24/96 ,, 24/192 ... Can you hear the difference ?

[Vinyleyes]

I am slowly reading up and gathering data to help me decide how and with what equipment to plunge into the computer audio world. One of my biggest quandaries is .. how important is it to have the facility to replay at 24/192 khz ..... is there really an audible difference between that and 24/96 ... who can hear the difference and to what degree is it noticeable.

I have looked closely at Sqeezeboz offerings ,, but the Musical Fidelity M1 CLIC looks to be a great all rounder .. complete with a decent .. if not class leading DAC ... Any comments are welcome gents ... :cool:

[Werner Berghofer]

Brian,


is there really an audible difference between that and 24/96

I seriously doubt that most people will be able to hear a difference between redbook audio (44.1 KHz/16 bit) and higher resolutions. High-res audio seems to be the most current incarnation of snake oil mumble jumble.

See the excellent post by Head-Fi user “gregorio” dated March 2009: 24 bit vs 16 bit, the myth exploded! (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded)

Werner.

[kml]

See the excellent post by Head-Fi user “gregorio” dated March 2009: 24 bit vs 16 bit, the myth exploded! (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded)

Werner.

Excellent link thanks! :)

cheers
ken

[Macca]

Excellent link thanks! :)

cheers
ken

Yes, very interesting stuff

[Vinyleyes]

Wow .. what a thread that is attached ... forgive me if I do not read it all tonite .. :) ... and also thanks for the brave ?? opinion.

Only today did I read a review on the MF Clic where the reviewer clearly stated that the sound through 24/192 USB clearly bettered CD replay .. so I am very interested to hear more peoples views on this ...

I guess it is going to come down to what I can hear with my own ears .. but that is certainly food for thought as to whether or not it is worthwhile spending any serious money on this.

:cool:

[Welder]

Have to agree with Werner here.
Even if you believed you could hear a difference between 24/96 and 24/192 to the best of my knowledge no studio unless producing experimental test recordings uses equipment to take advantage of such bit rates and frequencies.

So basically, there isn’t any material to listen to at 24/192 unless upsampled from a lower bit rate and frequency recording (a contentious point often under debate regarding Hi Res material)

Very few people have equipment capable of reproducing such Hi Res recordings; think amplifier bandwidth and processing power and speakers that in general don’t go much past 20KHz.

Then have your hearing tested. At your age Brian (no insult intended, I’m a deaf old git too) I doubt you can hear much beyond 14KHz and despite what some may say about n order harmonics, even if you could hear them in ideal circumstances, they’ll likely be below the noise floor of your listening environment.

In short, don’t worry about it.

What may be worth checking out given you like your vinyl and are probably comfortable with that type of sound is a Non Oversampling Dac. To my ears at least these do sound different to the more common oversampling variety.

The thing is here is to find kit you like the sound of and not get overly concerned about the specifications (did I just write that :eek:)

The Logitech Touch is a great piece of kit for anyone who isn’t interested in music server building and there is plenty of info on AoS on how to squeeze the best out of one.
I would avoid all the one box solutions like the plague tbh. Stick to using a basic laptop/computer/Touch/Dac and remote hard drive to start with and worry about all the rest once you’ve discovered whether file based audio is for you.

[Ammonite Audio]

Brian,



I seriously doubt that most people will be able to hear a difference between redbook audio (44.1 KHz/16 bit) and higher resolutions. High-res audio seems to be the most current incarnation of snake oil mumble jumble.

See the excellent post by Head-Fi user “gregorio” dated March 2009: 24 bit vs 16 bit, the myth exploded! (http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded)

Werner.

I can't be arsed to read all of that, particularly since it's my experience that bit depth does in fact matter but that sampling frequency is not so important. Linn Records' 24 bit 44.1kHz downloads do prove the point; at leat to my ears. But, to answer the OP's question, I don't think that you can hear improvements going from 96kHz to 192kHz - 2L have free downloads (http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html) that allow you to hear the same music in different formats, so I do recommend that the curious have a go. Anything beyond 96kHz is, to my ears, pretty pointless since 96kHz can sound so magnificent compared with Red Book CD (I hold up Linn Records' Carol Kidd high-res downloads as proof of that).

[Tim]

I would avoid all the one box solutions like the plague tbh. Stick to using a basic laptop/computer/Touch/Dac and remote hard drive to start with and worry about all the rest once you’ve discovered whether file based audio is for you.
I totally agree with John here, I went through the same decision making process myself awhile back and looked at many players, but realised they were massively overpriced and performed no better (sometimes worse) that something you could put together with help from people on AoS.

I think finding the right DAC is a much more important consideration and the Logitech players are very highly regarded, but I have yet to try one, being more than happy with my own server. Go out and demo as many of the new players as you can, then look at the price and what you can do with a good DAC and a computer?

