Copied from another thread, courtesy of jgatie - full question was:
"Do you believe digital audio, outside of mastering/production techniques, can be improved by playback resolutions greater than 16/44.1?"
Can digital audio playback be improved by resolutions greater than 16/44.1?
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I had to smile. "Hi-res DD5.1" is pretty much an oxymoron. The maximum bitrate for DD/AC-3 is 640kbps. And that's for six channels (albeit the LFE is band-limited).
Does this all not help to illustrate the point that the 'quality' is in the mix and the mastering? And, let's not forget, the composition and the artists' rendering? Oh, and a bit of adult beverage to enhance the memory of the original live performances, though as I recall the scent in the air then was of something rather different....
Given the era that record was recorded, I would be surprised if the original masters had the range to even fully utilize CD audio.
By the way, that was always one of my favourite albums when I was growing up, and Firth of Fifth is probably one of my favourite tracks ever.
Off topic, if you want a treat, check this guy out: https://youtu.be/-V7Dqf-FQL4
Cheers,
Keith
By the way, that was always one of my favourite albums when I was growing up, and Firth of Fifth is probably one of my favourite tracks ever.
Off topic, if you want a treat, check this guy out: https://youtu.be/-V7Dqf-FQL4
Cheers,
Keith
The Bard's words about a hoist and a petard suddenly come to mind. ;)
And yes, that is a great album.
And yes, that is a great album.
Lol. But it was a good discussion.
Of course, till the next country is heard from, when this will start all over again. That is the nature of the internet forum beast; even where the search function works well, few will read what is there in the knowledge base.
Does the legendary wapping high thread need to be a sticky?! So we can just point the next person that chugs along with the same claims to the beginning of that discussion?!
The 2008 remaster is pretty respectable. Nice clarity and soundstage, though presumably some of the HF on the percussion is forever lost.
I miss ol wapping. Never has there been a better combination of righteous indignation matched with an equal level of cluelessness. The time he broke down and conceded to follow our instructions on how to configure his NAS and, even after it worked, he still claimed it was Sonos to blame and not his network was comedy gold.
LOL!!! I must have missed those events; I joined that 2007(?) thread late in the day, in 2011. It still had legs then though.
LOL!!! I must have missed those events; I joined that 2007(?) thread late in the day, in 2011. It still had legs then though.
That was during his "Sonos should make me a router/NAS" phase. He could never seem to get the share on his Mac to work, and blamed Sonos instead of the well publicized and notoriously unreliable MacOS SMB implementation. Kept pleading with Sonos to cure his network woes by putting out Sonos branded routers and storage devices.
Erm...I have to confess to some posts on those lines myself in my early days here:)
Nothing of note to add to the discussion, other than the great music being discussed. Probably my favourite album of all time, certainly up there in my top 3. Most versions of the songs were better live and took on a life of their own. Seeing Steve Hackett again in a couple of months. 🙂 Nice Youtube link. 🙂
Indeed you are right, and thanks for pointing that out. I noted in a later post that the disc was actually DTS5.1, and I had to transcode it using a Playstation to feed the Playbar. So none of the original hi-res audio (it's 24/96) will make it through, and even if it did, the Sonos system would presumably refuse to play it.
The point of my story was not about hi-res, it was about the clear and positive effect of Trueplay tuning on a Sonos 5.1 setup. We also watched Dr Strange the other night with similar excellent 5.1 sound.
Thanks for the link - quite a talent!
Returning the favor, check out Another One, a song by Project RnL from Israel. The bass solo at the end is extraordinary.
I have tried playing 24/96 ALAC through my CONNECT:AMP to see what would happen. The result was just white noise.
It sounded FANTASTIC, though. 😉
Another excellent digest/commentary from Archimago: http://archimago.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/musings-do-we-need-those-20khz.html
As a jazz fan, most of what i listen to was recorded during the golden age of jazz, the 1950s, on magnetic tape. These great recordings have an equivalent bit depth of perhaps 11 bits, and a bandwidth of 15khz, at best. Anything beyond CD resolution will simply be a waste.
Most modern pop recordings have maybe 9db of dynamic range. Again, "hi rez" would be a complete waste. Modern classical and jazz recordings, meticulously recorded, might have a tiny technical advantage at 24 bits, but I very much doubt anyone can hear a worthwhile difference.
Most modern pop recordings have maybe 9db of dynamic range. Again, "hi rez" would be a complete waste. Modern classical and jazz recordings, meticulously recorded, might have a tiny technical advantage at 24 bits, but I very much doubt anyone can hear a worthwhile difference.
This will make no difference to those on the other side of the divide, to people holding close to faith based beliefs.
From Wikipedia:
Dithering eliminates the granularity of quantization error, giving very low distortion, but at the expense of a slightly raised noise floor. Measured using ITU-R 468 noise weighting, this is about 66 dB below alignment level, or 84 dB below digital full scale, which is somewhat lower than the microphone noise level on most recordings, and hence of no consequence in 16-bit audio.
Dither can also be used to increase the effective dynamic range. The perceived dynamic range of 16-bit audio can be 120 dB or more with noise-shaped dither, taking advantage of the frequency response of the human ear.
In other words, noise-shaped dither provides 16 bit recordings with all the resolution humans will ever need.
Dithering eliminates the granularity of quantization error, giving very low distortion, but at the expense of a slightly raised noise floor. Measured using ITU-R 468 noise weighting, this is about 66 dB below alignment level, or 84 dB below digital full scale, which is somewhat lower than the microphone noise level on most recordings, and hence of no consequence in 16-bit audio.
Dither can also be used to increase the effective dynamic range. The perceived dynamic range of 16-bit audio can be 120 dB or more with noise-shaped dither, taking advantage of the frequency response of the human ear.
In other words, noise-shaped dither provides 16 bit recordings with all the resolution humans will ever need.
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