Excellent video! Thanks for the clarifications, for a regular user these explanations are welcome. I was about to spend a lot of money but I think my best is in the CD quality area. Thank you!
Excellent. I went down this rabbit-hole months ago. My less expert conclusion was the same; we don't need hi-res, but as I listen mostly to Classical, and the stereo era began seventy years ago, many famous recordings from the pre-digital era, particulary the Solti Ring and the Britten Requiem, have since been remastered. You don't need hi-res to benefit from this, but the remastering is what mattered: cleaning up the original tapes, changing balances, fixing pitch, etc. etc. So the new Solti Ring is as good at 16/44 as at 28/192; the difference you're hearing is the remastering, not the upsampling.
Excellent and informative presentation that cleared up some misunderstandings I was holding for many years! I truly love all my Cyrus gear and would never replace it (apart from with other Cyrus gear)
People dont grasp how must of music actually happens under 7khz. For example. The fundamental of the lowest E note of a six string guitar is 82hz. The highest note of a 24 fret guitar is 1312hz. Yes, the highest note we associate with high pitched solos is not even 1.5khz. Yes, I know there are the harmonics, but even you consider the harmonics go 2 extra octaves, it is still below 6khz.
Yep ... 90% of all musical content is below 7khz. The highest standard musical note on an A440 tuned piano is only 4186hz. The 5th harmonic of Middle A (440hz) is at a mere 2200hz. But the real surprise is that a 12 inch crash cymbal is only at about 500hz. The shrillness is the result of rich harmonic content.
I am pretty sure that, thoughout this whole presentation, I could hear some high-res jazz music in the background. It was audible, although I could not hear anything above 16kHz.
TH-cam compresses at 16khz maximum and that's the reason!!!But in my opinion, as I trust my ears, hi-res that some digital stores sell, are not real hi-res, because the majority of these, are not from original source (master tape). They are oveprocessed cd versions and re-remastered, they have extreme bass and I can barely hear higher frequencies, because of extreme bass and hard kick drums that hide the detail. Loudness is extreme and distorts, they are so squashed. On original compact discs I have, even I convert to mp3 320kbps, that they are crystal clear with detailed sound.
A great video. One thing to realize is that current digital recording and playback is a result of maths. There is ONE solution to any captured or played back wave no matter what the bit depth. Because computers need fixed quantities to work with, there are rounding errors. This shows up as noise like tape hiss. The original signal is there in full detail. Using more bits pushes this noise to a lower level. Even at 16 bits you cannot hear it over the music. So more bits in consumer playback mean nothing but bigger file sizes. Another thing to realize is that if you listen to a loud sound you are deaf to quiet sounds for a period. Your ears are mechanical and get overloaded so big dynamic 24 bit range will be impossible to listen to.
The 12.5 registers on my spectrum analyzer and higher ones don’t show up at all. Perhaps TH-cam is filtering out high frequencies? I tried tone generator app in iOS App Store. I can hear till 17.5khz.
This is unfortunately true, thanks for pointing it out. We have analysed the transcoded TH-cam files and indeed those higher frequencies have been filtered out by TH-cam. Nevertheless there are plenty of online tone generators you can try to find out how high your hearing goes. Simply search for "Online Tone Generator".
One other thing is the noise and distortion introduced by the microphone preamps and any mixing/level controlling done during recording. Even the most expensive professional units have some noise and distortion. Digitally encoding the signal will encode this faithfully too.
Out of all the tracks in my playlist, which was selected purely according to tracks I liked, not on their resolution, I have about 500 44.1kHz tracks, 7 48k Hz tracks, 3 96kHz tracks and 5 192kHz tracks. I am using a Blue II DAC with Adam A5X active montors plugged in directly to the DAC. They all sound good to me and there is nothing that really stands out in the 96+ KHz tracks that really stands out as it might do if, say, if I was comparing 7.4 ips reel-to-reel with 15 ips reel-to-reel. My concern in the past was that we were somehow not capturing the music as well as it could be but, now I have a 192kHz-capable DAC, I am not worried about it now. This is just my own subjective assessment.
