As I listen to my new system (PS Audio M1200 amps and LS50 Metas) I find myself gravitating to the HiRes Qobuz recordings more and more. They just sound better and clearer and more unmuffled than the non-HiRes ones. There is so much more detail to hear I never knew was there.
Paul did not mention a "key" factor, when it comes to high resolution audio: "The source material" Most source material is between suck to very good. Very little is outstanding. And when it comes to popular music, then perhaps 1 in 1,000 songs have outstanding sound quality. If you think that your favorite pop, disco, or rock and roll songs sound great, then you have not heard a truly great sounding song. So if you take all of the blundered songs, released by incompetent engineers at the studios, and obtain high resolution versions of those same songs, you will have a clearer picture into just how bad they are (or just how not great they are). If you take an out-of-focus video, and play it on the best, sharpest monitor that money can buy, then you end up with a super view into how out-of-focus your video is. The same goes for audio. When you have a super detailed image of a badly produced song, you still hear a badly produced song. For songs that sound fantastic at 44.1 kHz / 16 bits, then those songs would benefit from a high resolution version of that same release. ----- Why did Paul create Octave Records? Because Paul knows how bad studios do their job. Because Paul knows that studios have an addiction to "Too much equalization, too much compression, too much unnecessary processing, is never enough". For the mass number of great, popular songs out there, nearly all of them have too much processing, and at higher resolution, you hear the degradation all the more on quality, professionally set-up stereos. There are many Jazz and Classical songs that were done right, and benefit from higher resolutions. Sadly, they are the exception, when they should be the rule. Cheers!
I appreciate your videos! I recently got my first taste of the hifi world with my Tekton Pendragons I got this year. Originally I only replaced the speakers, using the same yamaha receiver I already had and it was a good overall improvement. Even more recently however I upgraded to a separate power amp, DAC, and preamp, and the difference was even more dramatic to me! It's hard to describe in words what your ears hear, and I think that's where talks about audio often run into difficulty, but the music just felt more alive, and the stereo felt "more stereo-y" haha (i think people usually describe this as the sound stage). DACs in particular are a lot more complicated than I ever imagined, and I definitely don't know all the engineering involved, but they can sound dramatically different.
I remember in the 80's speaker and headphones being plastered with "DIGITAL READY" because apparently these new CD's were blowing up non "digital ready" cones. It was a nice marketing job to make people repurchase speakers and headphones.
Yep! Radio Shack was bad at this. Didn't help that their "house brand" at the time was called Digital. I still have a pair of 3-way Digitals in my basement. Cabinets have seen better days but the drivers are still solid. 🤣
Paul, I agree with you that 44.1kHz/16bit should be enough. However, I do think it falls short of "being all it could be" in most recordings. I am pushing close to 500 CDs and about 50 SACDs in my collection. In the collection there are normal CDs that sound fantastic and SACDs that really sound lacking. I truly believe that mastering and engineering plays a very large, but overlooked part, in the sound quality of the finished recording. One of my best sounding CDs is the Animals Retrospective, on ABKCO Records, which was made from a DSD master and engineered by Gus Skinas. The bass goes very low and clean... the highs are crisp with subtle nuisances that are clearly there. By the same token, I have some SACDs that really sound like mush. The one truism I have found is that an Octave Records SACD is always the highest quality recording possible. Even when the artist or their music doesn't suit my tastes, I always enjoy the quality of the recording.
I agree also. I recently listened to a 24/96 recording via Qobuz of an album released this year and it was one of the worst recordings I have ever heard. It was so overly compressed that I had to stop listening after two tracks.
Sooo true! Mixing/mastering people remain invisible and significance of their work understood by few. Paul mentioned in one of his videos it's an art... and many today don't know how to do right.
It's simple; It's either a well executed release or not. Endless examples exist of less than ideal sonics in "hi res", ... similarly, there's many releases with quality sonics via Redbook. Example; Donald Fagan's Nightfly, recorded on first gen digital rig +40yrs ago. How can it possess adequate sonics, ... let alone stellar sonics? How? It was simply well executed ... best practices were employed throughout, top to bottom. Care was taken throughout the 𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙚 process... Acoustic environment, mic selection/placement, signal path, gain structure, etc. Today, the mindset exists that it'd be unthinkable to use recording and conversion from just 10yrs ago! And of course, the latest updated state of the art gear would likely be preferred. But 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙡𝙮, simply being mindful (fanatical in Fagan's case) of best practices throughout is key to a quality sonics.
