Why 24 bit audio and anything over 48k is not only worthless, but bad for music.

May 31, 2025 at 4:07 PM Post #3,781 of 3,947
Not if frequency error is audible and time error isn’t.

Not to everyone. I find some objective differences in hi-res (excluding NOS which is pretty obvious treble roll off) can be audible not in the frequency response sense but on pacing, timbre and dynamics which I'm not claiming is absolutely correlated to better optimizations in both time and frequency domain
 
May 31, 2025 at 4:49 PM Post #3,783 of 3,947
May 31, 2025 at 5:07 PM Post #3,784 of 3,947
What's interesting about this illegal signal is that it can show the different behaviors of DACs and how they filter out the signal so that they can reproduce the square wave in either optimized time domain or optimized frequency domain. Hi-Res allows for better optimization of the square wave in the time domain without sacrificing frequency response
What's really interesting is that you keep making incorrect assumptions about how digital audio works without either understanding it or at least checking if they are at least correct or not like claiming a sampled high frequency square wave would sound the same as a high frequency sine wave.

DACs employing steep FIR filters are already perfect in both the time and frequency domain across the audible frequencies with standard sampling rates. They don't cause any ringing in their pass region (up to ~20kHz) and ringing outside that range is obviously impossible to notice by someone whose hearing don't go as high. If by some chance someone heard such a high frequency ringing, it's extremely likely irrelevant because it's caused by the insane amount of high frequencies present in the square wave, an amount that is more than unlikely show up with real music. Just because a DAC behaves differently (outside of the audible range btw) with a test signal does not mean that it would behave differently with actual music.
 
May 31, 2025 at 5:32 PM Post #3,785 of 3,947
Or those who understand digital sampling theory.

I'm well aware of the Shannon Nyquist theory. Yes, you will get ZERO imaging aliases with 44.1 KHz sampling and that's because the FIR filter is bandlimited at the nyquist frequency by noise shaping. The result is a smooth analog sine wave.

1748727324172.png


I'm merely pointing out there are differences in hi-res 768 KHz against CD that can be shown objectively in TIME DOMAIN, NOT FREQUENCY DOMAIN using square wave as signal input

What's really interesting is that you keep making incorrect assumptions about how digital audio works without either understanding it or at least checking if they are at least correct or not like claiming a sampled high frequency square wave would sound the same as a high frequency sine wave.

I could not hear any difference between 7KHz square and 7KHz sine and that's because the 3rd harmonic is at 21KHz

1748727581150.png
 
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May 31, 2025 at 5:57 PM Post #3,786 of 3,947
I could not hear any difference between 7KHz square and 7KHz sine and that's because the 3rd harmonic is at 21KHz
Why are you lying about this? It's clear you haven't listened to the files I've provided and you have not generated your own either. Seriously, do it. The square wave have a ton of aliasing present creating an annoying buzzing sound regardless of the DAC being used. Be careful though, you might end up learning something new about digital audio.
The fifth harmonic in your picture will get wrapped right back to 9kHz creating an easily audible harmonic, and the wrapping around holds true to everything else above the third harmonic!

There are a ton of audible harmonics when generating a 7kHz (!) square wave with Audacity as can be confirmed by the spectrum:
1748728484742.png

This is already present in the signal before the reconstruction! Is your gear or ear really so extremely bad you do not hear it or are you really just lying about it because you can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes on this? @2leftears corrected me when I accidentally uploaded the square wave twice, it's a very audible effect.
The other version does not sound completely clear either by the way. While I haven't tried adobe audition, I highly doubt it doesn't just generate a naive square wave either.

You don't understand the sampling theory at all if you really expect a 7kHz square wave to sound like sine wave.
 
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May 31, 2025 at 6:05 PM Post #3,787 of 3,947
I could not hear any difference between 7KHz square and 7KHz sine and that's because the 3rd harmonic is at 21KHz

That would be the case if you generate them using a good quality low distortion function generator & amp.

