Interesting argument, but ... As a professional Audio Engineer I can tell you that 24 bit 96 KHz does make a difference to the trained ear especially for acoustic master recordings. There are vibrational frequencies above our hearing range that do effect the listener when listening through hi-end reproduction equipment. I admit that I can not personally hear a difference between 24-96 and 24-192. But I can hear a difference between 16-44.1 and 24-96 with properly recorded non-over compressed acoustic recording using hi-end microphones and listening equipment. Unfortunately most of the world is listening to mp3 over computer monitors so 16-44.1 is becoming the defacto hi-end format.
We will have to agree to disagree. When at CBC Vancouver, in the main classical recording studio, we did a blind test between 16/44.1 and 24/96 and the difference was audible. There was also an audible difference between 16/44.1 and 24/48. Less of a difference between 24/48 and 24/96 but still "minimally" audible on the high end system that existed in that studio at that time. The converter (Apogee) was common in all frequencies and it output multiple sample rates at the same time, so that would have minimal effect on audible outcome. There is a difference. Is it audible to 99.9% of the population ? Probably not. I remember one incident where I was working in the Drama studio and was hearing an annoying tone at approx. 18K coming from the main board and printing onto the digital (DAT) tapes we were recording on at that time (16-48). I called on the maintenance department to show them the problem and they couldn't hear it. Luckily at the same time another recording engineer entered the studio and I asked him if he could hear the high frequency tone in the room. Luckily he did. Maintenance then brought down frequency analysis equipment that showed a high frequency anomaly coming from the board. It was tracked down to the power supply and after three days of soaking in a "special chemical bath" the transformer and power supply were repaired and the console was still in service with no problems 5 years later.
#1 Red Book Standard is a CD manufacturing standard not the audio frequency bible. (you changed your own argument with ... Sampling rates above 44.1 and 24 bit have no affect on audio quality and have no audible improvements compared to the Red Book Standard) You have already changed your argument from 16/44.1 to 24/44.1 (Not a Red Book Standard since CD's do not exceed 16/44.1). 16 or 24 bit have nothing to do with frequency but everything to do with signal to noise ratios. 44.1 up to 192 (and beyond) have everything to do with frequency capture. Some systems in development (and use) actually only sample frequencies up to 24 KHz per channel but over sample and create redundant samples expanding the number of frequencies actually being sampled (ie_ every 1/2 hertz rather than every full hertz). Others actually sample up to 88 KHz per channel. Scientific sampling recorders now exceed those frequency specifications and are use in marine and celestial research where extended spectrum monitoring is often required (ie_ cetacean research). These systems can only be audibly experienced by humans by "lowering or slowing" the pitch down to normal listening parameters or by visual monitoring on scopes. You are assuming, incorrectly, that sympathetic frequencies above 20KHz do not exist and have no effect on the listener. Perhaps you should do some study of the psycho-acoustic properties of music on the human body. I suggest your time would be better spent in discussions of what a major problem with audio is ... Mastering. Study the work of Bob Katz vs. the loudness wars or the "if my record sounds louder it will sell more" syndrome prevalent in todays music. When you are listening to that form of music you can have 4bit 44.1 KHz and it doesn't matter since the music doesn't really have any s/n, it's just loud or silent. The subtlety doesn't exist. That is my final post on this matter, but I know that you will slag this as you suffer from Donald Trump ego inflation last word syndrome. You feel that by writing the last line you win. You've already LOST.
I'm a professional sound guy that works in the motion picture industry and I can tell you... your explanation is pretty good but your conclusion is incomplete. You totally miss the purpose of HD (above 48K) audio. The main reason people use it is because they are doing some sort of high fidelity mastering where they could need to layer the sound. What if they need to slow down the sound to match slow motion video? If you slow down 48K, your sound will turn sucky really quickly. You need that higher fidelity sound to properly mix or master.
Agreed, but this video was from the perspective of high-res audio as a consumer music delivery format. In cases such as the one you are describing, it does make sense.
I'm considering transitioning to a bat so I can take advantage of frequency's beyond 20-20K and I can virtue signal my new abilities on Twitter while simultaneously canceling anyone who attempts to disprove my new found abilities.
My ears tell me different. I definitely can hear a difference, significant difference that adds to my listening pleasure. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and what you hear is what you get.
3:51 The answer: Because frequencies higher than 20kHz combine to produce lower frequencies within our hearing range that add to the high end frequency timbre of music. This is why Rupert Neve made sure his test equipment was rated to have a linear response of up to 50kHz and a controlled response to 100
gotta love your presentation. loud and clear. english isn't my first language and i usually need to turn on english subtitles in case i mishear some words.
There is one thing I don't understand here. You break down sound into amplitude (which you say is recorded as bit depth) and frequency, which is recorded as the sampling rate, but what about timbre? How is that recorded? I find that it is the timbre that is missing from low definition recordings and, although you can hear the notes and how loud they are it is the quality of the sound that is often poor.
There are more considerations than this: - low pass filters (preventing aliasing) don't have to be as drastic (steep curve) for Hi-Res audio, - if the track uses fade away type of ending, you won't hear "graininess" of the audio resulting form less bits of resolution at low volume parts - if you plan on processing audio further, like slowing the tempo down and bringing pitch to original (to practice your favorite part on an instrument), you have more information to work with in Hi-Res audio to get better results after editing - DSD is also considered Hi-Res. The advantages of DSD are such, that you get far smoother waveform than recovering from PCM encoding. At 1-bit depth, but sampling rates as high as 2.8Mhz, you still get 4x the information that it's on a redbook CD - SA-CD, which is an optical disc using DSD codec, is unlikely to be pirated, because there aren't any consumer SA-CD burning devices. Also, and artist recording directly to DSD and release SA-CD album, basically makes his or her master recording available to you, because not much editing software is available for DSD. So, as I described above, there are practical as well as ethical reasons that are in favor of various forms of Hi-Res audio. As long as we don't resort to dynamic compression for commercial reasons (loudness war) or data compression for convenience reasons (56Kbits/sec or even 128Kbits/sec MP3 can sounds rather horrible), and keep recording sources legitimate (no up-conversion from lower bit rates and lower sampling frequencies just to "appear" Hi-Res), I am all for it. I don't like piracy, and I don't like data compression con with 10:1 compression schemes. If I get a high quality recording from a legitimate source, I'll take it on a MiniDisc (ATRAC 290Kbits/sec) or on redbook CD, DAT, 24-bit digital reel-to-reel tape or in Hi-Res audio file format. MP3 or vinyl are not for me for reasons I'd have to write another comment this long, so I won't get into. As far as Hi-Res audio, I don't have problem with it. Pono player is sort of the lowest quality hardware you can get for Hi-Res audio, and most of files in Pono store are not true Hi-Res. So yes, there's some con there. But my experience with SA-CD discs and audio gear, hdtracks.com and something like Sony NW-ZX2 portable player have been really good. If I dig both the sound and the gear, what's not to like?
>SACD unlikely to pirate Older PlayStation 3's have a SACD drive, and they're a go-to for ripping them. Recently some players were found to be also capable of that.
SACD has been pirated for a while. DSD also isn't very good for technical reasons, the most prominent being the need for an extremely accurate clock. www.mojo-audio.com/blog/dsd-vs-pcm-myth-vs-truth/ Here's an article on that subject.
Andrew Piatek - If you have thousands of dollars to spend on the proper equipment to play back Hi-Res Audio, actually believe that the difference you can hear is worth it and don't mind that a great majority of artists and albums are not available in Hi-Res Audio, then by all means, give your money away. Some of the newest equipment is indeed very nice and of high quality. I can not justify spending nearly $10k for a Sony portable setup minus the download only digital files. I'd rather stick with my iPod classic, or smartphone (for Bluetooth) and buy a brand new Yamaha FZ-09 motorcycle for roughly the same amount of money. I am not suggesting that you go out and purchase a motorcycle. I am simply trying to put into perspective the astronomical rip-off Hi-Res audio equipment is.
Portable player NW-WM1Z $3200. Headphones MDR-Z1R $2300. Headphone Amp TA-ZH1ES $2200. These are the current prices. Nearly 8k after sales tax. You will still need to purchase digital files to listen to but I figure if you spend that much already $25 per album is chump change.
Generally, I think you're right, when a song is ready to be broadcast (After being mastered), 16bit/44.1khz will pretty much sound similar to 24bit/96khz. But, at the producing stage, I believe it gives you more freedom to mix, shape, eq and control finer subtleties then lower resolutions. (This subject can lead to a social, philosophical argue, because people are able to enjoy good old lofi music as well..) It's like, shooting an8k video and play it on a HD tv (which is basically 1k) it doesn't affect the top quality of the tv, but at the producers level, you just have more info to work with..
YES! Sample rate affects both latency (important for performance) and transient response (important for tracking, mixing, mastering). Bit depth is important for headroom while tacking, mixing, and recording. This is why most DAW software uses 32-bit floating point internally. However, you can't fix it in post if you clip. So those extra bits make it easier to record tracks at varying levels without clipping. Sure it can and has been done at 16bit 44.1k audio, but it's much easier to get good results recording in higher resolution than you need.
It's not necessarily about end-user listening all of the time. With more data within the audio signal, effects can be made to be more robust. It's just like cameras with a high resolution capture. No one is going to look at the 6000x8000 image once the image is edited, but more color data allows the editor to perform more robust editing on the image. Likewise, someone who downloads a song at a higher than nyquist audio track will be able to apply better effects to the song, mainly focusing on equalization. Also, because of nyquist, frequencies at the higher end of the sampling range get sampled as low-end, and muddy up the bass tones of the song. Because of this, the higher end of human hearing at 22kHz gets confused as low end when listening to 44.1kHz audio. Increasing the sampling rate to 96kHz frees up the higher human hearing range to be heard clearly. This was a very short video, and could have been explained better by someone with sound engineering or electrical engineering experience.
kids these days have no idea how lucky they are that most modern vsti support oversampling by default to get rid of nyquist limit, run any old plugin's saw wave at higher piano register and you get horrible aliasing at 44.1 samplerate
I can hear difference between 44 and 192 in normal listening. I cut off the frequencies below 44 and there was quite bit of music in there. Even when my DAC upsamples the music it sounds better. I can describe 44 as sliding on slide with bumps and hi res as much more flat and comfortable slide. DSD is completely flat compared to PCM. I think bit depth makes a difference too. I tried Master vs Hi-Fi on Tidal and the master sounded better. I was confused. I was looking at graph comparisons before I bought Tidal and it was same on the graphs. I later found out Master is 24bit.
@ReaktorLeak So I first played it on speakers that had 48kz limit. When I heard the first and secod I knew the first is hires but I played the third one and thought the second one is cd. So I switched to my dac and headphones and clearly heard the difference. First track was ok, second was harsh but when I played the third track it hurt my ears. Most obvious were the drums but the piano was same. I checked it in spek ofc and I thought I would hear the difference in the piaono but I didnt. Only when I compared them ten times and focused a lot they sounded different but I wouldnt guess right which one is hires. I tested my ears on tone generator and maximum frequency I heard was 28kHz.
This is why higher sampling rates sound better: it isn't that they can reproduce ultrasonic frequencies, it's that they can better reproduce the sound frequencies you CAN hear. I have done some tests with analog sine waves fed into my pro-audio ADC, and above ~11khz the signal starts losing integrity when the system is at 44.1khz. It starts sounding "steppy" and harsh and drops slightly in volume. When I increase the sampling rate, those high frequencies sound fuller and more clear. Think about it: at 44.1, any signal above 11khz has fewer than 4 samples to represent the waveform. Quantization errors! So 96KHz simply sounds better, assuming you have high-end speakers/headphones to reproduce those high frequencies.
you must have some shit ears if you cant hear a difference mate. sure, you have this whole scientific view, i understand it. but moving for 44.1khz to 192khz, its a very noticable difference, especially with proper quality headphones.
Quote : "In this forest plot, the untrained listeners are clustered around 50% correct, though most of the studies are slightly above that. The trained listeners performed much better, usually between 60% and 70% correct, though the confidence intervals are much wider than for most of the studies with untrained listeners". www.avsforum.com/forum/91-audio-theory-setup-chat/2501370-high-resolution-audio-perception-meta-analysis.html
Recording in higher bitdepths or frequencies can be beneficial, so you can manipulate the sounds more easily. But when outputting, you can keep it at his recommended settings.
i didn't quite understand what 44khz or x-khz got to do with hearing Frequency (15-22). 44khz format or 192 khz is the sampling rate of the original file. Quote by Sony: Higher sampling rates mean that more samples per second were taken when the original analog sound was converted into digital.
Partly true. Increasing the sampling rate by 4 increases the top frequency by double. So, if the highest frequency you can reproduce is , say now 44khz and change, it is still only 1extra octave. It's the detail that the extra samples give you which matters. More samples makes the recording more detailed and closer to the analogue information that you are recording. I am in my 40s so my upper frequency threshold is now starting to be impaired by age. That doesn't stop me noticing better stability, detail or pitch. If I loose even down to 10khz that's only the top octave I have lost. Nothing is linear in sound. It's logarithmic. Remember that.
kHz is sampling rate and I wonder you even understand what that actually means. It is samples per second. If someone wanting the best, he can go upto 192khz but you really need high end system to be able to notice the difference. In cheap systems, you can't even differentiate between 44.1 and 192khz. Human brain actually resolve music at 250khz but the thing is, it is impossible to record music at that rate, our brains can pick up nuisances even at 4 milliseconds apart which is equivalent to 250khz and to create the same sound as in the studio, you really need 250khz but because of the hardware limitations, you can only record those nuisances 22 milliseconds apart (192khz) which impacts the transients in the music and higher end DACs, such as Chord Qutest tries to upscale the music at that sample rate but it's only partially successes. If you really want to learn more about this, watch "John Franks" interview.
Actually, I learned in another video that higher sampling rates can be useful if you do time stretch operations on your audio. For instance if you want to do a slow motion effect with a voice, you can record it with a high sampling rate (i.e. 96kHz or 192kHz) so that when you stretch it, you have less of the "crunchy" undesirable effect for that slow motion. Not tested myself yet, but video here: ruclips.net/video/Vr8lplezplk/видео.html. So it's rare, but in some cases high sampling rate can be useful.
this is a great point and when you ask the question "is higher sample rate or higher bit rate beneficial," the answer is different for each depending on whether you are talking about recording, editing, or consumption
AHH, forgot about that one! Sometimes... It's needed to stretch a sample to get it to "fit" in a part of a certain mix... 44.1 when given a pretty minor stretch (around 4-7%) there are residual bits in there that gives it a crunchy tone.... The same used to happen with tape speeds, it was always better to record at the faster speed (15 ips) than the more domestic 7.5 ips, as there was more tape getting used for audio thus more details could be recorded... Essentially the analogue version of sample rates. Interestingly, the tape speed adjustment was used when the first digital audio samplers grew into a useable musical instrument... Due to the cost of memory, the early digital samplers had teeny tiny memory specs....thus sample time was also tiny (Casio RZ1 for example, 1 second divided between 4 sample trigger pads). As a work around, users would record onto tape - and then sample it by playing the tape at double speed. Effectively doubling the sample time, but at the cost of audio quality.
Good point, analog is superior in this but when streching if interpolated points are added, say with a window of 100ms that predicts the direction of the curve, not only direct mid between 2 points, it should sound the same if capturing with twice the samplerate. I don't think DAWs do this so yeah, you are right.
In essentials, this topic would say everything there is to sampling rates and bit depth. But its riddled from being partially factoid and a bit too theoretical, for its own good. For example: 16 bit depth gives us 96 dbFS of dynamic range. This is not true, even if we ignore, that people believe, you would get 96dB of dynamic range on the music alone. In fact, you don't get anywhere near that dynamic range for the music, nor would you ever need it. Lets take some classical music as an example. How about Mozart Overture 'Die Zauberflöte'? That piece peaks at roughly -3dBFS and goes down to -71dBFS (RMS). So we are talking about a a dynamic range of about 68dB. And it makes perfect sense! Listening to music at 96dB SPL is not healthy for your ears and hearing. And now for the overall dynamic range possible in 16 bits: While in theory, the noise floor of a 16 bit recording is 96dBFS, pracitally, its not possible to have a noise floor that low. Its more likely to have about -93dBFS (RMS) as a lowest noise floor. That being said - if you get your peak noise below 94dBFS, its likely, that the conversion does not consider what as any signal and as far as your PCM WAV file would be conserned, you'd have effectively NO NOISE at all. But since noise in that recording jumps from -93dBFS (RMS) to ZERO, you have effectively a noise floor of -93dBFS (RMS) and in peak even worse -90dBFS. Thus you have a signal to noise ratio of a mere 25dBFS vs RMS Noise, a mere 22dBFS vs noise peak. But is that a problem? Not really, no. If even if you played back music at up to 90dB (SPL), what can be considered painfully loud on the loudest parts, you would have literally NO NOISE OUTPUT on your system. So are 24 bits of bit depth useless? This question has two answers: For listening? Yes. Period. For recording though, 24 bits of bit depth are highly usefull, because you can record with a noise floor even lower. Why is this important? Because you can do more postprocessing to make quieter party more audible, without getting the noise floor to an audible level. So 24 bit recordings have their place - but mostly for the people producing music. So what about the sampling rate? Anything above 20000Hz is useless content, because nobody can hear it, right? Well, when i was 11, i could hear frequencies up to 21500 Hz. But thats beside the point, because i couldn't do it anymore, when i was 16. Since high quality music isn't produced for kids who cannot afford ridiculously expensive gear to listen to it, but rather for people who can afford it, there is almost no point in even having a max frequency of 20000 Hz recorded. 17400 Hz is a tone only teenagers can hear. Anyone 18 years or older cannot hear this tone. So why would anybody want a higher sampling rate? Not for being able to listen to higher frequency recordings. 48000Hz as a sampling rate has been standartised for digital video broadcasting. It was a sampling rate, that matches pretty much all the frame rates in used around the world at the least overhead possible. No matter if 24Hz, 25 Hz, 30Hz, 48Hz, 50Hz or 60 Hz. It is easiest to process. (And its the same for 16 bits of bit depth. 24 bit signals are more difficult to process. It needs more computational power.) That is the reason 48 khz of sampling rate and 16 bits of bit depth exist. That's why most computerized hardware, no matter if its a smartphone, a TV, a Computer display or whatever the case is standartized at 48000Hz of sampling rate and 16 bit of bit depth. Its easyer to process than even 44100Hz of sampling rate would be. - Today it doesn't matter anymore, as we have easily enough computational power to calculate the playback of even ridiculous sampling rates like 96khz. But back then, when we began to digitalize TV broadcasting, it was very much a thing. 44100Hz was perfect for audio reproduction, but in context with digital video broadcasting, they needed a sampling rate better suited for the job and ended up with 48000Hz. Any even higher sampling rate was an attempt to deal with issues related to aliasing, which is a form of inaccurate audio unique to the digital realm. To adress the myth: No, its not usually audible. You need to to really extreme examples to make it audible. They tried to make dealing with audio aliases easier, but by know, its pretty much proven, that even in recording, using oversampling in the post processing you can deal with even strong examples of aliasing it at both 48000Hz or 44100Hz without a problem. A higher sampling rate only results in higher CPU loads and bandwidths and is harder on the system, at no real world advantage. They do nothing to improve the audible content below 20000Hz, like its stated in this video. But its even worse: Higher sampling rates can result in increased intermodulation, even in the audible range. To put this another way: You pay exponentially more money to realize a pristine recordings AND playback of 96Khz 24 bit signals, than what you would pay for playback of 44100 or 48000Hz @ 16 Bits -- again, at NO advantage. And i challenge anyone who still believes strongly to hear a difference, to do a real blind test. If you don't get at least 80% of your quesses right, you got to admit to yourself, that you're blinded by the numbers.
