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I am doing production with these recordings, tools are more precise at higher bit and sample rates. Also quality of listening equipment is a factor as hearing i

by Yaa101 5y ago

I am doing production with these recordings, tools are more precise at higher bit and sample rates. Also quality of listening equipment is a factor as hearing is not a flat frequency response, things as ambiance and resonance play a role, music is not a single frequency tone but a combination of complicated frequency additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions. So more frequency room can produce nicer highs and clearer sound, especially when music is uncompressed. It is simplistic to state that 44.1/16bit is enough, if that is the case then any combination of recording, amplifier and speaker would suffice. This just isn't the case, also that we would need awesome priced equipment isn't really worth it. But there really is a difference between a phone with a music app playing a 16bit/44.1kHz song on a medium quality headphones and a dedicated player with a good DAC chip playing a 96kHz song on a good quality headphones. People that cannot hear the difference should not invest in such equipment and will be happy with the need to invest less money for their entertainment.

summm 5y ago
44.1/16 is enough for distribution. This is not simplistic. It simply can reproduce waveforms up to the nyquist frequency perfectly within a defined noise range. That's a mathematically proven fact. Of course you can botch that with bad listening equipment, but there's nothing a ridiculously oversampled signal would improve given the same listening equipment. You do speak about the studio processing right?
carlmr 5y ago
>It is simplistic to state that 44.1/16bit is enough, if that is the case then any combination of recording, amplifier and speaker would suffice. No, that doesn't follow. It just means that recording at those bit rates and sampling frequencies isn't the "bottleneck" for the sound in the system. >But there really is a difference between a phone with a music app playing a 16bit/44.1kHz song on a medium quality headphones and a dedicated player with a good DAC chip playing a 96kHz song on a good quality headphones. When everything you compare to is better quality then of course it sounds better. But it's not due to the 96kHz vs 44.1kHz. Nyquist-Shannon is mathematical reality. You have to compare the same high quality headphones, the amp with the same DAC, with the same recording, being played through a high quality filter bringing everything down to 44.1kHz/16bit.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  "You have to compare the same high quality headphones, the amp with the same DAC, with the same recording, being played through a high quality filter bringing everything down to 44.1kHz/16bit." I agree. If there is a methodologically sound study showing that people can actually distinguish (>50%) between 44.1kHz/16bit and 192kHz/24bit on the same hardware [at exactly the same dB SPL], then I will be really surprised. It's not physically possible to hear those differences, as far as I understand it.
  - carlmr 5y ago
    I'd also be surprised. Even more so with grown-ups, most of them don't even hear >20kHz.

by Yaa101 5y ago

summm 5y ago

44.1/16 is enough for distribution. This is not simplistic. It simply can reproduce waveforms up to the nyquist frequency perfectly within a defined noise range. That's a mathematically proven fact. Of course you can botch that with bad listening equipment, but there's nothing a ridiculously oversampled signal would improve given the same listening equipment. You do speak about the studio processing right?

carlmr 5y ago

>It is simplistic to state that 44.1/16bit is enough, if that is the case then any combination of recording, amplifier and speaker would suffice. No, that doesn't follow. It just means that recording at those bit rates and sampling frequencies isn't the "bottleneck" for the sound in the system. >But there really is a difference between a phone with a music app playing a 16bit/44.1kHz song on a medium quality headphones and a dedicated player with a good DAC chip playing a 96kHz song on a good quality headphones. When everything you compare to is better quality then of course it sounds better. But it's not due to the 96kHz vs 44.1kHz. Nyquist-Shannon is mathematical reality. You have to compare the same high quality headphones, the amp with the same DAC, with the same recording, being played through a high quality filter bringing everything down to 44.1kHz/16bit.

andrewzah 5y ago
"You have to compare the same high quality headphones, the amp with the same DAC, with the same recording, being played through a high quality filter bringing everything down to 44.1kHz/16bit." I agree. If there is a methodologically sound study showing that people can actually distinguish (>50%) between 44.1kHz/16bit and 192kHz/24bit on the same hardware [at exactly the same dB SPL], then I will be really surprised. It's not physically possible to hear those differences, as far as I understand it.
- carlmr 5y ago
  I'd also be surprised. Even more so with grown-ups, most of them don't even hear >20kHz.