Zp 24/96

He pretty clear that it paves the way to adoption of 24-bit music by the masses.

For a start, he's from Linn who have a vested interest in promoting and hyping hires formats.

Secondly, there's a huge and illogical leap between "hires available on iTunes" and "adoption by the masses".

For a start, the majority of iTunes users don't really care about sound quality. Remember, iTunes is primarily for people who listen on cheap consumer gear. For most iTunes users the change from 128k to 256k MP3 probably wasn't that significant. Its a struggle to get most people to be interested in lossless formats, yet alone hires.

Secondly, most iTunes users simply don't have the equipment to resolve hires files properly. Consider what equipment works with iTunes: iPods, Airports, and a handful of mid-range speaker docks. People who genuinely care about this will already be using WAV or FLAC with something other than iTunes on a high end system. They might now start using iTunes as well, but this isn't going to significantly increase the market demand for hires. Most people won't care and won't want to pay a premium for something they can't take advantage of.

Finally, there isn't any material about in hires formats. The majority of music (99.999%) is produced and mastered for CD. A CD master is 16-bit. Yes it's possible to go back to the original pre-master tapes/files (many of which are in 24 bit or higher) and remaster it for hires, but to do this properly takes a lot of time and money. It's one of the things Linn do and get paid for doing, which is why they are keen to hype it.

And for older pre-digital music where only the masters are available (and not the original unmixed tracks), these are fully resolvable in 16-bit standard res. formats, and there's nothing you can do to increase the resolution of these recordings.

I'm all for better quality music, but most modern music is mastered in such a way that it doesn't take full advantage of even the standard res formats we have in common use today, and I don't see any big outcry from the public about that.

Is this what will finally prod Sonos in to taking hi-res seriously at last?

No. Genuine mass market demand for hires might drive them, but can't this is going to happen for a long time. I can't see hires music market share increasing above 0.01% in the foreseeable future.

Cheers,

Keith

Finally, there isn't any material about in hires formats. The majority of music (99.999%) is produced and mastered for CD. A CD master is 16-bit. Yes it's possible to go back to the original pre-master tapes/files (many of which are in 24 bit or higher) and remaster it for hires, but to do this properly takes a lot of time and money. It's one of the things Linn do and get paid for doing, which is why they are keen to hype it.

And for older pre-digital music where only the masters are available (and not the original unmixed tracks), these are fully resolvable in 16-bit standard res. formats, and there's nothing you can do to increase the resolution of these recordings.

I'm all for better quality music, but most modern music is mastered in such a way that it doesn't take full advantage of even the standard res formats we have in common use today, and I don't see any big outcry from the public about that.




Keith


https://www.hdtracks.com/ Lots of Hi RES Stuff and some of the very best sounding ones are originally analog recordings, so I don't quite get your point. You aren't saying that a 16/44 digital file (CD quality) sounds as good as a Analog Studio Master that was originally done at say 30 ips on half inch tape??? You're kidding right????

So dynamic range is the only parameter that effects sound quality?

This is a pretty through piece on the inherent advantages of Hi Res music files. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a-prima-donna-pc,544-4.html

Of course there's always ways to out reason, reason.. Me I like my music to sound as good as it can.. I wonder if the same folks that seem to diss higher bit rate audio also argued against all the other improvements that have made hifi better and better over the years..anyway no skin off my nose, think I'll go listen to some music .. Running on Empty 24/192 sounds great, maybe with a wee dram of the good stuff :-)

And in case anyone who's not biased is reading this remember CD's or 16/44 is what we have because in the SEVENTIES when the CD format was developed 16 bit audio was state of the art..I think technology has improve a little since then 🙂

So dynamic range is the only parameter that effects sound quality?


No, but I mentioned some other parameters as well. For every audio characteristic you can think of, CD specification exceeds analogue tape.

You deride redbook as being "old", but it was designed by audio Engineers to exceed the specification of all of the current formats of the time and, therefore, to resolve them. It was also designed to exceed the specification of the human ear to resolve audible differences.

Of course, not much was known about the practical aspects of digital audio production at the time, and it's only relatively recently we've come to appreciate the different requirements and techniques used in recording, mixing and mastering of digital audio. Certainly these days we have learned that some of those techniques involve careful mastering to ensure the eventual transfer to CD goes as well as possible, and that includes careful handling of compression, noise reduction and dither to ensure optimum transfer to redbook format. In the early days of CD, the need for these techniques wasn't appreciated and that resulted in a lot of poor recordings. Even today many CDs are poorly mastered.