As someone who performed as well as listened to music for a significant part of my life, I must interject there is more to experiencing audio than what one hears. There's also the elements that are merely felt, but which contribute greatly to the sense of space in a well-recorded album. There is an immediately noticeable difference in dynamics, for instance, between REM's Bang and Blame on CD compared to a 24-bit/96 kHz FLAC.
I believe you have used frequency range to explain sampling rate. Human frequency range is between 20hz to 20 Khz. Sampling rate is the number of times per second analogue audio is sampled for digital conversion. Basically, a 96Khz sample rate offers a higher resolution than 44.1Khz sample rate. It's like comparing an SD screen resolution with a HD screen.
Michael Wanyoike i think the same,he's wrong..44.1khz is how many measures are done in 1second,so higher the khz's->higher precision of the recording..and the bit depth is the magnitude of the wave sounds
That's true. But Nyquist tells us that the maximum frequency reproducible (in the case of CD quality, that's 44.1kHz / 2 = 22.05kHz) will be reproduced perfectly. This is despite the fact that it only has two samples per cycle. Last year, Technology Connections made a great video about this exact topic, which is well worth a look: ruclips.net/video/pWjdWCePgvA/видео.html
@@HandyAndyTechTips great,I did some research and nysquit theorem is really useful to get such an "hands on results"..I tested my ear and I can listen to the maximum of 20-21khz(not the test on yt, because the awful compression ) (it sounds like a line,obv at that frequencies,and isn't always precettible,need concentration)..I don't really know why there are headphones with higher fre.response Than 22khz..ok I might give a contribution to the whole listening sound session..but are a bit meaningless, about me
@@matteopiccioni196 Most internal DACs and headphones have a frequency response between 20hz to 20Khz. Am guessing even if you have a higher quality audio, the higher frequencies will get cut out anyway. It is a general consensus that the upper limit of human hearing is around 20Khz. However, there was a study that was conducted by www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10848570 that revealed when music was presented with frequencies above the 20Khz limit, there was increased brain wave activity than when music was presented without the higher frequencies. None of the participants were able to hear the higher frequencies when presented on it's own but when added to music, they said it created a pleasing sound experience. I guess it's really worth owning sound gear that can support a frequency response higher than 20Khz.
I can hear the difference in high res music, it’s like night & day. Don’t know what else to say but it’s like when I play guitar I can hear old & new strings where others can’t.
@Bob Insult, the typical answer of a guy that needs to justify the absurd expend in audio gear/music that will not provide any benefit. Pissed off of all the money Meridian and MQA has been taking from you? Don't take it with this guy, get your complains to the manufacturers. Flat-Earthers everywhere.
@@GeneralKenobi69420 No honestly he's right. I thought I'd give it a listen (and I'm very critical to so called "claims" of better audio) and you can really hear the difference, it's quite astounding, try it for yourself
Supposedly we can't hear a difference over 20- some odd khz so 44.1khz is more than enough but wonder if better bit rate does matter because my copy of Dark Side of the moon sounds freaking phenomenally better at higher khz and bit rate. FLAC just sounds crisper if mastered well.
I'm sure DSOTM does sound better on your high-res FLAC copy. But that's probably attributable to a better source tape or better mastering (eg. more dynamics) rather than the hi-res format itself. It's not the format that matters, but the way in which you use it.
@@HandyAndyTechTips They probably re-mastered it, so they used a filter to reduce noice, then the played with the dynamics a bit to make it sound more lively
This is a great video Andy! It's very informative, however torwards the end I'd like to address a problem that I myself have while doing audio signal processing, and it is that sometimes it needs to be louder in either amplitude or sampling rate for computing purposes, it's not the same to have a sinewave at 16 bit 44.1khz than it is to have a 24 bit 96khz sinewave compressed down to the dynamic range of 16 bit 44.1khz (with a compressor, not reducing the sampling rate) the harmonics obtained out of the process are impossible to replicate from the bitrate of 16 to 8 after normalizing back to 44.1... do I make sense? Think about it like those CSI scenes where they try to resample the face of a man from a very low resolution image back into the crisp and clear high res image. The responsiveness of effects is way bigger while working on a higher bitrate, and higher resolution environment. Other than that, the song is going to sound pretty much the same once it gets it's final mix and gets mastered for distribution. So for production purposes, 24 bit is greater, provides with more virtual headroom, and 96000 khz should be enough, unless the intention is to destroy the sound to extract the very deep harmonics of it, in which case, having more fabric to cut from is always better. :D -Godsicc
Just a general comment on HiFi: Higher bit rates and sample/mix rates are better. Humans hearing is not digital stereo. Simplifying human hearing to be the same as digital sampling rates and frequencies(With a fixed time base) completely ignores the nature of hearing: Human hearing is biologically a massively parallel asynchronous sampling system that feeds a conscious mind that has psychological responses as well as basic biochemical responses. So feeding it as much data as possible is Ideal; The MIXING rate is exactly as it sounds; the bandwidth room for all the soundscape to be produced. SO 192khz does not mean a sound with a frequency of 192kz will be heard, but a lot more lower frequency sounds can be produced with a wider timebase. Human hearing does not sync up and operate at the output rate of a fixed rate device, it samples in a scatter pattern in the time base, so not 20000 times per second; millions of conversions from a 3d microphone(ear) with thousands of pickup points(Hairs/Bones/Nerves) all operating asynchronously and in parallel. Sound waves can interact physically in the air to produce more detail through a higher mixing rate on the output; more signals per given time. Thus you have more detail that our parallel hearing can process. Again: NOT to produce higher frequencies than we can hear, but more DETAIL in the soundscape and soundstage. *Sound can also be perceived through pressure and vibration; FELT more than heard. Most obvious is SUB-BASS but higher frequencies can also be felt. More detail from a higher mixing rate can allow for the soundstage and soundscape to fill out. If you have any doubt, check your sound settings and if you can set it to 24bit(or the highest you have) then only change the mixing rate: Start at 22,050 per channel: Stereo: From 44.1khz up to 192khz+ (Highest you can find). Listen for the fidelity rather than frequency response. Listen for both MORE DETAIL and also LESS ARTIFACTS. I always notice with CD audio there is a "tinkle" digital rattle to it. Whereas with 96kz+ the sound is smoother; no matter the source resolution. Sorry for the text, some graphics would be much better, but think about it a bit like megapixels and frame rates on cameras. At a baseline (Ignoring device quality), the more of both that you have the more DETAIL you can capture. **OH NO** (Not going to get into "Humans can only see 30fps and Retina quality." -- Total nonsense for similar reasons, human vision is not a fixed framerate camera with a fps built in. Summary: FIDELITY comes from DETAIL and a higher MIXING/SAMPLING rate allows for a BROADER soundscape and soundstage no matter where you limit the BANDWIDTH(Human hearing range 0-26khz). So 192khz is not to make 192kz sounds but rather produce a more detailed soundscape and soundstage that our parallel and asynchronous hearing can enjoy. Regards Ent
It’s just a ploy to get people to buy a new format or file. I still get s kick out of cassettes, LPs and CD. I’ve a problem with mp3 as it’s below par.
Not always. mp3 of course can be indistinguishable from the original but there are many variables (not only bitrate). Basically, if you haven't any frequencies above approx. 10-12 kHz you should be fine.
Andy, the ultimate objective is to having more dynamic range, not less. Your presentation lead to think that since all music has been overcompressed (not true, just pop music for radio use) we already have a surplus of bit depths. 24 bits are making a comeback because you can lower the noise floor and put the dynamic range just where it was before the "loudness wars". Encoding and filtering are not flawless: they create "artifacts" such as spikes and brush. With higher sampling rates this noise can be shifted up into the inaudible region, then filtered away with more subtle filtering (not "brick wall") that lowers this noise. Furthermore: high sampling rates do not just broaden the frequency range but ALSO improve quality by providing more sampling points that make "interpolation" and "anti aliasing" more accurate to capture and render real world complex music thereby pick up timbre, transients and other subtleties in a way that CD 16/44.1 does not. You have had the revelation of Nyquist and Shannon, but there is a LOT more science and technology to learn and apply. Your field at present is obviously not digital audio. I encourage you to dig further into the matter if this field interests you. We are reaching a tipping point. The default medium for sound is digital, and we seek the highest possible fidelity. The 16/44.1 is Red Book spec from 40 years ago. Resources were limited and costly back then. CD was barely sufficient, but it got the basic job done. It was a milestone, but a lot has happened since then and there is a lot to learn and do. Red Book is now the "bare essentials", our basic starting point. Almost "the shellac 78 rpm disk", if I may. And engineers are routinely working today extending accurate music reproduction way beyond those parameters. Dip in further. Contemporary digital sound is fascinating.
Its something you need to site down and listen too to understand. Only example I can give is the separation of instruments and over dubbed sound effects is huge. I could never understand the women's whisper "if you here this you will die" or something but its so clear on the SACD that it sound like someone saying it clearly in my ear. And I have tried to record it from the Audio outs on my PC and it sounds EXACTLY the same as the CD once I have sampled it down to 44.1. I have friends that are vinyl buffs and always talk about records sound so much better than blah blah blah, 5 minutes of listening to an SACD said that he never heard anything sound so good.
SACDs are generally copies of the masters. That's what SACDs were originally used for. They were meant to have an exact archive of the master before it's gone through the "mastering" process. Many, not all, of the 24 bit recordings are taken from the SACD archive and nothing altered. So it really depends on the actual recording and what has been done to it. The Loudness wars is because they are using audio compression, limiting and other tricks to increase the sound so it APPEARS to be louder. But those loudness wars are really only part of the pop world because they are using those versions over the radio. NO, SACD's sound better because they don't typically fuck up the master with audio compression, limiting, and other bullshit. They are supposed to be direct versions of the 2 track masters.
That is why HD audio has to be mastered from the original masters to sound the closest of those master like no other formats could ever have. Or else it's nonsense. Playing HD audio without appropriate speakers is also nonsense.
Here is what is not being talked about. Digital samples are simply and precisely (nothing more either) snippets (AKA snapshots or audio pictures) of the waveform taken at specified intervals. What is the specified interval? The sample rate! How many bits that are assigned to that sample is the 16, 20 or 24-bit rate thing. Bit rate determines how loud a sound needs to be before that information is valid or kept. Any sound lower in volume than the lowest volume sound determined by the bit rate is discarded. The whole thing is pretty complex and is far more complicated than just that. Suffice it to say that the lower the bit rate the more rounding off of numerical values there are assigned to that sample. Back to sample rate. So in a 44.1Khz sample, the sampler takes 44,100 snippets per second. Those snippets are just like still image pictures and if you were to zoom in and look at what was sampled you would see that there is a lot of time where there is physically no sound. The original theory was that if your sample rate was fast enough the sound on/off thing would become inaudible much like it becomes seamless with video. That rate was determined to be 44,100 times per second hence was why we standardised on that. The big point here is that it was physically sound, no sound, sound, no sound. Somewhere down the road maybe the mid-2000's it was decided that it was better to stuff something into the holes in between these samples and an averaging algorithm was added on playback under the guise of a filter. Let us call a spade a spade here (for those who are making every effort to find fault that is a playing card reference, not a racial slur). This averaging thing is synthetic audio. Synthesised. FAKE!!! What they effectually have done is slur the audio image. It is akin to drawing a line with chalk and rubbing your finger over it so that there are no hard edges. It looks and in this case sounds really pretty doesn't it? The thing is though it is not the actual sound. You see when you sample even faster than 44.1Khz the faster you sample the more detail of the sound is captured, the more the hard edges from sampling go away and the closer we get to what the actual sound was that was captured. Sure we don't hear notable aliasing with the filter but what were are hearing is more of a departure from the capture the more we numerically round the data. we could do the same trick with MP3 but it would become a lot more obvious. The fact remains that the magic trick of inventing audio to fill in the gaps is audibly different from an actual higher resolution sample. Those differences are different than what you might be listening for and with that, you could mistakenly think that higher resolution audio doesn't achieve any sonic advantage but it actually does. You just need to watch the magician's other hand. You can never replace the real thing.
Thanks for a very good info. Yet, do you care to explain why is Hi Res better? Why even 44.1kHz recording on a digital format ( DAT ) is inferior to an exact same recording on the same DAT in a 48kHz rate? Why SACD is better than a CD? Thanx
192khz ,, gives resolution,,, , audible frequency is different subject, sampling is different, , sampling means number of points in time line, , record at high sample and down grade to 44.1
Dude, I rarely make comments on peoples videos...but what a great explanation and organization of even making topics with numbers to further explain! thank you very much! i'm a follower now! congratulations for the terrific video and channel.
When we talk about the nyquist sampling theorem we also need to account for the normal LP antialiasing filter, no filter is perfect and produces ripples and phaseshifts which means that we lose more of the high frequencies, for example a normal "brickwall" LP-filter apply the 0.45-0.55 slope, like all filters its a compromise and this often results in loosing some of the available bandwidth.
+Eddie Mathews That's true. Many high res files DO sound far better than their CD counterparts. Why? Because the mastering is different. Just look at the Dynamic Range database, and observe the difference in DR values between the CD and HDtracks versions of Dream Theater's "Systematic Chaos": dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=dream+theater&album=systematic+chaos
+HandyAndy Tech Tips Well, it's harder to explain why older recordings can also sound better. I have blu ray audio disks of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" and Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" and in each case they sound amazing. The source material wasn't remastered. It's a bit of a confusing mess right now with everyone trying to figure out DSD and PCM and whatnot. Lots of interesting points made by each side. I'm making a record right now and having it mastered at 96 KHz, 24 bit and my goal is to preserve some dynamic range! But the hipsters love their analog tape and vinyl noise for its "warmth", not realizing that what they really love is compression.
I guess the hipsters love compression is due to loss of other signals which "confuse" them. With a reasonably less data like those music from iTunes and Spotify, their ear/head could easily hear them "clearer". But with good recording, i believe 24 bits 96 KHz music is absolutely better. The problem for consumer like me is, i don't know who or which recording studio produces good music.
Finally, a video that lays out the information and doesn't drone on and on. I've been very unsure about this information. I bought IEMs and a DAP that were both labeled with the HiRes Audio logo. After this, I felt like I had to make sure as much of my music as possible was in 24/48 and up. Honestly, when I compared the 16/44.1 version, I could not hear a difference and did my best not to let my bias influence my perception. In a program like Spek, you can even see that the sound barely travels above the 20kHz range anyway.
I think the topics described in this video are spot on but one thing to keep in mind is that it's also kind of misleading. High red audio vs standard res audio doesn't really mean anything because it's the DAC that matters. If you have a very good DAC then a high res audio file will create a more comfortable sound then a standard res audio file will. A flute will still sound like a flute but when you have complexities like multiple instruments overlapping each other a good dac will be able to better recreate a scene within the soundstage with more samples. Most crap DAC's will just push out 44khz and let it be done. A high end DAC will be able to extrapolate more timing information to create smoother timbers and transitions. Just my two cents. :)
VERY GOOD point about the DAC and sound reproduction equipment in general. The final audible performance is only as good as the weakest link in that sound reproduction chain.
darkflame808, you sound like a sales rep for a business. To keep it simple either this hype is sales gimmicks to believe you can hear a difference or there really is a difference but only under certain circumstances, a crappy deck DAC will lose sound quality and dumb down the sound a bit. I know for a fact a 20000 dollar mcintosh system playing an lp sounds so much better than a CD on the same system so for me its worth a closer look at how we can get closer to that cleaner sound. Cds are 0s and 1s, just binary. LP have much more character. Lets see how we can get closer to that and further away from CDs but still be digital.
no matter the format its about source first. Then its about the level playback capability you have, no salesman needs to tell anyone that unless your starting out.
