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[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm not say 16/44.1 is lousy. It's perfect for audiobooks & loudness wars victims.

16/44.1 is also more than good enough for a well-mastered CD. You see, as a CD is 16/44.1 already, ripping it at any higher resolution doesn't improve the sound quality.

The ONLY way you can benefit from a higher resolution (if you have the hearing to hear it, and the equipment to play it), is when your music comes straight from the master.

What I don't get is why ruin good recordings by remastering them to be flat?

Do you know what a 'hot' LP is?

That's vinyl which has been cut to be as loud as possible. You can only go so far, because otherwise you'd damage the record. On a CD, you can push much further. First, you raise the loudest parts as far as they'll go. That's officially 89 dB on a CD (when running on a calibrated reference system), but with tricks, you can get up to 99-100 dB. If that's not loud enough, you start raising the quieter parts as high as they'll go, and then you get the tell-tale 'brick wall' mastering.

This image shows brick wall mastering

The top part is correctly mastered. The bottom part is brick walled, especially on the right, where the waveform almost fills the entire spectrum.

The peaks in the top waveform are the louder parts: bass, drums, beats, riffs, fill-ins, that sort of thing. They stand out. That's why they're peaks. You can only have loud sounds if you also have quiet sounds. Brick wall mastering destroys bass, drums, and beats and such because it removes all the peaks. It makes your penny whistle the same loudness as a church organ, and an acoustic guitar will be just as loud as a Bösendorfer grand piano. (And that is one loud m***f***, lemme tell ya.)

And the entire point of this is to try and be louder than everyone else.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

16/44.1 is also more than good enough for a well-mastered CD. You see, as a CD is 16/44.1 already, ripping it at any higher resolution doesn't improve the sound quality.

I'm not saying to up the resolution at all.

The ONLY way you can benefit from a higher resolution (if you have the hearing to hear it, and the equipment to play it), is when your music comes straight from the master.

Computers these days can play 24/96 no problem. And you can get USB DACs (and some DAPs that are better sounding than the on-board sound.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Computers these days can play 24/96 no problem. And you can get USB DACs (and some DAPs that are better sounding than the on-board sound.

You're forgetting that most speakers in a somewhat normal price range cap out at around 18 - 18.5 kHz.

Even if a manufacturer says they can go higher, it's often not feasible because the tone is going to be too soft to hear at normal listening distances. So... even while they maybe, possibly can do it, you need very expensive speakers to actually hear it.

As I said, the very highest audio qualities are only useful for people who have both golden ears, and golden equipment. I have silver ears, and bronze equipment with silver lining, so... not good enough. I'm sticking to 16/44.1.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You're forgetting that most speakers in a somewhat normal price range cap out at around 18 - 18.5 kHz.

What do you concider to be a normalprice range?

You obviously are not listening. I'll say this one more time. Read very carefully and very slowly. 24/96 has sonic benefits that are in the audible frequency range.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What do you concider to be a normalprice range?

You obviously are not listening. I'll say this one more time. Read very carefully and very slowly. 24/96 has sonic benefits that are in the audible frequency range.

I'm not listening because you're talking bullshit. Most speakers can't reproduce that 'benefit'.

If there was a clearly noticeable difference between 16/44.1 and anything higher, then Xiph.org wouldn't have posted a long article stating that anything above 16/44.1 is useless except for editing. Have you actually read the article, and watched the linked Show&Tell video's?

About 24/96, the article actually says:

Assuming your system is actually capable of full 96kHz playback [6], the above files should be completely silent with no audible noises, tones, whistles, clicks, or other sounds. If you hear anything, your system has a nonlinearity causing audible intermodulation of the ultrasonics. Be careful when increasing volume; running into digital or analog clipping, even soft clipping, will suddenly cause loud intermodulation tones.

In summary, it's not certain that intermodulation from ultrasonics will be audible on a given system. The added distortion could be insignificant or it could be noticable. Either way, ultrasonic content is never a benefit, and on plenty of systems it will audibly hurt fidelity. On the systems it doesn't hurt, the cost and complexity of handling ultrasonics could have been saved, or spent on improved audible range performance instead.

Summarized: even *if* your system can play the 'benefits' you're so adamant about, Xiph.org states that it's useless and actually harmful *within the audible range*.

I hope you don't mind that the words written by people who actually design and write audio codecs hold more weight with me than yours.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

And I'm telling you that most speakers can't reproduce that benefit.

I disagree. Most speakers can reproduce that benefit.How well they do it deoends on the speakers.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If there was a clearly noticeable difference between 16/44.1 and anything higher, then Xiph.org, who are the maintainers of FLAC, wouldn't have posted a long article stating that anything above 16/44.1 is useless except for editing.

Actually, 24/96 is better for editing. That's why most digital recordings are recorded at 24/96.

About 24/96, the article actually says:

That's pure BS. The audio beyond 20khz is not going to audibly hurt the sound you can hear. That article is a load of rubbish and really should go away. There are audible benefits to 24/96 over 16/44.1.

[Katsunami]

As I said in my previous post: I hope you don't mind that the words written by people who actually design and write audio codecs hold more weight with me than yours It's your word against that of professional codec designers and writers, and I'm taking their side in the matter.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

As I said in my previous post: I hope you don't mind that the words written by people who actually design and write audio codecs hold more weight with me than yours It's your word against that of professional codec designers and writers, and I'm taking their side in the matter.

My words are very similar to the words of many others and some of those others are actually audio professionals. The audio forums I am a member of have people who work in the business and I can say most agree that 24/96 is better than 16/44.1.

So take that as you will.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Actually, 24/96 is better for editing. That's why most digital recordings are recorded at 24/96.

Did you actually read the last bit you quoted, where Katsunami actually wrote "anything above 16/44.1 is useless except for editing."

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That's pure BS. The audio beyond 20khz is not going to audibly hurt the sound you can hear. That article is a load of rubbish and really should go away. There are audible benefits to 24/96 over 16/44.1.

Have you actually played the ultrasonic samples through your sound system? The article argues that since most amplifiers aren't designed for ultrasonic frequencies, the ultrasonic components generate false tones in the audible spectrum. If your sound system is doing things right, you should hear nothing. Anything you hear is noise introduced by the amplifiers/speakers.

[JSWolf]

http://audiophilereview.com/audiophi...nd-better.html

Have a read.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

http://audiophilereview.com/audiophi...nd-better.html

Have a read.

Frankly, the usual wibble from the kind of people who coloured in the edges of CDs or want oxygen free copper digital cables.

A blind listening test, comparing the original hi-res source with properly downsampled 16/44.1 from the hi res source is the only way to really compare formats.

But if the magic feather of a high res recording makes you feel better, it's your money.

[tubemonkey]

128 MP3 on a small BT speaker works for me