I love this guy ! Also i have a question, i use pc with dac (topping e70),cyrus one and MA Gold 100. Is it true that its better to use multiples of 44,1 khz in windows sound settings? I mean, the highest value in my case is 32bits and 384khz but im using 352,8 khz instead, which is divisible by 44.1. Or maybe i should be using some smaller values if we can only hear 20 bits? Greetings to Cyrus Team from Poland! :)
The video and the explanations given in it are excellent, easy to understand and, above all, true. However, the background music cut in at far too high a level is absolutely annoying! It would be nice if Cyrus could re-release this helpful video, this time without the music. Thanks!
The voice of reason. So much of it is about chasing the numbers. If you can see 192kHz on the screen of your streamer it's bound to sound better - isn't it???
Comparing picture resolution and Audio bit depth is incorrect. In digital audio even a 2 Bit output signal is perfect - but there is a lot of quantization noise generated degrading the observed audio quality! So the expression "resolution" for bit depth is very misleading.
Interesting, with the tone test I heard the 12.5k test as a high pitched sound (both channels) the 16k test I heard as a low frequency tone, and 18k I heard as a high pitch (higher pitch than the 12.5k tone) but only in the right channel (right ear) Headphones are Monoprice M1060 Open Back Planar headphones. You can work out my views on hi-res as I have a modern implementation of the original TDA1540D chips running non-oversampling.
And of course the response..."well you need a higher resolving system" then you will hear the difference. I am sure there are those self described golden ear people that can tell the difference all the time. You know the same ones that can tell when their cables on on or off the floor.
The filters are not only applied in DA conversion, but also in the studio‘s AD conversion, Hi-Res allows for less steep filters, therefore less damage to the audio signal. Gentler filters = better audio. Studies have shown that the human hearing resolution is ca. 7 microseconds. You claim that more than 44.1 kHz sampling frequency is not necessary. However, CD quality only means a time resolution of 20 µs. Only at 192 KHz sampling do we get down to 5 µs. From this I conclude that Hi-Res can make sense over this point of view. Granted, not every listener will have that ability, but prof. musicians and conductors with trained listening may have.
Bravo! Very few people get this. Music is not just about frequency but also about timing. HighRes has some benefits for transient response and timing. My opinion is that 96khz is the sweet spot for high fidelity. Going higher may give another 1% or 2% in quality but is it worth the expense and will you notice. You need to have very good equipment compared to the average consumer to really get any benefit.
AD with oversampling is a thing you know, and delivering something higher than 44.1 ain't necessary since we don't hear over 20khz anyways (most people go even lower than that). This time resolution thing ain't an argument either since those waveforms can very much happen between samples as well. Don't underestimate that sinc!
Pure DSD recording and playback almost always sound great. Not necessarily because of the DSD process, but because of the care used in making such a recording. Most other recording are made with random levels of quality,
DSD was created as a recording and archive format because at the time it could be converted to PCM or any new future formats with minimal loss in quality, unlike PCM. Converters have improved a great deal since then.
What sounds best for one person is not what sounds best for another: we are not industrial products, each of us has a different perception, this include different sound perception. A person trained in classical music with real instruments for years will have a far higher sensitivity to sound quality than the pop music lover listening to mp3 lossless compressed with low quality in ear bluetooth compressed earbud. Same for somebody trained to cooking in 5 stars restaurant will have a far different palate than a mc donald customers. Generally speaking masses have been trained for decades to love very low quality of anything: food, audio, tv series, reasonings, morals, that's why the world is going downhill.
Hi-Rez audio is an audiophile's dream that they magically can hear sound beyond what their hearing is capable of yet their egos will tell you, " I can hear the diffrence". Really? Can you prove it with facts than with your opinion? 😮
I find it funny how 70 year old audiophile can talk about better speakers capturing all the crackles. People are so obsessed with things they eighther can't hear of if they can it doesn't add anything good to the music.
