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High Resolution Audio: Does It Matter?

Hypnotoad

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Let’s step back and define what we mean by high resolution audio. There is no formal definition so I will resort to my own: anything above CD’s 16-bit/44.1 KHz in my book is high resolution audio. The most common step above that which is used frequently in video production is 16 or 24-bit samples at 48 KHz.

Fans of high resolution audio no doubt want to see much bigger numbers than 48 KHz. But 48 KHz with the original samples of 16 or 24 can still be beneficial.

Another stumbling block is that there is such a huge variation in the quality of music files, what I think is close to my best sounding digital album is Ray Charles - Genius Loves Company which is stock 16 bit / 44.1 Khz and one of my worst is Linda Ronstadt - Prisoner In Disguise which is 24 bit / 192 Khz.

Would my Ray Charles album be much better in 24 bit / 192 Khz and Linda Ronstadt be much worse in 16 bit / 44.1 Khz?
 

andreasmaaan

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Would my Ray Charles album be much better in 24 bit / 192 Khz and Linda Ronstadt be much worse in 16 bit / 44.1 Khz?

Unless the up/downsampling were done poorly, the answer is that there would be either no audible difference or perhaps a tiny audible difference only for some people using some playback equipment ;)
 
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daftcombo

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Were the filters used in the blind-test (the one with 6 downsampled version) IIR or FIR?

If >44.1Hz files don't sound better than 44.1Hz, isn't it better to downsample everything to 44.1Hz, or even put a brickwall at 20kHz in order to limit IMD that could come down the chain?

I'm thinking about that post by @edechamps s in this other thread I created:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/.../importance-of-the-reponse-above-16-khz.7225/
I have measured a number of DACs that have a steep reconstruction filter designed in such a way that tones near 20 kHz and above will create imaging artifacts (so, for example, at a 48 kHz sample rate, a 20 kHz tone might also create an an imaging artifact at 28 kHz). This spurious image tone can then interact badly with the original 20 kHz tone in devices downstream of the DAC (amplifier, transducer) to create intermodulation distortion which will definitely land in the audio band, well below 20 kHz. This can then trick the listener into thinking they can hear a 20 kHz tone, while what they're actually hearing are non-linear distortion artefacts that happened to land in the audible band.
 
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I got that article by email yesterday and wondered if this forum might be able to share a few thoughts about the test setup (in a separate thread?).
Mark Waldrep acknowledges that there will always be criticism on the test, but agreeing in advance about the setup might reduce that to a minimum. For starters he proposes to use audio material from his own catalogue. Whatever he selects, I hope it will be a variety of music styles, recording teams/equipment (mics, converters) and post-production equipment.
Just wondering: stereo or also multi-channel formats ?
 

Soniclife

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This is the correct approach for someone involved in audio, that thinks there is an audible difference, but no previous study has turned a positive difference, do the work diligently to find the truth.

However when I see things like this I'm always reminded about all the searches and teams assembled in the search for the loch Ness monster.
 

andreasmaaan

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I got that article by email yesterday and wondered if this forum might be able to share a few thoughts about the test setup (in a separate thread?).
Mark Waldrep acknowledges that there will always be criticism on the test, but agreeing in advance about the setup might reduce that to a minimum. For starters he proposes to use audio material from his own catalogue. Whatever he selects, I hope it will be a variety of music styles, recording teams/equipment (mics, converters) and post-production equipment.
Just wondering: stereo or also multi-channel formats ?

I respect Mr Waldrep for persevering so diligently with his work on this. One potential issue I see with this type of test in which listeners use their own systems at home is that there will be no control over these test systems, which increases the risk of both false negatives and false positives due to, for example:
  • systems that are not capable of reproducing the higher frequencies present in the hi-res material
  • systems that do not have a sufficiently low (electronic and/or ambient) noise floor
  • systems that use suboptimal anti-imaging filters
  • systems that produce audible intermodulation distortion between in- and out-of-band signal or noise
But I think all of this has been discussed quite comprehensively already in this and other threads...
 

andymok

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Finally, AES Inside Track of the month is High-Resolition Audio! Some new papers will be coming out.
 
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amirm

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Would my Ray Charles album be much better in 24 bit / 192 Khz and Linda Ronstadt be much worse in 16 bit / 44.1 Khz?
If it were captured using the former, then the simple answer is that we are deprived from knowing so. I don't know what algorithm was used for that down conversion. At the extreme such as the resampler that was used in Windows XP, yes, it does degrade. At best, it was a good algorithm with proper dither. I just don't see a reason to have someone perform this type of processing for me. I now have gigabit ethernet access and when I pay good money for a download, then I like it to be in the resolution and sampling rate of the project.
 
