Comparison: PCM DXD DSD (Sound Liaison High Res Format Comparison)

[GWolfman]

But it is really better to get what is needed.

Well said!

 

[Pluto]

So you do not believe in consumer protection

It has nothing to do with consumer protection.

If you are daft enough to believe that 10× the bandwidth of human hearing is required for delivery of recordings then you should be reasonably happy with the noise that is an unavoidable physical consequence of that excess bandwidth.

I can produce wonderfully quiet recordings if you are happy to restrict the bandwidth to about 25kHz.

“The wider you open the window the more muck gets in”

 

[sarumbear]

It has nothing to do with consumer protection.

If you are daft enough to believe that 10× the bandwidth of human hearing is required for delivery of recordings then you should be reasonably happy with the noise that is an unavoidable physical consequence of that excess bandwidth.

I can produce wonderfully quiet recordings if you are happy to restrict the bandwidth to about 25kHz.

You are missing the point. You say we don't need Hi-Res. That is not the argument here.

Whether you like it, or I am being daft, or not, High Resolution is established as a recording standard. It is advertised to the consumer as such. Producers must then deliver it within the limits of equipment availability and within the guidance of their professional bodies.

Your attitude is fuel for the producers of these tracks who are cheating the consumer. A Bugatti Chiron is marketed to have a 1500HP engine. If it fails to deliver that power everyone will be up in arms. Is the market daft enough to believe that a car needs that level of power?

Contrary to what you say recording systems do exist that deliver the full potential of High Resolution. There is no excuse for tracks that @amirm reviewed exist. Maybe you should do some research? I suggest you start here.

https://merging.com/solutions/live_event_recording
https://merging.com/products/interfaces

 

[sarumbear]

High rez just gets you a zoomed in view of empty or erroneous information. It’s presence can only lead to downsides.

No comment needed

https://merging.com/products/interfaces

 

[Pluto]

Contrary to what you say recording systems do exist that deliver the full potential of High Resolution

But the limiting factor is not usually the recording/editing technologies.

It's the microphones, the venues, the singers and instruments and, oh yes, DSD. In my entire career I have never known a producer who set out, at the commencement of a project, to create a work in "high resolution". Neither have I known one who has said, on hearing the Red Book downsampling of a job recorded at, say, 96kHz, “that's distinctly low resolution compared to what we've been hearing up to now”.

Of course there are many records that have had better (or, at least, different) masterings issued in various higher resolution formats but I have never encountered any actual evidence in support of the view that anything significantly greater than 16/44 is necessary or desirable. That said, I'd be happier if the base format was 16/48 or even 20/48 just to remove that little grey area, but I'm not complaining.

 

[sarumbear]

If you are daft enough to believe that 10× the bandwidth of human hearing is required for delivery of recordings then you should be reasonably happy with the noise that is an unavoidable physical consequence of that excess bandwidth.

Watch @amirm's video and notice that there is music correlated signal all the way up to 100kHz. Are you going to argue with that? Is your job as a recording engineer not to capture what is being played? Or do you think you know best and nothing above 25kHz should be recorded?

“The wider you open the window the more muck gets in”

Don't live in muckville then, move to a place where there is no muck!

 

[sarumbear]

In my entire career I have never known a producer who set out, at the commencement of a project, to create a work in "high resolution".

Had they ever started with saying "we want a 16-bit 44.1kHz recording"? I'm curious; when you last recorded an acoustic session, if I may ask?

I have never encountered any actual evidence in support of the view that anything significantly greater than 16/44 is necessary or desirable.

I am sure you will allow others to have a different view. Especially as they managed to make high-resolution an industry standard...

 

[HD MOVIE SOURCE]

Can anyone explain the jumps at 3:50 to the very right. The entire scale jumps, this is too high to be drums, but the fact that the entire spectrum jumps is odd, because I don't hear it in the music?

 

[sarumbear]

Can anyone explain the jumps at 3:50 to the very right. The entire scale jumps, this is too high to be drums, but the fact that the entire spectrum jumps is odd, because I don't hear it in the music?

It is above 150kHz and at below 100dBFS. How do you expect to hear it? Most likely caused by an edit.

 

[MacCali]

I am still trying to get a grip on all this, watched the first two presentations. Will watch this also, but overall I got from what many have told me nothing is better than CD quality? As it seems some people are just screwing up the entire upscaling,

Predictability wise, a song that was recorded in hi res won’t have this bs? It will follow proper wave pattern as shown in the videos?

I requested on the previous video if he can show a CD and SACD using this method. Cause it seems people swear by direct CD. Not that I doubt it

 

[sarumbear]

Just found out that Audition (2021) cannot play DxD files as its playback engine is limited to 192kHz sampling rate.

 

[voodooless]

Watch @amirm's video and notice that there is music correlated signal all the way up to 100kHz. Are you going to argue with that?