The noticeable difference for me has to do not with simply presence or absence of sound, but tonal qualities, perceived dynamics and realism. High res done right sounds so good.
@@astheworldburns3590 Hey Paul, I certainly appreciate what you’re saying and completely agree that without a/b comparison…how can we tell a difference? A couple of points to that. First, we are likely a bunch of audiophiles; I know I am, and one thing we do as audiophiles is tweak, spend money for things we think will improve sound, and for me, A/B compare to try and verify those improvements. I have spent so many hours in my life moving a speaker literally 0.5 inches, sitting, listening, putting it back, moving another 0.5 inches, etc. to get “that sound” I was looking for. So yeah, in an A/B comparison with CD for instance, there is a noticeable improvement. That brings me to the second point, of what is a noticeable improvement? For me, even without A/B comparing, I have a certain standard to which I expect and want from an audio system. Since I’m old, I remember 8-track tapes, cassettes, and all of that. I can tell you unequivocally, that when 8-track and even cassettes were king, I did not like their reproduction of music. The hiss, the dragging, the lack of dynamics, even though we didn’t have better (aside from Vinyl), I knew that we needed better. When CDs came along, I was a teenager. I loved the direct track access, the lack of “tape hiss,” and the increase in dynamic range, it was fantastic. That said, when listening to a CD on any system, from a $500 Best Buy, to what most of us probably have, and up to those multi-hundred thousand $ systems we get to experience at a hi-fi shop every once in a while, a CD, sounds like a CD. It’s good, very good, but there is an nth degree of something missing; there is also an nth degree of fatigue or “squared off hard edges” in music produced from CD. Not dissimilar to early digital amps that could easily be picked out of a group of amps, a CD has a certain overall sound quality. More specifically, a lack thereof. If you recall, JVC introduced a CD format that was basically higher bit rate but still CD…I forget what they called it, but I remember hearing things (and quietness) that I hadn’t heard before at a shop in Columbus, from an Eagles album we’ve all heard a million times. I asked the owner “what is special about that recording? It sounds better” and he told me it was playing on one of those JVC-invented discs. Fast forward a few more years, and I listened to my first DSD128, and let me tell you; strings sound like strings, not reproduction of strings. Same goes for beautiful female voices, my gosh High-res does wonders for that part of the audio spectrum. I’m telling you at least my 100% truth, even without A/B comparing, this was the first time I had ever heard music played back and “felt” it like I did, and for the first time, I was finally convinced that what I was hearing was music, was instruments. I couldn’t hear the recording, I couldn’t hear the lack of some aspect of fidelity, I heard the room, the voices and the instruments. To me, it was that step out of the “uncanny valley “ so talked about in computer graphics. I didn’t feel like anything was missing, like something still needs to be improved. What is wonderful, though, is that even if my own standards have been achieved, I know that a new generation will in fact improve upon this. We will get better than DSD or whatever else high-res format, heck you guys are probably already aware of what will be replacing these current formats. I can’t wait.
I would love to hear ' The Beauty of Gray (2 meter session) ' by Live as recorded on CD on the PS Audio IRS5 system. It is one of the better dynamic range recordings and the studio stage set is captured. Yet I can imagine how amazing it would have been in 24/192 or even better when recorded in DSD. People who deny Hi-Res either are not capable to hear or see past their own thoughts, or just have never had the joy of a nice, well set up system. Paul's tips for setup in his book and disc are amazing, they really help understanding and improving.
Since the filters are not the perfect filters of Nyquist theory, people can't appeal to Nyquist when they claim 44.1 suffices. If they had perfect filters, then fine, but they just don't, and therefore in real life, higher resolution gives you more.
Moving from the average Sony Blah Blahs at around 20-60 ohm to Sennheiser HD600's at 300 ohm with an amp to overcome the impedance, I can easily say that the sound quality is very different. This is due to distortion. When you crank up regular headphones you misunderstand "Too loud", it's not too loud, it's peaking and starting to distort (and sound like crap) so you back it down. I can't turn up my HD600's too loud in the old conventional way, and only notice it's been up too loud when I take them off and realize my ears are ringing. That's how clean the sound is, and they sound just as clean and clear at any volume. If I have a head ache, I can turn the volume down low and still hear just fine. That all being said, your system's throughput is very important. All the best gear in the world won't matter if your source is incorrectly set to 16 bit 48khz when it's capable of 32 bit 96khz. I have to keep an eye on my sound card's settings as either updates or a program will occasionally reset the bit rate down to 16 bit, and yeah you start noticing how narrow and limited the sound has become. I used to laugh at audiophiles and just say they had more money than they knew what to do with, but my setup is pretty modest at around $700 and it makes all those pairs of $60-100 headphones I bought over the years look like hot garbage. Also know that it will take your ears and brain a couple weeks or so to adjust to what you're hearing to appreciate the difference. It's not about how much you spend, it's how you spend it and if you're willing to take the time to learn how to use the gear properly.
