24/44.1 = High Definition ???

[SuicideSquid]

MP3 is already compressed. No point trying to zip it.

Except that sending a dozen individual files to people is annoying, and sending one file is convenient.

 

[Ricardus]

SRC built into some DAWs, even the "off-line" conversion, can be bad. The default SRC in Reaper is not good and sometimes leads to audible artifacts. Late last year Reaper finally added Voxengo r8brain SRC which is both faster and significantly better than Reaper's previous default SRC.

That being said, those artifacts were subtle, and certainly didn't sound like "metal grinding". That's absurd.

What's funny is that I still engineer in a studio that is entirely analog (with the exception of digital delays and a digital mixdown deck, but we have an EMT plate and analog mixdown decks, too), and I would often be the person saying I preferred analog tape over digital, but only because it's a workflow I started with. Not because of all of these digital-bogeymen that so many critics believe in.

 

[Ricardus]

Except that sending a dozen individual files to people is annoying, and sending one file is convenient.

ZIP should have an option to archive all of the files in one file, without doing compression, to make it easier to send.

 

[voodooless]

ZIP should have an option to archive all of the files in one file, without doing compression, to make it easier to send.

Use rar or tar.

 

[SuicideSquid]

What's funny is that I still engineer in a studio that is entirely analog (with the exception of digital delays and a digital mixdown deck, but we have an EMT plate and analog mixdown decks, too), and I would often be the person saying I preferred analog tape over digital, but only because it's a workflow I started with. Not because of all of these digital-bogeymen that so many critics believe in.

You could not pay me to work in analog. I've been working exclusively digital since I started making bedroom recordings on Cakewalk in the late 90s.

 

[Ricardus]

You could not pay me to work in analog. I've been working exclusively digital since I started making bedroom recordings on Cakewalk in the late 90s.

Your loss! So much fun!

Good god, I got a mix session from a guy who must have never worked on a format which forced him to think about track economy and things like that. A simple C&W song. 47 tracks I think? He put vocal choruses and verses on separate tracks. Same with guitars, even though it was the same guitar sound.

I have a pretty firm belief: If you can't say it in 24 tracks it isn't worth saying.

 

[Ricardus]

Use rar or tar.

Sure. I have no idea what OS they're using but I don't think Windows ships with TAR. Zip should do the trick.

 

[SuicideSquid]

Your loss! So much fun!

Good god, I got a mix session from a guy who must have never worked on a format which forced him to think about track economy and things like that. A simple C&W song. 47 tracks I think? He put vocal choruses and verses on separate tracks. Same with guitars, even though it was the same guitar sound.

I have a pretty firm belief: If you can't say it in 24 tracks it isn't worth saying.

As someone who works in the medium of progressive and symphonic rock, I could not disagree harder.

I'm finishing up a song right now that has nearly 200 tracks - two drummers, one recorded on 8 tracks, the other on 16, full horn and string sections, a choir made up of six voices plus two lead vocalists, piano, flute, synthesizer, organ, two marimbas, a glockenspiel, bass, three electric guitars, and acoustic guitar, plus various additional tracks for effects routing. The finished song is 27 minutes long and is by far the most complicated and difficult engineering and mixing job I've ever undertaken. Trying to do it in 24 tracks would have been a fool's errand.

 

[Ricardus]

As someone who works in the medium of progressive and symphonic rock, I could not disagree harder.

I'm finishing up a song right now that has nearly 200 tracks - two drummers, one recorded on 8 tracks, the other on 16, full horn and string sections, a choir made up of six voices plus two lead vocalists, piano, flute, synthesizer, organ, two marimbas, a glockenspiel, bass, three electric guitars, and acoustic guitar, plus various additional tracks for effects routing. The finished song is 27 minutes long and is by far the most complicated and difficult engineering and mixing job I've ever undertaken. Trying to do it in 24 tracks would have been a fool's errand.

And yet lots of very complicated sessions have been done on that and less.

 

[krabapple]

It was kind of a neat idea - HDCDs had an extra four bits but if you threw the disc in a normal player, it just ignored them and treated the disc as a normal 16/44.1.

There were a few thousand of them produced in the late 90s and early 2000s, but since it didn't actually make any difference to sound quality, most people had no idea what it was, and a much bigger marketing push was made behind SACD and DVD-Audio, it was pretty much dead by around 2005 or so.

..except when it did make a difference. And that could happen when the 'Peak Extend' option was enabled for an HDCD mastering. PE is supposed to provide 6dB of peak level over standard. When enabled, the undecoded 'normal' version that plays in any CD player has a peak-limited (compressed) dynamic range -- but if you play it in hardware (or software) that has an HDCD decoder, the output has the 'extended' , i.e., original, dynamic range.

Peak Extend was an HDCD encoding option, so it wasn't used on all HDCDs. In every case I've seen it used, it was used on a release sourced from a pre-digital-era analog tape recording. Which didn't require any dB over normal CD capability , to have its dynamic range fully captured -- i.e., Peak extend was a case of 'solving' a nonexistant problem. (Example: Yes HDCDs mastered in Japan in the early Oughts)

Further silliness: not every Peak Extend-enabled HDCD actually used peak extension. Sometimes it just changed the overall level. Like turning your volume down by 6dB. No change in dynamic range. (Example: Van Halen HDCDs from the late Oughts)

 

[Ron Party]

As someone who works in the medium of progressive and symphonic rock, I could not disagree harder.