If you'd do a blind test between 24/192 and 16/44.1 you would at the VERY best hear a very slight difference in the upper most treble, but most likely you wouldn't hear any difference whatsoever since I bet you don't hear anything over 12-20khz (depending on your age) and don't play your music at 100dB+ anyways.
Do we need 3000cc car. Why I need 3000cc car, a 1300cc car already can give me 110km/hour speed on the highway that is the speed limit set by the government. Now I can decide to go ahead to purchase the 1300cc car, and use it for maybe 10 years, after 10 year I just need to buy another new car that is 1300cc and so on for the rest of my life, and I can save a lot and keep the saving together with me and live a happy life forever and ever……amen.
I issue you with a challenge. Compile a lengthy playlist of CD quality tracks you enjoy listening to. Compile an identical playlist, this time using ‘high res’ tracks. Listen to both. I bet you will suffer from listener fatigue far quicker with the CD quality, even if you don’t hear a difference.
why play music when you are talking? as an audio expert you should know better. Maybe I should just listen to the music and not the words coming out of your mouth.
It’s crazy how little we know about this hobby we love so much. 😂
Beyond excellent, downloaded after watching. I play CDs exclusively. Techno-Layman explanation certainly helps me. Thank you
A clear and concise explanation. Some audiophiles will deny it, of course, as they won't be prepared to admit having bought the hi-res snake-oil!
Excellent video! Thanks for the clarifications, for a regular user these explanations are welcome. I was about to spend a lot of money but I think my best is in the CD quality area. Thank you!
Bartosz, dzięki za bardzo konkretne wyjaśnienie tych zawiłych treści. Świetny film 👍
Cieszymy się, że się podobało :-)
Excellent. I went down this rabbit-hole months ago. My less expert conclusion was the same; we don't need hi-res, but as I listen mostly to Classical, and the stereo era began seventy years ago, many famous recordings from the pre-digital era, particulary the Solti Ring and the Britten Requiem, have since been remastered. You don't need hi-res to benefit from this, but the remastering is what mattered: cleaning up the original tapes, changing balances, fixing pitch, etc. etc. So the new Solti Ring is as good at 16/44 as at 28/192; the difference you're hearing is the remastering, not the upsampling.
It's a money making con by the music industry.
Excellent video Bartosz. Thank you. This helps me to educate more people about the truth about HiRes audio in the consumer domain.
👍🏻
Excellent and informative presentation that cleared up some misunderstandings I was holding for many years! I truly love all my Cyrus gear and would never replace it (apart from with other Cyrus gear)
Glad it was helpful!
People dont grasp how must of music actually happens under 7khz.
For example. The fundamental of the lowest E note of a six string guitar is 82hz. The highest note of a 24 fret guitar is 1312hz. Yes, the highest note we associate with high pitched solos is not even 1.5khz. Yes, I know there are the harmonics, but even you consider the harmonics go 2 extra octaves, it is still below 6khz.
Yep ... 90% of all musical content is below 7khz.
The highest standard musical note on an A440 tuned piano is only 4186hz.
The 5th harmonic of Middle A (440hz) is at a mere 2200hz.
But the real surprise is that a 12 inch crash cymbal is only at about 500hz. The shrillness is the result of rich harmonic content.
I am pretty sure that, thoughout this whole presentation, I could hear some high-res jazz music in the background. It was audible, although I could not hear anything above 16kHz.
TH-cam compresses at 16khz maximum and that's the reason!!!But in my opinion, as I trust my ears, hi-res that some digital stores sell, are not real hi-res, because the majority of these, are not from original source (master tape). They are oveprocessed cd versions and re-remastered, they have extreme bass and I can barely hear higher frequencies, because of extreme bass and hard kick drums that hide the detail. Loudness is extreme and distorts, they are so squashed.
On original compact discs I have, even I convert to mp3 320kbps, that they are crystal clear with detailed sound.
