24 bit music question


budweiser

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After reading up on some high end music (flac) it seems the android in general ( I have Galaxy s3 )

can't play the files to the full capacity , from what I read, I don't know if it is true or not.

 http://neutronmp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1264

"Majority of high-end Android devices could do 24/96kHz! Starting from Samsung Galaxy S. But, Android OS is hardcoded to 16/44.1 kHz and it is not flexible in changing the output format. So, whatever device is low or high end it will be playing 16/44.1... Device producers did not provide any native API to overcome Android audio stack also "

My question is can the 1st batch Pandora play the - Ultra-high resolution recordings (192 kHz/24 bit) Flac files without loosing any quality ? or is it also scaled down ? Thanks Bud
 
The pcm1773 chip supports upto 24bit 48kHz. Currently on pandora 48kHz works but not 24bit (don't know why, could be a driver issue), only 16bit does.
 
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Same old bullshit.

--EDIT : Just read the "Better headphones" part.

This article is so ridiculous.
 
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24-bit would be cool. I have some SACD Pink Floyd flac rips but they won't play on my Pandora. Cracks for a few seconds then skips the track if I remember correctly.
 
Some OP music players are limited in terms of format compatibility (24bit aside).
 
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24 bit just provides a better dynamic range. 16 bit can handle a max of 96 dB, (6 dB per bit), 24 bit (144 dB) is good to have some headroom for microphones, processing etc. so nice to have in a recording studio. It's no use to have a 24 bit audio player. Quality of the music won't change, there's just more difference possible between the softest and loudest passages in a mix.  

It could be used to drop the noise floor down though, but that would also drop the low dynamic passages.

144 dB(spl) is well over the pain threshold btw so you could turn the volume down to lets say disco level @ 105dB but that would mean you wont be using bits 19 through 24 (or 1 through 5 rather).

Better representation of the original soundwaves (is better quality) can be accomplished by increasing the sampling freq.

48kHz can draw frequencies of max 24kHz (48/2, nyquist freq) which is more than sufficient for the human ear which can't distinct far over 20kHz. In pro recording I usually work 24 bit 96kHz but in the end it will almost always be processed down to CD quality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency
 
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Same old bullshit.


--EDIT : Just read the "Better headphones" part.


This article is so ridiculous.
Agreed.
"Over-ear, in ear, open or closed, it doesn't much matter."


Stopped reading.   :p    This article is like to audio what the antichrist is to jesus.

You are all believers in the church of Audiophilia :) What he is saying, with the quoted bits above, is that it doesn't much matter whether the 'phones are "Over-ear, in ear, open or closed" as long as they are good phones (that is, better than the crap people usually listen to their music in - I.e. crappy Iphone buds).

As far as he argues about the sampling frequency/bit depth thing, he is exactly on the money. You know, in the scientific way, not in the "Let me tell you this story about the magic frequency, and then you'll give me your money". That is another kind of "on the money", that serves to con you out of yours :)
 
24 bit just provides a better dynamic range. 16 bit can handle a max of 96 dB, (6 dB per bit), 24 bit (144 dB) is good to have some headroom for microphones, processing etc. so nice to have in a recording studio. It's no use to have a 24 bit audio player. Quality of the music won't change, there's just more difference possible between the softest and loudest passages in a mix.  

It could be used to drop the noise floor down though, but that would also drop the low dynamic passages.

144 dB(spl) is well over the pain threshold btw so you could turn the volume down to lets say disco level @ 105dB but that would mean you wont be using bits 19 through 24 (or 1 through 5 rather).

Better representation of the original soundwaves (is better quality) can be accomplished by increasing the sampling freq.

48kHz can draw frequencies of max 24kHz (48/2, nyquist freq) which is more than sufficient for the human ear which can't distinct far over 20kHz. In pro recording I usually work 24 bit 96kHz but in the end it will almost always be processed down to CD quality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency
You are assuming a linear scale here. You can also use a floating point representation for more dynamic range.

In any case, I completely agree that for playback, more than a 48kHz sampling rate and more than 16 bit sample resolution (even linear) is nonsense.

The human ear is what it is -- we don't encode the infrared or UV spectrum in our JPEG files either. Only for some reason there seem to be more people who claim they can hear ultrasound (of course they always fail when tested scientifically), than people who claim to be able to see light outside the visible spectrum.

