3 ms·
I haven’t done the math, but I wouldn’t be utterly shocked if undithered 16-bit audio, cranked up some silly amount (such that full scale is 130dBA perhaps) has
by amluto 3y ago
I haven’t done the math, but I wouldn’t be utterly shocked if undithered 16-bit audio, cranked up some silly amount (such that full scale is 130dBA perhaps) has an audible noise floor.
This is consistent with my other comment about badly encoded MP3 being far from transparent.
- SSLy 3y agoYeah, 18-20 bits make sense in loudly tuned cinemas.
- fuzzfactor 3y agoIt takes a certain amount of analog circuitry to bring a signal up to 130dBA full scale. Doing the math on the analog bits, the engineering data indicates the analog noise will always end up greater than the 16-bit floor. "One day" I built an analog preamp which had lower noise than a CD could reproduce anyway.
- amluto 3y agoWe’re talking about bad audio, though — setting full scale to 130dB doesn’t mean that the system can reproduce 130dB accurately or even hit 130dB at all. In any case, while 130dB is a bit excessive, a highly efficient speaker (e.g. the old Voice Of The Theater) connected to a good modern amplifier and DAC could easily be cranked to 118dB with a noise floor that’s, at least in principle, inaudible in any normal room. (I’m not saying this is a good idea. But seriously, check out the performance of the top amplifiers at audiosciencereview.com — these things have ridiculous performance and aren’t even that expensive. About 120dB SNR at over 100W is something you can just buy, for about $1500.) (I’m also not claiming anything about linearity of the system or of people’s ears. But I can imagine 16 bits being put to better use in a well-considered floating point system than as plain linear PCM.)