The topic is far more complicated than the Nyquist theorem and the maximum theoretical dynamic range. In a hi end system with a proper DAC you can definitely spot the difference between an Hi res vs cd quality version of the same piece. (If of course you are not listening to some heavily compressed or clipped modern mastered production!!)
As the owner of thousands of licensed Hi-Res FLAC and DSD titles, I can tell you first hand that most of them are remastered FOR Hi-Res. If I play the CD version of Physical Graffiti from the 1990s and compare that to the recently release Hi-Res version of the album the difference is stark, indeed. So quite a bit of the Hi-Res releases have been updated to take advantage of the capabilities of the medium. The very recently released Hi-Res release of Abbey Road has never sounded better. You should not play these on your phone to compare them. An audiophile hi-if system consisting of an excellent DAC, amplification, and full range speakers, including a subwoofer, is really necessary to be able to appreciate the difference. If you listen to modern pop, don’t bother. It’s about fashion, not music.
Brilliant Andy, thanks. I've been toying with joining one of the Hi res streaming services but you've saved me quite a few pounds. Really well explained and delivered.
No, it is not, of course not! I for instance came here from the video of Mark Furneaux: Digital Audio: "The Line Between Audiophiles and Audiofools" ruclips.net/video/IiZqYnd5g8M/видео.html He basically tells the same.
People cannot hear anything above 20kHz. But if anything above 20kHz is present in the system it can mix with upper harmonics and produce products less than 20KHz, which you can hear. Best example is metal dome tweeters (breakup is usually about 25kHz). Hit it with a 22kHz tone and a 25kHz tone (right on the breakup) that are linearly mixed with ultra-low distortion equipment. It will produce an audible 3kHz tone because IMD goes through the roof at breakup.
Hi-res audio works a lot better with pluguins, VSTs, etc... after you master it, the audible diference is unnoticeable to most people. But try recording at low-res, and the diference is HUGE in the mix due to pluguins being able to work more accuratly in hi-res. Thats really why ppl use it
Çerastes I don't think this is the right way to quantify the difference between hi-res and standard resolution audio. If you subtract a small portion of a sound wave even if that portion is not audible, the original sound wave change and in some cases could change drastically. In some cases, with some kind of music, the difference is difficult/impossible to find. In other cases that thinly difference changes completely the listening experience. I'm not audiophile and I don't have hi-res equipment, but I have a lot of friends witch has. The listening experience is totally different, but even the cost...
Huge? Impossible unless the hi res file came from a different (ie better) master. Otherwise it is impossible if your hardware is performing properly at all bit rates. Expectation biases and placebo effects may affect your perception that one is better than the other and that is why only a controlled blind test is valid to test this. Over 30 years have passed now with various controlled tests and yet there is still no convincing evidence that hi res sounds different than CD specs. One of the best known peer reviewed tests is in the link below. docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdrewdaniels.com%2Faudible.pdf
I agree. Listen to Yusef Islam/ Cat Stevens.... ( I don't think the album is as good as Teaser or Tea .. and there are other issues). The sound is glorious and warm. Listen to much of HD Tracks and I can preview about one in ten; being in Australia, and seek out the delux version of Rumours.. Fleetwood mac. Interestingly, my preamp is a simple new analogue mixing desk and my speakers and amp were chsen with a generous budget in mind.... and suitable for a moderate sized living room. The CD player is a recorder as well and has very good specs... far better than a car CD Player for example.
listening on headphones or a really good resolving system, yes the difference is huge. Most people can't even define ' audibility' , because they don't listen for it.
At our recording studio we record at 24 bit/ 96K. The main reason we do that is headroom. The second reason is we can always drop to 16 bit at any time during the mastering. Sometimes the 24 bit does sound better to me especially on very high frequency instruments like bells. Is it worth the extra cost? Well in our studio it makes sense but for consumers 16/44.1 hits it perfect.
I have what I would consider to be a pretty high end streamer based system and the biggest problem I find is that the quality of encoding on older vinyl on tidal is sometimes so dreadful that I prefer not to listen to it. There is definitely a case for very high end vinyl systems but you lose out big time on the convenience factor. I have a fairly large number of 24bit recordings and to be honest, the difference is not all that great. There is a difference when moving up to very , very top end DAC, amp and £25,000 speakers. Things then begin to boil down to how well the sound engineers have done their job. I have a Lou Reed Transformer CD which was cut from a magnetic master tape and it still to this day sounds fabulous. It is equally as good as the vinyl recording I have. On the other hand, I tried listening to Straight Shooter from Bad Company via tidal and it had lost so much in the transcription process it just felt completely flat...… such a disappointment! Old story, it's all in the recording quality not the musical content.
Andy Your final comment in this video - "unless an album is released with completely different mastering than its CD equivalent, it will sound exactly the same" - is actually all you needed to say. We are using hi-res formats to record CD quality music, imagining that somehow the change of clothes (upsampling) will upgrade the wearer of the clothes. True, Unless we have access to digital masters recorded from analog at hi-res levels, we will actually never know of hi-res audio is superior. Furthermore, it may require a lots of time and exposure to tell the difference, much like learning a new language and going to visit another country - the subtle differences in accent and nuances of meaning become apparent over long periods of time. This could explain the resurgence in popularity of LPs.
What is with this convention that high sample rates are pointless? What about for the purpose of recording ultrasonic audio and slowing it down into the range of human hearing? It's like saying a 120,000 FPS camera is pointless because the human eye can only observe 30 FPS... Or that a telescope is pointless because humans can only see a distance of 5km.
It's useless for consumer audio, which is the point. The video even says this in text. High sample rates are very useful when you're actually editing and mastering audio. The bit depths are almost always floating point 32-bit as well, which is way more than 24-bit. For simply listening to music though, they're completely useless.
+AA Productions That's why CD audio is 44.1kHZ. The sampling rate is sufficiently high enough that you can audio that humans can hear (near) perfectly. Any sine wave between 20Hz and 20kHz can be accurately produced. Fun fact: The audio you listen to is a bunch of sinewaves mashed together. If you can reproduce every sinewave a human can hear, then by extension you can reproduce every sound a human can hear.
That's due to the cutoff. Over 20kHZ the audio is completely silenced because all it contains is noise. In fact there's a technique called "noise shaping" which puts even more noise beyond the filtering to improve audio quality.
There is a proved test where hidef audio moves speakers drivers a little different than low def audio, making subtle moves and changing a lot the sound of the speaker, independant of what your ear can hear...
Resolution is the main reason to record at higher sample rates. Head room for bit rate. Especially if you are working the audio afterwards. `There is definitely a difference in listening to 44/16 versus 192 or 96K./24. Why do you think movies are produced in 192K or 96K.? Obviously the more samples per second are going to capture a better quality of audio just like 4k and even 8k does with video. It's not just the nyquist frequency, although that does give more dimension, the amount or frequency that something is sampled is going to be a better documentation of an audio event. Cymbal tails, reverbs, even sibilance acts differently. Today most people record virtual sampled instruments, loops, synths, and maybe some electric guitar, drum samplers...no you are not going to hear the difference with canned sources, it may be a lost art actually, but if you are recording finite acoustic music, you definitely have a better recording with higher sampling rates. Even if you down sample it is better quality than originally capturing it a 44.1K So bravo `Chris Cutress you are correct with sticking to your guns.
What the hell are you saying? Those KHz are not referred to the range of waves the human ear can listen to. Those khz are referred to the "resolution" of the recording. It means, how much times in a second the recorder is capturing the waveform. It's like a camera that can capture 24 fps vs one that can capture 480fps. Many could not see a difference, well, this is another example: if 44.1 khz is the old dvd resolution, 96 Khz is the full HD of Audio. 192 Khz is the 4K. Maybe 4k could be too much for many, but please let them decide.
If you have a recording with a sample rate of 44.1kHz, then, according to Nyquist, the frequency that is half of this rate (22.05kHz) will be reproduced perfectly (except if you use steep analog low-pass filters, which are no longer common thanks to oversampling). Using a higher sampling rate (eg. 96kHz) will NOT magically improve the "resolution" of 22kHz sounds. For more info, see this video by Technology Connections: ruclips.net/video/pWjdWCePgvA/видео.html
Great video. For the average consumer it is not important. For music producers, we need a minimum of 24-bit/96kHz so we can master it properly. That's why there is so much headroom in this quality(144dB) With this in mind you can figure out why the loudness war is that simple. It's easy to use a powerful compressor to get the quit parts louder en louder parts that run hot in the VU softer. Unfortunately it's decreasing the complete quality from the original recording. I do use compressors, but I am carefully handling the ratios so its sounds just as loud or a tiny bit louder than my original mix. But sometimes its handy to use compressors and limiters in vocal parts. Great video by the way. Greetz, Emiel
funny, i master records for a living and never get sent high rez files from places like oceanway or blackbird, only get sent high rez files from smaller artists. 44.1/24 is fine
TO start with bit rate is the size of block width and the khz is the high of that block used in measuring the sound curve. 192khz is not the frequency. 24 is more accurate division of sizing the width of the sound wave and 192khz is sizing the high. Smaller divisions mean the gap between each measurement round off is smaller and so is more accurate. khz is not a measurement of sound frequency but (fsp) FREQUENT SAMPLING POINTS and should be renamed. Its like measuring your table by inch and rounding up or down the the nearest. Then do that same using cm. What will be more accurate, its the CM's because they are a smaller division. Use 24 bit 192 khz as a max. Above that you may not notice the accuracy. frequency is not related to data but reproductive response.
Bang on. The only audible difference is down to different masterings. The music industry broke sound quality by mastering music so that it sounds passable on a cheap and nasty set of ear buds, and now they are selling us the music without, or at least with less, the stupid compression and charging us through the nose for it. The only way they can do that is by conning us that the huge waste of bandwidth/storage space that hi-res music takes up enables us to hear better quality. CD quality was set like that for a reason. It's the best our ears can handle.
Dude!, Why do you have 8,430?... after watching this video I think you can stand out to those guys like MKBHD, Pocketnow, Android Authority, Jonathan Morrison, Austin Evans.. MAN YOU ARE GREAT YOUR EXPLANATION IS EXCEPTIONAL.
Why all studios using hi res? why their masters are always on hi res? THey must all be fools according to your own words! We don't hear digits we hear analog sound, and hi rez is closer to analog.. it has nothing to do with the sound frequencies humans can hear, you miss the point if you think that...It has to do with the samples taken from the original analog sound going though mics and A/D converters to become digits, the more samples the smother the wave will be... that translates to detailed analytic sound, without the harshness of digital, and much closer to the old good analog Mastertapes the studios used all these years.. If you can't hear a difference because your low-fi equipment doesn't allow it, don't blame the format... You' haven't proved anything, but your own ignorance on the subject
I Master in garage band at 24 bit Wav and the quality is incredible and the sounds are more dynamic as i have great hearing and sensitive ears i can ABSOLUTELY hear the difference in 16 and 24 bits
It seems to depend on the DA/AD converter chips and individual perception of sound. I don't produce with audiophile gear, but I feel that it would make the experience nicer because of the fancy chips. But would it be worth the small change that only a small percentage of my listeners could hear? It becomes more of a want to gain social exposure at this point than practical use.
@@helldotsin DAC is most important in sound quality. My PC onboard or AD18 DAC sound like garbage compared to AK4452. Most people buy more expensive headphones to experience better music but it will still sound the same. I have blast on my cheap Koss headphones while fifteen times more expensive Sony sounds like garbage.
As a composer and someone who works with audio a lot I can say to you that 192kHz is very useful if you want to manipulate sound (if you want to stretch the tracks)... In that sense, if you stretch an audio too much it will sound very bad, but that too much stretching is not a lot in 44.1kHz...
@@HandyAndyTechTips Maybe you need to look into high-end consumer audio delivery, then you will realize it is not as perfect as 192khz 24 bit or DSD. If your DAC is not over $1000 USD, you will have a hard time telling the difference, because your Equipment was not designed to give you the level of tranparency and detail required to tell the difference.
You barely touch on the Nyquist Theorem. The highest possible frequency that can be REPRESENTED is half of the sample frequency. However, as you approach this limit, you get that frequency presented as a square wave. You're not getting as much precision. As far as consumer play-back, the audio won't go through that much DSP. As far as professional audio, that can contain tons and tons of DSP in the signal chain before it's even released in the world of consumer listening. Professionals love high quality recordings when it comes to things like time-stretching audio to a longer duration or pitching a sound down. The higher sample rate allows samples to be stretched longer before more noticeable artifacts are produced. True 192kH recordings can be pitched down lower and lower than 44.1kHz before there's a noticeable absence of high frequency information missing. A higher bit-depth adds greater levels of protection when gain-staging live recordings. If you're using equipment with better signal to self-noise ratios you can keep your recordings clean and have loads of headroom and a usable bit-depth. Low volume recordings don't hold up very well when exposed to lots of DSP. The down-side of very high sample rates is the tolerance factor in timing (jitters) in the clock speed of your audio. You'll want gear with very stable clock-rates, especially when recording (analog to digital) aka "sampling." Sloppy builds of power supplies, A->D converters, design stability, etc. are not in the realm of consumer pricing to value. 192kHz, 24-bit doesn't make much sense as a consumer format. That's absolutely true. But it's a good thing in the world multiple layers of digital signal processing.
fakshen1973 That's totally wrong. A 22KHz sine wave can be PERFECTLY reproduced with a 44KHz sampling frequency. That may sound unintuitive, but it's still true due to the way ADCs and DACs work.
Not true. Up to just below the Nyquist limit (say 20 kHz) the DAC will produce a perfect sine wave with no loss of precision. There are many RUclips videos that demonstrate this.
This is in correct. Audio fidelity is only as good as the output quality. I recommend you find a professional to show you the difference on a proper system. The richness will blow your mind. Same with motion picture cameras. More information is always better as long as you can afford it and know what to do with it.
You are so right Justin, this guy needs to get his head out of a text book and go to a recording studio and have they play back samples on professional equipment, so he can know the truth
Absolutely absolutely worth it. 85 out of 100. I can plug my cordless headphones directly into my Marantz HE and get breathtaking sound. Just try doing that with a standard cd player! LOL
What Andy fails to go into any detail about is the subject of harmonics. Harmonics are the upper frequencies of sounds you do not normally hear, but alter the timbre of a sound. Harmonics are what makes the sound of a violin, a flute and a piano all sound different, even if they are playing the same musical note. So when you play an 'A4' on a piano, you aren't just hearing 440, but you are also hearing 880, 1320, 1760, 2200 etc. This is true on the very high notes as well. Just cutting off the frequencies at 22050, which is what CD audio is doing, is cutting off all those vital very high frequency harmonics that help shape and clarify the sound we hear. So before you decide that CD audio is the best and greatest, try going out and actually listening to high res digital audio, and try listening to pure analog audio as well, which has no such limits. The absolute and very best method of recording sound is still the reel to reel tape, especially when it's 2-track stereo at a speed of 15 IPS or greater. So there.
Hi-res is not only about frequencies and dynamics. The data stream for converting analog audio is much bigger. That makes hi-res PCM possible to sound better. Most studio recordings are made in 24 bit/96kHz or 192kHz.
After reading some topics/forums etc I did a lot of research in digital audio. I have to admit I was victim of all the marketing... You are completely right.
This is technically correct if you are only talking about music. Sound effects and ambient files are a different story. Higher bit depth and sample rates allow for more flexibility when it comes to modifying the sounds.
You are talking about *producing* the files. The video made it clear it was talking about *listening* to the final product. Yes, the data is handled with higher resolution during production, but the final product doesn't need that.
That is like saying that you cant tell the difference between 1080p and 4k. At a certain distance you can not see the pixels anymore but you still can tell that the image is sharper.
The difference between Hi resolution audio and CD quality is slight but by no means insignificant. However, people are still claiming that MP3 at 192k or lower sounds as good as CD, which is clearly nuts. We have governments and broadcasters around the world telling us that inferior quality low bitrate MP2 DAB transmissions are a step forward to FM radio. In Norway they have even switched off the FM radio much to peoples disgust. I suggest this is a more pressing issue than the debate here. Even TV sound has got worse than the old NICAM system. If you are bothered about the quality of hi res then why is there not a bigger fuss about DAB vs FM radio?
I posted this as a response, but I thought I'd add it here as it might get missed and I'd like to see a discussion. A DAC can never produce an "exact signal" and it's always going to be an approximation based on information available to reproduce the complex curve. Think of the "stair case" as marker points on an extremely complex shape. The more points provided the close it gets to the original. The so called "stair step" myth comes from drawing horizontal and vertical lines between the points. Errors occur when insufficient digital points are placed on a complex curve and these dots are joined by approximation. Therefore the more points provided the closer the approximation. It's always going to be an approximation, although the more points provided the closer it will be to the original. If there's a minor bump or dip in the curve between sampled points, you need to represent them. Otherwise they are completely missed and smoothed over. Get the graph paper out and give it a go. Bit rate: The use of higher bit rates mean more values are available that can be assigned to the sample. This means a value can be selected that is closer to the value measured. On a graph it can be considered the values on the x or vertical axis. Sampling frequency: The sampling frequency is the number of samples taken every second. The more samples taken result in a closer representation of the original. On a graph it can be considered the values on the y or horizontal axis.
