|
Ahhh... the whine of the 15.734 kHz horizontal flyback transformers. The sound of cheap video terminals. When I was much younger, like 50 years ago I had no trouble hearing sounds up to at least 19kHz. At those frequencies, they add no information to sound but they can still add colour to it. Alas, now my hearing aids block everything above about 7.5 kHz.
While there is probably little practical reason for sampling frequencies greater than 48 kHz, I think that a case can be made for 24 bit samples just to give greater dynamic range. The reason we still have 16 bit samples now is that when the CD standards were specified in the early 80's, 16 bits was really pushing the state of the art. I was working in remote sensing at the time and anything greater than 12 bits was considered very exotic (and very expensive).
Several years ago I realized that my CD collection had far exceded any accessible space so I ripped them all to flac images with cue sheets. With those two files I can recreate an exact copy of the CD. These images are then stored on both hard drives and bluray discs. I then split the images into tracks and I have these on an external drive that is connected to an old netbook computer. The netbook is also connected to an external usb D/A that is connected to the hifi. Now I have immeadiate access to my entire music collection. The audio quality is that of the original CD.
|