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amirm

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This is the correct approach for someone involved in audio, that thinks there is an audible difference, but no previous study has turned a positive difference, do the work diligently to find the truth.
Well, I did pass a previous test he put forward on AVS as he references:

foo_abx 1.3.4 report
foobar2000 v1.3.2
2014/07/11 06:18:47

File A: C:\Users\Amir\Music\AIX AVS Test files\Mosaic_A2.wav
File B: C:\Users\Amir\Music\AIX AVS Test files\Mosaic_B2.wav

06:18:47 : Test started.
06:19:38 : 00/01 100.0%
06:20:15 : 00/02 100.0%
06:20:47 : 01/03 87.5%
06:21:01 : 01/04 93.8%
06:21:20 : 02/05 81.3%
06:21:32 : 03/06 65.6%
06:21:48 : 04/07 50.0%
06:22:01 : 04/08 63.7%
06:22:15 : 05/09 50.0%
06:22:24 : 05/10 62.3%
06:23:15 : 06/11 50.0%
06:23:27 : 07/12 38.7%
06:23:36 : 08/13 29.1%
06:23:49 : 09/14 21.2%
06:24:02 : 10/15 15.1%
06:24:10 : 11/16 10.5%
06:24:20 : 12/17 7.2%
06:24:27 : 13/18 4.8%
06:24:35 : 14/19 3.2%
06:24:40 : 15/20 2.1%
06:24:46 : 16/21 1.3%
06:24:56 : 17/22 0.8%
06:25:04 : 18/23 0.5%
06:25:13 : 19/24 0.3%
06:25:25 : 20/25 0.2%
06:25:32 : 21/26 0.1%
06:25:38 : 22/27 0.1%
06:25:45 : 23/28 0.0%
06:25:51 : 24/29 0.0%
06:25:58 : 25/30 0.0%
06:26:24 : Test finished.

----------
Total: 25/30 (0.0%)

----

foo_abx 1.3.4 report
foobar2000 v1.3.2
2014/07/10 18:50:44

File A: C:\Users\Amir\Music\AIX AVS Test files\On_The_Street_Where_You_Live_A2.wav
File B: C:\Users\Amir\Music\AIX AVS Test files\On_The_Street_Where_You_Live_B2.wav

18:50:44 : Test started.
18:51:25 : 00/01 100.0%
18:51:38 : 01/02 75.0%
18:51:47 : 02/03 50.0%
18:51:55 : 03/04 31.3%
18:52:05 : 04/05 18.8%
18:52:21 : 05/06 10.9%
18:52:32 : 06/07 6.3%
18:52:43 : 07/08 3.5%
18:52:59 : 08/09 2.0%
18:53:10 : 09/10 1.1%
18:53:19 : 10/11 0.6%
18:53:23 : Test finished.

----------
Total: 10/11 (0.6%)

-----------------------------------
They were very challenging but passable on a laptop with IEM.

Your second question is valid though. I did not attempt to figure out the why (ABX just quantifies hearing a difference). And there was such explosion of commentary online that polluted the results of the open benchmark.
 

jazzendapus

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They were very challenging but passable on a laptop with IEM.
Maybe that's exactly the reason they were passable. Playing them on equipment of that sort could possibly introduces artifacts/distortion of some kind, so you've only managed to identify them because they were objectively sounding worse than standard res audio.

That whole Hi-Res business is reminding me of that particular bit from Dumb and Dumber:
 

Hypnotoad

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My point is that it depends on the quality of the original recording and I couldn't explain it better than this:

"Provenance is defined as the ‘the place of origin or earliest known history of something.’ And according to Dr. Mark Waldrep, CEO of AIX Records, provenance, with regards to music, “…refers to the technology and techniques used during the original sessions for a particular track or album. Knowing the provenance of a particular music production provides useful information on what a user can expect with regards its fidelity. .......knowing that a classic rock album from the 1960s was tracked on a Studer 4-track, mixed to an Ampex 440 2-track deck, mastered to another tape copy and then cut to the ultimate vinyl master prior to pressing commercial copies should mean something too.” In other words, if the sound quality of the music in question couldn’t ever have been called “high definition” in the first place, then a lossless, “high resolution” version of it isn’t going to sound any better. To put it yet another way: A turd in high-definition is, at the end of the day, still a turd."