I have it that we don't understand how our senses work and what they can perceive. There is a study on blind site where blind people can perceive the emotional content of an image. They can't "see" the image, describe the picture, but they can tell you if they get a feeling of sadness or happiness from it. We may not be able to hear (describe sounds outside of our audible range) but that does not mean they don't have an impact on us.
Clarity, sound-stage, and resolution are not wholly inclusionary with frequency response or efficiency. Thai's why we have high resolution sources and and high resolution speakers (like my beloved ribbon drivers).
This may also be a reason, I Think the claims that high res audio is not better may be true for a pure sine wave of high frequency.. But probably when you combine multiple waves beyond the audible range, it can produce frequencies in audible range. In stereos, the frequency beyond audible range is not mixed down (as they are produce by individual speakers/drivers), so the resultant audible range wave between high res and normal can be different.
Two of my favourite videos on topic Why we need hi-res audio (physiological aspect) th-cam.com/video/r_wxRGiBoJg/w-d-xo.html How it is achieved in digital audio th-cam.com/video/jBYZTTErTY8/w-d-xo.html
When I listen to a CD on my system the sound feels like it is coming out of the speakers. When I listen to vinyl or high resolution audio the music sounds like it is encompassing every inch of the room and creates a much more pleasurable experience.
Wow, I was debating CD vs records with somebody (who thought he was more qualified to judge cause he was an engineer who recorded and produced music n I was just a listener?) and so to reassure myself did some comparing again and that's exactly what (among other things) I came up with. CD's sound was clean, good separation , but from the speakers. Records (good condition n noise free), sound was all around the speakers. Coarse then he started throwing in pro digital with higher sampling n bits etc., when I was talking about to CD's. Plus engineers typically listen at a mixing board with near field monitors, not sitting back with a good, not even top system. Personally I think a experienced "listener" has the edge on judging. And he had no idea what my background was, go figure?
@@bradt.3555 The only way to convince a skeptic is to have them come over and sit in front of your system. Have them give you a top 10 list of their favorite albums or songs. Do some research and find which one has the best quality production and get that on vinyl.
I am thinking of one TH-cam network where the moderator and his Zoom guests seem to love their test equipment more than they love audio equipment or the sound of music. “What fools these mortals be”.
Thank you Robin Goodfellow (a.k.a. Puck), you are absolutely correct. I once attended a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" where the part of Puck was played by two young actresses simultaneously, frequently alternating lines. It worked fabulously well for the character who seems to be everywhere at once.
1. it does sound better 2. if youre actually interested 3. if youre *capable of hearing.* i maintain 2 people cant run the same speed/distance, 2 people cant read the same fine print, 2 people cant smell the same odors, 2 people cant detect the same food ingredients.... why cant one hear better than the next?
@Douglas Blake , understood. im 62 years old. i worked 38 years on the RR. i was a roadie for rock bands. i love firearms. on hearing tests i top out at 14k. that said... i have a trophy winning competition truck stereo. my tweeters (Focal krx2) play to 22k. when i got in my buddys truck, his tweeters (Focal Utopia M) play to 50k. the difference is immediate & undeniably evident. i might not be able to "hear" it......... but i know its there.