A great video. One thing to realize is that current digital recording and playback is a result of maths. There is ONE solution to any captured or played back wave no matter what the bit depth. Because computers need fixed quantities to work with, there are rounding errors. This shows up as noise like tape hiss. The original signal is there in full detail. Using more bits pushes this noise to a lower level. Even at 16 bits you cannot hear it over the music. So more bits in consumer playback mean nothing but bigger file sizes. Another thing to realize is that if you listen to a loud sound you are deaf to quiet sounds for a period. Your ears are mechanical and get overloaded so big dynamic 24 bit range will be impossible to listen to.
It's the mastering that counts. In any format or resolution. You can't replace the ears with a box. Some sound better on one system VS another.
The 12.5 registers on my spectrum analyzer and higher ones don’t show up at all. Perhaps TH-cam is filtering out high frequencies? I tried tone generator app in iOS App Store. I can hear till 17.5khz.
Impressive, my hearing top up at about 14khz
This is unfortunately true, thanks for pointing it out. We have analysed the transcoded TH-cam files and indeed those higher frequencies have been filtered out by TH-cam. Nevertheless there are plenty of online tone generators you can try to find out how high your hearing goes. Simply search for "Online Tone Generator".
Thanks for clarifying that, though I was going deaf 😂
They have been filtered out because they are pointless.
I would guess you are pretty young to be able to hear 17.5. Or you are an outlier.
One other thing is the noise and distortion introduced by the microphone preamps and any mixing/level controlling done during recording. Even the most expensive professional units have some noise and distortion. Digitally encoding the signal will encode this faithfully too.
Out of all the tracks in my playlist, which was selected purely according to tracks I liked, not on their resolution, I have about 500 44.1kHz tracks, 7 48k Hz tracks, 3 96kHz tracks and 5 192kHz tracks. I am using a Blue II DAC with Adam A5X active montors plugged in directly to the DAC. They all sound good to me and there is nothing that really stands out in the 96+ KHz tracks that really stands out as it might do if, say, if I was comparing 7.4 ips reel-to-reel with 15 ips reel-to-reel. My concern in the past was that we were somehow not capturing the music as well as it could be but, now I have a 192kHz-capable DAC, I am not worried about it now. This is just my own subjective assessment.
I love this guy ! Also i have a question, i use pc with dac (topping e70),cyrus one and MA Gold 100. Is it true that its better to use multiples of 44,1 khz in windows sound settings? I mean, the highest value in my case is 32bits and 384khz but im using 352,8 khz instead, which is divisible by 44.1. Or maybe i should be using some smaller values if we can only hear 20 bits? Greetings to Cyrus Team from Poland! :)
A year late .... But THANK YOU for posting some good old fashioned common sense.
Excellent explanation, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
The video and the explanations given in it are excellent, easy to understand and, above all, true. However, the background music cut in at far too high a level is absolutely annoying! It would be nice if Cyrus could re-release this helpful video, this time without the music. Thanks!
The voice of reason. So much of it is about chasing the numbers. If you can see 192kHz on the screen of your streamer it's bound to sound better - isn't it???
Ruined by the background noise. Avoid
Comparing picture resolution and Audio bit depth is incorrect. In digital audio even a 2 Bit output signal is perfect - but there is a lot of quantization noise generated degrading the observed audio quality! So the expression "resolution" for bit depth is very misleading.
Can I reliably tell the difference in blind tests? No. Even with an external DAC and good headphones I can't, so I don't need high res audio.
Excellent and well said!Totally agree!
What music is playing in the background?
A disturbing one
Interesting, with the tone test I heard the 12.5k test as a high pitched sound (both channels) the 16k test I heard as a low frequency tone, and 18k I heard as a high pitch (higher pitch than the 12.5k tone) but only in the right channel (right ear) Headphones are Monoprice M1060 Open Back Planar headphones. You can work out my views on hi-res as I have a modern implementation of the original TDA1540D chips running non-oversampling.
And of course the response..."well you need a higher resolving system" then you will hear the difference. I am sure there are those self described golden ear people that can tell the difference all the time. You know the same ones that can tell when their cables on on or off the floor.
It’s like goodsound said, it’s all about the filters. Hires is easier for my DAC to decode without altering the signal. It’s all good.