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/when-high-resolution-audio-isnt-hd/
 

sergeauckland

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My point is that it depends on the quality of the original recording and I couldn't explain it better than this:

"Provenance is defined as the ‘the place of origin or earliest known history of something.’ And according to Dr. Mark Waldrep, CEO of AIX Records, provenance, with regards to music, “…refers to the technology and techniques used during the original sessions for a particular track or album. Knowing the provenance of a particular music production provides useful information on what a user can expect with regards its fidelity. .......knowing that a classic rock album from the 1960s was tracked on a Studer 4-track, mixed to an Ampex 440 2-track deck, mastered to another tape copy and then cut to the ultimate vinyl master prior to pressing commercial copies should mean something too.” In other words, if the sound quality of the music in question couldn’t ever have been called “high definition” in the first place, then a lossless, “high resolution” version of it isn’t going to sound any better. To put it yet another way: A turd in high-definition is, at the end of the day, still a turd."

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/when-high-resolution-audio-isnt-hd/
This has been my point about classic albums released in HiDef. When an album has been recorded in the 1960s or early '70s on a tape machine with a S/N ratio of 60dB, push it to 70dB with Dolby, with a frequency response of 20kHz at very best, with 3% distortion on peaks and using microphones that are drooping by 18kHz, there's no point whatsoever in cheating the public by claiming that a 24bit/96k or even more ludicrous, 192k HiRes release can possibly be better.

Even those recordings which have been remixed and remastered going back to the original session tapes can't be any better than the original Red Book release. Even early digital recordings were recorded with a 50kHz sample rate so again, no benefit in an HD release.

Just a cynical exploitation of a market willing to believe any old guff.

S.
 
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amirm

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This has been my point about classic albums released in HiDef. When an album has been recorded in the 1960s or early '70s on a tape machine with a S/N ratio of 60dB, push it to 70dB with Dolby, with a frequency response of 20kHz at very best, with 3% distortion on peaks and using microphones that are drooping by 18kHz, there's no point whatsoever in cheating the public by claiming that a 24bit/96k or even more ludicrous, 192k HiRes release can possibly be better.

Even those recordings which have been remixed and remastered going back to the original session tapes can't be any better than the original Red Book release. Even early digital recordings were recorded with a 50kHz sample rate so again, no benefit in an HD release.

Just a cynical exploitation of a market willing to believe any old guff.

S.
Unless someone captures these tapes at 44.1/16 bit, I rather have the capture resolution/bit depth than 44.1/16. You never know what is used to down convert the higher resolution format uses in the capture/mastering.
 

Hypnotoad

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there's no point whatsoever in cheating the public by claiming that a 24bit/96k or even more ludicrous, 192k HiRes release can possibly be better.

Yes, what's the point of upsampling old master tapes, then selling the music for more as it's HiRes Audio, other than just to make money?
 

JJB70

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The music and audio industries collaborating to try and get people to spend more buying music they already have in many cases by trying to convince them that upsampled oldies are somehow much better, surely it'd never happen...... After all these are industries well known for their integrity and aversion to snake oil and empty marketing......

If the record labels were serious about quality they'd offer good masters rather than the over compressed crap they push. I would much rather have a low rate well recorded MP3 than a whizzo high res bit of crap. But that's just me.
 
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amirm

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I think the record labels need to offer two levels of fidelity:

1. Loudness compressed or whatever they are doing that for mass market

2. Carefully mastered, full dynamic range music in whatever sample rate/bit depth (but might as well at least pick 24/48 kHz). They should perform blind listening tests to guarantee that this version is superior to #2. Then they should price these at 20% premium over #1.

They/industry is mistakenly picking higher specs as the improved version, not realizing that if it doesn't have better subjective fidelity, it is not a real market/business.

The whole audiophile LP business is another version of #2 by the way. Instead of releasing on vinyl, they should also have a target for digital.
 

Soniclife

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If the record labels were serious about quality they'd offer good masters rather than the over compressed crap they push. I would much rather have a low rate well recorded MP3 than a whizzo high res bit of crap. But that's just me.
Not just you.
I live in hope that one day they will work out that 2 different masters on streaming services might help their streaming numbers, at least for stuff with more than a 6 month lifespan, and there is no problem with maintaining multiple versions in a streaming world, where there was in a physical inventory world.
 
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