First I should apologise for the slightly provocative title.
I know human hearing has a dynamic range of ~120dB but the only device I can think of which needs this much would be an environmental noise recorder that you didn't want to miss any sound and didn't want to use an auto gain control.
Those of us that have recorded music on any type of recorder will be familiar with its level control. If the sound is loud we turn it down a bit, and vice versa.
Back in tape days it was a real skill to get the level good. Too high gives distortion on peaks but too low made the tape noise too audible. A bit of tape overload can be euphonic (a tape overload emulator plug in is a popular limiter used by recordists now) and is certainly better than audible hiss during the quiet parts of the music so we did tend to over record a touch, something catastrophic with digital.
With a 16-bit digital recorder it is very easy to set levels since, IME, even with peaks at -6dB the quiet bits of the music will never be accompanied by audible hiss.
What started me on this line of thought was an experience at the Scalford enthusiasts show, put on by the HiFi Wigwam, about 5 or so years ago.
I showed up with a few bits of music on a USB stick one of which was a 24/96 recording of Eric Whitaker music (Water Night).
@Pluto of this parish was there with his active Harbeth Monitor 40s and his laptop. I had intended to ask him to produce a 16/44.1 down sample of one of my files to compare with the 24/96 original but he suggested a different comparison which may be more surprising for listeners and he could do in real time on his PC.
This was to play back the file as 8-bit with noise shaping. We, the assembled audience of enthusiasts and many die hard "analogue is better" fans, then got to compare 24/96, 8/96 with noise shaping and 8/96 without.
The 8/96 had obvious hiss in the quiet bits and between tracks without noise shaping but I think it fair to say nobody in the room could hear any difference between the 8-bit noise shaped and the original 24/96. I was surprised, and a several of the audience were angry, refusing to believe they had been contentedly listening to 8-bit and claiming trickery.
Anyway @sergeauckland was there too so maybe he would remember it too.
I know human hearing has a dynamic range of ~120dB but the only device I can think of which needs this much would be an environmental noise recorder that you didn't want to miss any sound and didn't want to use an auto gain control.
Those of us that have recorded music on any type of recorder will be familiar with its level control. If the sound is loud we turn it down a bit, and vice versa.
Back in tape days it was a real skill to get the level good. Too high gives distortion on peaks but too low made the tape noise too audible. A bit of tape overload can be euphonic (a tape overload emulator plug in is a popular limiter used by recordists now) and is certainly better than audible hiss during the quiet parts of the music so we did tend to over record a touch, something catastrophic with digital.
With a 16-bit digital recorder it is very easy to set levels since, IME, even with peaks at -6dB the quiet bits of the music will never be accompanied by audible hiss.
What started me on this line of thought was an experience at the Scalford enthusiasts show, put on by the HiFi Wigwam, about 5 or so years ago.
I showed up with a few bits of music on a USB stick one of which was a 24/96 recording of Eric Whitaker music (Water Night).
@Pluto of this parish was there with his active Harbeth Monitor 40s and his laptop. I had intended to ask him to produce a 16/44.1 down sample of one of my files to compare with the 24/96 original but he suggested a different comparison which may be more surprising for listeners and he could do in real time on his PC.
This was to play back the file as 8-bit with noise shaping. We, the assembled audience of enthusiasts and many die hard "analogue is better" fans, then got to compare 24/96, 8/96 with noise shaping and 8/96 without.
The 8/96 had obvious hiss in the quiet bits and between tracks without noise shaping but I think it fair to say nobody in the room could hear any difference between the 8-bit noise shaped and the original 24/96. I was surprised, and a several of the audience were angry, refusing to believe they had been contentedly listening to 8-bit and claiming trickery.
Anyway @sergeauckland was there too so maybe he would remember it too.