24/192 music downloads...and why they make no sense

[iaresee]

Good read: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Pono went under in 2017 IIRC.

 

[bradlake]

Good read: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Pono went under in 2017 IIRC.

Neil’s heart (of gold) was in the right place, but that was some clunky hard/software.......

 

[chris]

As part Native Hawaiian, the name of that device bugged me.

But remember kids, more number is betterer

 

[yek]

Well-known article, great stuff.
I included a link to it when I wrote the Drive Guide, Bit Crusher section.

 

[PumpkinKing86]

 

[PumpkinKing86]

In all seriousness though, just give me lossless audio that has plenty of dynamics (no brickwalling) and I'll be happy.

 

[axifist]

In all seriousness though, just give me lossless audio that has plenty of dynamics (no brickwalling) and I'll be happy.

Totally agree! Listen e.g. to the last Daft Punk album, Random Access Memories. It's quite uncompressed (by modern standards) and just sounds fantastic! (If only that singing wasn't like that... )

 

[iaresee]

Well-known article, great stuff.
I included a link to it when I wrote the Drive Guide, Bit Crusher section.

It popped to the top of hackernews today so it's getting some fresh attention from the nerd-set.

 

[antcarrier]

192 is way overkill, but 24 bit clearly sounds better than 16 bit. Higher sample rates such as 88.2 or 96, while outside the audible spectrum, are superior for many kinds of digital processing as they result in less aliasing when processed in the mixing/mastering stage. If you then have to SRC to get back to 44.1, the audio will be audibly degraded by the SRC.

IMO audio should be delivered at the sampling rate it was mastered at.

EDIT: If you want to compare 16 vs 24 bit, stick this free plugin at the end of one of your own recordings https://www.airwindows.com/ditherbox-vst/
Compare 16 bit PaulDither and 24 bit PaulDither. The 24 bit version clearly sounds better. I expect that this may be related to the noise shaping used, but I don't know for sure.

 

[Muad'zin]

In all seriousness though, just give me lossless audio that has plenty of dynamics (no brickwalling) and I'll be happy.

I was perfectly happy with lossy audio back in the 90's already. I never was much for being an audiophile. The loudness war on the other hand was pure evil incarnate. In that sense we're lucky that listening through youtube has pretty much put a stop to that.