Fred I completely understand what your saying and agree with you, Hi-Res is better and you can hear the difference on a good DAC, but most people do not even know what a DAC is. Hahaha
I'm an ultrasound hearer and have pretty much given up on anybody ever producing music to cover my hearing range. What I can say is 196khz audio files do not sound much better. Most hi res files have a sharp drop off around 25 - 30khz. Yes I can hear more hi hats in these files but you also hear more electrical noise. Probably because the studio equipment was not designed to record or produce sounds outside of normal hearing range. He is absolutely correct when it comes to dynamic range. Most modern music is super compressed so 24bits is pointless. Also, your brain tunes into the loudness of music so your perceivable dynamic range is not 100db, it's far less once its tuned into the song you are listening too. The loudness wars producers have capitalised on that so that we can now perceive more of a modern song. Problem is it also takes the soul away from a song. No matter what your hearing range is, if you want to enjoy music more look into 3d sound stuff like dolby atmos.
Thank you! What a sensible and well thought-out comment. You're right - most studio equipment is only designed to capture from 20Hz - 20kHz, so that's why hi-res files have a lot of ultrasonic noise.
Does that mean that bit rate is more important than sample rate? As long as the sample rate is 44 and the bit rate is 24 it will be Hi Res? Does format matter at that point? I always heard that flac format was the best? As I thought the goal was to have a format that offers as little of compression as possible?
Can super hi-res music have the potential to annoy nearby animals? I know it sounds like a silly question but I'd like to stick with the "safest" high quality format possible.
That may well be true, but if that is the case then why does a SACD (based on DSD files) of an album always sound so much better than the CD of the exact same album? Assuming that they are both derived from the exact same master recording, the SACD always wins every single time - and it's not even close. How do you explain that?
@@michaelbeckerman7532 I don't know. But with the SACD there are two other channels that have been added into the recording so the CD version my just have the two additional channels mixed into the front channels when played as an ordinary CD. But the truth is I don't know. I have only one SACD and I do have an SACD player but I never used it in that mode. It really didn't interest me to see what effect it had. As near as I can tell these multichannel formats are simply the sons and grandsons of quadraphonic sound. So ????
For everyone going on and on with bullshit about how HD sounds better, do yourself a favor: download a 24 bits / 96 KHz track, convert it to 16 bits / 44 KHz while keeping the original, and do an actual blind test with Foobar2000’s ABX module. You *won’t* hear a difference. If anyone is able to hear the difference with a p-value below 0.05, message me with the signed message from the software to prove it and I’ll send you 10 bucks
There is no sense in saying that the sampling rate for audio if fine at 2 time 20kHz! That's the minimum requirement for detecting at least a variation in wave form. If u take an electrocardiogram sample would u say that 2 times the signal frequency is enough for sampling? That doesnt make any sense, sometimes sampling should be more than 1000 times the frequency to c completely the wave form
"Perfectly" not true. Filters, slopes, phase. Though nyquist said double the freq etc, he would've gone higher, to give more sampling resolution to higher frequencies. People just went with 44.1k cos they misunderstood him.
If the audio is coming of a CD it's still 16Bit audio it gets Dithered down to 16 Bit 44.1K no matter what sample rate was used in the recording it Does make a difference recording so older record on Vinyl will sound better than a CD & FLAC HD will sound better than a CD or MP3 but If you don't have a decent DAC or speakers it makes no difference.
24 bit recordings can have a more accurate transient feel. I've recorded drum in both and the 24-bit definitely sounds more HI-FI. There's a rapid change in attack that is probably also caught better by a faster sampling rate. It's not about the upper limits of frequency range but more about the speed of change of these things. More samples in a better bit depth is obviously more faithful to the original and where it happens with rapidly changing dynamics (Guitars too) it does make a difference in capturing punchiness of the performance. I can send you some performances at 96khz and 24 bit that are obviously better than a dithered version of the same performance. Luv and Peace.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with pro recording. This video, however, is about whether hi-res audio delivers tangible benefits to the consumer. I'm arguing that the real focus of audiophiles should be to encourage the use of more dynamic range within existing 16/44.1 recordings. I'm sure we both agree that a squashed high-res file will sound far worse than a dynamic 16/44.1 version.
Ian you are so right, it is not even funny, this guy Andy is talking about facts he has heard from a text book, maybe he should be a real musician like you and try recording it and playing back and realize the the text books he is reading are wrong. The other possibility is maybe he lost some of his hearing and cannot tell the difference. Either way, I am glad you voiced your opinion about the reality and truth of higher sampling rates.
@@nileshbarai4999 Yeah I agree, it seems to be a case of theoretical knowledge that doesn't translate to practical experience. As someone else said it seems more to do with what this format is able to capture not the perceptible range of the human hearing, It's so obvious if you take a listen 🤦🏽♂️maybe he's a vinyl fan 🤣🤣🤣
Excellent overview, trying to figure out whether to go for 96khz (max) or 192 khz audio interface. I think watching this video clears most doubts I had.
Sound reproduction is not only about dynamic range and frequency response. This video fails to note that a higher bit depth will produces samples that are more detailed. And with a higher sampling rate, the samples will occur more frequently. More samples (than the CD standard) that are more detailed = better sound. Using above-average equipment (speakers, headphones, amplifiers, cables, etc.), the sonic improvements of 24-bit/192 kHz - compared to 16-bit/44.1kHz - can clearly be heard. The better the equipment, the easier its is to hear the differences. Don't bother trying to make a determination with earbuds or cheapo desktop speakers. Here's a experiment to try: Compare an official CD to its Hi-Res equivalent (both derived from the same master) using quality equipment. I have, and the difference is obvious: the Hi-Res files are vastly superior... smoother, more natural, dynamic sound. It's disappointing that this video gets so many more 'Likes' than 'Dislikes' when it's spreading false information. Hi-Res Audio is not a myth or a rip-off. It's all about the mastering of the track/album. FACT: A higher bit depth and higher sampling rate will yield superior sound.
Theorems and internet videos should not be enough for you to make a conclusion the benefits of Hi-Res vs. Redbook 16-bit/44.1kHz (CD format). They certainly aren't for me. I can HEAR the difference. As I mentioned before, I have directly compared an official CD (on the Reference Recordings label) to its Hi-Res (24-bit/192 kHz) equivalent. Both sources were derived from the same master. I used a pair of mediocre JBL ES80 speakers and an above-average Yamaha Aventage receiver, which allowed me to switch back-and-forth between the USB files and CD playback in real-time. This way, I could compare the same segments of music, one and then the other. The difference was obvious: the Hi-Res files were smoother, more natural, and dynamic. When listening to Hi-Res files on a PC, the sound properties of the playback device must be changed to match to the sampling rate and bit depth of the file. For Windows 7, these Sound settings can be found in Playback devices --> (select the playback device) --> Properties --> Advanced. (I'll bet that most people forget to perform this step - which is absolutely essential to gain the benefits of Hi-Res audio.) Also, a good DAC/amplifier is much preferred over a PC's on-board audio/headphone jack. As far as digital audio playback goes, do you really think that Redbook Standard (CD) format is limit of what humans can hear? What an absurd thing to believe! The DTS-Master Audio format (used on most Hollywood movie Blu-Ray releases) is capable of up to 24-bit/192kHz... and sounds far better than CD, especially in discrete surround sound. No reason for Hi-Res Audio it to exist? It's superiority is AUDIBLE*, and that's all that matters. * Unfortunately, some people cannot hear the difference between standard Redbook and Hi-Res because they are not listening on quality playback equipment... or their devices' audio settings aren't configured correctly... or they don't have discerning hearing. A shame, really.
No, I have just have excellent hearing and can hear a major difference in sound between CD and the corresponding Hi-Res files. It seems you are suffering from one or more of the following: poor hearing, non-discerning hearing, inferior playback equipment, or your devices' audio settings aren't configured correctly. When produced using correct mastering techniques, the benefits of Hi-Res Audio are real (i.e. audible). Just because you can't hear a difference between CD and Hi-Res (or you believe in the sound theorems so much that you don't attempt to hear a difference), doesn't mean that people can't hear a difference.
Serious issues? Not with my hearing, I can assure you. I'd like to hear what you have to say after you perform this real-world test: With high-quality headphones/speakers, an SACD player with HDMI-out, and and amplifier that can decode DSD without processing, compare a Hybrid SACD's Redbook and DSD programs - both derived from the same master, of course. I'm curious if you can hear the difference. In the meantime, I'll read the article you linked.
A lot of people seem to miss out on the basics of Sound and Wave theory. You have something called Harmonics. You could have an Ultrasonic frequency but the harmonics of it comes down to within our hearing range and gives a more fuller sound. So you get richer sound quality from 24bit rather than 16 bit because of clipping with the harmonics.
+Cerastes: I am not talking about the digital end but the analogue end after the DAC. Harmonics in frequencies are very import and they exist for every frequency, it is what makes a guitar sound like a guitar and other musical instruments sound like they are. The more harmonics you have then the richer the sound will be.
You are forgetting something: we not only hear with our ears, but with our bodies too. You can put on a CD only the freequencies that human ear can hear but the feel is hollow. That's because the rest of the body can't feel the frequencies that you erased to fit on a CD. Increasing the frequency response doesn't affect the ear but it affects THE BODY FEEL. That's why all analog audio is always better.
4 года назад
@ReaktorLeak But you can't limit to the ear when you talk about high fidelity. Beethoven compose his best work when he was deaf by hearig without ears.
4 года назад
@ReaktorLeak i ABSOLUTELY DISSAGREE.
4 года назад
@ReaktorLeak I don't need to argue. Mine are facts too. Are you out of them?
When Apple Introduce Retina display technology; they clams that it is the maximum level for human eye ability and any resolution above it it will not be noticeable. And now, the 4K TV looks much better than 1080p. My opinion is, don't say it is not usable or over humans abilities, most of the time it is better/Much better. :)
The only real thing about that is that video quality becomes a lot more available to the average consumers after a short period of time (remember when 4K TV's for like, $20k a couple years ago?). With audio, the average citizen will only really be able to tell the difference between a song that's mixed badly, and one that's mixed great (both could easily be MP3 files too), and then the difference between headphones that are made poorly, and those that are made well (my ATH-M50x headphones literally only sound a little bit better than my $10 Sony earbuds), and you can get some really nice sounding headphones for less than $50. But again, to most citizens that can afford the necessary equipment to really notice any major difference in audio quality after a certain point, it won't matter much. I myself have been trying to get into the audiophile world for the past few years, but the only major improvement I've gotten was getting my ATH-M50 headphones, and even then I still go to my Sony earbuds more often because they keep the sound in while on-the-go, and sound basically as good (mainly because my phone doesn't really produce the lowest notes that I wish, like my gaming laptop does, because of it's upgraded soundcard). Other than that, all my FLAC files are really just wasting space on my hard drive, lol.
cremacancel. you missed the point. it is not important if You see the pixels but if You can distinguish the image quality for different displays with different ppi. so the higher ppi the better it looks even from distance You cansee single pixels. the same effect is for audio. numbers does not matter. if you can hear the difference (in double blind test) then the difference exist. people cant hear above 20khz but it doesnt mean we cant distinguish tonal differences made by the harmonic above 20khz. newest reserch shows we cant hear single tone above 20khz but we can notice the difference in timbre of some instruments if the highest harmonics are removed. You dont see the single pixel but please remember the whole picture is build from many pixels with millions of colors. so for monochrome (dual - only black and white) is complete different story than full color, but even black/white printers uses 600dpi as a standard andd I can see the difference between 300dpi 600dpi and 1200dpi. So I can expeect displays with 1000dpi on mobile devices when technology improves and definetly I will see the difference.
ath m50 is decent but not good enough. i would say the mdr v6 or its brother can outperform the m50 but if you want top quality try an open headphone over 600 dollars or even the hd600-650 can be good enough
If you bought a TV that could show infrared and ultra violent would you see a difference? It can objectively show more colors after all. The answer is obviously no. Your eyes can't see those frequencies of light. Likewise your ears cannot hear outside the ~20Hz-20kHZ frequency range of sound. The higher sampling rates and bit depth will not allow you to magically hear more detail than your eyes are physically capable of.
Actually no, I have one and I'm not that ignorant but I did fall for buying a HD album that I later found out was mastered from the CD master and not the original analogue master... so basically I wasted $20 for an exact copy... Obviously it sounds a little better played on my Fiio but that's just better quality electronics...
@Çerastes Why are you talking about db now? Changing the subject huh? Because you cant come up with something differnet and revelant. All you can do is copy and paste, look at your name you cant even type C straight lmao.
What you did fail to mention is how soundcards and speakers react to these changes, for me 24bit 48khz is the best combination (Xonar DG), 96khz is reproduced slightly higher pitched than normal for some reason, and 44khz misses some clarity, it all comes down on how well your devices react to specific setting combination.
Better to explore the subject more. you completely missedd the idea of hi resolution audio. Please remember there is no real digital. Digital is just artificial analog when 0 is low value and 1 is high value. so to meet the mathematical theorem Nyquist in practice You need infinite frequency response for digital domain and hard limited frequency response below 20KHz for analog domain. It is impossible to achieve, so there will be distorton and artifacts when converting DA and AD. This distortions and artifacts can be audible but if you go with higher sampling rate You can limit it. it means move them out of audible area 20kHz. So the higher is the sampling rate the less are the artifacts that destroys the sound. You cant get rid of it completely by upsampling/oversampling, because this creates additional artifacts. So for 90% situations you cant notice the difference but it does not mean there is no difference becaue one said it 90 years ago (The Nyquist theorem). people can hear the difference even if 90% of them are not interested in the improvement and will not accept the extra cost. 16bits is 96dB. but human hearing can stand 120dB. So it is 20bits. If You release in 24 bits then You have a pleanty of room reserve and it does not cost much, but when you stick to 16bits You have to master the sound with care and compromise. some live recordings suffer the limited ddynamic of 16bits. Most DAC already ddo upsampling to 24bits and do 4 times oversampling 44.1 to 176.4 because it is much simple to manage DA conversion. So why dont we release music in that format? because the Nyquist. This is the same decision as Longplay rotation speed. The faster it rotates the more precise can be the sound or less expensive making the LP but then the CD becames bigger or contain less music. 16/44.1 was selected in late 70ties when. and until now the CD cant be better than LP just because this limitations. CD was never better than LP but it was smaller. the technology improves andd quality of LP was also improved since 70ties but CD cant be improved because it has limitation by design, that is why SACD and DVD-Audio came in early 90ties. I dont like hi-res files because they are to big but this might change in future when storage became less expensive.
Dear Andy, can you explain why for video it needs a rate of 48khz? Unfortunately I rendered my music track at 44.1 without realising this, now my music track sounds muffled when I listen to it while watching my RUclips video. So frustrating as it was crystal in my video editor.
i feel like he is staring into my soul
LMAO! where do you guys get these images from
all i notice is him sticking his thongue out with every word
@@ulfrinn8783 y'all got me tripping 🤣🤣😂😭☠️👻😇
🤖
😂😂😂
Interesting argument, but ... As a professional Audio Engineer I can tell you that 24 bit 96 KHz does make a difference to the trained ear especially for acoustic master recordings. There are vibrational frequencies above our hearing range that do effect the listener when listening through hi-end reproduction equipment. I admit that I can not personally hear a difference between 24-96 and 24-192. But I can hear a difference between 16-44.1 and 24-96 with properly recorded non-over compressed acoustic recording using hi-end microphones and listening equipment. Unfortunately most of the world is listening to mp3 over computer monitors so 16-44.1 is becoming the defacto hi-end format.
We will have to agree to disagree. When at CBC Vancouver, in the main classical recording studio, we did a blind test between 16/44.1 and 24/96 and the difference was audible. There was also an audible difference between 16/44.1 and 24/48. Less of a difference between 24/48 and 24/96 but still "minimally" audible on the high end system that existed in that studio at that time. The converter (Apogee) was common in all frequencies and it output multiple sample rates at the same time, so that would have minimal effect on audible outcome. There is a difference. Is it audible to 99.9% of the population ? Probably not. I remember one incident where I was working in the Drama studio and was hearing an annoying tone at approx. 18K coming from the main board and printing onto the digital (DAT) tapes we were recording on at that time (16-48). I called on the maintenance department to show them the problem and they couldn't hear it. Luckily at the same time another recording engineer entered the studio and I asked him if he could hear the high frequency tone in the room. Luckily he did. Maintenance then brought down frequency analysis equipment that showed a high frequency anomaly coming from the board. It was tracked down to the power supply and after three days of soaking in a "special chemical bath" the transformer and power supply were repaired and the console was still in service with no problems 5 years later.
As I said at the beginning of my last post, we will have to agree to disagree.
#1 Red Book Standard is a CD manufacturing standard not the audio frequency bible. (you changed your own argument with ... Sampling rates above 44.1 and 24 bit have no affect on audio quality and have no audible improvements compared to the Red Book Standard) You have already changed your argument from 16/44.1 to 24/44.1 (Not a Red Book Standard since CD's do not exceed 16/44.1). 16 or 24 bit have nothing to do with frequency but everything to do with signal to noise ratios. 44.1 up to 192 (and beyond) have everything to do with frequency capture. Some systems in development (and use) actually only sample frequencies up to 24 KHz per channel but over sample and create redundant samples expanding the number of frequencies actually being sampled (ie_ every 1/2 hertz rather than every full hertz). Others actually sample up to 88 KHz per channel. Scientific sampling recorders now exceed those frequency specifications and are use in marine and celestial research where extended spectrum monitoring is often required (ie_ cetacean research). These systems can only be audibly experienced by humans by "lowering or slowing" the pitch down to normal listening parameters or by visual monitoring on scopes. You are assuming, incorrectly, that sympathetic frequencies above 20KHz do not exist and have no effect on the listener. Perhaps you should do some study of the psycho-acoustic properties of music on the human body. I suggest your time would be better spent in discussions of what a major problem with audio is ... Mastering. Study the work of Bob Katz vs. the loudness wars or the "if my record sounds louder it will sell more" syndrome prevalent in todays music. When you are listening to that form of music you can have 4bit 44.1 KHz and it doesn't matter since the music doesn't really have any s/n, it's just loud or silent. The subtlety doesn't exist. That is my final post on this matter, but I know that you will slag this as you suffer from Donald Trump ego inflation last word syndrome. You feel that by writing the last line you win. You've already LOST.
ruclips.net/video/geaoEt-9V-w/видео.html
Let me know when you get your PH.D in Physics,then I'll consider what you have to say. Now you can get back to your Anime.