CD audio (44.1 kHz) does not capture everything we can hear in the sense that it cannot capture the full harmonics of sound that we can hear. Yes, 44.1kHz sampling is enough to capture any individual soundwave up to the highest frequencies that most people can hear (20kHz or so), but it cannot capture let's say 10 different high frequency soundwaves in the 18kHz-20kHz range, because it doesn't have high enough sampling rate. For this example, you'd need something like 10 (number of soundwaves) X 2 (Niquist) X frequency (19kHz let's say - an average of 10 different individual soundwaves in the 18kHz-20kHz range) = 380kHz - way beyond CD standard. And yes, we can hear multiple different soundwaves in the 20Hz-20kHz range at the same time. How many at the same time? I haven't seen yet any studies, but definitely waaaay more than one :D This is the crux of the misunderstanding (and misinformation) issue in the digital domain. Perceptible frequency range (20Hz-20kHz) versus Sample rate. The industry conflates the two concepts and thus confuses people in the process that they are the same thing, but they are not. Sampling rate has to be enormously higher than the perceptible frequency range. The whole point of digital high res signals is to have a more detailed image of the real audio signal, whether it's audio, video, image or whatever. The video world can benefit of resolutions enormously higher than what we have today, and also of refresh rates. The equivalent applies to the audio world as well. It's just that these notions affect the willingness of buyers to spend too much on gear, so the industry almost always and unanimously has an interest in supressing such realizations.
@Douglas Blake Uhm, a speaker can reproduce multiple soundwaves at the same time if engineered properly. Let's say a woofer is given the signal to reproduce a 100Hz soundwave. While the cone is doing its 100Hz cycle, it can also vibrate at a separate, higher frequency (let's say a 500Hz soundwave) within that cycle of the original 100Hz wave. Of course, there are limits to how many concurrent soundwaves a speaker can produce based on the electronics, material and other engineering stuff in which I am not an expert. But a single speaker can definitely produce multiple concurrent soundwaves. And when I say speaker, I mean a single driver, so don't draw the wrong conclusion that I mean a speaker with multiple drivers (tweeter, woofer etc.).
@Douglas Blake Where did you come up with the cone having to be in more than one places at once? I did not claim such a thing and there would be no need for it either. A speaker cone can reproduce multiple higher frequency cycles within the cycle of a lower frequency. The same thing happens with the biological eardrum. While reproducing, let's say, a 100Hz vibration, it can also reproduce a higher frequency vibration that will have shorter cycles that fit within that larger initial cycle. Envision the cone doing a large back-front 100Hz cycle, but within it, it's doing smaller, shorter back-and-front cycles of a higher frequency. The cone does not have to be in 2 places at once, but can still reproduce one or more additional frequencies within that same large cycle of the initial low frequency wave. That's how we can hear multiple soundwaves at the same time.
@@geoff37s38 That may be true, but it does not invalidate whatsoever the core of my argument of being able to hear multiple sound frequencies concurrently.
I had the reasonably unique (I think there were a couple dozen there at the most, small room) opportunity in the '70's to sit in on a comparison between formats. It was an AES meeting at a Nashville recording studio. They were releasing a Direct to Disc that they had also recorded to an Ampex 2 track and a Soundstream! We heard the disc, the analog tape and digital source played back through the West Lake system it was mastered on! The disc was played on the cutting lathe platter it's master was cut on with an SME arm and V15 cartridge. 100% agreement the disc easily blew the others away.
Although I quite enjoy how my CDs sound with my Marantz player I also get a kick out of using Jriver to upsample my FLAC files to 705.6MHz and using a slow filter on my DAC.
Source material is important. When I was in the Air Force we had a saying, " You can't polish a turd no matter how much you rub it." That being said a quality recording is the best place to start.
As to the 44.1/48kHz sampling side of digital audio, with respect to our hearing... yes, the RANGE of what we can hear is up to 20 kHz (when you're young, etc.) and Nyquist tells us we require double of this value to capture it all, hence 40 kHz *blabla math, bits* or 44.1/48 kHz. But, the RESOLUTION of what we can hear is about 7 µs (!), as research has shown in recent years. 7 µs translates to 143 kHz, hence *blabla math, bits* sampling with 384 kHz captures all we can perceive. ......... this is what I learned just recently, also I'm new to the "hifi-hobby", so please, correct me or build upon this :)
@Douglas Blake I'm not saying you can perceive frequency above "20 kHz" (and yes, I know about what range is about possible to hear, also w.r.t. age). I'm making the case for the difference between RANGE ("20 kHz") and RESOLUTION (7 microseconds) of what we hear, maybe for want of better terminology. What is your point on sampling, maybe more in the context of the 7 microseconds? (I'll try and dig up my reference for this number)
@Douglas Blake Thanks for your insights! Studying on was and still is the plan.. btw, haven't found the source of the 7 microseconds, but it was on the TH-cam channel of Hans Beekhuyzen that I first heard of it. Greetings from Holland!
