How much better can sound reproduction get, are we almost at the pinnacle or is there still some way to go, can we expect major improvements in the future?
Computational audio is the new pinnacle, combined with advancements in recording techniques/encoding. In terms of pure signal reproduction it's been audibly perfect for a few decades in the enthusiast market and at least 15 years in the mainstream.
Agreed. Hires is already internally oversampled by DACs and everyone has an option to oversample externally anyways through Windows Mixer if you want. To my opinion, HiRes is definitely a money grabbing game since all information is already present with CD. However the option to load custom oversampling to even DSD1024 is a very good thing, but for storing music or selling music , CD is totally fine and a perfect medium
I mean back when SACD was a thing, I collected an "audiophile" grade stereo SACD player and SACD discs. Some only have a SACD layer: one is really meant for surround sound as it's 4 organs for quad sound. The player also upsamples CD to 96 or 192kHz, and I certainly can't hear a difference, I did like collecting classical and jazz titles because they were either out of print for CD or mastered better than the redbook version. That when DSD was a format that actually had major music labels producing for DSD64, it's more reason why I don't understand why folks think we'd need DSD1024.
I mean back when SACD was a thing, I collected an "audiophile" grade stereo SACD player and SACD discs. Some only have a SACD layer: one is really meant for surround sound as it's 4 organs for quad sound. The player also upsamples CD to 96 or 192kHz, and I certainly can't hear a difference, I did like collecting classical and jazz titles because they were either out of print for CD or mastered better than the redbook version. That when DSD was a format that actually had major music labels producing for DSD64, it's more reason why I don't understand why folks think we'd need DSD1024.
I only like boutique formats like DSD64 because there's an implication (and a real world correlation) that the recording and production will be really, really good or why would they waste the money? Aside from that DSD is a terrible, inefficient music format that has no reason to exist.
Regardless of Paul the snakeoil guy being stupid, how am I going to find my favorite albums from years ago in higher than 44.1/16bit? It's not happening, more over a lot of important master tapes got burned in a fire 10 years ago or so. Those masters are not coming back. Not a single person can A/B test any high res vs cd quality.
I test for effects of the 16 bit format(brighter, shallower soundstage depth, grey background) and 24 bit(warmer fuller, dark background) rather than hearing a difference, imo.
I also test for longer periods of time, say listening to 24 bit for 20 minutes casually then switching down to 16, where the brightness, lack of depth can be more easily perceived.
Also consider that any analogue master tape is only capable of around 13 bits of dynamic range at a maximum so a HiRes version of these titles is not going to give you anything more.
Also while master tape is capable of higher frequencies, the standard RedBook of 16 44.1 is going to give you all audible frequencies anyway.
Truthfully the best rendition of these older titles is likely to be the second edition of the CDs as that's when the mastering guys stopped with the "Whoooa we can finally do treble" with digital.
I mean back when SACD was a thing, I collected an "audiophile" grade stereo SACD player and SACD discs. Some only have a SACD layer: one is really meant for surround sound as it's 4 organs for quad sound. The player also upsamples CD to 96 or 192kHz, and I certainly can't hear a difference, I did like collecting classical and jazz titles because they were either out of print for CD or mastered better than the redbook version. That when DSD was a format that actually had major music labels producing for DSD64, it's more reason why I don't understand why folks think we'd need DSD1024.
I only like boutique formats like DSD64 because there's an implication (and a real world correlation) that the recording and production will be really, really good or why would they waste the money? Aside from that DSD is a terrible, inefficient music format that has no reason to exist.
Well, they figured out that they can make money from extracting the 1-bit sigma delta operation and put it on a data file and market it as direct conversion to analog with just a low pass filter and obviously has to sound better due to “direct path” hence why it exists
If only they would measure the brain itself with, say, Electroencephalography(EEG), to see what’s happening in the brain while listening to various sampling rates to see if there are effects or not…
Oh wait…
Subjective effects of broadband water sounds with inaudible high-frequency components
The additional accuracy of 24 bit is not needed. 13 bits is enough in consumer audio and that's "only" 8192 levels. More points of measurement don't provide anything. It is redundant information. Do you know my name better if I tell it to you 10 times instead of just once?
There still has to be a ROI for a business. There are smaller businesses that have found they get good enough returns advertising hi-res recordings/remastering for a select range of consumers. But the majority of consumers are happy with streaming lossy music tracks from top services. I have a hunch that vinyl records still are seeing higher sales now, due to young people finding interest in the format. Be it large cover art, or that even though masters are from digital, there's a certain subjective bias of its treble rolloff. I've collected some vinyl records that were either out of print titles or their masters sounded better than early CD. I have collected a few new records: some have some really neat new features-one of the main ones being a 3D hologram (shining a light on the grooves and seeing a floating 3D drawing).
Also RE why is it hard to understand why bit depth is not just about dynamic range. Well we live in the 21 century: where bit depth is just about dynamic range. Sample rate with audio has such fine filters that it's easy to reproduce a 44.1 kHz wave. New recording technologies for audio are 32bit float do be able to have a dynamic range that's above 120 dB (where editors can bring out quiet details and still not have noise). The same is true for imaging-until recently your DR was 8bit per channel (256 shades of tone or 0:255 DR) output. That's now changed to up to 10bit for HDR displays. Current camera sensors can record over 14bit DR. That gives the photographer a range of editing to bring out details in areas that would just be white or black in a 8bit/10bit color space.
When it comes to audible fidelity, we are maxed out. The goal has been achieved. The future is multichannel, bringing three dimensional directionality to the mix, and DSPs allowing for sculpting the sound to your personal preference.
There are ways of synthesizing multichannel speciality using DSPs. The Realiser is the best currently, along with Apple’s Spstial Audio. There’s plenty of room for future advancements there.
There are ways of synthesizing multichannel speciality using DSPs. The Realiser is the best currently, along with Apple’s Spstial Audio. There’s plenty of room for future advancements there.
I can't wait till there is at least a 3D spacial element to this tech where as you turn your head, the sound stays centered. That would emulate speakers more closely. Also Don't discount DST-X for headphones. It's legit.
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