
Or how about this prove to me how you can test that humans can't hear the difference between 16 and 24 bits.
 
Thus to sum things up it matters but whether you can hear it is a different thing all together. 

yes the 24bit file may have some sound information below -96db that the 16/44 won't have. yes there will most likely also be a noise floor improvement(given that your system is able to keep any noise well below -100db). so overall the 24bit will be technically better. we all agree on this.
but then we can use a 16/44 file and output it to 24bit like I do, and already you lose some of the benefits of a 24bit album. then there is the problem that pretty much no music uses the 96db of dynamic of 16bit. so this makes the use of 24bit of no consequence it's just nothing instead of nothing in the signal data. and that only leaves the noise floor at about 100db on CDs. how many humans can hear -100db noise while listening to music at the same time? well you can go see an audiologist and ask him his opinion about it ^_^. but all this is just theory so we don't really care, maybe we forgot something important.  let's keep an open mind.
 
our slight little problem then is that up till now, nobody has really been successful at telling 24 from 16bit in a well prepared well controlled test. it's not about how we're all special and different, it's about finding someone that can actually tell them apart. even 1 that can reliably tell them appart would be great to make me doubt even a little. I probably still wouldn't care and keep using 16bit, but it would make me a lot more curious for sure.
we have plenty of people saying they can, and even a few who conducted their own weird tests and auto-succeeded into proving themselves right. but each time a serious test in double blind with a good number of participants and a good number of trials is done, the result is "they guessed and got about 50% right".
so from our point of view, you're pretty much telling us you saw a ghost.
 
and I'm not saying it's impossible, what I'm saying is that when you guys notice something, it's probably just your own system messing up on one of the 2 bit depths somehow, or you being victim of a placebo. because on well working systems as I said we're still waiting for any conclusive evidence that anybody can tell them apart.
 
 
 
 
I couldn't find the one I was looking for, but found this one instead http://sdg-master.com/lesestoff/attachment.pdf
if you're bored by the reading (I found it actually interesting and very much in favor of hires at least on the theory part), just skip to page 29 and 30 for the pie chart results.  it's at least very revealing about how strong suggestion can be.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  ok fine then. How i test is that i will have the exact file encode it into 16bits. Do an ABX with the 2 files. And let me repeat my previously mentioned point. Most music don't make a difference whether 16bits or 24bits. But for some where its in a well recorded space, there seems to be more space in the sound. That is what i can explain from my experience. And I even invited friends over and let them hear the 2 files of same song without telling them what they are hearing. And asked for their experience to see if what I heard was partly placebo. Had 2 friends and both on separate occasions. Both claim that it sounded more spacious.
 
So tell me have i done it correctly?

 
Yes, you would take the 24-bit file(s) and convert it to lossless 16-bit / 44.1 kHz, using a program like dBpoweramp.
 
Have you reviewed the instructions (in various posts in this thread) on how to do the ABX test with foobar2000?
 
These are interesting impressions. Let's test them out and see what the results are.
 

  The way you ask me to strut your stuff sounds like a demand to me. See the problem here is perspective. If you're too arrogant to see it from my point of view, you will never see it as a demand. So really suit yourself.

 
Let's take the statement into context:
 
"You are hereby invited to strut your stuff and show us if you can demonstrate this with statistical significance!"
 
How is an invitation a demand, exactly?
 
In any case, there is no reason to be offended by the phrase "strut your stuff"...it's just an expression, and a very lighthearted one, at that.

 

[daltonljj]

   
Yes, you would take the 24-bit file(s) and convert it to lossless 16-bit / 44.1 kHz, using a program like dBpoweramp.
 
Have you reviewed the instructions (in various posts in this thread) on how to do the ABX test with foobar2000?
 
These are interesting impressions. Let's test them out and see what the results are.
 
 
Let's take the statement into context:
 
"You are hereby invited to strut your stuff and show us if you can demonstrate this with statistical significance!"
 
How is an invitation a demand, exactly?
 
In any case, there is no reason to be offended by the phrase "strut your stuff"...it's just an expression, and a very lighthearted one, at that.

 In any case? Well definitely not. Cos you certainly did not see it from mine. Like I said if you insist then suit yourself. Cos you a really too arrogant to see from my POV. Cos like i said i felt offended. not sure if the other 2 guys felt offended. You might wanna ask them too ... lol
 
I'm currently using Jriver media player. What other information do you need ??

 

[Head Injury]

Just for fun, here's the null file I made from the 24 and 16 bit files: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rahtngk3hwsaoti/24%20vs%2016%20no%20dither.flac?dl=0
 
Be very careful when trying to listen to it, any volume setting that will make it audible will become dangerous with actual music.

 

[Music Alchemist]

   In any case? Well definitely not. Cos you certainly did not see it from mine. Like I said if you insist then suit yourself. Cos you a really too arrogant to see from my POV. Cos like i said i felt offended. not sure if the other 2 guys felt offended. You might wanna ask them too ... lol
 
I'm currently using Jriver media player. What other information do you need ??

 
Strut your stuff just means display your skills. I invited you to do so. How could you possibly be offended by that?
 
If you have already selected the song(s) to use (ones you perceived differences with) and converted the 24-bit file(s) to lossless 16-bit / 44.1 kHz, you can then follow the instructions in this guide to conduct the ABX test.

 

[Allucid]

I honestly don't care about this thread. If a human couldn't hear the 24bit difference, then the file wouldn't be made.
Explain this - a DAP will click (different chipset) when switching from 16bit FLAC to 24bit. If a consumer aimed DAP [FiiO X1] supports 24bit FLAC, aimed at the masses, then obviously people can tell the difference between the two. The X1 doesn't down sample 24 to 16 because it uses something else to process the file.

Honestly I don't care, I'm not an audiophile if this is what they do, sit around comparing graphs of music. I just buy high end audio projects / mid end stuff I like, use it and enjoy it. You probably should too, instead of dissenting music.
Try tell a Christian that their beliefs don't exist, and they'll try prove you wrong. Same concept - try tell people there's no difference between 24 and 16...

 

[bigshot]

I honestly don't care about this thread.

 
Prove it!