The filters are not only applied in DA conversion, but also in the studio‘s AD conversion, Hi-Res allows for less steep filters, therefore less damage to the audio signal. Gentler filters = better audio.
Studies have shown that the human hearing resolution is ca. 7 microseconds. You claim that more than 44.1 kHz sampling frequency is not necessary. However, CD quality only means a time resolution of 20 µs. Only at 192 KHz sampling do we get down to 5 µs. From this I conclude that Hi-Res can make sense over this point of view. Granted, not every listener will have that ability, but prof. musicians and conductors with trained listening may have.
Bravo! Very few people get this. Music is not just about frequency but also about timing. HighRes has some benefits for transient response and timing. My opinion is that 96khz is the sweet spot for high fidelity. Going higher may give another 1% or 2% in quality but is it worth the expense and will you notice. You need to have very good equipment compared to the average consumer to really get any benefit.
AD with oversampling is a thing you know, and delivering something higher than 44.1 ain't necessary since we don't hear over 20khz anyways (most people go even lower than that). This time resolution thing ain't an argument either since those waveforms can very much happen between samples as well. Don't underestimate that sinc!
7 micoseconds is totally incorrect. So that's wrong. It's about 3 milliseconds at best.
@@simonzinc-trumpetharris852 proof?
Do we need hi-res audio? No, we just love expensive toys.
Pure DSD recording and playback almost always sound great. Not necessarily because of the DSD process, but because of the care used in making such a recording. Most other recording are made with random levels of quality,
DSD definitely cannot be trusted on a sound quality basis. I have seen files that are very poor.
Are sure they were recorded as DSD or could they have been converted from PCM 44Khz and upsampled then marketed for DSD playback?@@r423fplip
DSD was created as a recording and archive format because at the time it could be converted to PCM or any new future formats with minimal loss in quality, unlike PCM. Converters have improved a great deal since then.
Yes dsd is awesome, for people saying they can't hear a difference come to my house and i promise you will tell a difference
What sounds best for one person is not what sounds best for another: we are not industrial products, each of us has a different perception, this include different sound perception.
A person trained in classical music with real instruments for years will have a far higher sensitivity to sound quality than the pop music lover listening to mp3 lossless compressed with low quality in ear bluetooth compressed earbud.
Same for somebody trained to cooking in 5 stars restaurant will have a far different palate than a mc donald customers.
Generally speaking masses have been trained for decades to love very low quality of anything: food, audio, tv series, reasonings, morals, that's why the world is going downhill.
Hi-Rez audio is an audiophile's dream that they magically can hear sound beyond what their hearing is capable of yet their egos will tell you, " I can hear the diffrence". Really? Can you prove it with facts than with your opinion? 😮
I find it funny how 70 year old audiophile can talk about better speakers capturing all the crackles. People are so obsessed with things they eighther can't hear of if they can it doesn't add anything good to the music.
I think Hi-Res audio is noticeably better to my ears. Especially the sound stage and depth.
If you'd do a blind test between 24/192 and 16/44.1 you would at the VERY best hear a very slight difference in the upper most treble, but most likely you wouldn't hear any difference whatsoever since I bet you don't hear anything over 12-20khz (depending on your age) and don't play your music at 100dB+ anyways.
Blind test.
How can you tell?
Do we need 3000cc car. Why I need 3000cc car, a 1300cc car already can give me 110km/hour speed on the highway that is the speed limit set by the government. Now I can decide to go ahead to purchase the 1300cc car, and use it for maybe 10 years, after 10 year I just need to buy another new car that is 1300cc and so on for the rest of my life, and I can save a lot and keep the saving together with me and live a happy life forever and ever……amen.
I issue you with a challenge. Compile a lengthy playlist of CD quality tracks you enjoy listening to. Compile an identical playlist, this time using ‘high res’ tracks. Listen to both. I bet you will suffer from listener fatigue far quicker with the CD quality, even if you don’t hear a difference.
Older music, maybe for archival purposes. Newer music definitely no.
why play music when you are talking? as an audio expert you should know better. Maybe I should just listen to the music and not the words coming out of your mouth.
NO!