5 ms·

I can hear the difference between them but honestly I listen to Spotify on highest quality setting (320Kbps I think?) for my everyday because it's convenient an

I can hear the difference between them but honestly I listen to Spotify on highest quality setting (320Kbps I think?) for my everyday because it's convenient and already sounds great. I'm listening in an imperfect environment anyways with environmental noise from outside and a non-treated room. My main benchmark is does the codec give me listening fatigue which, for example, Soundcloud and 128Kbps does but 320Kbps doesn't. As an aside people who swear by 24-bit audio don't even understand what bit rate does in context of audio. It's only useful in the studio context. Edit: Not sure why I'm getting down voted. I can explain the difference as added sparkle in the transient high end frequencies. My hypothesis is that the presence of frequencies outside of the range of our ears affect the frequencies within our hearing range. It's pretty common to have to re-EQ the whole track after EQing one instrument in a mix so this concept is just being applied outside our hearing frequency spectrum Also I would like to point out that higher bandwidth audio doesn't necessarily sound better to me, just different.

atoav 8y ago
I work in Film Postproduction and work as a soundesigner or re-recording mixer and also mix music from time to time. In audio production you can really feel the difference between 16 bit Audio and 24 bit. Just like in photography were RAW only really makes a difference when you start to manipulate the data you really start to hear the difference between 16 and 24 bit once you work with recordings. 24 Bit allows more “shades” of loudness between the loidest signal and absolute silence. This means the above statements depend on the dynamic range of the recording, which is arguably too low in these days. As an output format 16bit should be enough for most scenarios and except for a few edge cases hearing the difference of a well mastered 16bit recording to the same thing in 24 bit should be nearly impossible. This however refers all to uncompressed audio. Depending on your audio gear you can definitly can hear a difference between uncompressed/lossless and lossy mp3 compression even at 320kbps. The same is true for 330kbps vs 128kbps mp3. I must admit that I cannot differenciate between uncompressed and opus 256kbps. If you do anything that needs audio compression I strongly recommend looking at the Opus Codec
cjhanks 8y ago
I upvoted you, but you're wrong. 24bit audio depth matters, especially in jazz and classical recordings. You notice both subharmonics and superharmonics missing. Particularly when their phase is slow in time.
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  Case in point. The bit rate has to do with dynamic range not frequencies.
  - cjhanks 8y ago
    The reverberation of a single tone can be in phase or out of phase. The results is observed as a beat frequency in amplitude.. not in tonal frequency, that's what why bitrate matters.
    - rorykoehler 8y ago
      We use higher bitrates during recording to lower the noise floor, in turn giving more headroom in the mix. Once you mix down this becomes irrelevant because the difference between silent and full volume at 16bit is enough to cover the full capability in terms of sound pressure levels of the human ear. 1bit = 6dB which means 16bit is 96dB. As we don't start at absolute zero but with a background noise of the room at 30dB using the full dynamic range of 16bit at playback you risk deafening yourself. In your example if your single tone is out of phase then 1) how do you control this at any bit rate and 2) this is controlled by an acoustically treated room and a skilled engineer during recording. When you listen on headphones you already eliminate this concern on playback and unless you are listening in a professional designed and treated listening studio you will always have some element of phase cancellation. This is the listening character of your room and will occur at any bitrate. Read this https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/the-24bit-delusion/ https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/the-24bit-delusion/
      - cjhanks 8y ago
        You know - I agree with this article. Thank you for your thoughtful response. I understand and agree that 24bits is enough for human perception. But something else is happening in MP3 encoding. Some sort of assumptions about human perception of dynamic range that are inaccurate. I am not expert enough to know precisely where. But I generally understand compression and I am an "audiophile". Nothing in the article stands out as false to me. But I cannot help but believe it might be missing something.
posterboy 8y ago
> transient high end frequencies. My hypothesis is that the presence of frequencies outside of the range of our ears affect the frequencies within our hearing range This is something I wonder about, too, but by my limited knowledge of signal processing the low pass effects of the signal transmission path do simply not admit any such frequencies. I wonder whether that counts for all orders of derivation, though. I wonder if higher frequencies can cause resonance in lower frequencies, undertones instead of overtones so to speak, maybe in exotic geometries like the inner ear. Echo location famously works better in the ultrasonic range and involves higher order derivatives. We don't talk of constant sinusoids, but ultrasonic sweeps and chirps (not sparkle :D). We can't hear ultrasound, but perhaps we can sense it similarly to how we can sense lowest frequencies as rumble. I really don't know the maths, what is a really low frequency note played for nanoseconds? High frequency Pulse Width Modulation is used to modulate sound in the audible range, which is quite tricky to get right mathematically and in hardware. The common problem is the introduction of ringing, indeed. By the way, I really like to listen to music under the shower in the next room. I hear, or rather hallucinate, the most wonderful sounds under the noise.