But you are now moving the goal posts (or you have been misleading us). You asked about hearing the difference between a 7kHz square and 7kHz sine if both were not created by actually sampling an analog signal, but were instead constructed directly in the digital sample domain, without the required anti-aliasing low-pass filtering that should happen when you are actually properly sampling an analog signal, and then taking that improperly generated digital ("illegal") sample signal and passing it through an audio DAC.

That difference is absolute audible, evidenced by the files @VNandor posted already.

If you understood the digital sampling theory (like you say), then you would know that the anti-aliasing low pass filter employed in the sampling process is an absolute requirement, and circumventing that by constructing your square wave "samples" directly in the digital domain (without taking care to avoid aliasing) results in a digital sample signal that violates the digital sampling theory conditions with harmonics resulting in the audible frequency range as @VNandor already showed.
 
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May 31, 2025 at 6:17 PM Post #3,788 of 3,947
Why are you lying about this? It's clear you haven't listened to the files I've provided and you have not generated your own either. Seriously, do it. The square wave have a ton of aliasing present creating an annoying buzzing sound regardless of the DAC being used. Be careful though, you might end up learning something new about digital audio.
The fifth harmonic in your picture will get wrapped right back to 9kHz creating an easily audible harmonic, and the wrapping around holds true to everything else above the third harmonic!

There are a ton of audible harmonics when generating a 7kHz (!) square wave with Audacity as can be confirmed by the spectrum:
1748728484742.png
This is already present in the signal before the reconstruction! Is your gear or ear really so extremely bad you do not hear it or are you really just lying about it because you can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes on this? @2leftears corrected me when I accidentally uploaded the square wave twice, it's a very audible effect.
The other version does not sound completely clear either by the way. While I haven't tried adobe audition, I highly doubt it doesn't just generate a naive square wave either.

You don't understand the sampling theory at all if you really expect a 7kHz square wave to sound like sine wave.

That's not 7KHz square. Why do you have aliasing in there? Doesn't your ADC eliminate that lol? Seems like your Audacity is broken lol

I tested with just merely an online test tone and LITERALLY I hear ZERO difference between the sine and square wave lol

1748729823638.png
 
May 31, 2025 at 6:21 PM Post #3,790 of 3,947
440Hz square and 440Hz sine are 100% audible difference BTW
 
May 31, 2025 at 6:24 PM Post #3,791 of 3,947
That's not 7KHz square. Why do you have aliasing in there? Doesn't your ADC eliminate that lol? Seems like your Audacity is broken lol

I tested with just merely an online test tone and LITERALLY I hear ZERO difference between the sine and square wave lol
Digitally of course. DAC, NOT ADC such as analog synths!


Ok. Not like it matters because you do not know what an ADC is either. At which point do you think an ADC is involved when Audacity or an online tone generator generates the sound by the way? How would my ADC eliminate aliasing when you specifically requested not using an ADC? You also specifically said Audacity and adobe, not some random tone generator. You even confirmed the settings that you supposedly checked.

You make up one thing you are completely wrong about then come back with something else that you are correct about. Yes, that tone generator you found does sound the same with the square and sine wave setting at 7kHz, I agree.
 
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May 31, 2025 at 6:30 PM Post #3,793 of 3,947
Frankly I'm still not sure what settings he has in mind. It doesn't seem like he clearly answered if he means a square that is properly band-limited or not.
Told you so guys :-)

Seems like your Audacity is broken lol
No, we all assumed that when you answered here "square":
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/why...t-bad-for-music.716822/page-250#post-18709868
then you actually looked at that screenshot. Apparently we assumed too much.
 
May 31, 2025 at 6:32 PM Post #3,795 of 3,947
Told you so guys :-)

You generated a non bandwidth limited square hence all the aliasing. I want a PROPER square wave WITHOUT ALIASING.

Playing back with the online test generator literally showed no audible difference between 7KHz sine and 7khz square
 
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