http://losslessaudiochecker.com/

[RayDunzl]

Thanks for these measurements. I am painfully learning through Acourate .

I have the "lite" version, AcourateDRC, not much to learn there. Can set a curve (to some degree), set how "sharply" (for lack of a better word) it corrects - and not much else. But it is sufficient, and tailored specifically to the convolver I have, the MiniDSP OpenDRC-DI.

My measurement posts use REW - Room Equipment Wizard, and, in the case just above, an import of a music file into Audacity.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Inversely, even if there is high frequency content, it doesn't mean it is "high-res." I plan to do a video to show the proper way to determine if what is there is music signal instead of just random noise.

In addition, down sampling should be detected by the signature of the brick-wall filter. It is easy to see that in play and no force of nature could explain otherwise.

And there's the fundamental question: is it resolution or is it noise? Not that if matters to most of us old, audio obsessed males. I doubt many of us hear much above 15k. I'm fine with hi res, but not at a premium price. And I need to be reassured that noise above 20k isn't creating issues in the sudible range. At the end of the day, we'd get much more from an industry that offered "audiophile" mixes and mastering. Low to no compression, a slow hand on the sweetening. That I'd pay for, every time. Make an alternative to "loudness wars" recordings the cause. That would get us better quality than more bits.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

...

At the end of the day, we'd get much more from an industry that offered "audiophile" mixes and mastering. Low to no compression, a slow hand on the sweetening. That I'd pay for, every time. Make an alternative to "loudness wars" recordings the cause. That would get us better quality than more bits.

Not to be a smart Alec, but your dream exists and has existed. Unfortunately, it is the tiny classical music niche dedicated to hi rez recording, so it is not to everyone's musical taste. But, there are a number of excellent companies consistently turning out extremely well engineered recordings involving no monkey business.

I mean, I feel your pain. But, we just don't have the problems you allude to in hi rez classical. Not every recording is great, but I am amazed at how many good ones there are.

 

[amirm]

As Fritz says, companies that are vertically integrated and record/distribute their own digital content have true, and consistent high-resolution content. The use the same equipment and workflow and the result is universally excellent.

 

[ceedee]

One often overlooked reason 96k once offered real improvements and doesn't any longer is the DAWs in use. For some years quite a few did compression or reverb or other processing at 96 khz as that is what the plug ins were written for. So any other sample rate had to be converted. Some conversion wasn't good and some orders of processing would lead to significant aliasing and other artefacts. Sometimes the math was truncated or had other issues. With lots of processing this could be audible. Record in 96k and only 96 k (88k was no better) and you avoided these problems. So a 96k recording of heavily processed material would indeed sound different, and cleaner than other rates.

This for the most part has become a complete non-issue in the last few years. Now most plugins when needed will upsample to extremely high rates and use 64 bit precision. So there are no issues from such activity related to sample rate. Many compression plug ins let you choose how much and whether to upsample to either use aliasing as a choice or prevent it from happening. So this is a situation where maybe you convinced yourself back when with earlier recordings that hirez was a wee bit of an improvement. The same recording done currently likely offers zero audible benefit versus 44 or 48 sample rates.

Yes, you are exactly right. This was a problem in some cases, but is not any longer with competently-designed processors.

DAW plugins that do nonlinear processing are often working at sample rates far above 192kHz nowadays. I use a hard clipping plugin for nipping off the peaks of certain program material, and the user can select the oversampling rate. Aliasing is reduced substantially at 32x oversampling, but the software I use goes up to 256x for maximum transparency. That's 1.4 MHz and 11.3 MHz, respectively. Even if we were to run DAW projects at 192 kHz, it's merely a drop in the bucket compared to what nonlinear processes really need.

I'm not saying the difference between 32x and 256x is always audible, but it's easy to see the difference in measurements.

 

[NorthSky]

Work In Progress, sorry
Have a look at the Pacific and ignore all this stuff

Thx Vincent, and that's pretty much what I do; looking @ the Pacific and ignore "most" if not all that stuff.
Today we can listen to some high resolution lossless audio from our better music records/albums/vinyls/LPs.
No issue there; it remains lossless...it's in that domain.

