... You asked for a recommendation, and you clearly can google...go nuts. I didn't ask for a book review. ...
I asked for if people knew of any good research on a topic, that implies, at least in any scientific forum I know about, that you know what your recommend and find it good yourself. I actually tired to look it up, in multiple online research databases, and it is not available on those. Given that you seem to indicate you just googled the book, and is not a book you recommend based on your own knowledge of it, I will not spend more time on it. Seems like wasted time. As a researcher, this is pretty irritating waste of time.
But speakers do soundstage and directionality naturally. Headphones have to be processed into doing it. I understand what you're talking about, but that has never been a part of acoustic sound reproduction. Back in the days of the acoustic Victrola they recorded everything dry and used the horn in the phonograph to project the sound into the room to give it a natural presence. Room ambience helped make severely limited recordings sound so real and present they could make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Natural room ambience is an important part of the sound quality of a speaker system too. If you think that the ideal listening room is completely dry and dead, and all of the ambience should be baked into the mix, you're wrong about what makes a good speaker system. The acoustics of the room is as much a part of the sound quality as the acoustics of the speakers.
It sounds like you're theorizing about speakers the way people theorize about headphones. But they are quite different animals and have different goals, advantages and limitations. With headphones, you're removing the room from the equation to make balanced frequency response and super low distortion easier to achieve. With speakers you are taking advantage of the room acoustics to give ambient space for the sound to exist in and you're adding a kinesthetic punch to the sound. Two totally different approaches- both equally valid- and both suited for their own purposes. You could design a listening room to mimic the advantages of headphones, but it wouldn't exploit the unique benefits of speaker sound. And you can probably synthesize speaker sound with headphones, but you'll lose the advantages headphones have. And it would be like a digital reverb hall ambience vs. a real concert hall ambience. Close but no cigar.
You might want to google information about room treatment theory. That might help you understand how speaker systems are implemented. You'll find out that the goal of room treatment isn't to remove all reflections. It's to remove *detrimental* reflections so the disadvantages are minimized and natural room ambience can help the sound bloom and exist in three dimensional space. Speaker systems are optimized to create something bigger and better than the recording alone. They aren't about clinically presenting the recording and nothing else. Recording booths are about isolation because you want to focus on just the sound you're trying to get down in the recording. But speakers use the room to* enhance* the recording.
Not many people have heard a surround system optimized for music listening. Most of them are optimized for home theater. But a really good speaker system in a really good room does things headphones can't. And headphones do things speakers can't. It's best to use each for what it does best and not try to make one into the other.
Sure. Bose in particular has been playing on this aspect for years now. The problem is the physics of it. What you speak of, is adding to the recording, which is a form of distortion. For speakers, there is plenty of distortions in any normal environment, and for most acoustics designs, making these as flattering as possible, is a stated goal. But when the speaker itself and the room acoustics becomes a part of the musical mix, clearly altering the presentation, do we need high res music for that? I have even attended lectures at conferences for recording industry, covering just room acoustics. Read books on the topics. Even books on speaker building, like the calculations done on the reflex volume, and its affect on the rendering. Speakers are not rendering exactly what the recording is.
But sure, some argue about this "dryness" whatever that is. If you mean that nothing is added to the recording, then I am all with you. Some speakers play just fine, without the need for much to be added, and without a great need for extra reflections. Typically a studio speaker.
Moving beyond 16bit, if distorting the rendering like a normal listening situation with speakers do, why do you need more than 16bit? If you do not play above 90db, in pure technical terms, it should be all there, at 16bit. If there is an audible difference, and sure, that might be the case, what is causing it? There is also a ton of added distortion, for non-"dry rooms". Why this need for this super accurate rendering then?
There have been decades of research on how humans perceive sound, and it's the reason why we've been able to get the necessary transparency bandwidth for audio data down to 128-256k! All that leans heavily on Fourier theory. Fine if you want to say "human hearing is complex", but that isn't proof that you need more bits or samples/second, which is of course the kind of thing people want to assume rather than prove.
I have no idea what you are talking about. A search in multiple science data bases return hits from the field of networking and on Google I get a lot of hits in the field of signal processing. A quick definition of the term, is not available, and not obtainable, without a considerable effort, even for me and the access I got through the University. I do not have the time for that. If this is vital info, please share.
Also, even though some theories and models have success at making the signal as imperfect as possible, yet still recognizable, it still is not The Explanation of how human hearing is working or what algorithms humans use. It perfectly well might be just a coincidence or a correlation. For all we know, there might be no universality to this at all.
And yet, I agree. That something is complex, is not proof of much. But if it is complex, then it is not simple. Also, if it is poorly understood, and there is limited knowledge, and universality is a huge unknown, what is known is really dependent on the epistemology applied. What is proof, depends on your epistemology and your ontology.
What is expected, currently, with the results at hand, is that positional accuracy, as done by hearing, will correlate with the findings of the bounds discovered thus far. But that is for the simple stuff. There might be combination of variables, or complexity, that suddenly reveals a different result, as a result of how the brain and senses work. Until that is a known, it will remain an unknown.