Certainly there are problems inherent in mastering for CD, and characteristics of the format that have to be accommodated, but that's always been the case for shellac, tape, vinyl, radio... One of the key jobs of the mastering Engineer is to understand and accommodate those characteristics and to master accordingly, but that doesn't mean the format is poor or audibly limited in any way. Hires certainly reduces (or removes) the need for this stage of mastering, but doesn't necessarily mean you'll get something that sounds better.

As for that rather poor article, I can tell you that I was studying sampling technology in my teens and have a Bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering, during which I studied audio, sampling and signal analysis. Whilst it's not a subject I have addressed in mathematical detail for a number of years, I really don't need such Mickey Mouse articles to try to explain audio to me, especially when the author clearly knows so little about the subject. Quite frankly any article which tries to explain hires by showing waveforms with "jaggies" and concludes that "the object of the exercise being to retrieve the original curve" shows a deep ignorance of the subject and isn't worth the paper it's written on. If you use articles like this as a reference for digital audio technology then it's no surprise you're a fan of hires.

I will also mention that one of my friends (in fact I'm seeing him at the weekend) was one of the lead developers for the SADiE DAW (one of the primary tools used for digital mixing and mastering in modern studios) and spent a significant portion of his life understanding and solving the issues of working with digital media in conjunction with respected audio Engineers including Bob Katz. We talk about this sort of stuff a lot, and his view of the world (as a respected expert in his field) is completely different from yours.

The following thread is worth reading. Readers should note that this thread is from the Squeezebox forums and many of the people involved are audiophiles with high end setups including modded Transporters. At least one of the people is a respected studio audio engineer. http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=89733

Allthough we cannot hear anything above frequencies 16/44 can reproduce, it is not impossible that the sound might sound more lively because of resonance and feeling.

That's one of those ethereal "we can't know everything" sort of statements that Psychics and Homoeopaths use. Perceptual studies have been conducted with a range of sounds with and without high frequency components and concluded that no significant difference could be perceived by the test subjects.

If I want people to go away with a message then it's this: whatever the audible benefits of hires, the primary reason for hires tracks sounding better is better production, NOT the format.

Cheers,

Keith

whenever i buy cd's i do not care about ripping them
I don't get it, how do you listen to them on Sonos then?

I must say all of your points are very well thought out and reasoned, very logical-very objective!

I only have one question, pretty simple one, one that really only requires a yes or no answer: Have you ever listened in your home, with your gear, with your ears, to any Hi Res 24/96 flac or Wav against their known 16/44 versions (as in exact same master, one sampled to 16/44, and same master at 24/96) And please I know you're bright and will most likely find a semantic problem with my question, but I think you understand my question.

If you've listened in your own home on good gear, where you could spend the time in a familiar and stress free environment and feel that 16 bit is as good as you need, and that the higher bit rate files weren't any better than I have no quarrel.

My beef is with people that have never really listened in their home with good gear, and then use other peoples opinions as the basis for deriding those of us (and there are many) who have listened extensively in familiar surroundings on good gear and feel that with well mastered material that the higher bit rate stuff does sound better.

This whole issue reminds me of the early days of compact disc.. All the "objective" press all the engineers claimed that it sounded perfect because it measured perfect.. I'm 100% confident that if one could compare an original Sony CDP101 to say a Oppo player ( pretty close in actual price ) that even a deaf man could hear the difference 🙂

Hires? Nah, I just feel being tricked into only supposedly better gear.
Everybody has a CDP now, so at least two industries are interested in making everybody buy something new.
I need to buy new players and new content, just like in the early days of CD.

So call it a conspiracy theory, but I think there is still much potential in 16/44, if "they" (well, what do I know... sound engineers?) just made an effort.

To my ears the main difference between vinyl and CD was: the crackles disappeared.

I got nothing to add to this...

When the first CDs were produced in the early 80s, as was said earlier, the mastering engineers didn't have a good grasp of the new format and that made for some pretty poor CDs. I'd imagine that the vinyl lovers back then found it very easy to dismiss the CD. But fast forward almost 30 years and I think we'd all agree that CDs have moved on a long way and although there is still a lot of guff out there, there are some superbly mastered CD available, especially when you stumble across the artists that really take pride in producing quality music. So do you think fast forwarding another period, if the 24bit formats were allowed to grow in usability, engineers would use it more, get familiar and learn how to push the new boundaries and the step up could be better realised?

