24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

[Grahame]

Oh dear, don't annoy the nerds, it only makes them mad ..

http://people.xiph.o...neil-young.html

Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple's Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of 'uncompromised studio quality'. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young's group several months ago.

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we're not going to see any actual improvement.

There is some sensible advice (shock horror)

http://people.xiph.o...ung.html#toc_bh

Finally, the good news

What actually works to improve the quality of the digital audio to which we're listening?

Better headphones

The easiest fix isn't digital. The most dramatic possible fidelty improvement comes from a good pair of headphones. Over-ear, in ear, open or closed, it doesn't much matter. They don't even need to be expensive, though expensive headphones can be worth the money.

Keep in mind that some headphones are expensive because they're well made, durable and sound great. Others are expensive because they're $20 headphones under a several hundred dollar layer of styling, brand name, and marketing. I won't make specfic recommendations here, but I will say you're not likely to find good headphones in a big box store, even if it specializes in electronics or music. As in all other aspects of consumer hi-fi, do your research (and caveat emptor).

Edited March 5, 2012 by Grahame

[Beefy]

Excellent article. The 'spectrophiles' argument is something I hadn't considered before.

[cobra_kai]

Really good read thanks for posting

[TMoney]

+1

Great read. It confirms a lot of what I've thought subjectively. Thank you for posting.

Edited March 6, 2012 by TMoney

[roadtonowhere08]

Great article. I learned a few things - always a good thing.

[Dreadhead]

Excellent article. I had not realized about the 96dB dynamic range not being true otherwise all old hat.

[acidbasement]

Nice article, and seems to provide links to good references. I like.

[Knuckledragger]

I use a pair of shure SE535 which i find to be some of the best earbuds on the market (fit nicely under motorcycle helmet) and I can identify tracks below 192kbps very quickly. 128kbps aac or mp3 sound very poor.

The article may have a lot of study, but reality is that there are those of use that could be considered audiophiles and truly can hear the difference.

Via Slashdork.

[Currawong]

I recall Dan Lavry writing essentially the same things in a white paper years ago about why mastering above 96k was pointless.

I don't understand the part about why the dynamic range for 16-bit is 105dB though.

[justin]

sort of more on this: takes a thorough look

For the purposes of building stuff, I also think that iOS compatibility has surpassed 24/96 or 24/192 USB playback in value to modern audiophiles.

[jp11801]

that article is full of fail here is a great quote

"While in the studio, Ward downloaded a track from a recently mastered indie rock album from iTunes. We used Apple's iTunes processing tools to convert the track to a WAV file —according to Apple, it's the same decoding performed by iTunes during playback. Ward then loaded the original CD master WAV file into his workstation. Using his console's A/B listening switch, we both spent time comparing the two tracks."

Really they converted a lossy AAC to a wave file and compared the wave they made from the lossy iTunes file to the cd rip??

Edited May 1, 2012 by jp11801

[Dreadhead]

Really they converted a lossy AAC to a wave file and compared the wave they made from the lossy iTunes file to the cd rip??

Yes that is what they did.

[grawk]

That seems to be a valid way to compare the aac file to the cd rip to take any active process conversion out of the picture. That said, I didn't, and won't, read the article...

[justin]

That seems to be a valid way to compare the aac file to the cd rip to take any active process conversion out of the picture. That said, I didn't, and won't, read the article...

they dont seem to get anywhere in determining if "Mastered for iTunes" = better sound. like any studio that sells on iTunes is going to give a fuck about sending them a higher quality version if one even exists.