Why Do Old Technologies Persist in Audio?

[Vacceo]

It is NOT clear at all that 16/44 can be distinguished from 24/96 in a level matched blind test. Try it yourself, take a 24/96 file that you know is legit and not up sampled and dither it down to 16/44 and then use a ABX tool like foobar2000 ABX to see if you can hear any difference. I certainly can not. While some claim they can hear a difference and there are some studies that seem to imply some people may be able to tell the difference the evidence is not at all conclusive. In any case "easily tell the difference" is not correct.

The very host of this forum, Amir, can. Not because he was gifted by the Anunnaki of audio, but by training in listening to artifacts and errors.

However, your point is fair: most untrained people (that is, most people) can't.

 

[Newman]

The very host of this forum, Amir, can. Not because he was gifted by the Anunnaki of audio, but by training in listening to artifacts and errors.

However, your point is fair: most untrained people (that is, most people) can't.

You misunderstood Amir.

In one of his videos on a similar topic he said (paraphrased) that if he wasn’t doing tricks (like making an A/B loop of the last few seconds of the fade-out to silence at the end of a track, then cranking the volume to levels that would damage his ears and instantly fry his equipment if used for the main music, and listening for differences in noise floor with 16 vs 24 bit, and using short repeat loops sometimes as short as a fraction of a second), then he would be completely helpless to tell one from the other just listening to music.

The evidence is that nobody can tell 16/44 from 24/96 listening to music.

 

[617]

You misunderstood Amir.

In one of his videos on a similar topic he said (paraphrased) that if he wasn’t doing tricks (like making an A/B loop of the last few seconds of the fade-out to silence at the end of a track, then cranking the volume to levels that would damage his ears and instantly fry his equipment if used for the main music, and listening for differences in noise floor with 16 vs 24 bit, and using short repeat loops sometimes as short as a fraction of a second), then he would be completely helpless to tell one from the other just listening to music.

The evidence is that nobody can tell 16/44 from 24/96 listening to music.

Exactly. If you're looking for an audio format superior to redbook CD, the answer is multi channel, not increasing the bandwidth past human hearing or dynamic range past any recorded music.

 

[MattHooper]

You misunderstood Amir.

In one of his videos on a similar topic he said (paraphrased) that if he wasn’t doing tricks (like making an A/B loop of the last few seconds of the fade-out to silence at the end of a track, then cranking the volume to levels that would damage his ears and instantly fry his equipment if used for the main music, and listening for differences in noise floor with 16 vs 24 bit, and using short repeat loops sometimes as short as a fraction of a second), then he would be completely helpless to tell one from the other just listening to music.

The evidence is that nobody can tell 16/44 from 24/96 listening to music.

Which is one reason why I haven't cared about hi-res audio for music listening. 16/44 sounds plenty fine to me.

 

[ZolaIII]

It is NOT clear at all that 16/44 can be distinguished from 24/96 in a level matched blind test. Try it yourself, take a 24/96 file that you know is legit and not up sampled and dither it down to 16/44 and then use a ABX tool like foobar2000 ABX to see if you can hear any difference. I certainly can not. While some claim they can hear a difference and there are some studies that seem to imply some people may be able to tell the difference the evidence is not at all conclusive. In any case "easily tell the difference" is not correct.

Yes some people can (including me I tried) but it's mostly thanks to resampling artifacts if it whose 96/24 to 48/24 you couldn't (neither hear it or point to it). I tried this in my test of lossy formats and come to a conclusion that is a crucial thing and I used visual aid the plot graphs for identification rather than duble blind, duble subjective ABX testing.
Using dB poweramp for conversion and keeping it to one core only didn't change the outcome. You have a lot of examples of this in complains of people how it's done bad on OS level hire and elsewhere.