I'm a professional sound guy that works in the motion picture industry and I can tell you... your explanation is pretty good but your conclusion is incomplete. You totally miss the purpose of HD (above 48K) audio. The main reason people use it is because they are doing some sort of high fidelity mastering where they could need to layer the sound. What if they need to slow down the sound to match slow motion video? If you slow down 48K, your sound will turn sucky really quickly. You need that higher fidelity sound to properly mix or master.
Agreed, but this video was from the perspective of high-res audio as a consumer music delivery format. In cases such as the one you are describing, it does make sense.
I'm considering transitioning to a bat so I can take advantage of frequency's beyond 20-20K and I can virtue signal my new abilities on Twitter while simultaneously canceling anyone who attempts to disprove my new found abilities.
My ears tell me different. I definitely can hear a difference, significant difference that adds to my listening pleasure. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and what you hear is what you get.
abbbsolutely
I can hear the difference as well.
3:51 The answer: Because frequencies higher than 20kHz combine to produce lower frequencies within our hearing range that add to the high end frequency timbre of music. This is why Rupert Neve made sure his test equipment was rated to have a linear response of up to 50kHz and a controlled response to 100
@Rory just look at the way he's holding that mic....
Spot on!
gotta love your presentation. loud and clear. english isn't my first language and i usually need to turn on english subtitles in case i mishear some words.
There is one thing I don't understand here. You break down sound into amplitude (which you say is recorded as bit depth) and frequency, which is recorded as the sampling rate, but what about timbre? How is that recorded? I find that it is the timbre that is missing from low definition recordings and, although you can hear the notes and how loud they are it is the quality of the sound that is often poor.
There are more considerations than this:
- low pass filters (preventing aliasing) don't have to be as drastic (steep curve) for Hi-Res audio,
- if the track uses fade away type of ending, you won't hear "graininess" of the audio resulting form less bits of resolution at low volume parts
- if you plan on processing audio further, like slowing the tempo down and bringing pitch to original (to practice your favorite part on an instrument), you have more information to work with in Hi-Res audio to get better results after editing
- DSD is also considered Hi-Res. The advantages of DSD are such, that you get far smoother waveform than recovering from PCM encoding. At 1-bit depth, but sampling rates as high as 2.8Mhz, you still get 4x the information that it's on a redbook CD
- SA-CD, which is an optical disc using DSD codec, is unlikely to be pirated, because there aren't any consumer SA-CD burning devices. Also, and artist recording directly to DSD and release SA-CD album, basically makes his or her master recording available to you, because not much editing software is available for DSD.
So, as I described above, there are practical as well as ethical reasons that are in favor of various forms of Hi-Res audio. As long as we don't resort to dynamic compression for commercial reasons (loudness war) or data compression for convenience reasons (56Kbits/sec or even 128Kbits/sec MP3 can sounds rather horrible), and keep recording sources legitimate (no up-conversion from lower bit rates and lower sampling frequencies just to "appear" Hi-Res), I am all for it. I don't like piracy, and I don't like data compression con with 10:1 compression schemes. If I get a high quality recording from a legitimate source, I'll take it on a MiniDisc (ATRAC 290Kbits/sec) or on redbook CD, DAT, 24-bit digital reel-to-reel tape or in Hi-Res audio file format. MP3 or vinyl are not for me for reasons I'd have to write another comment this long, so I won't get into. As far as Hi-Res audio, I don't have problem with it. Pono player is sort of the lowest quality hardware you can get for Hi-Res audio, and most of files in Pono store are not true Hi-Res. So yes, there's some con there. But my experience with SA-CD discs and audio gear, hdtracks.com and something like Sony NW-ZX2 portable player have been really good. If I dig both the sound and the gear, what's not to like?
>SACD unlikely to pirate
Older PlayStation 3's have a SACD drive, and they're a go-to for ripping them. Recently some players were found to be also capable of that.
SACD has been pirated for a while. DSD also isn't very good for technical reasons, the most prominent being the need for an extremely accurate clock.
www.mojo-audio.com/blog/dsd-vs-pcm-myth-vs-truth/
Here's an article on that subject.
Your correct Andrew...
Andrew Piatek - If you have thousands of dollars to spend on the proper equipment to play back Hi-Res Audio, actually believe that the difference you can hear is worth it and don't mind that a great majority of artists and albums are not available in Hi-Res Audio, then by all means, give your money away. Some of the newest equipment is indeed very nice and of high quality. I can not justify spending nearly $10k for a Sony portable setup minus the download only digital files. I'd rather stick with my iPod classic, or smartphone (for Bluetooth) and buy a brand new Yamaha FZ-09 motorcycle for roughly the same amount of money. I am not suggesting that you go out and purchase a motorcycle. I am simply trying to put into perspective the astronomical rip-off Hi-Res audio equipment is.
Portable player NW-WM1Z $3200. Headphones MDR-Z1R $2300. Headphone Amp TA-ZH1ES $2200. These are the current prices. Nearly 8k after sales tax. You will still need to purchase digital files to listen to but I figure if you spend that much already $25 per album is chump change.
Generally, I think you're right, when a song is ready to be broadcast (After being mastered), 16bit/44.1khz will pretty much sound similar to 24bit/96khz. But, at the producing stage, I believe it gives you more freedom to mix, shape, eq and control finer subtleties then lower resolutions. (This subject can lead to a social, philosophical argue, because people are able to enjoy good old lofi music as well..)
It's like, shooting an8k video and play it on a HD tv (which is basically 1k) it doesn't affect the top quality of the tv, but at the producers level, you just have more info to work with..
YES! Sample rate affects both latency (important for performance) and transient response (important for tracking, mixing, mastering). Bit depth is important for headroom while tacking, mixing, and recording. This is why most DAW software uses 32-bit floating point internally. However, you can't fix it in post if you clip. So those extra bits make it easier to record tracks at varying levels without clipping. Sure it can and has been done at 16bit 44.1k audio, but it's much easier to get good results recording in higher resolution than you need.
Exactly. In theory this may reduce aliasing
It's not necessarily about end-user listening all of the time. With more data within the audio signal, effects can be made to be more robust. It's just like cameras with a high resolution capture. No one is going to look at the 6000x8000 image once the image is edited, but more color data allows the editor to perform more robust editing on the image.
Likewise, someone who downloads a song at a higher than nyquist audio track will be able to apply better effects to the song, mainly focusing on equalization.
Also, because of nyquist, frequencies at the higher end of the sampling range get sampled as low-end, and muddy up the bass tones of the song. Because of this, the higher end of human hearing at 22kHz gets confused as low end when listening to 44.1kHz audio. Increasing the sampling rate to 96kHz frees up the higher human hearing range to be heard clearly.
This was a very short video, and could have been explained better by someone with sound engineering or electrical engineering experience.
kids these days have no idea how lucky they are that most modern vsti support oversampling by default to get rid of nyquist limit, run any old plugin's saw wave at higher piano register and you get horrible aliasing at 44.1 samplerate
I can hear difference between 44 and 192 in normal listening. I cut off the frequencies below 44 and there was quite bit of music in there. Even when my DAC upsamples the music it sounds better. I can describe 44 as sliding on slide with bumps and hi res as much more flat and comfortable slide. DSD is completely flat compared to PCM.
I think bit depth makes a difference too.
I tried Master vs Hi-Fi on Tidal and the master sounded better. I was confused. I was looking at graph comparisons before I bought Tidal and it was same on the graphs. I later found out Master is 24bit.
@ReaktorLeak So I first played it on speakers that had 48kz limit. When I heard the first and secod I knew the first is hires but I played the third one and thought the second one is cd.
So I switched to my dac and headphones and clearly heard the difference. First track was ok, second was harsh but
when I played the third track it hurt my ears. Most obvious were the drums but the piano was same. I checked it in spek ofc and I thought I would hear the difference in the piaono but I didnt. Only when I compared them ten times and focused a lot they sounded different but I wouldnt guess right which one is hires. I tested my ears on tone generator and maximum frequency I heard was 28kHz.
@ReaktorLeak Lots of peole can hear 28.
I agree on my system I can tell the difference with Tidel Master sound quality vs the regular. On an audiophile grade setup it is even more noticable.
This is why higher sampling rates sound better: it isn't that they can reproduce ultrasonic frequencies, it's that they can better reproduce the sound frequencies you CAN hear. I have done some tests with analog sine waves fed into my pro-audio ADC, and above ~11khz the signal starts losing integrity when the system is at 44.1khz. It starts sounding "steppy" and harsh and drops slightly in volume. When I increase the sampling rate, those high frequencies sound fuller and more clear. Think about it: at 44.1, any signal above 11khz has fewer than 4 samples to represent the waveform. Quantization errors! So 96KHz simply sounds better, assuming you have high-end speakers/headphones to reproduce those high frequencies.
you must have some shit ears if you cant hear a difference mate.
sure, you have this whole scientific view, i understand it.
but moving for 44.1khz to 192khz, its a very noticable difference, especially with proper quality headphones.
Some people can hear the difference some not. Obviously you belong to the last category. That doesn't make your opinion more valuable than any others.
Yeah nobody:www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/06/28/people-can-tell-when-they-hear-hi-res-music-study-finds/
Quote : "In this forest plot, the untrained listeners are clustered around 50% correct, though most of the studies are slightly above that. The trained listeners performed much better, usually between 60% and 70% correct, though the confidence intervals are much wider than for most of the studies with untrained listeners". www.avsforum.com/forum/91-audio-theory-setup-chat/2501370-high-resolution-audio-perception-meta-analysis.html
90% is guessing? Hahaha. Ok Good Night sis.
I guess I like wasting storage on my sd card
Recording in higher bitdepths or frequencies can be beneficial, so you can manipulate the sounds more easily. But when outputting, you can keep it at his recommended settings.
Thanks for giving me a handy, Andy!
Bro big fan
Bro bigger fan
@@drljevic583 big fan of... Hazard Mouth?
@@bingchiIIing thank you Asad I appreciate your support
@@hazardmouth Yes.
i didn't quite understand what 44khz or x-khz got to do with hearing Frequency (15-22). 44khz format or 192 khz is the sampling rate of the original file.
Quote by Sony: Higher sampling rates mean that more samples per second were taken when the original analog sound was converted into digital.
Partly true. Increasing the sampling rate by 4 increases the top frequency by double. So, if the highest frequency you can reproduce is , say now 44khz and change, it is still only 1extra octave. It's the detail that the extra samples give you which matters. More samples makes the recording more detailed and closer to the analogue information that you are recording. I am in my 40s so my upper frequency threshold is now starting to be impaired by age. That doesn't stop me noticing better stability, detail or pitch. If I loose even down to 10khz that's only the top octave I have lost. Nothing is linear in sound. It's logarithmic. Remember that.
kHz is sampling rate and I wonder you even understand what that actually means. It is samples per second. If someone wanting the best, he can go upto 192khz but you really need high end system to be able to notice the difference. In cheap systems, you can't even differentiate between 44.1 and 192khz.
Human brain actually resolve music at 250khz but the thing is, it is impossible to record music at that rate, our brains can pick up nuisances even at 4 milliseconds apart which is equivalent to 250khz and to create the same sound as in the studio, you really need 250khz but because of the hardware limitations, you can only record those nuisances 22 milliseconds apart (192khz) which impacts the transients in the music and higher end DACs, such as Chord Qutest tries to upscale the music at that sample rate but it's only partially successes. If you really want to learn more about this, watch "John Franks" interview.
Maybe people need to hear Hi-Res on a High-End DAC, so they can realize what they are missing
Actually, I learned in another video that higher sampling rates can be useful if you do time stretch operations on your audio. For instance if you want to do a slow motion effect with a voice, you can record it with a high sampling rate (i.e. 96kHz or 192kHz) so that when you stretch it, you have less of the "crunchy" undesirable effect for that slow motion. Not tested myself yet, but video here: ruclips.net/video/Vr8lplezplk/видео.html. So it's rare, but in some cases high sampling rate can be useful.
this is a great point and when you ask the question "is higher sample rate or higher bit rate beneficial," the answer is different for each depending on whether you are talking about recording, editing, or consumption
AHH, forgot about that one! Sometimes... It's needed to stretch a sample to get it to "fit" in a part of a certain mix...
44.1 when given a pretty minor stretch (around 4-7%) there are residual bits in there that gives it a crunchy tone.... The same used to happen with tape speeds, it was always better to record at the faster speed (15 ips) than the more domestic 7.5 ips, as there was more tape getting used for audio thus more details could be recorded...
Essentially the analogue version of sample rates.
Interestingly, the tape speed adjustment was used when the first digital audio samplers grew into a useable musical instrument...
Due to the cost of memory, the early digital samplers had teeny tiny memory specs....thus sample time was also tiny (Casio RZ1 for example, 1 second divided between 4 sample trigger pads).
As a work around, users would record onto tape - and then sample it by playing the tape at double speed.
Effectively doubling the sample time, but at the cost of audio quality.
Except here, we are talking about the end consumer, not studio type use.
Good point, analog is superior in this but when streching if interpolated points are added, say with a window of 100ms that predicts the direction of the curve, not only direct mid between 2 points, it should sound the same if capturing with twice the samplerate. I don't think DAWs do this so yeah, you are right.
BTW if anyone is making plugins, this would be a good tool. Analyse the recorded file and the add interpolated points when streching.
In essentials, this topic would say everything there is to sampling rates and bit depth. But its riddled from being partially factoid and a bit too theoretical, for its own good.
For example: 16 bit depth gives us 96 dbFS of dynamic range. This is not true, even if we ignore, that people believe, you would get 96dB of dynamic range on the music alone. In fact, you don't get anywhere near that dynamic range for the music, nor would you ever need it. Lets take some classical music as an example. How about Mozart Overture 'Die Zauberflöte'? That piece peaks at roughly -3dBFS and goes down to -71dBFS (RMS). So we are talking about a a dynamic range of about 68dB. And it makes perfect sense! Listening to music at 96dB SPL is not healthy for your ears and hearing.
And now for the overall dynamic range possible in 16 bits: While in theory, the noise floor of a 16 bit recording is 96dBFS, pracitally, its not possible to have a noise floor that low. Its more likely to have about -93dBFS (RMS) as a lowest noise floor. That being said - if you get your peak noise below 94dBFS, its likely, that the conversion does not consider what as any signal and as far as your PCM WAV file would be conserned, you'd have effectively NO NOISE at all. But since noise in that recording jumps from -93dBFS (RMS) to ZERO, you have effectively a noise floor of -93dBFS (RMS) and in peak even worse -90dBFS. Thus you have a signal to noise ratio of a mere 25dBFS vs RMS Noise, a mere 22dBFS vs noise peak. But is that a problem? Not really, no. If even if you played back music at up to 90dB (SPL), what can be considered painfully loud on the loudest parts, you would have literally NO NOISE OUTPUT on your system.
So are 24 bits of bit depth useless? This question has two answers: For listening? Yes. Period. For recording though, 24 bits of bit depth are highly usefull, because you can record with a noise floor even lower. Why is this important? Because you can do more postprocessing to make quieter party more audible, without getting the noise floor to an audible level. So 24 bit recordings have their place - but mostly for the people producing music.
So what about the sampling rate? Anything above 20000Hz is useless content, because nobody can hear it, right? Well, when i was 11, i could hear frequencies up to 21500 Hz. But thats beside the point, because i couldn't do it anymore, when i was 16. Since high quality music isn't produced for kids who cannot afford ridiculously expensive gear to listen to it, but rather for people who can afford it, there is almost no point in even having a max frequency of 20000 Hz recorded. 17400 Hz is a tone only teenagers can hear. Anyone 18 years or older cannot hear this tone. So why would anybody want a higher sampling rate?
Not for being able to listen to higher frequency recordings. 48000Hz as a sampling rate has been standartised for digital video broadcasting. It was a sampling rate, that matches pretty much all the frame rates in used around the world at the least overhead possible. No matter if 24Hz, 25 Hz, 30Hz, 48Hz, 50Hz or 60 Hz. It is easiest to process. (And its the same for 16 bits of bit depth. 24 bit signals are more difficult to process. It needs more computational power.) That is the reason 48 khz of sampling rate and 16 bits of bit depth exist. That's why most computerized hardware, no matter if its a smartphone, a TV, a Computer display or whatever the case is standartized at 48000Hz of sampling rate and 16 bit of bit depth. Its easyer to process than even 44100Hz of sampling rate would be. - Today it doesn't matter anymore, as we have easily enough computational power to calculate the playback of even ridiculous sampling rates like 96khz. But back then, when we began to digitalize TV broadcasting, it was very much a thing.
44100Hz was perfect for audio reproduction, but in context with digital video broadcasting, they needed a sampling rate better suited for the job and ended up with 48000Hz. Any even higher sampling rate was an attempt to deal with issues related to aliasing, which is a form of inaccurate audio unique to the digital realm. To adress the myth: No, its not usually audible. You need to to really extreme examples to make it audible. They tried to make dealing with audio aliases easier, but by know, its pretty much proven, that even in recording, using oversampling in the post processing you can deal with even strong examples of aliasing it at both 48000Hz or 44100Hz without a problem. A higher sampling rate only results in higher CPU loads and bandwidths and is harder on the system, at no real world advantage. They do nothing to improve the audible content below 20000Hz, like its stated in this video. But its even worse: Higher sampling rates can result in increased intermodulation, even in the audible range. To put this another way: You pay exponentially more money to realize a pristine recordings AND playback of 96Khz 24 bit signals, than what you would pay for playback of 44100 or 48000Hz @ 16 Bits -- again, at NO advantage. And i challenge anyone who still believes strongly to hear a difference, to do a real blind test. If you don't get at least 80% of your quesses right, you got to admit to yourself, that you're blinded by the numbers.