As to the original question, I also agree with the consensus and find 16bit perfectly acceptable and have yet to clearly hear any difference, but I have only heard a few 24bit files and players to be honest. However, some of the Linn recordings are quite something to behold on a good system. What I can tell you is that most file based audio systems IMO are more than capable of bettering CD playback, regardless of whether it's 16bit or 24bit, so the reviewers comment about the Clic is somewhat redundant, as I reckon if they played the same music at a lower bit-rate, it would still better CD.

Unless I'm completely mistaken I doubt anybody on AoS has gone over to file based audio just for the convenience it offers, it was the quality of the sound they could achieve compared to CD playback - the convenience is a bonus.

[Vinyleyes]

Have to agree with Werner here.
Even if you believed you could hear a difference between 24/96 and 24/192 to the best of my knowledge no studio unless producing experimental test recordings uses equipment to take advantage of such bit rates and frequencies.

Then have your hearing tested. At your age Brian (no insult intended, I’m a deaf old git too) I doubt you can hear much beyond 14KHz and despite what some may say about n order harmonics, even if you could hear them in ideal circumstances, they’ll likely be below the noise floor of your listening environment.

In short, don’t worry about it.

What may be worth checking out given you like your vinyl and are probably comfortable with that type of sound is a Non Oversampling Dac. To my ears at least these do sound different to the more common oversampling variety.

The thing is here is to find kit you like the sound of and not get overly concerned about the specifications (did I just write that :eek:)

The Logitech Touch is a great piece of kit for anyone who isn’t interested in music server building and there is plenty of info on AoS on how to squeeze the best out of one.
I would avoid all the one box solutions like the plague tbh. Stick to using a basic laptop/computer/Touch/Dac and remote hard drive to start with and worry about all the rest once you’ve discovered whether file based audio is for you.

I "hear" you about the hearing ... :) .. I don't need to be tested ,, I know I am deaf in one ear almost haha!
What you say makes a lot of sense ... At the moment I have a perfectly good DAC in my Oppo 95 (which is going to be sprinkled with the dust) and I could feed the Touch into that ... and then use Shuggies link ( thanks) to experiment a bit with different res files ...
I am on Windows Vista .. so should I be recording my CD's to WAV ,, that is the best option I can see on the computer .. it says the bit rate is higher than that for WMA ...

And .. with hindsight .. what I should have asked is .. what are people's experience in listening to differences between Red Book and 24/96 ... I think that is what I need to determine now for my own listening .. find out if I can actually hear a difference haha! and I can begin that process just by buying a Touch ..

So whats the best Touch to get nowadays :-)

:cool:

[Vincent Kars]

Some can hear the difference, they even can hear if it is not true hires but upsampled: http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=pcaudio&m=72939

16 bits goes down to -96 dBFS, 24 to -144.
Sound impressive but where is the noise floor of your gear?
If you have very quiet gear 24 allows you to hear some very tiny details.
Listening to the decay of an instrument at high level might reveal this.

Higher sample rates allow for a higher Nyquist.
Record at 44, one captures up to 22 kHz theoretically.
As any signal in the input above Nyquist is an error, the input must be band limited.
One needs a very steep (brick wall) between 20 and 22.
This might affect the sound.
Using higher sample rates e.g. 88 allows for a smooth low pass filter starting at 30 or so.

What is above the upper threshold of out hearing we can’t hear.
But we can’t rule out that due to the content above this threshold our tweeters behave different nor that there can be intermodulation distortion in the audible range due to this content above the hearing threshold.

A common explanation why hires sound better is that it is a niche market.
Normally management has al kind of requirements like it should sound good in noisy surroundings (car), on the radio, stand out in the crowd, etc.
This is the normal loudness war.

As it is a niche market, the guys are still allowed to produce quality instead of agreeability.


I advise against ripping to WAV.
Due to a lack of standards the support for tagging is a mess.
The moment you move the audio to another computer or switch to antoher media player, you have a problem.
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/WAV_KB.htm

As you are talking WMA you probably use WMP.
Try WMAL (lossless), M$ own FLAC.

You might have a look at dbPoweramp, one of the best rippers and a very powerful format converter in one.
Having used WMP a couple of years I switched to J River Media Center.
A superior interface and good sound.
It also supports driver like ASIO and WASAPI.
I do think WASAPI sound better than DS (Direct Sound) the only driver WMP does support.
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/SW/Players/MC14/MC14_intro.htm

[sq225917]

I'm not so sure that the differences between 24/192 and 16/44.1 are that audible, but I think there's differences to be heard in the filters used and the softer roll off with higher sampling rates and great word lengths that may offer improvements.