Perceptual audio coding is what makes the compression algorithm works and according to the bitrate and frequency employed it determines what sounds can be left and which ones gone
Thanks Paul ! I can honestly say I do not understand all of what you say but I am learning a lot from your talks. I have just purchased a set of KLH -5 and hope they will replace my AR-11"s. I run a Marantz 2270 and a technics turn table w/ Ortafon blue cartridge and a Teac reel - reel . Old school yes but I love it. Keep up the good work God bless !!
infraand ultrasonic frequencies can damage your speaker IF the sounds have extreme amplitude (volume). extremely low frequecies can behave like temporary dc current, which can blow a speaker if its to intense or does not flip in time (but that would be riducously low frequency). extremely high frequencies can leave the speaker no time to excellerate, so the driver instead heats up. this can be damaging too. but this needs very high amplitude to make it beyond negligable. low energy sub bass and ultrasonic high res audio information is of no danger and might improve loudspeaker movement naturality.
The real problem with some of these formats was demonstrated by Amir on his channels. It’s true you can’t hear above 20 kHz no matter what. However having spectral content BEYOND there can cause serious issues for your tweeter if the amplitudes are high enough due to intermodulation distortion, which will be quite audible if the products fall into the audio band. This is due to the tweeter being driven into its nonlinear region. I experienced this when I was doing something stupid such as using my amplifier with my function generator and forgot about it still being hooked up. Since the frequency was ultrasonic I could not hear it when I went to play music. I was promptly greeted with alien sounds coming out of my speakers since they were being blasted with tons of ultrasonics.
Correct! I did the same with my signal generator a few years back, feeding my speakers with HF beyond the nominated 20Khz. I couldn't hear anything but, surely I did smell the tweeter voice coils as they...melt! Expensive mistake.. 😯
@@m.9243 Came close! Fortunately the distortion let me know immediately what was going on, and the voice coils just got a few degrees above ambient. Still scary to feed almost the full power of the amp into those tiny little voice coils. And yeah sucks to hear about your tweeters. Hopefully they had replacement drivers in your case?
@@mysock351C Yes, I had to get them from France! The speakers in question are JM Lab / Focals Electra 926. The tweeters were not cheap either.. Made of Titanium and worth $ 370 each.. Live and learn!
Pro sound guys know .with big power amps with extreme voltage swings it becomes a problem when you need gain up enough to hear low amplitude details and not throw the cone out of the basket during dynamic bursts..2 ways.. and honestly you do both . 1 make the speaker setup so capable it will handle it..and 2 use some type of averaging...DRC.
To consumers i think hi-res is a niche, but not essential.. some people may prefer the ultrasound added to their playback, which have more directional energy that people can probably *feel*..thus getting better image as sir you advocate... also if a hi-res recording doesn't not filter out the ultrasound it probably cause more damage to the ears than to the loudspeakers.. i live near a power transformer station that radiate constant ultrasound at so-called safe level only on paper. and I hate that sound..
No need in hi-resolution, ive had many high end speakers and setups, and dont even use a dac. Im not complaining and im picky and analytical, i stream good recordings and have no background noise, nothing out of order, imaging, instrument separation, its all there, dont buy into gimmicks, do what works for you.
Bought a pair of JBL L-100a's in 1978. 3 or 4 years later JBL sends me a letter stating that my speakers are "Digital ready." I thought... No kidding... LOL! 😁
I've got JBL XPL 160's which were sold as designed for digital audio. Yes, they are. But the best sounding I've ever got them is with a tube 12AU7 preamp with an direct coupled Accuphase MOSFET poweramp. BHK's are not much around in this country...
@@zargamali8531 The JBL L-100a's are not being used now. They are sitting in their JBL boxes. Many decades have passed since I bought them new and the crossovers need to be rebuilt. Presently, I'm using a pair of JBL 4365's speakers. I have two DACs, a PS Audio Perfectwave Directstream and a Denafrips Terminator+. I'm looking for a used Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC now. I've heard very good things about that DAC. My preamp is a PS Audio BHK. Using a McIntosh MC452 amp (much to the chagrin of Paul, lol!)
@@edmaster3147 Yes, I've listened to the XPL 160's, very nice. I've also been thinking about replacing my BHK preamp with an all tube preamp instead of just the the input stage like the BHK. The problem with 'modern' tube preamps they have seem to gone to the 'neutral' side of sound. Good sound, but not anything like older 'tube sounding' preamps. Weather that be a good thing or bad I guess it's all up to each person's taste. By the way, where are you located? I'm in the U.S.