 

[skypickle]

Inversely, even if there is high frequency content, it doesn't mean it is "high-res." I plan to do a video to show the proper way to determine if what is there is music signal instead of just random noise.

In addition, down sampling should be detected by the signature of the brick-wall filter. It is easy to see that in play and no force of nature could explain otherwise.

any news of this video? In this day and age of profit maximization, I see a lot of 192khz and DSF files that are derived from 'standard' quality masters. I can see record labels going to the devious extreme of compressing/filtering the sound of 16/44 flacs 'forcing' us to spend more to get hi-res files which really only contain 16/44 data.

 

[watchnerd]

Unfortunately, it is the tiny classical music niche dedicated to hi rez recording, so it is not to everyone's musical taste. But, there are a number of excellent companies consistently turning out extremely well engineered recordings involving no monkey business.

Jazz, as well.

 

[Digital_Thor]

If the music file is "faulty" or not lossless - can it be reparied?
Some say that a clipped music signal, can be "repaired" by "rebuilding" the lost transients:
http://www.perfectdeclipper.com/
If the declipping works - could it then be done, so that I can permanently declip my problematic FLAC files on my NAS?

 

[restorer-john]

Try De-clipper first. Record a 1KHz sine at a level high enough to clip it hard. FFT the file. 'De-clip' it. FFT the resultant file. Report the THD differences.

 

[Vincent Kars]

Some necro posting but the website https://losslessaudiochecker.com/ has gone.
If you click the link you get

Learn more about DSD bring you to a page on the Qobuz website explaining the great benefits of DSD!
One almost wants to go back in time when Tidal was promoting MQA.

 

[Rednaxela]

I don't want DSD.

 

[voodooless]

So, where is the software that detects that the DSD content is actually sourced from PCM?

 

[Galliardist]

Some necro posting but the website https://losslessaudiochecker.com/ has gone.
If you click the link you get
View attachment 403789

Learn more about DSD bring you to a page on the Qobuz website explaining the great benefits of DSD!
One almost wants to go back in time when Tidal was promoting MQA.

Those advantages apparently...

This stuff just makes me think ASR should have an annual "Stupid" award or something to really call it out. There's really no excuse for it.

 

[Galliardist]

So, where is the software that detects that the DSD content is actually sourced from PCM?

All the PCM content in my main system gets turned into DSD anyway, so I think I can decline that offer.

 

[Sokel]

All the PCM content in my main system gets turned into DSD anyway, so I think I can decline that offer.

Out of preference or necessity?

 

[voodooless]

This stuff just makes me think ASR should have an annual "Stupid" award or something to really call it out. There's really no excuse for it.

Yes, we really should have the equivalent of a Darwin Award for audio! The absurdity of that picture is staggering, it is wrong on so many levels

Let's call it a Shannon Award @amirm, please make it happen

 

[Galliardist]

Out of preference or necessity?

Interesting question. I bought a Marantz disc player that converts to DSD on the way to analogue. But I didn't buy it for that processing, so maybe by coincidence more than anything else?

 

[voodooless]

Out of preference or necessity?

Well, Delta Sigma DACs convert to a single or multi-bit PWM. The only difference to the Marantz that @Galliardist has is that they chose not to use a standard silicon solution to do it.

 

[Sokel]

Interesting question. I bought a Marantz disc player that converts to DSD on the way to analogue. But I didn't buy it for that processing, so maybe by coincidence more than anything else?

Well, Delta Sigma DACs convert to a single or multi-bit PWM. The only difference to the Marantz that @Galliardist has is that they chose not to use a standard silicon solution to do it.

I asked about necessity because if someone has a "humped" DAC like KTB it's more of an necessity and less of a preference to play everything as DSD.
I mean this thing's huge IMD is exactly where the main music levels are so...

PCM vs DSD

Did a little comparison and I was wondering if any friend with better gear here has tested this. Results you're about to see is probably narrowed to the specific DAC but it's interesting to see how it handles things differently. I will not try to decipher the results other that DSD seems much...

www.audiosciencereview.com