I have the 2l.no Mozart violin concertos in 24/352 and the difference between that and the 16/44.1 s readily audible, it's slight, but noticeable none the less. is it worth striving for? Well that's the real question.

[Ali Tait]

Agreed, poweramp is very good and easy to use. I'd recommend FLAC too, as it compresses files, so takes up less space on the hard drive.It's a lossless compression though, so no sound quality is lost, and the file is bit- perfect to the original. I'd say more people use FLAC than any other system.

[magiccarpetride]

And .. with hindsight .. what I should have asked is .. what are people's experience in listening to differences between Red Book and 24/96 ... I think that is what I need to determine now for my own listening .. find out if I can actually hear a difference haha! and I can begin that process just by buying a Touch ..

Most 24/96 material sounds better than the redbook counterpart. However, there are a few reasons for that. In general, most available 24/96 material has been handled better, meaning with more care and attention. Secondly, if you're messing around with a high definition recording (say, 24/192), anything you do creates less digital artifacts than if you're messing around with the redbook material. Mastering a recording that was done in 16/44 format is more prone to result in unwanted 'pixellation' and digital harshness.

When comparing the two formats, you must be sure you're comparing apples to apples. For example, my first foray into the 'high definition vs. the redbook' format comparisons were on the Getz/Gilberto album, and the high definition format literally destroyed the CD format. But the reason was that the CD format was mastered with a sledge hammer, while the 24/96 format was remastered with painstaking care. So in the end I realized that I was comparing apples to oranges.

You need to make sure that you compare the identical master that has been rendered in two different formats. Then the comparison would be fair.

I did exactly that, and came to the following conclusion: it is not always easy to identify which format is which; short term listening may leave you confused. However, in the longer run, high definition always wins, as it is definitely much less fatiguing. Listen to the redbook version for a while (a few hours), and you'll end up tired and exhausted. Listen to the same music in high definition, and after a few hours you can still keep listening and enjoying the music. These would be the major differences.

Btw, same applies to lossless vs. mp3. Some people cannot immediately hear the differences between lossless and lossy, but the differences sure enough emerge after prolonged listening.


So whats the best Touch to get nowadays :-)

I'd go for the Logitech Squeezebox Touch.

[dave2010]

See also this related post on another thread - http://theartofsound.net/forum/showpost.php?p=242922&postcount=20

If magiccarpetride replies he'll be very close to his 1000!

[lurcher]

You need to make sure that you compare the identical master that has been rendered in two different formats. Then the comparison would be fair.

You can just take your 24/96 recording, convert to 16/44.1 with dither and see if you can hear any difference. That avoids compairing different mastering.

[dave2010]

The differences between "hi-fi" audio (any bit depth, any sample rate) and the "real thing" were just oh so obvious at Prom 43 last night. I may be becoming a deaf old git, but the "real" sound is just so much fuller - in some seats at least. Mind you, with the echo, one does hear some of the music twice! This affected the opening of the piano concerto, where the young Chinese pianist might have been playing anything for a minute or two, at least until my ears adjusted. I generally rcommend live sound, whatever variety, over canned music.

[magiccarpetride]

The differences between "hi-fi" audio (any bit depth, any sample rate) and the "real thing" were just oh so obvious at Prom 43 last night. I may be becoming a deaf old git, but the "real" sound is just so much fuller - in some seats at least. Mind you, with the echo, one does hear some of the music twice! This affected the opening of the piano concerto, where the young Chinese pianist might have been playing anything for a minute or two, at least until my ears adjusted. I generally rcommend live sound, whatever variety, over canned music.

I agree, however very rarely do I get an opportunity to enjoy live performances that would be of equal quality as the live sound. Most of the time I see performers merely going through the motions, sometimes even being pissed with the audience, or just plainly scared. That's why I'm into compromising, and going for select few recorded performances which, despite being of a substandard aural quality, are of a stellar musicianship quality.

[dave2010]

Magiccarpetride

Congratulations on your 1000! Are you now going to retire, or set another target? :)

Live music can be a bit like horse racing (which doesn't turn me on ...) or other sports. You can't be sure what's going to happen. With recorded music the excitement of waiting for the needle to jump (analogue), or the track to repeat/stutter is not the same. At concerts there's the added "pleasure" of coughera, talkers, and some who take in bottles and glasses to clank. On CDs these additional parts are often missing, or if not, always appear at the same points.