@@Mark-lq3sb I'm in the Netherlands. I got the idea of 12AU7 pre with MOS-FET power amp by the BHK. As I already got an Accuphase amp an Aric Audio pre found its way in my system funny enough, those are so rare over here. I like tubes, but the Mosfets are much more capable to drive the speakers. But if you love the old tube amp sound, Steve Guttenberg just did a review on a Bottlehead tube pre, which he said sounded really 'tuby', perhaps thats something for you.Cheers.
Im not a fan of p.s audio stuff. Never heard any but prices are insane. But i dont think he designs anything. He manages the company. The engineers do the math.
Pauuuuuul, please explain the details of why, the videos can be as long as you want them to be. I've felt youtube has allot of short quips that are designed for a general audience, I think that conception is ill advised. The audience is thirsting, and is focused, this isn't a general audience, and we all have the time for the depth, and we need desperately need more than just a passing mention. Please consider expanding the depth and complexity, for at least one episode to explain these filter-interactions and sampling rate things. I think it would do the world a great service, also watch out for that oatmeal! it's a gateway to granola!!! lol
Graph a 20,000 Hz sine wave and add vertical lines through it to represent a sample rate of 44,100 Hz. You'll see very quickly that the samples don't even remotely capture the full range of the waveform, because they are barely sampling more than twice per wave, and any given moment on the wave that is sampled is very rarely the peak or valley of the waveform. In fact, the sample may easily be taken at the exact moment the wave is at it's null point, and not "return" to capturing a peak for many consecutive samples. Even if it randomly captures a peak, the subsequent sample will not capture the corresponding negative peak. At 44.1 khz, the A/D is constantly phasing in and out of capturing the input waveform. This phasing, combined with an inability to capture the full amplitude of the waveform for anything other than occasional random samples, and an inability to capture the exact stop and end of the waveform, let alone capture any variation in the waveform (especially important for complicated waveforms from overtones and recorded room acoustics) means that while 44.1 khz sample rates may technically be capable of capturing "something" at 20 khz, it is massively distorted and useless for transmitting information to your brain. If you move to 88.2 khz or higher, suddenly you can now sample a 20 khz tone more than four times per cycle. This is still pretty crappy in terms of being able to accurately interpret the wave, but it's a massive improvement. Once you get down to the range where most of us adults can actually hear (12k-16k) and combine that with 88.2 khz or higher sample rates, now we can finally gather enough info from the waveform for a DAC to approximate an output wave that's getting close to the original waveform. That's why when people talk about the effect of hi-res sample rates, they often talk about how the hi-res version has more "air" and "space," and that the recorded room is more clearly reproduced. Your brain can't echo-locate and tell you anything about the recorded space unless those high frequencies can be captured ACCURATELY, and not just as useless pulsing noise. Same goes for bit depth, where the sound of the room is generally vastly quieter than the instrument. The instrument doesn't need all that range, but the recorded room does (this doesn't apply to noise-gated sources, of course). Bass frequencies don't need hi-res because the waves are so slow that even 44.1 khz can sample them tons of time per cycle, and you don't need hi-res in noisy listening environments that drown out our brain's ability to echo-locate.
@@geoff37s38 Thanks for the link. Took me a while to watch it, but I enjoyed it. I'd be curious to see how these experiements would translate to the real, imperfect, and infinitely more complicated waveforms of actual music, but this was very informative in terms of clearing up some general misconceptions I had about digital audio. Thanks!
Nerve transmission < 1microsecond. Neuro studies on double click resolution show temporal audio detection as low as 7-8 microseconds. 44.1khz sample rate = 22 microseconds. Need to be > 192khz to capture temporal resolution appropriately. This 20khz is good enough argument misses the point.
Hey Paul, love your videos. However, the 'comparison' you used at around the 4 minute mark was very misleading/troubling because you made no mention whether the CD and hi-res comparison you did were taken from the same master, therefore invalidating any perceived sonic differences. Unless you compare music taken from the same master and done by the same engineer(s) then any comparison is nonsense.
Hi-res files may produce ultrasonic noise that was not part of the performance. Not likely to cause tweeter damage but may cause a nasty response in the tweeter that can cause undesirable effects in the audible range.
@@edmaster3147 He's just bs-ing, as many here on Paul's videos do. Hi-res files are not about ultrasonic frequencies, but about capturing and reproducing multiple frequencies in the audible 20Hz-20kHz(ish) spectrum. The industry is just misdirecting people into thinking that they are giving you ultrasonic frequencies, but what they are in reality doing is giving more frequencies in the audible spectrum, hence the higher resolution (higher number of frequencies (aka vibrations) in the audio content).