Right now we've got companies like HDtracks who are under suspicion of upscaling redbook and selling it off at a premium. And that is awful, and should be policed. Similar things were being offered by market stall holders in the 80s selling knock off CDs. But it shouldn't be a reason for the format not to take off, there's always been conmen exploiting the illinformed.

I suppose my point is, the difference between 16 and 24bit may be zero, negligable or even in some cases worse right now, but 24bit has more potential to go further and hopefully will better reach its potential in the years to come.

I admit, I've not yet had the chance to do a proper test of 16/44 vs 24/96 yet, but I will after xmas now that my friend has a Linn Superuniti. I'd like to do some blind taste tests to really see if my own ears can tell a difference as there's strong opinions on both sides here. In the interests of trying to make the fairest test possible, if I use Society of Sound to download a 16bit and a 24bit version of the same album to test, can i assume its the from the same master? I think all their albums are new recordings specifically for their site.

Note that one of the claims about ABX is that it places undue stress on the tester and isn't a "natural" listening environment, and that this stress can mask the differences. Some people claim that the differences only start to show through after prolonged listening in a comfortable "known" environment (basically in your own home). I have previously done listening tests in a high-spec audio listening room with the nearest I have heard to "pristine" acoustics and audio equipment in my life, but apparently this isn't good enough.



Note also that these are the same folks who claim to hear "night and day", "huge" and "unquestionable"" differences when not heard in an ABX test. 😉

Worst culprit is usually not the frequency and resolution.
- Loudness war is HORRIBLE, and I usually prefer vinyl releases because they usually don't have a reason to do loudness war there.
- Transcoding from one digital resolution to the other is not a good thing. Especially 50KHz (old 80's format) and 48KHz, when they are sent back to 44.1KHz. I also once got a 32KHz Minidisc "master".
- Multiple DAC/ADC in the chain. Or multiple frequency adaptation. Or "we have plugins let's use them" syndrome. Or people who don't know what the crap they are doing.
- People who don't know how to use proper dithering for end CDs.
- People who don't do things @ 2x (IE: you record at least @ 88.2/24 for 44.1/16; you record at least @ 192/24 for 96/24; you process everything @ 32 bits float, or even better in doubles)

Remove these, and we'd have very potent 44KHz 16 bits CDs.

On a great product, I have not found a major difference between 16 bits and 24 bits, to be frank. However, I have seen a very notable difference between 44KHz and 96KHz, like I see a potent difference between quantized 44KHz and discrete 22KHz (putting analog pass-low at that frequency -- and yes 22KHz is much better).


Seriously, and without being condescending, I don't believe Sonos is a maniacal audiophile product nor it should be. I believe it caters to the "good enough" part of us. It's convenient, it's good, it works well, it has very good quality, it plays very correctly, but that's not the equivalent to some 5K+$ source (or amp, speakers for the Play/Amp versions). It does have a really great resolution, little distortion (before/after 3.6 😉 ). It's no wonder I got them in most of my house rooms. :)

I also use Sonos on my main amp, but only with the fixed digital out, and leave the decoding to another DAC. I don't believe any digital hype about digital wires being better than the other, or digital sources being better than the other (with one caveat: a Realtek sound card I used that had a DAC, and then a ADC for the optical out connector!), as long as they are doing proper data passing, and not applying filters. So for me, the original CD and the ALAC versions are the same, as long as Sonos merely decodes the audio bits, and sends out the uncompressed version to the coax.

But like I wrote in my last text, not being audiophile doesn't mean I don't want it to handle my 96/24 files 🙂 Just downsample them 🙂

I think that Sonos should lisent to this thread, it is still alive after such a long time.

Sonos We want 24/96 you know that in the future, it's going to get here! So the question will you be here too! 🙂 please be with us, because otherwhise it's a very cool product and it's working well

I'm the owner of a modified sonos zp90 the sound is sweet, jitter is gone music is left, but it has only increased my wish for 24/96-192. I'm hooked on it and it wont let me go. I've got a resampler which can do the job, but it's far from always that it is a good solution

I agree ! - 24bit 96khz would be very nice !

I don't believe that the software or Sonosnet can do it.. Even the hardware may not be up to it.. I think if it was doable with the current hardware/software Sonos would have done it, no reason not to.