There are advantages both ways. With recordings or radio you can always turn off if something is boring (or just not buy the CD or track in the first place), and you can also listen to things which are very rarely performed, and do all this whn you want - other circumstances and people permitting. One the other hand live music can deliver a much more exciting experience and sometimes with much better sound.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

It's nice to have...
My linn supports 24/192 ... Better mastering might be why stuff sounds better, but the fact is, the stuff that I have on 24/192 does sound better than the vast majority of red book stuff!
I'm might not technically be better with direct comparison ... But if companies release 24/192 you can pretty much guarantee it's had a lot of effort put into it one way or another!
If you can't justify any extra expense, or the kit you find more suitable to your ears doesn't handle it then I wouldn't worry... But if it's something you are thinking about, and you can justify a little extra expense then maybe your purchase will provide you with a bit more price of mind that you haven't in some way limited your self/what you can listen to ...
I take advantage of it in my kit very infrequently, but it's nice to know the option is there ... However speculative the technical advantages are!

[Themis]

If I understand properly the discussion is not whether there are differences between CD-rez and high-rez playback but whether you (or I) can actually hear these differences ? :scratch:

I really wonder why some spend so much energy trying to convince me what I can or can't hear ?
I assure you I can answer myself to this simple question ! :ner:

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Dimitri!!
When did you re-surface?
Nice to see you back, and fighting the corner for purist subjectivism :)

[Themis]

Dimitri!!
When did you re-surface?
Nice to see you back, and fighting the corner for purist subjectivism :)
I re-surfaced... today !!! :cool:

And I was thinking of you, when in Vienna I decided to buy a Canon 600 D ! :eyebrows:

[dave2010]

I really wonder why some spend so much energy trying to convince me what I can or can't hear ?
I assure you I can answer myself to this simple question ! :ner:Dmitri

Nice to see you back here.

Isn't the problem that some of us may never be able to tell the difference, some of us perhaps for sure can, and some of us may be able to tell the difference given some time.

Not only that, but we may also need to be able find data which we like and can tolerate listening to. A simple example might be of some audio compressed to MP3 (shudder) and done (fairly badly) with a light touch, and compared with a really heavily compressed MP3 of the same. It should be easy to tell the difference. It's also possible that the more heavily compressed version will sound pleasanter, since the high frequency roll off, though pretty severe, may at least be smooth enough, whereas the supposedly higher resolution version may just have all the artefacts out there on display, and actually be uncomfortable to listen to. However, neither should sound as good - in general - as the original recording - assuming that was made well.

I am sure that my hearing varies over time, and sometimes it's a lot better than others. Just because I can't hear artefacts one day doesn't mean I won't hear them another day - or vice-versa. If I'm building up a library of recordings for myself and others to enjoy, I generally think it's worth trying to get as good a sound as possible. However, casual listeners may not notice much difference between versions, so in the end it depends whether one cares enough I guess.

I suspect that what are generally considered to be better quality systems are usually much easier to listen to for longer periods, and that's where some of these differences - assuming they exist - will show up.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

I re-surfaced... today !!! :cool:

And I was thinking of you, when in Vienna I decided to buy a Canon 600 D ! :eyebrows:

Nice bit of kit!
Did you get any nice shots with it whilst you were there?

[Themis]

Nice bit of kit!
Did you get any nice shots with it whilst you were there?
Yes, of course ! I'll try to post some in the photo section soon ! ;)

[Themis]

Dmitri

Nice to see you back here.

Isn't the problem that some of us may never be able to tell the difference, some of us perhaps for sure can, and some of us may be able to tell the difference given some time.

Not only that, but we may also need to be able find data which we like and can tolerate listening to. A simple example might be of some audio compressed to MP3 (shudder) and done (fairly badly) with a light touch, and compared with a really heavily compressed MP3 of the same. It should be easy to tell the difference. It's also possible that the more heavily compressed version will sound pleasanter, since the high frequency roll off, though pretty severe, may at least be smooth enough, whereas the supposedly higher resolution version may just have all the artefacts out there on display, and actually be uncomfortable to listen to. However, neither should sound as good - in general - as the original recording - assuming that was made well.

I am sure that my hearing varies over time, and sometimes it's a lot better than others. Just because I can't hear artefacts one day doesn't mean I won't hear them another day - or vice-versa. If I'm building up a library of recordings for myself and others to enjoy, I generally think it's worth trying to get as good a sound as possible. However, casual listeners may not notice much difference between versions, so in the end it depends whether one cares enough I guess.

I suspect that what are generally considered to be better quality systems are usually much easier to listen to for longer periods, and that's where some of these differences - assuming they exist - will show up.
Nice to see you're still here ! :)

Very sensitive words, Dave !

What really bothers me about hi-rez discussions is just people who are trying (sometimes sincerely) to convince everybody around that their effort of "trying to get as good a sound as possible" is useless... or even worse. :steam:
And it is still more disturbing when all this is based on partial technical data, sometimes even deliberately so. ;)

Like, for instance, reducing sampling frequency use on the sole cutting-frequency argument. ;)