@@edfort5704 The funny thing is though, that Paul's knowledge makes sense and I implemented some of his tech tips which work spot on. I don't believe that the industry is misdirecting, I do believe that lack of factual knowledge often leads to mistrust.
Cd 16/44.1 is absolutely nice, specially with a transport. But dsd or sacd does sound better when recorded on dsd. I just cant jump in to sacd as there are too few that does it right. Now im just collecting cds and im pretty happy with it. If sacd gets more and more available (wishful thinking), i start collecting those too.
Do a proper blind test between the two like on the lines on what Mark Waldrep ran a couple of years back. Pure A Vs B comparison is pointless if you know which is which. In Mark's tests, blind testing showed statistically that people were not able to detect the differences. It was as if their selections were no different than coin tosses. Anecdotes of some person hearing a difference are useless unless the test was blind and properly/professionally controlled. Nobody on the scientific side of things disputes there are differences. There most definitely are significant dynamic range and frequency differences. But we have to scientifically show that these can be perceived to validate the true value of high-res.
@Douglas Blake Probably not, but does that really matter, except when designing circuits to make sure there have not been any blatant design flaws (hey, it happens)? Rhetorical question, it doesn't. I listen to diverse genres of music, not test signals with the biochemical kludge that is the chain from my external nervous system to my brain; my personal version of an ongoing trial-and-error process that has gone through God knows how many iterations over literally billions of years since the first common ancestor of life on Earth. It's a messy process, yet here we are. That includes the engineers who designed and fine tuned your aforementioned scope and FFT analyser. Paul McG recently gave an example of when they were comparing the two finalist designs for their newest phono preamp. Both measured nearly identically (nothing is ever identical) and both met the design criteria by numerical analysis. When they plugged them into their reference system for evaluation, one gave a reasonable facsimile of the 3-dimensional sound fields of the voices and musical instruments in the recording venues. The other sounded as flat as the proverbial pancake. Which one do you think was advanced toward production? Another rhetorical question. Don't confuse measured precision with the complex external reality (What a concept! -- Robin Williams).
@Douglas Blake Looking back over my previously message, I find no indication that I believed that you do not listen, that is pretty much the default position for people who watch and comment on PS Audio posts. Presumably to a thoughtfully assembled system. Doubtless not the same as my thoughtfully assembled system. It's still a reasonably free country with many and diverse options. And I too am weary of these little on-line debates, while the many significant challenges facing people in the wide world tend to get set aside; some of which are too quickly rising to existential levels. We have both expressed our positions with abbreviated arguments within the limited time-space of the comment chain and which are not likely to change these aspects of our respective world views. So let us part ways on our chosen paths for now. The frequently anastomosing nature of reality may bring us together again. Or not.
@@ryacus Why stop at radar? There is the whole continuum of the electromagnetic spectrum ranging from beyond the cosmic microwave background radiation and high gamma radiation. Massively useful for astronomy beyond that tiny sliver of what human eyes can see. And frequencies of sonic pressure waves beyond that narrow bandwidth of what the human ears can hear. Other biochemical lifeforms have senses that exceed ours in many ways. Yet when it comes to what is generally called art that is experienced and evaluated by H. sapiens (frankly a rather pompous self designation), it is irrelevant. Maybe someday, artificial intelligence may be able to evaluate aesthetics as we do (and good luck finding a commonality of opinion in these matters) to a lesser or greater extent, but will it consider that as something other than a waste of bandwidth? To focus on just music for this forum, that is something that is important me, including the reasonably good, yet none-the-less imperfect reproduction of imperfect recordings. I appreciate the work of clever engineers and their tools to make this possible. However, when I personally listen to music in its broad variety of genres, my all too human nervous system is what I have, not a spectrum analyzer which would useless to me anyway for this enterprise.
Paul, if I separate the plus and minus legs on my speaker cable. I figure this would eliminate any capacitance and inductance between them, Right? So my question is, how far is the minimum distance to eliminate any mentioned L&C effects?
I think the big reason hi Rez is nonsense is because less than 10% of all recorded music ever is high Rez. Does it really matter if it sound better if it demands you limit your potential listening material by 90%? In my books, it limits my potential enjoyment of music by at least 90%. And to the uptight OCD audiophile who will inevitably respond to this comment.......ok then, your right, I'm wrong. Now take your meds and try to calm yourself.
