24bit/96/192KHz vs 16bit/44.1/48KHz for music playback - A scientific look.

[mrk]

I was Googling for how Google Music handles lossless audio and amidst the search results my eyes focused on this article.

Having read it I'm now more aware of the misconceptions people make (myself included) and will no doubt have this in mind when getting new music.

The TL;DR version is explained in this extract:

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we're not going to see any actual improvement.

...

The ear hears via hair cells that sit on the resonant basilar membrane in the cochlea. Each hair cell is effectively tuned to a narrow frequency band determined by its position on the membrane. Sensitivity peaks in the middle of the band and falls off to either side in a lopsided cone shape overlapping the bands of other nearby hair cells. A sound is inaudible if there are no hair cells tuned to hear it.

It's worth mentioning briefly that the ear's S/N ratio is smaller than its absolute dynamic range. Within a given critical band, typical S/N is estimated to only be about 30dB. Relative S/N does not reach the full dynamic range even when considering widely spaced bands. This assures that linear 16 bit PCM offers higher resolution than is actually required.

It is also worth mentioning that increasing the bit depth of the audio representation from 16 to 24 bits does not increase the perceptible resolution or 'fineness' of the audio. It only increases the dynamic range, the range between the softest possible and the loudest possible sound, by lowering the noise floor. However, a 16-bit noise floor is already below what we can hear.

...

16 bits is enough to store all we can hear, and will be enough forever.

So what do you guys think of this? I have several albums in 24/96 and my DAC/Amp supports that over Asynchronous USB. Maybe I should drop the output from Windows to 16bit and 44.1 or 48KHz with this new knowledge in mind considering the bulk of my music is 16/44.1 anyway.

Think a re-read in the evening is in order as some of it went over my head as well this morning

 

[mrk]

That's the point of the article Samsara That if you converted the 24/96 Mastered re-release to CD format then the sonics are identical.

And aye the final parts of the article go into detail about this that marketing depts have a field day promoting 24/96/192 when the only real difference is that a higher quality master was used. Had the same master been used for a CD re-release then it would sound identical to the 24/96 version!

With this in mind I don't think it matters a great deal whether the Windows DAC output is set to default 16/41 or 24/96 considering any corrections are being done by the amp internally?

Which artist does "one world" btw? There are a few on Google

 

[mrk]

I see what you guys are saying above yeah and the last few days I've been playing around. There's certainly no quality difference listening to 24/96 Flacs at 16/44.1 but in Windows I have noticed if I set the amp (USB connection) to 16/44.1 then at very high volume when there's nothing playing you can hear the ambient hiss faintly like you get on an analogue amp. There is no distortion or interference from anything else but the ambient hiss is there. That kind of volume level is ear deafening though so would never be that high when playing stuff.

Set Windows to any 24 bit mode and it's dead silence even at max volume. So it appears that Windows 7 outputs the cleanest audio at 24bit when using a DAC but there's no audible difference in musical performance.

I'll leave it at 24/96 purely for the clean background

dire straits

Cheers!

 

[mrk]

Because a bought lossless file (say FLAC) @ 16/44.1 takes up less space than @ 24/96 or 24/192 and has no audible difference, this is the whole point of this thread

This is important for those who like to keep their lossless music on portable devices.

 

[mrk]

Re: DAC/Amp - It doesn't matter if it's expensive or cheap though, 16/44.1 envelopes the full range for playback humans can hear

The difference that is subjective is exactly what a person has trained their ears to pick up on. Person A may be more technical than person B and over the years has gradually upgraded speakers/headphones/amps and at each step has noticed new details in music they are familiar with (usual occurrence with most people from communities like this one and others where we share a common interest) whereas person B will not know any different because music is just music, they just want to hear a song - And so on

Really thin speaker cable may warm up and fade with repeated use on large speakers as well due to resistance - I had this on my old Tannoy speakers and NAD amp where I got thin cabling that looked nice (clear sheath) and was cheap but after long sessions the cable was warm and soft. Over time the sheath started to go yellow from the repeated warm up/cool down.

Since then I've always had thick gauge cables on my speakers, not necessarily expensive cable but thick cable that won't get bogged down with heavy use.

 

[mrk]

Keep it as flac if it's at 16bit and 44.1KHz.

You could convert them to mp3 using the LAME encoder and the quality would be indistinguishable from the lossless format in most instances though but that defeats the objective of having lossless music in your archive.

 

[mrk]

Yup, My 64GB card on the phone has 7GB odd free as most of it is used by music, some of that music is in Flac format where I've been able to rip or get it in that format. Syncing with the PC is just easier this way, no need to dedicate time to converting each new album to mp3 just for the phone and I would imagine most people have in ear buds that isolate outside noise quite well

 

[mrk]

^ Generally true but don't get it mixed up with genuine cable issues though. Look at the X1 thread, the stock cable does decrease sound because it has unusually high resistance (1.5ohms) whereas a normal cable has typically 0.5ohms.

It's not common but it does happen.

 

[mrk]

Oh indeed, the fact is marketed cables are priced insanely high for no reason whatsoever. A digital cable is exactly that. Tesco sell a 1 metre strand of optical "premium" cable which is fine, it's well built and terminated with metal ends and they charge a tenner. The exact same cable, but longer, on eBay is £7 cheaper.

In an all analogue system I can appreciate some cables do deliver a different sound to others but the equipment being connected has to be supremely good to be sensitive enough to tell the difference and we're probably talking amps/speakers that cost thousands if not tens of thousands of £.

Everything else is so minuscule it falls into the doesn't matter category so buy something built well that will last for the price as opposed to "much better bass from this cable!!!" type stuff

 

[mrk]

Maybe it's special sound transparency copper?







It's the Hi-fi mags I tell you, they cause all this.