People also need to realize, that hardly any, if any, theory in physics is proven. They are just not proven false: Yet. The concept of knowledge is not a trivial one, and what constitutes a proof for anything, is a very blurry landscape. At least in science. That is why we, and at the risk of putting people of, we as in the science community, refer to the tradition we are a part of. It is essential.
Having seen and been taught some signal processing, what was constituted as a proof of no loss for image treatment, was not really my thing. I got great respect for what have been achieved, but no so much on what is considered proof for no loss on lossy compression. Particularly, when faced with proof that falsifies the results, the community answer is a huge letdown. Their math proofs usually holds up though, but as a tradition, it is flat out weak, if any subjectivity is introduced.
Except for the last quoted sentence, I feel you're ignoring the actual practicalities/reality. Yes, a close mic'ed snare drum rimshot for example might produce a very high level, there are very low noise floor studios in the world and in theory you might be able to exceed 96dB dynamic range with a violin (not sure it wouldn't be a challenge though). BUT, even if you did have an exceptionally low noise floor live room, it's not so low a noise floor once you put musicians in there. In the case of say a rimshot or drum hit, the noise floor picked-up by that close mic is effectively incredibly high because a drum hit/rimshot typically does not occur in complete isolation, there would be spill from other instruments in the drum kit and typically we never use just a close mic, because it doesn't give a desirable/aesthetically pleasing result. In the case of a violin, the only way I can imagine of potentially exceeding 96dB dynamic range would be to very close mic it but again, in practise that is very undesirable.
In theory I'm sure you know what you're talking about but I don't know in practise, I've never tried it because it's either not possible in practise or it's aesthetically undesirable. Mics are chosen for their sonic characteristics, noise floor is only one of those characteristics and typically not the characteristic of primary concern and the same is sometimes true of the mic pre-amp. In other words, if my only goal as a recording engineer were to achieve the highest possible dynamic range, then maybe 16bit would in some cases not be enough but that is not my only goal in reality, in fact, it's quite a long way down the list of goals.
G
EDIT: "none of which actually have true 24 bit noise performance (except for one)." - There's one which does, how is that possible? Can you let me know which one or give me a link please, I'd like to read up on it.
I really like this post. It falls inline with my impression of how musicians typically work. I know people who could probably say exactly the same, almost word for word, for a greater part of this post.
Noise Reduction is used in post, if a mic picks up too much noise. Many find this a non-issue. Sometimes mics are used, even knowing they produce a lot of noise, for multiple reasons. If you struggle with that, you need to listen to some Ed Sheeran tracks of late. Like "Supermarket Flowers". Just listen for it, and you will be able to pick it up all over the place, all over, as across the music industry. Just like in the old days, when Dolby C was used. If you know how that degraded the track, you can clearly hear the tell tale signs.
As for picking mics, there are a ton of videos on mics on the tube. The irony is that they are often picked for having a character opposite of what many audiophiles call for: They are often picked for how they distort the sound. For most musicians, it is more about expression. They sound expression they seek. Or what mic would fit a particular voice, as to make it sound great.
You will also find a lot of the bloggers or tubers posting on the gear they use. Almost any video using a mosquito, include some NR in post. The talk is more about the noise floor, and at least for portable gear, the mic amp is a huge factor as well.
I tried the high res on my portable recorder, and the result was worse than that of 16/44.1. Which is in line with the original claim of this thread. I found no benefit in post either, actually quite the opposite. Thing is, I have the exact same experience with my USB interface at home as well, which is a best selling USB interface for musicians. Sure, there is a difference, it is just for the worse.
As for math, high res recordings should sound as low res, but not in my case. To me, it is evident that something else is going on, like the interplay of gear, digital noise, or something.
It is not really that hard to tell a difference, but just because it comes with a label with a higher number, it is not necessarily better. I hear all these people speaking of their great high res experience, I just struggle to reproduce it.
Tidal introduced "Master" quality, using lossy (!) compression for high res. I just cannot get it to work, as with anything high res. Sure there is a difference. A difference for the worse. It even mess up the 16/44.1, which is supposed to be embedded, as it clearly is not lossless anymore. I would gladly pay for high res audio, but it better give me an improvement. That improvement is lost on me, on all my gear. I must be getting old or something.
Yet, the reported Tidal "improvements" is easy to achieve for 16/44.1 as well, just reduce the buffer to be as small, that it will produce a signal loss over USB, and a lot of the sonic traits are there. Sure, I can hear plenty of what is described as positive sonic traits, but these are what in my experience typically is followed by digital noise or signal loss. Also, a lot of other signs of noise, is present. There seem to be some improvement, but accompanied by a lot of negatives, making me even doubt if there is anything positives at all. What the real positives are, someone has yet to tell me.
I get an improvement from USB filtering and cables, but high res audio, it is still lost on me. Including when doing my own recordings.