Using a larger spectrum/resolution/depth/range to have some room for editing makes perfect sense of course, but for playback it is at best just a waste of space, and at worst it's something that can introduce unwanted distortion. From the xiph.org article:

192kHz digital music files offer no benefits. They're not quite neutral either; practical fidelity is slightly worse. The ultrasonics are a liability during playback.

[...]

There are a few ways to avoid the extra distortion:

  1. A dedicated ultrasonic-only speaker, amplifier, and crossover stage to separate and independently reproduce the ultrasonics you can't hear, just so they don't mess up the sounds you can.
  2. Amplifiers and transducers designed for wider frequency reproduction, so ultrasonics don't cause audible intermodulation. Given equal expense and complexity, this additional frequency range must come at the cost of some performance reduction in the audible portion of the spectrum.
  3. Speakers and amplifiers carefully designed not to reproduce ultrasonics anyway.
  4. Not encoding such a wide frequency range to begin with. You can't and won't have ultrasonic intermodulation distortion in the audible band if there's no ultrasonic content.
They all amount to the same thing, but only 4) makes any sense.
 
Same old bullshit.

--EDIT : Just read the "Better headphones" part.

This article is so ridiculous.
Agreed.

"Over-ear, in ear, open or closed, it doesn't much matter."

Stopped reading.   :p    This article is like to audio what the antichrist is to jesus.
If you only stopped reading when you reached that point in the article, then you'll be fine ;)
 
Recommending earplug is what i found horrible.

The best listening experience is with Hi-Fi speakers.

Also, some audio professionals usually resample their CD to 96kHz to get better quality. It may sound stupid, but there's some papers explaining why around.

And finally, the "ear can't listen more than" reminds me those endless debates around vinyl vs CD, or tube vs transistor amps.

It's all about volume. When listening loud, analogic clearly wins.
 
And finally, the "ear can't listen more than" reminds me those endless debates around vinyl vs CD, or tube vs transistor amps.
Problem is,it's been tested in blinded conditions and effectively, people can't tell the difference. Again and again and again. So yeah, the ear can't listen to stuff that it cannot detect.  
 
Also, some audio professionals usually resample their CD to 96kHz to get better quality. It may sound stupid, but there's some papers explaining why around.
Interesting, I'd not heard that before so I did a search. Seems that ignoring those that do it in a studio so as to standardise all their samples to 96Khz, there are those that do it just for the sound. The theory is somewhat similar to the video processing effects you get in modern high-speed TVs - it inserts interpolated frames to smooth out the curves.

I suppose I can see the advantage if you're using a PC card that resamples to 48kHz, in that playing a 44.1kHz CD sample on that would theoretically introduce some jitter to the playback. Playing a 96kHz sample on that would mean the timebase is easily divisible, eliminating any jitter but meaning that most of the time you're hearing interpolated samples, not the original music.


If you've got actual 96kHz hardware, the case might be easier to make as you can then control exactly what you hear, but even if it can't scale back to 44.1kHz, you're slightly better off playing 44.1kHz music at a fixed 96kHz than a fixed 48kHz as at the higher frequency the jitter will be less.


I hope I'm using the right terms here. I suspect the jitter playing 44.1kHz on 48kHz hardware would be inaudible to me anyway. Personally I'll keep all my music at 44.1kHz and trust the playback software and hardware to play it back well.


Out of interest, can the Pandora play native 44.1kHz audio, or is it fixed to some (higher) frequency?


On topic, I'm much less concerned about the limitations of 16bit sampling. I can hear the quiet sections of Beethoven's 7th as well as the loud ones on CD, so I'm not fussed.
 
And finally, the "ear can't listen more than" reminds me those endless debates around vinyl vs CD, or tube vs transistor amps.
Problem is,it's been tested in blinded conditions and effectively, people can't tell the difference. Again and again and again. So yeah, the ear can't listen to stuff that it cannot detect.  
Certainly not vinyl vs CD, or tube vs transistor amps. Especially at high volume it's damn easy to tell the difference.
 
And finally, the "ear can't listen more than" reminds me those endless debates around vinyl vs CD, or tube vs transistor amps.
Problem is,it's been tested in blinded conditions and effectively, people can't tell the difference. Again and again and again. So yeah, the ear can't listen to stuff that it cannot detect.  
Certainly not vinyl vs CD, or tube vs transistor amps. Especially at high volume it's damn easy to tell the difference.
I was just talking about 16 bits vs 24 bits audio. It's been tested several times and people can't tell the difference. They even couldn't find a single person who can actually tell the difference and be right the whole time. 
 
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