As someone who performed as well as listened to music for a significant part of my life, I must interject there is more to experiencing audio than what one hears. There's also the elements that are merely felt, but which contribute greatly to the sense of space in a well-recorded album. There is an immediately noticeable difference in dynamics, for instance, between REM's Bang and Blame on CD compared to a 24-bit/96 kHz FLAC.
I believe you have used frequency range to explain sampling rate. Human frequency range is between 20hz to 20 Khz. Sampling rate is the number of times per second analogue audio is sampled for digital conversion. Basically, a 96Khz sample rate offers a higher resolution than 44.1Khz sample rate. It's like comparing an SD screen resolution with a HD screen.
Michael Wanyoike i think the same,he's wrong..44.1khz is how many measures are done in 1second,so higher the khz's->higher precision of the recording..and the bit depth is the magnitude of the wave sounds
@@matteopiccioni196 Exactly!
That's true. But Nyquist tells us that the maximum frequency reproducible (in the case of CD quality, that's 44.1kHz / 2 = 22.05kHz) will be reproduced perfectly. This is despite the fact that it only has two samples per cycle. Last year, Technology Connections made a great video about this exact topic, which is well worth a look: ruclips.net/video/pWjdWCePgvA/видео.html
@@HandyAndyTechTips great,I did some research and nysquit theorem is really useful to get such an "hands on results"..I tested my ear and I can listen to the maximum of 20-21khz(not the test on yt, because the awful compression ) (it sounds like a line,obv at that frequencies,and isn't always precettible,need concentration)..I don't really know why there are headphones with higher fre.response Than 22khz..ok I might give a contribution to the whole listening sound session..but are a bit meaningless, about me
@@matteopiccioni196 Most internal DACs and headphones have a frequency response between 20hz to 20Khz. Am guessing even if you have a higher quality audio, the higher frequencies will get cut out anyway. It is a general consensus that the upper limit of human hearing is around 20Khz. However, there was a study that was conducted by www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10848570 that revealed when music was presented with frequencies above the 20Khz limit, there was increased brain wave activity than when music was presented without the higher frequencies. None of the participants were able to hear the higher frequencies when presented on it's own but when added to music, they said it created a pleasing sound experience. I guess it's really worth owning sound gear that can support a frequency response higher than 20Khz.
I can hear the difference in high res music, it’s like night & day. Don’t know what else to say but it’s like when I play guitar I can hear old & new strings where others can’t.
@Bob Insult, the typical answer of a guy that needs to justify the absurd expend in audio gear/music that will not provide any benefit. Pissed off of all the money Meridian and MQA has been taking from you? Don't take it with this guy, get your complains to the manufacturers. Flat-Earthers everywhere.
Explain the differences you can hear, real answer = None.
The difference you hear might be due to bitrate, which is not exactly the same thing. Otherwise either you're lying or it's pure placebo
@@GeneralKenobi69420 If he can hear a difference then theres something wrong with his audio equipment, "audiophiles" are so full of shit
@@GeneralKenobi69420 No honestly he's right. I thought I'd give it a listen (and I'm very critical to so called "claims" of better audio) and you can really hear the difference, it's quite astounding, try it for yourself
Supposedly we can't hear a difference over 20- some odd khz so 44.1khz is more than enough but wonder if better bit rate does matter because my copy of Dark Side of the moon sounds freaking phenomenally better at higher khz and bit rate. FLAC just sounds crisper if mastered well.
I'm sure DSOTM does sound better on your high-res FLAC copy. But that's probably attributable to a better source tape or better mastering (eg. more dynamics) rather than the hi-res format itself. It's not the format that matters, but the way in which you use it.
@@HandyAndyTechTips They probably re-mastered it, so they used a filter to reduce noice, then the played with the dynamics a bit to make it sound more lively
This is a great video Andy! It's very informative, however torwards the end I'd like to address a problem that I myself have while doing audio signal processing, and it is that sometimes it needs to be louder in either amplitude or sampling rate for computing purposes, it's not the same to have a sinewave at 16 bit 44.1khz than it is to have a 24 bit 96khz sinewave compressed down to the dynamic range of 16 bit 44.1khz (with a compressor, not reducing the sampling rate) the harmonics obtained out of the process are impossible to replicate from the bitrate of 16 to 8 after normalizing back to 44.1... do I make sense? Think about it like those CSI scenes where they try to resample the face of a man from a very low resolution image back into the crisp and clear high res image. The responsiveness of effects is way bigger while working on a higher bitrate, and higher resolution environment. Other than that, the song is going to sound pretty much the same once it gets it's final mix and gets mastered for distribution. So for production purposes, 24 bit is greater, provides with more virtual headroom, and 96000 khz should be enough, unless the intention is to destroy the sound to extract the very deep harmonics of it, in which case, having more fabric to cut from is always better. :D
-Godsicc
Just a general comment on HiFi: Higher bit rates and sample/mix rates are better.
Humans hearing is not digital stereo. Simplifying human hearing to be the same as digital sampling rates and frequencies(With a fixed time base) completely ignores the nature of hearing: Human hearing is biologically a massively parallel asynchronous sampling system that feeds a conscious mind that has psychological responses as well as basic biochemical responses. So feeding it as much data as possible is Ideal; The MIXING rate is exactly as it sounds; the bandwidth room for all the soundscape to be produced. SO 192khz does not mean a sound with a frequency of 192kz will be heard, but a lot more lower frequency sounds can be produced with a wider timebase. Human hearing does not sync up and operate at the output rate of a fixed rate device, it samples in a scatter pattern in the time base, so not 20000 times per second; millions of conversions from a 3d microphone(ear) with thousands of pickup points(Hairs/Bones/Nerves) all operating asynchronously and in parallel.
Sound waves can interact physically in the air to produce more detail through a higher mixing rate on the output; more signals per given time. Thus you have more detail that our parallel hearing can process. Again: NOT to produce higher frequencies than we can hear, but more DETAIL in the soundscape and soundstage.
*Sound can also be perceived through pressure and vibration; FELT more than heard. Most obvious is SUB-BASS but higher frequencies can also be felt. More detail from a higher mixing rate can allow for the soundstage and soundscape to fill out.
If you have any doubt, check your sound settings and if you can set it to 24bit(or the highest you have) then only change the mixing rate: Start at 22,050 per channel: Stereo: From 44.1khz up to 192khz+ (Highest you can find). Listen for the fidelity rather than frequency response. Listen for both MORE DETAIL and also LESS ARTIFACTS. I always notice with CD audio there is a "tinkle" digital rattle to it. Whereas with 96kz+ the sound is smoother; no matter the source resolution.
Sorry for the text, some graphics would be much better, but think about it a bit like megapixels and frame rates on cameras. At a baseline (Ignoring device quality), the more of both that you have the more DETAIL you can capture. **OH NO** (Not going to get into "Humans can only see 30fps and Retina quality." -- Total nonsense for similar reasons, human vision is not a fixed framerate camera with a fps built in.
Summary: FIDELITY comes from DETAIL and a higher MIXING/SAMPLING rate allows for a BROADER soundscape and soundstage no matter where you limit the BANDWIDTH(Human hearing range 0-26khz). So 192khz is not to make 192kz sounds but rather produce a more detailed soundscape and soundstage that our parallel and asynchronous hearing can enjoy.
Regards
Ent
It’s just a ploy to get people to buy a new format or file. I still get s kick out of cassettes, LPs and CD. I’ve a problem with mp3 as it’s below par.
Not always. mp3 of course can be indistinguishable from the original but there are many variables (not only bitrate). Basically, if you haven't any frequencies above approx. 10-12 kHz you should be fine.
Andy, the ultimate objective is to having more dynamic range, not less. Your presentation lead to think that since all music has been overcompressed (not true, just pop music for radio use) we already have a surplus of bit depths. 24 bits are making a comeback because you can lower the noise floor and put the dynamic range just where it was before the "loudness wars". Encoding and filtering are not flawless: they create "artifacts" such as spikes and brush. With higher sampling rates this noise can be shifted up into the inaudible region, then filtered away with more subtle filtering (not "brick wall") that lowers this noise.
Furthermore: high sampling rates do not just broaden the frequency range but ALSO improve quality by providing more sampling points that make "interpolation" and "anti aliasing" more accurate to capture and render real world complex music thereby pick up timbre, transients and other subtleties in a way that CD 16/44.1 does not.
You have had the revelation of Nyquist and Shannon, but there is a LOT more science and technology to learn and apply. Your field at present is obviously not digital audio. I encourage you to dig further into the matter if this field interests you. We are reaching a tipping point. The default medium for sound is digital, and we seek the highest possible fidelity. The 16/44.1 is Red Book spec from 40 years ago. Resources were limited and costly back then. CD was barely sufficient, but it got the basic job done. It was a milestone, but a lot has happened since then and there is a lot to learn and do.
Red Book is now the "bare essentials", our basic starting point. Almost "the shellac 78 rpm disk", if I may. And engineers are routinely working today extending accurate music reproduction way beyond those parameters. Dip in further. Contemporary digital sound is fascinating.
Have you ever listened to Dark Side of the Moon on SACD? I cant explain how much better it sounds.
I bet it sounds louder, all SACD,S do, but better only because of that.
Its something you need to site down and listen too to understand. Only example I can give is the separation of instruments and over dubbed sound effects is huge. I could never understand the women's whisper "if you here this you will die" or something but its so clear on the SACD that it sound like someone saying it clearly in my ear. And I have tried to record it from the Audio outs on my PC and it sounds EXACTLY the same as the CD once I have sampled it down to 44.1. I have friends that are vinyl buffs and always talk about records sound so much better than blah blah blah, 5 minutes of listening to an SACD said that he never heard anything sound so good.
SACDs are generally copies of the masters. That's what SACDs were originally used for. They were meant to have an exact archive of the master before it's gone through the "mastering" process. Many, not all, of the 24 bit recordings are taken from the SACD archive and nothing altered. So it really depends on the actual recording and what has been done to it.
The Loudness wars is because they are using audio compression, limiting and other tricks to increase the sound so it APPEARS to be louder. But those loudness wars are really only part of the pop world because they are using those versions over the radio.
NO, SACD's sound better because they don't typically fuck up the master with audio compression, limiting, and other bullshit. They are supposed to be direct versions of the 2 track masters.
Oneness100 That was good information to know, thanks.
That is why HD audio has to be mastered from the original masters to sound the closest of those master like no other formats could ever have. Or else it's nonsense. Playing HD audio without appropriate speakers is also nonsense.
Here is what is not being talked about. Digital samples are simply and precisely (nothing more either) snippets (AKA snapshots or audio pictures) of the waveform taken at specified intervals. What is the specified interval? The sample rate! How many bits that are assigned to that sample is the 16, 20 or 24-bit rate thing. Bit rate determines how loud a sound needs to be before that information is valid or kept. Any sound lower in volume than the lowest volume sound determined by the bit rate is discarded. The whole thing is pretty complex and is far more complicated than just that. Suffice it to say that the lower the bit rate the more rounding off of numerical values there are assigned to that sample. Back to sample rate. So in a 44.1Khz sample, the sampler takes 44,100 snippets per second. Those snippets are just like still image pictures and if you were to zoom in and look at what was sampled you would see that there is a lot of time where there is physically no sound. The original theory was that if your sample rate was fast enough the sound on/off thing would become inaudible much like it becomes seamless with video. That rate was determined to be 44,100 times per second hence was why we standardised on that. The big point here is that it was physically sound, no sound, sound, no sound. Somewhere down the road maybe the mid-2000's it was decided that it was better to stuff something into the holes in between these samples and an averaging algorithm was added on playback under the guise of a filter. Let us call a spade a spade here (for those who are making every effort to find fault that is a playing card reference, not a racial slur). This averaging thing is synthetic audio. Synthesised. FAKE!!! What they effectually have done is slur the audio image. It is akin to drawing a line with chalk and rubbing your finger over it so that there are no hard edges. It looks and in this case sounds really pretty doesn't it? The thing is though it is not the actual sound. You see when you sample even faster than 44.1Khz the faster you sample the more detail of the sound is captured, the more the hard edges from sampling go away and the closer we get to what the actual sound was that was captured. Sure we don't hear notable aliasing with the filter but what were are hearing is more of a departure from the capture the more we numerically round the data. we could do the same trick with MP3 but it would become a lot more obvious. The fact remains that the magic trick of inventing audio to fill in the gaps is audibly different from an actual higher resolution sample. Those differences are different than what you might be listening for and with that, you could mistakenly think that higher resolution audio doesn't achieve any sonic advantage but it actually does. You just need to watch the magician's other hand. You can never replace the real thing.
44 sounds more clear when i bounce track out with videos, when I bounce out with 192 my hats sound weird on phones and IG posts
Instagrams compression algorithm is very unforgiving. People have had success bouncing out their clips below -6dB for better results.
Thanks for a very good info. Yet, do you care to explain why is Hi Res better? Why even 44.1kHz recording on a digital format ( DAT ) is inferior to an exact same recording on the same DAT in a 48kHz rate? Why SACD is better than a CD? Thanx
He can't explain it, because then he has to admit that half the stuff he said is BS
192khz ,, gives resolution,,, , audible frequency is different subject, sampling is different, , sampling means number of points in time line, , record at high sample and down grade to 44.1
Dude, I rarely make comments on peoples videos...but what a great explanation and organization of even making topics with numbers to further explain! thank you very much! i'm a follower now! congratulations for the terrific video and channel.
Thanks for watching - it's great to know that people are finding the videos interesting and useful :-)
Jesus christ FINALLY a genuine individual explaining it all properly! Thumbs up Andy!
Thanks! :-)
When we talk about the nyquist sampling theorem we also need to account for the normal LP antialiasing filter, no filter is perfect and produces ripples and phaseshifts which means that we lose more of the high frequencies, for example a normal "brickwall" LP-filter apply the 0.45-0.55 slope, like all filters its a compromise and this often results in loosing some of the available bandwidth.
It all makes perfect sense until you hear a 24 bit, 96 KHz. It sounds -slightly- better.
+Eddie Mathews That's true. Many high res files DO sound far better than their CD counterparts. Why? Because the mastering is different. Just look at the Dynamic Range database, and observe the difference in DR values between the CD and HDtracks versions of Dream Theater's "Systematic Chaos": dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=dream+theater&album=systematic+chaos
+HandyAndy Tech Tips Well, it's harder to explain why older recordings can also sound better. I have blu ray audio disks of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" and Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" and in each case they sound amazing. The source material wasn't remastered. It's a bit of a confusing mess right now with everyone trying to figure out DSD and PCM and whatnot. Lots of interesting points made by each side. I'm making a record right now and having it mastered at 96 KHz, 24 bit and my goal is to preserve some dynamic range! But the hipsters love their analog tape and vinyl noise for its "warmth", not realizing that what they really love is compression.
I guess the hipsters love compression is due to loss of other signals which "confuse" them. With a reasonably less data like those music from iTunes and Spotify, their ear/head could easily hear them "clearer". But with good recording, i believe 24 bits 96 KHz music is absolutely better. The problem for consumer like me is, i don't know who or which recording studio produces good music.
True, gee there are some thick people about,
Most mastering engineers just do ONE master and then sample rate convert.
Finally, a video that lays out the information and doesn't drone on and on. I've been very unsure about this information. I bought IEMs and a DAP that were both labeled with the HiRes Audio logo. After this, I felt like I had to make sure as much of my music as possible was in 24/48 and up. Honestly, when I compared the 16/44.1 version, I could not hear a difference and did my best not to let my bias influence my perception. In a program like Spek, you can even see that the sound barely travels above the 20kHz range anyway.
I think the topics described in this video are spot on but one thing to keep in mind is that it's also kind of misleading. High red audio vs standard res audio doesn't really mean anything because it's the DAC that matters. If you have a very good DAC then a high res audio file will create a more comfortable sound then a standard res audio file will. A flute will still sound like a flute but when you have complexities like multiple instruments overlapping each other a good dac will be able to better recreate a scene within the soundstage with more samples. Most crap DAC's will just push out 44khz and let it be done. A high end DAC will be able to extrapolate more timing information to create smoother timbers and transitions. Just my two cents. :)
VERY GOOD point about the DAC and sound reproduction equipment in general. The final audible performance is only as good as the weakest link in that sound reproduction chain.
darkflame808, you sound like a sales rep for a business. To keep it simple either this hype is sales gimmicks to believe you can hear a difference or there really is a difference but only under certain circumstances, a crappy deck DAC will lose sound quality and dumb down the sound a bit. I know for a fact a 20000 dollar mcintosh system playing an lp sounds so much better than a CD on the same system so for me its worth a closer look at how we can get closer to that cleaner sound. Cds are 0s and 1s, just binary. LP have much more character. Lets see how we can get closer to that and further away from CDs but still be digital.
no matter the format its about source first. Then its about the level playback capability you have, no salesman needs to tell anyone that unless your starting out.
The topic is far more complicated than the Nyquist theorem and the maximum theoretical dynamic range. In a hi end system with a proper DAC you can definitely spot the difference between an Hi res vs cd quality version of the same piece.
(If of course you are not listening to some heavily compressed or clipped modern mastered production!!)