I might . There are numerous ways to make that happen without there being any actual content "up there". There could be serious aliasing issues, resulting in spectrums being mirrored into the HF. The part where the voice came in looked curiously repetitive. You'll have to take a deeper look than amir dit just now to find that out. Only by listening you'd never find out. That fact alone should already speak volume about the usefulness.

 

[Pluto]

there is music correlated signal all the way up to 100kHz

The fact that there might be correlation should not be taken as evidence that it's actually desirable content. Jitter sidebands and other distortions are highly correlated to the wanted material. Does this make them desirable?

Is your job as a recording engineer not to capture what is being played?

No, the job is to capture what people want to hear*. Most analogue consoles have very distinct low pass filters in their outputs because the presence of ultrasonics is clearly deleterious to analogue recording. The fact that we now have technologies capable of preserving the unwanted garbage does not constitute a reason for doing so.

As our musical instruments evolved and developed over the last few hundred years, were the pioneers in any way influenced by what they could not hear?

do you think you know best and nothing above 25kHz should be recorded?

You may pay me to record anything you wish; I will happily take your money. But my advice to you is that to do so is more likely to be deleterious to the overall results than to keep it clean above, give or take, 20kHz.

A few years ago (about the time when the industry was starting to get interested in the world above 20kHz) I was taken to lunch by the R&D people at a top microphone company; it is quite amazing what truths come out when tongues are loosened following the consumption of too much Austrian wine. “It is a good thing”, the Herr Doktor explained, “that not too many people have the means of checking the distortion levels of microphones above 35kHz”. Salutary words.

*Should we preserve chair creaks and traffic/ventilation noise because they were part of the event?

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

Just found out that Audition (2021) cannot play DxD files as its playback engine is limited to 192kHz sampling rate.

View attachment 128885

This may or may not be correct for DxD files, but will work for uncompressed PCM Wav files

Audition cannot create or convert files above 192Khz, however......

I can open a 352Khz or 384Khz PCM Wav file and play it just fine at least as far back as Audition 3.0 (possibly earlier)

I can even open and edit these files in Windows XP-SP2

Simply drag the high rez file to Auditions editing window

Audition will resample playback (what you hear) to whatever Windows is set to

If I open a 64bit / 384Khz wav file and Windows is set to 24bit / 96Khz, then Audition will resample playback to 24/96 even though the file remains at 384Khz and 64bit

Audition 3.0 is even capable of playing 32bit and 64bit audio files in Windows XP, even though Audition 3.0 will not create or convert to 32bit or 64bit wav files

You can edit and save a 384Khz / 64bit file in audition by simply hitting "SAVE" (not "SAVE AS")
TRY IT!

Caution: Your song will now be over 1GB in size and may take quite a while to load or edit

Audition's create and convert limits are artificially imposed upon you

 

[charleski]

The tool, musicscope seems to be offered for free now although there is stipulation that you have to be an existing customer (?).

If anyone's interested, the link to download MusicScope is here. It looks like the company closed down back in 2019, so they did the decent thing and put up an open link for past customers. Since thye don't exist anymore they probably won't come running after you for downloading it.

 

[Bullwinkle J Moose]

and if you want to try up to 64bit / 384Khz (or higher) audio files in Audition....

Then try these >


TASCAM High-Rez Editor
DSD/PCM
https://www.tascam.eu/en/hr-editor.html


Aul Converter (up to 64bit audio)
https://samplerateconverter.com/wav/convert-rf64

 

[AndreaT]

Yes, another older high-resolution music format comparison, this time with a different twist than the previous ones:

The tool, musicscope seems to be offered for free now although there is stipulation that you have to be an existing customer (?).

Another fine analysis explaining why we should not bother downloading hi-res files. You pay for a lot of garbage.

 

[AdamG]

I am very close to handing out a few Thread Bans. Stop the personal insults and bickering.

 

[sarumbear]

This may or may not be correct for DxD files, but will work for uncompressed PCM Wav files

I posted the error message that Audition displayed when I tried to open a DxD file, which by standard is sampled at 24bit / 352.8 kHz. I tried this on two Windows 10 PCs, each less than two year old with i9 and i7 CPUs and 32 and 16 GB memory respectively. Here is a short clip if anyone care to test.

Audition's create and convert limits are artificially imposed upon you

May I ask you to please explain what you mean by "artificial"? Also please note that, I said playback DxD file, not create or convert WAV files.

 

[sarumbear]

and if you want to try up to 64bit / 384Khz (or higher) audio files in Audition....

Then try these >
TASCAM High-Rez Editor
DSD/PCM
https://www.tascam.eu/en/hr-editor.html
Aul Converter (up to 64bit audio)
https://samplerateconverter.com/wav/convert-rf64

Thank you but can you please tell me how am I going to try those editing software “in Audition”?