High resolution audio vs. CD: A null-test

[board]

I've made a video where I do null-tests between high-res and the same material down-sampled to standard CD specs, as I found this particular test to be missing in the available information.

This video probably won't be anything new for most people on this forum - I mainly made it for people who didn't know so much about this particular aspect of audio.

In any case, here's the link:

 

[escksu]

Seems like a click bait thread......

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

P.S. I most likely won't be taking part in any discussions, whether in the comments on Youtube or in any responses to this thread.

Why not?

 

[board]

Why not?

I'm tired of arguing with people, and this topic usually creates a lot of arguments. So I mainly made the video as a help for people who want to understand the topic better.

 

[voodooless]

I'm tired of arguing with people, and this topic usually creates a lot of arguments.

Then don’t make the video.. Isn’t the video itself an argument? It’s then a bit strange not to interact with people reacting.

 

[abdo123]

it's stupid to do it on Youtube as Youtube downscales everything to 44.1KHz anyway.

 

[board]

Then don’t make the video.. Isn’t the video itself an argument? It’s then a bit strange not to interact with people reacting.

The part of my post you cut out addressed that point. But to add: I had figured that people in Youtube's comment section could argue with each other then.

 

[board]

it's stupid to do it on Youtube as Youtube downscales everything to 44.1KHz anyway.

One of the very first things I say in the video is that I encourage people to do the same experiment at home so they can see for themselves that they get the same results as in the video without having to content with audio at 128 kbps.

 

[board]

I have now removed the last sentence from my original post (about not partaking in discussions), since I have now partaken in it here, and that one sentence was apparently more important to people than the content of the video, so ...

 

[diddley]

Yeah principles are a bitch

 

[Rip City Dave]

OP, I get that you don't want to get into arguments about the video, but now you are arguing about not wanting to argue. LOL.

 

[iMickey503]

Maybe it's just me, but when Germanic (Dutch, Netherlands Danish, Norwegian Etc..) speak english, I swear they sound like Asian people doing it. Its weird. At least you get the swear words right.

So for those of us that have SEVERE A.D.D. (Or Amerimut like me) ;

Null test:

So a TLDR of what the video is about is to see (Visually) if you can hear the difference in quality between Redbook cd audio standard and "Hi Rez" being something like SACD Correct?


AND, that there is no Audible difference between the two cuz of Nyquist or something?

 

[Frank Dernie]

Maybe it's just me, but when Germanic (Dutch, Netherlands Danish, Norwegian Etc..) speak english, I swear they sound like Asian people doing it.

Never noticed that, but there are a huge number of different accents in English, even in England. 50 years ago accents varied from village to village but the BBC insisted on accent free "Oxford English", now regional accents abound and young people try to emulate their hero's accent!
I am always impressed how well German, Dutch and Scandinavian people speak English.
I am reasonably fluent in spoken French but don't write it with much confidence.
I am bad at slowly adopting the accent and mannerisms of people I am talking to sometimes. I don't know why, but it did help me a lot with my foreign language pronunciation.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I've made a video where I do null-tests between high-res and the same material down-sampled to standard CD specs, as I found this particular test to be missing in the available information.

This video probably won't be anything new for most people on this forum - I mainly made it for people who didn't know so much about this particular aspect of audio.

In any case, here's the link:

This is a great video.
I did a similar thing about 10 years ago but without the analysis, just the listening and found absolutely no difference between 16/44 and 24/96 on the music I tried.
I wasn't surprised though since I have never seen a recording with >96dB dynamic range and I can only hear to 15kHz so hearing a difference would have been more baffling than informative.

 

[audio2design]

I'm tired of arguing with people, and this topic usually creates a lot of arguments. So I mainly made the video as a help for people who want to understand the topic better.

What about you understanding the topic and process better?

 

[Frank Dernie]

What about you understanding the topic and process better?

Surprised by this response, I consider @board to understand this better than most, or perhaps I have a parallel failure to understand and my experience is atypical.

 

[renevoorburg]

Maybe it's just me, but when Germanic (Dutch, Netherlands Danish, Norwegian Etc..) speak english, I swear they sound like Asian people doing it. Its weird. At least you get the swear words right.

by the way, English is a Germanic language…

 

[Ata]

For me, the interesting part is around the 40:00 mark:

- No difference in the audible spectrum -- very much expected with proper down/upsampling, goes to say the experiment was executed flawlessly;
- Above audible spectrum, surprise 1: Levels are higher than I expected, perhaps -40/-50db average RMS with peaks in the -20/-15db range for most of the piece. So there is quite a bit of information we cannot hear, it is not as badly attenuated by air between instrument and microphone as I would think;
- Above audible spectrum, surprise 2: The sound meter moves very much as you would expect with music or speech content. It is not all interference / ultrasonic noise.

So, this is a true HD recording, pity we cannot hear all of it.

 

[Frank Dernie]

For me, the interesting part is around the 40:00 mark:

- No difference in the audible spectrum -- very much expected with proper down/upsampling, goes to say the experiment was executed flawlessly;
- Above audible spectrum, surprise 1: Levels are higher than I expected, perhaps -40/-50db average RMS with peaks in the -20/-15db range for most of the piece. So there is quite a bit of information we cannot hear, it is not as badly attenuated by air between instrument and microphone as I would think;
- Above audible spectrum, surprise 2: The sound meter moves very much as you would expect with music or speech content. It is not all interference / ultrasonic noise.

So, this is a true HD recording, pity we cannot hear all of it.

Agreed, however much pressure fluctuation there is in the frequency range we can't hear, guess what? we can't hear it, so it doesn't make sense to record it and more than double the file size for nothing. The cheapness of storage these days is totally irrelevant.
I suspect the lack of air attenuation is simply the common use of close miking and multiple tracks nowadays rather than more listener distance microphones of yesteryear.

 

[Blumlein 88]

For me, the interesting part is around the 40:00 mark:

- No difference in the audible spectrum -- very much expected with proper down/upsampling, goes to say the experiment was executed flawlessly;
- Above audible spectrum, surprise 1: Levels are higher than I expected, perhaps -40/-50db average RMS with peaks in the -20/-15db range for most of the piece. So there is quite a bit of information we cannot hear, it is not as badly attenuated by air between instrument and microphone as I would think;
- Above audible spectrum, surprise 2: The sound meter moves very much as you would expect with music or speech content. It is not all interference / ultrasonic noise.

So, this is a true HD recording, pity we cannot hear all of it.

Slow it down by 50% and you will be able to hear all that.