As the owner of thousands of licensed Hi-Res FLAC and DSD titles, I can tell you first hand that most of them are remastered FOR Hi-Res. If I play the CD version of Physical Graffiti from the 1990s and compare that to the recently release Hi-Res version of the album the difference is stark, indeed. So quite a bit of the Hi-Res releases have been updated to take advantage of the capabilities of the medium. The very recently released Hi-Res release of Abbey Road has never sounded better. You should not play these on your phone to compare them. An audiophile hi-if system consisting of an excellent DAC, amplification, and full range speakers, including a subwoofer, is really necessary to be able to appreciate the difference. If you listen to modern pop, don’t bother. It’s about fashion, not music.
Brilliant Andy, thanks. I've been toying with joining one of the Hi res streaming services but you've saved me quite a few pounds. Really well explained and delivered.
This is the only video that cohesively explained things and made up my mind on the subject, thanks dude!
No, it is not, of course not! I for instance came here from the video of Mark Furneaux: Digital Audio: "The Line Between Audiophiles and Audiofools" ruclips.net/video/IiZqYnd5g8M/видео.html He basically tells the same.
He is trying to sell ipods here :P
and the official lightning to 3.5mm adapter
People cannot hear anything above 20kHz. But if anything above 20kHz is present in the system it can mix with upper harmonics and produce products less than 20KHz, which you can hear. Best example is metal dome tweeters (breakup is usually about 25kHz). Hit it with a 22kHz tone and a 25kHz tone (right on the breakup) that are linearly mixed with ultra-low distortion equipment. It will produce an audible 3kHz tone because IMD goes through the roof at breakup.
yes but the output of the song can be at 44khz
may be you've never listen to hi resolution audio with a good hardware. the difference is huge.
Hi-res audio works a lot better with pluguins, VSTs, etc... after you master it, the audible diference is unnoticeable to most people. But try recording at low-res, and the diference is HUGE in the mix due to pluguins being able to work more accuratly in hi-res. Thats really why ppl use it
Çerastes I don't think this is the right way to quantify the difference between hi-res and standard resolution audio. If you subtract a small portion of a sound wave even if that portion is not audible, the original sound wave change and in some cases could change drastically. In some cases, with some kind of music, the difference is difficult/impossible to find. In other cases that thinly difference changes completely the listening experience. I'm not audiophile and I don't have hi-res equipment, but I have a lot of friends witch has. The listening experience is totally different, but even the cost...
Huge? Impossible unless the hi res file came from a different (ie better) master. Otherwise it is impossible if your hardware is performing properly at all bit rates. Expectation biases and placebo effects may affect your perception that one is better than the other and that is why only a controlled blind test is valid to test this. Over 30 years have passed now with various controlled tests and yet there is still no convincing evidence that hi res sounds different than CD specs. One of the best known peer reviewed tests is in the link below.
docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdrewdaniels.com%2Faudible.pdf
I agree. Listen to Yusef Islam/ Cat Stevens.... ( I don't think the album is as good as Teaser or Tea .. and there are other issues). The sound is glorious and warm. Listen to much of HD Tracks and I can preview about one in ten; being in Australia, and seek out the delux version of Rumours.. Fleetwood mac. Interestingly, my preamp is a simple new analogue mixing desk and my speakers and amp were chsen with a generous budget in mind.... and suitable for a moderate sized living room. The CD player is a recorder as well and has very good specs... far better than a car CD Player for example.
listening on headphones or a really good resolving system, yes the difference is huge. Most people can't even define ' audibility' , because they don't listen for it.
At our recording studio we record at 24 bit/ 96K. The main reason we do that is headroom. The second reason is we can always drop to 16 bit at any time during the mastering. Sometimes the 24 bit does sound better to me especially on very high frequency instruments like bells. Is it worth the extra cost? Well in our studio it makes sense but for consumers 16/44.1 hits it perfect.
I have what I would consider to be a pretty high end streamer based system and the biggest problem I find is that the quality of encoding on older vinyl on tidal is sometimes so dreadful that I prefer not to listen to it. There is definitely a case for very high end vinyl systems but you lose out big time on the convenience factor. I have a fairly large number of 24bit recordings and to be honest, the difference is not all that great. There is a difference when moving up to very , very top end DAC, amp and £25,000 speakers. Things then begin to boil down to how well the sound engineers have done their job. I have a Lou Reed Transformer CD which was cut from a magnetic master tape and it still to this day sounds fabulous. It is equally as good as the vinyl recording I have. On the other hand, I tried listening to Straight Shooter from Bad Company via tidal and it had lost so much in the transcription process it just felt completely flat...… such a disappointment! Old story, it's all in the recording quality not the musical content.
Andy
Your final comment in this video - "unless an album is released with completely different mastering than its CD equivalent, it will sound exactly the same" - is actually all you needed to say.
We are using hi-res formats to record CD quality music, imagining that somehow the change of clothes (upsampling) will upgrade the wearer of the clothes. True, Unless we have access to digital masters recorded from analog at hi-res levels, we will actually never know of hi-res audio is superior.
Furthermore, it may require a lots of time and exposure to tell the difference, much like learning a new language and going to visit another country - the subtle differences in accent and nuances of meaning become apparent over long periods of time. This could explain the resurgence in popularity of LPs.
What is with this convention that high sample rates are pointless? What about for the purpose of recording ultrasonic audio and slowing it down into the range of human hearing?
It's like saying a 120,000 FPS camera is pointless because the human eye can only observe 30 FPS... Or that a telescope is pointless because humans can only see a distance of 5km.
that's not for music though
It's useless for consumer audio, which is the point. The video even says this in text. High sample rates are very useful when you're actually editing and mastering audio. The bit depths are almost always floating point 32-bit as well, which is way more than 24-bit. For simply listening to music though, they're completely useless.
+AA Productions
That's why CD audio is 44.1kHZ. The sampling rate is sufficiently high enough that you can audio that humans can hear (near) perfectly. Any sine wave between 20Hz and 20kHz can be accurately produced.
Fun fact: The audio you listen to is a bunch of sinewaves mashed together. If you can reproduce every sinewave a human can hear, then by extension you can reproduce every sound a human can hear.
That's due to the cutoff. Over 20kHZ the audio is completely silenced because all it contains is noise. In fact there's a technique called "noise shaping" which puts even more noise beyond the filtering to improve audio quality.
The general public doesn't listen to music like that. Hence pointless for listening.
This was a very clean and amazingly insightful video! Thanks Andy!
There is a proved test where hidef audio moves speakers drivers a little different than low def audio, making subtle moves and changing a lot the sound of the speaker, independant of what your ear can hear...
Source?
Ganondorf Man.... I saw it a long time ago something like about 10 years ago... Really... The test was show by marantz audio... Gonna search it...
that sounds like gold cable snake oil. Or even worse - "high res" USB and fiberoptic cables.
Resolution is the main reason to record at higher sample rates. Head room for bit rate. Especially if you are working the audio afterwards. `There is definitely a difference in listening to 44/16 versus 192 or 96K./24. Why do you think movies are produced in 192K or 96K.? Obviously the more samples per second are going to capture a better quality of audio just like 4k and even 8k does with video. It's not just the nyquist frequency, although that does give more dimension, the amount or frequency that something is sampled is going to be a better documentation of an audio event. Cymbal tails, reverbs, even sibilance acts differently. Today most people record virtual sampled instruments, loops, synths, and maybe some electric guitar, drum samplers...no you are not going to hear the difference with canned sources, it may be a lost art actually, but if you are recording finite acoustic music, you definitely have a better recording with higher sampling rates. Even if you down sample it is better quality than originally capturing it a 44.1K So bravo `Chris Cutress you are correct with sticking to your guns.
Whaw I just got to say "amazing" I always though high res was better and excellent video!
+anthony contreras Thanks for watching! :-)
+HandyAndy Tech Tips - I like your video style Andy but your conclusions are seriously flawed. You're not a sound expert.
Tony Yllescas just listen and everything he said is wrong
+Larry Brock: You have no clue what you are talking about bro.
Çerastes just go to tidel music and listen, preferably to something vocal based
What the hell are you saying? Those KHz are not referred to the range of waves the human ear can listen to. Those khz are referred to the "resolution" of the recording. It means, how much times in a second the recorder is capturing the waveform. It's like a camera that can capture 24 fps vs one that can capture 480fps. Many could not see a difference, well, this is another example: if 44.1 khz is the old dvd resolution, 96 Khz is the full HD of Audio. 192 Khz is the 4K. Maybe 4k could be too much for many, but please let them decide.
If you have a recording with a sample rate of 44.1kHz, then, according to Nyquist, the frequency that is half of this rate (22.05kHz) will be reproduced perfectly (except if you use steep analog low-pass filters, which are no longer common thanks to oversampling). Using a higher sampling rate (eg. 96kHz) will NOT magically improve the "resolution" of 22kHz sounds. For more info, see this video by Technology Connections: ruclips.net/video/pWjdWCePgvA/видео.html
Great video. For the average consumer it is not important. For music producers, we need a minimum of 24-bit/96kHz so we can master it properly. That's why there is so much headroom in this quality(144dB)
With this in mind you can figure out why the loudness war is that simple. It's easy to use a powerful compressor to get the quit parts louder en louder parts that run hot in the VU softer. Unfortunately it's decreasing the complete quality from the original recording. I do use compressors, but I am carefully handling the ratios so its sounds just as loud or a tiny bit louder than my original mix. But sometimes its handy to use compressors and limiters in vocal parts. Great video by the way. Greetz, Emiel
funny, i master records for a living and never get sent high rez files from places like oceanway or blackbird, only get sent high rez files from smaller artists. 44.1/24 is fine
Even a minidisc recorded in LP2 mode fully saturates our hearing capabilities, HD audio is just another pointless thing.
TO start with bit rate is the size of block width and the khz is the high of that block used in measuring the sound curve. 192khz is not the frequency. 24 is more accurate division of sizing the width of the sound wave and 192khz is sizing the high. Smaller divisions mean the gap between each measurement round off is smaller and so is more accurate. khz is not a measurement of sound frequency but (fsp) FREQUENT SAMPLING POINTS and should be renamed. Its like measuring your table by inch and rounding up or down the the nearest. Then do that same using cm. What will be more accurate, its the CM's because they are a smaller division. Use 24 bit 192 khz as a max. Above that you may not notice the accuracy. frequency is not related to data but reproductive response.
Just as you admit you won't notice the difference above 24bit 192khz, the truth is you won't hear the difference between that and 16bit 22kzh.
Bang on. The only audible difference is down to different masterings. The music industry broke sound quality by mastering music so that it sounds passable on a cheap and nasty set of ear buds, and now they are selling us the music without, or at least with less, the stupid compression and charging us through the nose for it. The only way they can do that is by conning us that the huge waste of bandwidth/storage space that hi-res music takes up enables us to hear better quality. CD quality was set like that for a reason. It's the best our ears can handle.
Dude!, Why do you have 8,430?... after watching this video I think you can stand out to those guys like MKBHD, Pocketnow, Android Authority, Jonathan Morrison, Austin Evans.. MAN YOU ARE GREAT YOUR EXPLANATION IS EXCEPTIONAL.
Wow, thanks! I'm really glad that you enjoyed the video.
Mohamed Dia Eldin watch my video
Why all studios using hi res? why their masters are always on hi res?
THey must all be fools according to your own words!
We don't hear digits we hear analog sound, and hi rez is closer to analog.. it has nothing to do with the sound frequencies humans can hear, you miss the point if you think that...It has to do with the samples taken from the original analog sound going though mics and A/D converters to become digits, the more samples the smother the wave will be... that translates to detailed analytic sound, without the harshness of digital, and much closer to the old good analog Mastertapes the studios used all these years..
If you can't hear a difference because your low-fi equipment doesn't allow it, don't blame the format...
You' haven't proved anything, but your own ignorance on the subject
H.D.O.M - the only thing you have heard, or ever will hear, is analog sound. The recording method used will never change that.
WakeUpAmerican000s yep lol
I Master in garage band at 24 bit Wav and the quality is incredible and the sounds are more dynamic as i have great hearing and sensitive ears i can ABSOLUTELY hear the difference in 16 and 24 bits
My research led me to the same conclusion. You can't differentiate perfect audio signal from perfect audio signals.
It seems to depend on the DA/AD converter chips and individual perception of sound. I don't produce with audiophile gear, but I feel that it would make the experience nicer because of the fancy chips. But would it be worth the small change that only a small percentage of my listeners could hear? It becomes more of a want to gain social exposure at this point than practical use.
@@helldotsin DAC is most important in sound quality. My PC onboard or AD18 DAC sound like garbage compared to AK4452. Most people buy more expensive headphones to experience better music but it will still sound the same. I have blast on my cheap Koss headphones while fifteen times more expensive Sony sounds like garbage.
As a composer and someone who works with audio a lot I can say to you that 192kHz is very useful if you want to manipulate sound (if you want to stretch the tracks)... In that sense, if you stretch an audio too much it will sound very bad, but that too much stretching is not a lot in 44.1kHz...
Exactly. But this video is about 44.1kHz as a consumer audio delivery format, in which case it's just about perfect.
@@HandyAndyTechTips Maybe you need to look into high-end consumer audio delivery, then you will realize it is not as perfect as 192khz 24 bit or DSD. If your DAC is not over $1000 USD, you will have a hard time telling the difference, because your Equipment was not designed to give you the level of tranparency and detail required to tell the difference.
You barely touch on the Nyquist Theorem. The highest possible frequency that can be REPRESENTED is half of the sample frequency. However, as you approach this limit, you get that frequency presented as a square wave. You're not getting as much precision.
As far as consumer play-back, the audio won't go through that much DSP. As far as professional audio, that can contain tons and tons of DSP in the signal chain before it's even released in the world of consumer listening.
Professionals love high quality recordings when it comes to things like time-stretching audio to a longer duration or pitching a sound down. The higher sample rate allows samples to be stretched longer before more noticeable artifacts are produced. True 192kH recordings can be pitched down lower and lower than 44.1kHz before there's a noticeable absence of high frequency information missing.
A higher bit-depth adds greater levels of protection when gain-staging live recordings. If you're using equipment with better signal to self-noise ratios you can keep your recordings clean and have loads of headroom and a usable bit-depth. Low volume recordings don't hold up very well when exposed to lots of DSP.
The down-side of very high sample rates is the tolerance factor in timing (jitters) in the clock speed of your audio. You'll want gear with very stable clock-rates, especially when recording (analog to digital) aka "sampling." Sloppy builds of power supplies, A->D converters, design stability, etc. are not in the realm of consumer pricing to value.
192kHz, 24-bit doesn't make much sense as a consumer format. That's absolutely true. But it's a good thing in the world multiple layers of digital signal processing.
fakshen1973 That's totally wrong. A 22KHz sine wave can be PERFECTLY reproduced with a 44KHz sampling frequency. That may sound unintuitive, but it's still true due to the way ADCs and DACs work.
Not true. Up to just below the Nyquist limit (say 20 kHz) the DAC will produce a perfect sine wave with no loss of precision. There are many RUclips videos that demonstrate this.
Yes you only need two samples to perfectly reproduce a sine wave, and it isn't a square wave.
This is in correct. Audio fidelity is only as good as the output quality. I recommend you find a professional to show you the difference on a proper system. The richness will blow your mind.
Same with motion picture cameras. More information is always better as long as you can afford it and know what to do with it.
You are so right Justin, this guy needs to get his head out of a text book and go to a recording studio and have they play back samples on professional equipment, so he can know the truth
Absolutely absolutely worth it.
85 out of 100.
I can plug my cordless headphones directly into my Marantz HE and get breathtaking sound.
Just try doing that with a standard cd player! LOL
@Çerastes he's joking. He literally said "plug in my cordless headphones"...
Did he just say Cordless headphones.
I've been looking for a video that explains this for a while now, thank you!
very helpful man, thanks alot!
What Andy fails to go into any detail about is the subject of harmonics. Harmonics are the upper frequencies of sounds you do not normally hear, but alter the timbre of a sound. Harmonics are what makes the sound of a violin, a flute and a piano all sound different, even if they are playing the same musical note. So when you play an 'A4' on a piano, you aren't just hearing 440, but you are also hearing 880, 1320, 1760, 2200 etc. This is true on the very high notes as well. Just cutting off the frequencies at 22050, which is what CD audio is doing, is cutting off all those vital very high frequency harmonics that help shape and clarify the sound we hear. So before you decide that CD audio is the best and greatest, try going out and actually listening to high res digital audio, and try listening to pure analog audio as well, which has no such limits. The absolute and very best method of recording sound is still the reel to reel tape, especially when it's 2-track stereo at a speed of 15 IPS or greater. So there.
you are awesome and well informed! thank you for sharing the knowledge!
Hi-res is not only about frequencies and dynamics. The data stream for converting analog audio is much bigger. That makes hi-res PCM possible to sound better. Most studio recordings are made in 24 bit/96kHz or 192kHz.
After reading some topics/forums etc I did a lot of research in digital audio. I have to admit I was victim of all the marketing... You are completely right.
This is technically correct if you are only talking about music. Sound effects and ambient files are a different story. Higher bit depth and sample rates allow for more flexibility when it comes to modifying the sounds.
You are talking about *producing* the files. The video made it clear it was talking about *listening* to the final product. Yes, the data is handled with higher resolution during production, but the final product doesn't need that.
That is like saying that you cant tell the difference between 1080p and 4k. At a certain distance you can not see the pixels anymore but you still can tell that the image is sharper.
@Çerastes Thats not how analog systems work.