I'm finishing up a song right now that has nearly 200 tracks - two drummers, one recorded on 8 tracks, the other on 16, full horn and string sections, a choir made up of six voices plus two lead vocalists, piano, flute, synthesizer, organ, two marimbas, a glockenspiel, bass, three electric guitars, and acoustic guitar, plus various additional tracks for effects routing. The finished song is 27 minutes long and is by far the most complicated and difficult engineering and mixing job I've ever undertaken. Trying to do it in 24 tracks would have been a fool's errand.

Yes, I love me some progressive rock

 

[SuicideSquid]

And yet lots of very complicated sessions have been done on that and less.

Sure, but why is that better?

Yes, I love me some progressive rock

I'd never have guessed from your profile pic ;-)
Mixes are done, just waiting on mix approval from some guest musicians before sending it off for mastering. Will share in the music forum here when it's released in May or thereabouts!

 

[SuicideSquid]

..except when it did make a difference. And that could happen when the 'Peak Extend' option was enabled for an HDCD mastering. PE is supposed to provide 6dB of peak level over standard. When enabled, the undecoded 'normal' version that plays in any CD player has a peak-limited (compressed) dynamic range -- but if you play it in hardware (or software) that has an HDCD decoder, the output has the 'extended' , i.e., original, dynamic range.

Peak Extend was an HDCD encoding option, so it wasn't used on all HDCDs. In every case I've seen it used, it was used on a release sourced from a pre-digital-era analog tape recording. Which didn't require any dB over normal CD capability , to have its dynamic range fully captured -- i.e., Peak extend was a case of 'solving' a nonexistant problem. (Example: Yes HDCDs mastered in Japan in the early Oughts)

Further silliness: not every Peak Extend-enabled HDCD actually used peak extension. Sometimes it just changed the overall level. Like turning your volume down by 6dB. No change in dynamic range. (Example: Van Halen HDCDs from the late Oughts)

I mean the format itself didn't provide any actual benefit in sound quality over a properly-mastered CD. Improper mastering or implementation of the format is a different matter.

Lots of SACDs sound way better than the CD layer, but that's because it's a different master on the CD layer with much more compression and limiting than the SACD layer, not because you're actually hearing something on the SACD layer that the CD layer couldn't reproduce if it was mastered similarly.

 

[TheBatsEar]

So what's with all the 24/44.1 files that have appeared on HDTracks and elsewhere?

The technical term is "Low-Noise-Redbook"

Just pad CD quality with zeroes from 16 to 24 bit and you are golden.

1. Very efficient when it comes to FLAC compression.
2. Very cheap to make.
3. Higher margin than CD quality.

 

[Tangband]

SRC built into some DAWs, even the "off-line" conversion, can be bad. The default SRC in Reaper is not good and sometimes leads to audible artifacts. Late last year Reaper finally added Voxengo r8brain SRC which is both faster and significantly better than Reaper's previous default SRC.

That being said, those artifacts were subtle, and certainly didn't sound like "metal grinding". That's absurd.

Yes, ofcourse its small differences but sometimes they are audible such as the one in Reaper. The important thing to know is that those things exist . Trust your ears, do your own recordings if you can, and if you can hear a difference between 96 kHz and doing SRC to 44,1 KHz , it might be a real difference. Very small differences can be anoying in long term listening.

The Well-Tempered Computer

www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com

 

[SuicideSquid]

Yes, ofcourse its small differences but sometimes they are audible such as the one in Reaper. The important thing to know is that those things exist . Trust your ears, do your own recordings if you can, and if you can hear a difference between 96 kHz and doing SRC to 44,1 KHz , it might be a real difference. Very small differences can be anoying in long term listening.

The Well-Tempered Computer

www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com

But if you use a quality SRC, you will not hear anything.

 

[Tangband]

Here is very interesting comparisons of different SRC converters used in recording with DAWs . As you can se, the windows 10 DS SRC is very bad and shouldnt be used for hifi listening.

SRC Comparisons

src.infinitewave.ca

 

[JWAmerica]

In the near future, video content will be produced and sold at a resolution beyond your eye's ability to discern the difference and marketed with a color gamut that you cannot fully see (insects and cuttlefish will love it though), at a glorious 1440fps.

 

[SuicideSquid]

In the near future, video content will be produced and sold at a resolution beyond your eye's ability to discern the difference and marketed with a color gamut that you cannot fully see (insects and cuttlefish will love it though), at a glorious 1440fps.

Depending on how far away you sit from your TV, this is already true for resolution.

 

[JWAmerica]

Depending on how far away you sit from your TV, this is already true for resolution.

TVs got bigger. I'm not even going to look at a screen smaller than 75" these days. Maybe a 65" in the bedroom. 8K screens will sell like hotcakes and it will just go from there. Gamers weren't satisfied with 120hz screens. Despite any amount of science involving nervous system response time, they will buy a monitor with a higher refresh rate because bigger number = more better. People won't know why they need a 720hz display with 128-bit quantumHDR color, but they'll buy it.