atoav 8y ago

I work in Film Postproduction and work as a soundesigner or re-recording mixer and also mix music from time to time. In audio production you can really feel the difference between 16 bit Audio and 24 bit. Just like in photography were RAW only really makes a difference when you start to manipulate the data you really start to hear the difference between 16 and 24 bit once you work with recordings. 24 Bit allows more “shades” of loudness between the loidest signal and absolute silence. This means the above statements depend on the dynamic range of the recording, which is arguably too low in these days. As an output format 16bit should be enough for most scenarios and except for a few edge cases hearing the difference of a well mastered 16bit recording to the same thing in 24 bit should be nearly impossible. This however refers all to uncompressed audio. Depending on your audio gear you can definitly can hear a difference between uncompressed/lossless and lossy mp3 compression even at 320kbps. The same is true for 330kbps vs 128kbps mp3. I must admit that I cannot differenciate between uncompressed and opus 256kbps. If you do anything that needs audio compression I strongly recommend looking at the Opus Codec

cjhanks 8y ago

I upvoted you, but you're wrong. 24bit audio depth matters, especially in jazz and classical recordings. You notice both subharmonics and superharmonics missing. Particularly when their phase is slow in time.

rorykoehler 8y ago
Case in point. The bit rate has to do with dynamic range not frequencies.
- cjhanks 8y ago
  The reverberation of a single tone can be in phase or out of phase. The results is observed as a beat frequency in amplitude.. not in tonal frequency, that's what why bitrate matters.
  - rorykoehler 8y ago
    We use higher bitrates during recording to lower the noise floor, in turn giving more headroom in the mix. Once you mix down this becomes irrelevant because the difference between silent and full volume at 16bit is enough to cover the full capability in terms of sound pressure levels of the human ear. 1bit = 6dB which means 16bit is 96dB. As we don't start at absolute zero but with a background noise of the room at 30dB using the full dynamic range of 16bit at playback you risk deafening yourself. In your example if your single tone is out of phase then 1) how do you control this at any bit rate and 2) this is controlled by an acoustically treated room and a skilled engineer during recording. When you listen on headphones you already eliminate this concern on playback and unless you are listening in a professional designed and treated listening studio you will always have some element of phase cancellation. This is the listening character of your room and will occur at any bitrate. Read this https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/the-24bit-delusion/ https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/the-24bit-delusion/
    - cjhanks 8y ago
      You know - I agree with this article. Thank you for your thoughtful response. I understand and agree that 24bits is enough for human perception. But something else is happening in MP3 encoding. Some sort of assumptions about human perception of dynamic range that are inaccurate. I am not expert enough to know precisely where. But I generally understand compression and I am an "audiophile". Nothing in the article stands out as false to me. But I cannot help but believe it might be missing something.

posterboy 8y ago

> transient high end frequencies. My hypothesis is that the presence of frequencies outside of the range of our ears affect the frequencies within our hearing range This is something I wonder about, too, but by my limited knowledge of signal processing the low pass effects of the signal transmission path do simply not admit any such frequencies. I wonder whether that counts for all orders of derivation, though. I wonder if higher frequencies can cause resonance in lower frequencies, undertones instead of overtones so to speak, maybe in exotic geometries like the inner ear. Echo location famously works better in the ultrasonic range and involves higher order derivatives. We don't talk of constant sinusoids, but ultrasonic sweeps and chirps (not sparkle :D). We can't hear ultrasound, but perhaps we can sense it similarly to how we can sense lowest frequencies as rumble. I really don't know the maths, what is a really low frequency note played for nanoseconds? High frequency Pulse Width Modulation is used to modulate sound in the audible range, which is quite tricky to get right mathematically and in hardware. The common problem is the introduction of ringing, indeed. By the way, I really like to listen to music under the shower in the next room. I hear, or rather hallucinate, the most wonderful sounds under the noise.