@Çerastes you dont know what i and what you are talking about
@Çerastes you are not even aware of how wrong
@Çerastes not even close so wrong are you
@Çerastes you still have no clue of how i have no clue about you having no clue as much as you have no clue
The difference between Hi resolution audio and CD quality is slight but by no means insignificant. However, people are still claiming that MP3 at 192k or lower sounds as good as CD, which is clearly nuts. We have governments and broadcasters around the world telling us that inferior quality low bitrate MP2 DAB transmissions are a step forward to FM radio. In Norway they have even switched off the FM radio much to peoples disgust. I suggest this is a more pressing issue than the debate here. Even TV sound has got worse than the old NICAM system. If you are bothered about the quality of hi res then why is there not a bigger fuss about DAB vs FM radio?
I posted this as a response, but I thought I'd add it here as it might get missed and I'd like to see a discussion.
A DAC can never produce an "exact signal" and it's always going to be an approximation based on information available to reproduce the complex curve. Think of the "stair case" as marker points on an extremely complex shape. The more points provided the close it gets to the original. The so called "stair step" myth comes from drawing horizontal and vertical lines between the points. Errors occur when insufficient digital points are placed on a complex curve and these dots are joined by approximation. Therefore the more points provided the closer the approximation. It's always going to be an approximation, although the more points provided the closer it will be to the original. If there's a minor bump or dip in the curve between sampled points, you need to represent them. Otherwise they are completely missed and smoothed over. Get the graph paper out and give it a go.
Bit rate:
The use of higher bit rates mean more values are available that can be assigned to the sample. This means a value can be selected that is closer to the value measured. On a graph it can be considered the values on the x or vertical axis.
Sampling frequency:
The sampling frequency is the number of samples taken every second. The more samples taken result in a closer representation of the original. On a graph it can be considered the values on the y or horizontal axis.
Fred I completely understand what your saying and agree with you, Hi-Res is better and you can hear the difference on a good DAC, but most people do not even know what a DAC is. Hahaha
I'm an ultrasound hearer and have pretty much given up on anybody ever producing music to cover my hearing range. What I can say is 196khz audio files do not sound much better. Most hi res files have a sharp drop off around 25 - 30khz. Yes I can hear more hi hats in these files but you also hear more electrical noise. Probably because the studio equipment was not designed to record or produce sounds outside of normal hearing range.
He is absolutely correct when it comes to dynamic range. Most modern music is super compressed so 24bits is pointless. Also, your brain tunes into the loudness of music so your perceivable dynamic range is not 100db, it's far less once its tuned into the song you are listening too. The loudness wars producers have capitalised on that so that we can now perceive more of a modern song. Problem is it also takes the soul away from a song.
No matter what your hearing range is, if you want to enjoy music more look into 3d sound stuff like dolby atmos.
Thank you! What a sensible and well thought-out comment. You're right - most studio equipment is only designed to capture from 20Hz - 20kHz, so that's why hi-res files have a lot of ultrasonic noise.
Does that mean that bit rate is more important than sample rate? As long as the sample rate is 44 and the bit rate is 24 it will be Hi Res? Does format matter at that point? I always heard that flac format was the best? As I thought the goal was to have a format that offers as little of compression as possible?
Nothing like plain, honest, simple truth. Well done.
Can super hi-res music have the potential to annoy nearby animals? I know it sounds like a silly question but I'd like to stick with the "safest" high quality format possible.
This is 100% correct. RBCD standards are sufficient for all musical recordings.
That may well be true, but if that is the case then why does a SACD (based on DSD files) of an album always sound so much better than the CD of the exact same album? Assuming that they are both derived from the exact same master recording, the SACD always wins every single time - and it's not even close. How do you explain that?
@@michaelbeckerman7532 I don't know. But with the SACD there are two other channels that have been added into the recording so the CD version my just have the two additional channels mixed into the front channels when played as an ordinary CD. But the truth is I don't know. I have only one SACD and I do have an SACD player but I never used it in that mode. It really didn't interest me to see what effect it had. As near as I can tell these multichannel formats are simply the sons and grandsons of quadraphonic sound. So ????
wait so why are there so many audiophiles saying 192khz is best and whatnot? if they can't detect the difference in quality what is the point??
Bro, that was legit!!! Great job.
For everyone going on and on with bullshit about how HD sounds better, do yourself a favor: download a 24 bits / 96 KHz track, convert it to 16 bits / 44 KHz while keeping the original, and do an actual blind test with Foobar2000’s ABX module. You *won’t* hear a difference. If anyone is able to hear the difference with a p-value below 0.05, message me with the signed message from the software to prove it and I’ll send you 10 bucks
There is no sense in saying that the sampling rate for audio if fine at 2 time 20kHz! That's the minimum requirement for detecting at least a variation in wave form. If u take an electrocardiogram sample would u say that 2 times the signal frequency is enough for sampling? That doesnt make any sense, sometimes sampling should be more than 1000 times the frequency to c completely the wave form
"Perfectly" not true. Filters, slopes, phase.
Though nyquist said double the freq etc, he would've gone higher, to give more sampling resolution to higher frequencies. People just went with 44.1k cos they misunderstood him.
RasecninjaSkywalker watch my video. You get the idea which is right.
If the audio is coming of a CD it's still 16Bit audio it gets Dithered down to 16 Bit 44.1K no matter what sample rate was used in the recording it Does make a difference recording so older record on Vinyl will sound better than a CD & FLAC HD will sound better than a CD or MP3 but If you don't have a decent DAC or speakers it makes no difference.
You are assuming that high frequency content has no effect on the audible range, it may do.
24 bit recordings can have a more accurate transient feel. I've recorded drum in both and the 24-bit definitely sounds more HI-FI.
There's a rapid change in attack that is probably also caught better by a faster sampling rate. It's not about the upper limits of frequency range but more about the speed of change of these things. More samples in a better bit depth is obviously more faithful to the original and where it happens with rapidly changing dynamics (Guitars too) it does make a difference in capturing punchiness of the performance.
I can send you some performances at 96khz and 24 bit that are obviously better than a dithered version of the same performance.
Luv and Peace.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with pro recording. This video, however, is about whether hi-res audio delivers tangible benefits to the consumer. I'm arguing that the real focus of audiophiles should be to encourage the use of more dynamic range within existing 16/44.1 recordings. I'm sure we both agree that a squashed high-res file will sound far worse than a dynamic 16/44.1 version.
Ian you are so right, it is not even funny, this guy Andy is talking about facts he has heard from a text book, maybe he should be a real musician like you and try recording it and playing back and realize the the text books he is reading are wrong. The other possibility is maybe he lost some of his hearing and cannot tell the difference. Either way, I am glad you voiced your opinion about the reality and truth of higher sampling rates.
@@nileshbarai4999 Yeah I agree, it seems to be a case of theoretical knowledge that doesn't translate to practical experience. As someone else said it seems more to do with what this format is able to capture not the perceptible range of the human hearing, It's so obvious if you take a listen 🤦🏽♂️maybe he's a vinyl fan 🤣🤣🤣
Excellent overview, trying to figure out whether to go for 96khz (max) or 192 khz audio interface. I think watching this video clears most doubts I had.
Sound reproduction is not only about dynamic range and frequency response. This video fails to note that a higher bit depth will produces samples that are more detailed. And with a higher sampling rate, the samples will occur more frequently. More samples (than the CD standard) that are more detailed = better sound.
Using above-average equipment (speakers, headphones, amplifiers, cables, etc.), the sonic improvements of 24-bit/192 kHz - compared to 16-bit/44.1kHz - can clearly be heard. The better the equipment, the easier its is to hear the differences. Don't bother trying to make a determination with earbuds or cheapo desktop speakers.
Here's a experiment to try: Compare an official CD to its Hi-Res equivalent (both derived from the same master) using quality equipment. I have, and the difference is obvious: the Hi-Res files are vastly superior... smoother, more natural, dynamic sound.
It's disappointing that this video gets so many more 'Likes' than 'Dislikes' when it's spreading false information. Hi-Res Audio is not a myth or a rip-off. It's all about the mastering of the track/album.
FACT: A higher bit depth and higher sampling rate will yield superior sound.
Yes they do. they affect the freq below nyquist.
Theorems and internet videos should not be enough for you to make a conclusion the benefits of Hi-Res vs. Redbook 16-bit/44.1kHz (CD format). They certainly aren't for me. I can HEAR the difference.
As I mentioned before, I have directly compared an official CD (on the Reference Recordings label) to its Hi-Res (24-bit/192 kHz) equivalent. Both sources were derived from the same master. I used a pair of mediocre JBL ES80 speakers and an above-average Yamaha Aventage receiver, which allowed me to switch back-and-forth between the USB files and CD playback in real-time. This way, I could compare the same segments of music, one and then the other. The difference was obvious: the Hi-Res files were smoother, more natural, and dynamic.
When listening to Hi-Res files on a PC, the sound properties of the playback device must be changed to match to the sampling rate and bit depth of the file. For Windows 7, these Sound settings can be found in Playback devices --> (select the playback device) --> Properties --> Advanced. (I'll bet that most people forget to perform this step - which is absolutely essential to gain the benefits of Hi-Res audio.) Also, a good DAC/amplifier is much preferred over a PC's on-board audio/headphone jack.
As far as digital audio playback goes, do you really think that Redbook Standard (CD) format is limit of what humans can hear? What an absurd thing to believe! The DTS-Master Audio format (used on most Hollywood movie Blu-Ray releases) is capable of up to 24-bit/192kHz... and sounds far better than CD, especially in discrete surround sound.
No reason for Hi-Res Audio it to exist? It's superiority is AUDIBLE*, and that's all that matters.
* Unfortunately, some people cannot hear the difference between standard Redbook and Hi-Res because they are not listening on quality playback equipment... or their devices' audio settings aren't configured correctly... or they don't have discerning hearing. A shame, really.
No, I have just have excellent hearing and can hear a major difference in sound between CD and the corresponding Hi-Res files. It seems you are suffering from one or more of the following: poor hearing, non-discerning hearing, inferior playback equipment, or your devices' audio settings aren't configured correctly.
When produced using correct mastering techniques, the benefits of Hi-Res Audio are real (i.e. audible). Just because you can't hear a difference between CD and Hi-Res (or you believe in the sound theorems so much that you don't attempt to hear a difference), doesn't mean that people can't hear a difference.
Serious issues? Not with my hearing, I can assure you.
I'd like to hear what you have to say after you perform this real-world test: With high-quality headphones/speakers, an SACD player with HDMI-out, and and amplifier that can decode DSD without processing, compare a Hybrid SACD's Redbook and DSD programs - both derived from the same master, of course. I'm curious if you can hear the difference.
In the meantime, I'll read the article you linked.
Im seriously going insane here wondering why i hear the difference in hi res audio! Am i not human? I hear and feel a very noticeable difference!
ReaktorLeak I’ll look into it and try it.
Great video!
A lot of people seem to miss out on the basics of Sound and Wave theory. You have something called Harmonics. You could have an Ultrasonic frequency but the harmonics of it comes down to within our hearing range and gives a more fuller sound. So you get richer sound quality from 24bit rather than 16 bit because of clipping with the harmonics.
+Cerastes: I am not talking about the digital end but the analogue end after the DAC. Harmonics in frequencies are very import and they exist for every frequency, it is what makes a guitar sound like a guitar and other musical instruments sound like they are. The more harmonics you have then the richer the sound will be.
"Hoy-resolution Oidio"
You are forgetting something: we not only hear with our ears, but with our bodies too. You can put on a CD only the freequencies that human ear can hear but the feel is hollow. That's because the rest of the body can't feel the frequencies that you erased to fit on a CD. Increasing the frequency response doesn't affect the ear but it affects THE BODY FEEL. That's why all analog audio is always better.
@ReaktorLeak But you can't limit to the ear when you talk about high fidelity. Beethoven compose his best work when he was deaf by hearig without ears.
@ReaktorLeak i ABSOLUTELY DISSAGREE.
@ReaktorLeak I don't need to argue. Mine are facts too. Are you out of them?
When Apple Introduce Retina display technology; they clams that it is the maximum level for human eye ability and any resolution above it it will not be noticeable. And now, the 4K TV looks much better than 1080p. My opinion is, don't say it is not usable or over humans abilities, most of the time it is better/Much better. :)
Derp
The only real thing about that is that video quality becomes a lot more available to the average consumers after a short period of time (remember when 4K TV's for like, $20k a couple years ago?). With audio, the average citizen will only really be able to tell the difference between a song that's mixed badly, and one that's mixed great (both could easily be MP3 files too), and then the difference between headphones that are made poorly, and those that are made well (my ATH-M50x headphones literally only sound a little bit better than my $10 Sony earbuds), and you can get some really nice sounding headphones for less than $50. But again, to most citizens that can afford the necessary equipment to really notice any major difference in audio quality after a certain point, it won't matter much.
I myself have been trying to get into the audiophile world for the past few years, but the only major improvement I've gotten was getting my ATH-M50 headphones, and even then I still go to my Sony earbuds more often because they keep the sound in while on-the-go, and sound basically as good (mainly because my phone doesn't really produce the lowest notes that I wish, like my gaming laptop does, because of it's upgraded soundcard). Other than that, all my FLAC files are really just wasting space on my hard drive, lol.
cremacancel. you missed the point. it is not important if You see the pixels but if You can distinguish the image quality for different displays with different ppi. so the higher ppi the better it looks even from distance You cansee single pixels. the same effect is for audio. numbers does not matter. if you can hear the difference (in double blind test) then the difference exist. people cant hear above 20khz but it doesnt mean we cant distinguish tonal differences made by the harmonic above 20khz. newest reserch shows we cant hear single tone above 20khz but we can notice the difference in timbre of some instruments if the highest harmonics are removed. You dont see the single pixel but please remember the whole picture is build from many pixels with millions of colors. so for monochrome (dual - only black and white) is complete different story than full color, but even black/white printers uses 600dpi as a standard andd I can see the difference between 300dpi 600dpi and 1200dpi. So I can expeect displays with 1000dpi on mobile devices when technology improves and definetly I will see the difference.
ath m50 is decent but not good enough. i would say the mdr v6 or its brother can outperform the m50 but if you want top quality try an open headphone over 600 dollars or even the hd600-650 can be good enough
If you bought a TV that could show infrared and ultra violent would you see a difference? It can objectively show more colors after all. The answer is obviously no. Your eyes can't see those frequencies of light.
Likewise your ears cannot hear outside the ~20Hz-20kHZ frequency range of sound. The higher sampling rates and bit depth will not allow you to magically hear more detail than your eyes are physically capable of.
frequencies above 20k have other effects that may or may not influence the music (psycho acoustics, harmonics, room resonance, etc)
@ReaktorLeak I believe you are right
I can tell the difference between hi-res audio and CD quality audio.
Its in your head
bet you cant tell the difference between flac and alac from 320kbps in blind tests.
chef7734 Depending what quality the FLAC is and what codec the 320 kbps audio uses
I cannot notice any differences by the time I get to 320 kbps MP3
A perfect example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing...
Actually no, I have one and I'm not that ignorant but I did fall for buying a HD album that I later found out was mastered from the CD master and not the original analogue master... so basically I wasted $20 for an exact copy... Obviously it sounds a little better played on my Fiio but that's just better quality electronics...
@Çerastes Your probably never heard 24 bit recording on decent DAC and headphones. Its like telling 4k is overkill compared to 1080p.
@Çerastes Stop spilling shit out of your mouth. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth
@Çerastes Why are you talking about db now? Changing the subject huh? Because you cant come up with something differnet and revelant. All you can do is copy and paste, look at your name you cant even type C straight lmao.
What you did fail to mention is how soundcards and speakers react to these changes, for me 24bit 48khz is the best combination (Xonar DG), 96khz is reproduced slightly higher pitched than normal for some reason, and 44khz misses some clarity, it all comes down on how well your devices react to specific setting combination.
Better to explore the subject more. you completely missedd the idea of hi resolution audio. Please remember there is no real digital. Digital is just artificial analog when 0 is low value and 1 is high value. so to meet the mathematical theorem Nyquist in practice You need infinite frequency response for digital domain and hard limited frequency response below 20KHz for analog domain. It is impossible to achieve, so there will be distorton and artifacts when converting DA and AD. This distortions and artifacts can be audible but if you go with higher sampling rate You can limit it. it means move them out of audible area 20kHz. So the higher is the sampling rate the less are the artifacts that destroys the sound. You cant get rid of it completely by upsampling/oversampling, because this creates additional artifacts. So for 90% situations you cant notice the difference but it does not mean there is no difference becaue one said it 90 years ago (The Nyquist theorem). people can hear the difference even if 90% of them are not interested in the improvement and will not accept the extra cost. 16bits is 96dB. but human hearing can stand 120dB. So it is 20bits. If You release in 24 bits then You have a pleanty of room reserve and it does not cost much, but when you stick to 16bits You have to master the sound with care and compromise. some live recordings suffer the limited ddynamic of 16bits. Most DAC already ddo upsampling to 24bits and do 4 times oversampling 44.1 to 176.4 because it is much simple to manage DA conversion. So why dont we release music in that format? because the Nyquist. This is the same decision as Longplay rotation speed. The faster it rotates the more precise can be the sound or less expensive making the LP but then the CD becames bigger or contain less music. 16/44.1 was selected in late 70ties when. and until now the CD cant be better than LP just because this limitations. CD was never better than LP but it was smaller. the technology improves andd quality of LP was also improved since 70ties but CD cant be improved because it has limitation by design, that is why SACD and DVD-Audio came in early 90ties. I dont like hi-res files because they are to big but this might change in future when storage became less expensive.
You have no idea what we can hear because you do not LISTEN.
Dear Andy, can you explain why for video it needs a rate of 48khz? Unfortunately I rendered my music track at 44.1 without realising this, now my music track sounds muffled when I listen to it while watching my RUclips video. So frustrating as it was crystal in my video editor.