My Topping NX4-DSD portable DAC/amp playing bitperfect USB source material from Neutron Player on my old phone sounds really good for the money (Neutron bypasses any system drivers). The NX4 seems to pair a lot better with IEMs than my big Sennheiser HDs, but for portable use, that's fine. People also seem to like the Monoprice Monolith portable DAC/amp for the same use-case. I wouldn't buy a propriatary gadget specifically for "transporting" digital audio files or streaming sources as they're never going to be as future-proof or tweakable as something running a major OS paired with an external DAC/amp (which you can upgrade any time you like) and a good app like Neutron. I can lie in bed, pop in IEMs, and access my entire digital collection of hi-res, redbook, and compressed files from my network drive without moving or disturbing my wife. And if I want to switch over to watch Paul's latest post or listen to an audiobook, all I have to do is open those apps.
when it's compressed to 44.1k 16 bit, is the information really still there to up sample to 192k 24 bit, especially when it was mastered at 96k 24 bit?? having a hard time wrapping my head around this one. i understand the bit but not so much on the freq. sounds like filtering to me. especially since it's far beyond human hearing and most high end speakers seem to roll off before 20 k.
This may help Why we need hi-res audio (physiological aspect) th-cam.com/video/r_wxRGiBoJg/w-d-xo.html How it is achieved in digital audio th-cam.com/video/jBYZTTErTY8/w-d-xo.html
@Douglas Blake maybe, if you have time, you can pick some examples from there two particular videos and post them here in comments, please? I'm interested in truth after all
im new to high res audio, im young so i dont have a good set up (i use a win10 laptop and have a razer headset that outputs in 24/48kHz) but even i can tell the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/48. Pink Floyds DSOTM bluray is the best one, listen to the CD then listen to the Bluray and you will definitely tell the difference
@Douglas Blake thats why i used the DSOTM immersion box set. IIRC the CD has the same mix/master as the stereo 24/96kHz mix/master. IMO the DSOTM in high res is the best album in high res.
@Douglas Blake i mean the box could always be wrong, we are talking about info the record labels put on there and they're totally 100% right all the time.
@@magicscreengames4353 im pretty sure ill be deaf when im older, i listened to music so loud in my youth that even the loudest setting on my phone is too quiet
Lest someone reading your comment actually believes you, if that were true, the speakers would have to also emit energy in the visible spectrum, so they'd have to literally be glowing hot when doing what you claim them to do :)
Dynamic Range we can't "withstand"? I know what my take on it is! It's like the Georgians thinking that if you travelled faster than 30 miles per hour your body would explode! 🤣
Well considering that most rooms resting level is about 30dB or higher, CD range is 93dB so in most cases to get full CD dynamic range you’d be listing at 123dB+. If you’re listening that loud then you WILL incur hearing loss after a short time. That has been proven, the Georgian’s did not prove the 30mph thing, so it’s not similar.
@Douglas Blake I'm aware of that. But, getting back to the point, _Dynamic Range_ is not equivalent to, nor does it have anything to do with _Acoustic pressure_ or "loudness".
@@gregf9160 Dynamic range is defined as “the ratio of the loudest undistorted sound to the quietest discernible sound, expressed in decibels, that a system is capable of producing.” So it actually has everything to do with sound pressure level. Specifically, it has to with the difference in the loudest and softest in which a system can be perceived. Like I mentioned previously if you are in a room with 30dB resting white noise, then to have a perceived dynamic range of 93dB, you have to have a sound pressure of 93dB above the minimum of 30dB. So 123dB, nothing complicated about it. That’s assuming that the sound engineer used that full amount of dynamic range, which is unlikely. Overall, I’m not saying dynamic range of the recording is irrelevant, but in most cases, you will be limited by the dynamic range of your room, speakers, amp, or even the recording itself, well before the recording media runs out.
@@noahnovotny2100 no, it doesn’t. Dynamic Range is a measure of bandwidth, not power. The fact the decibel is used as a unit of measurement (actually, just comparison) both of power and bandwidth is irrelevant, they are not the same thing. Anything and everything can be measured in Db. Bandwidth and Power are related of course, but are two distinct and unrelated things.
The vegetarian just made an analogy about how limiting your dietary intake to certain foods on paper might look OK but really isn't in reality... that is a lot to take in :D :D
There is unquestionably an audible difference between MP3 files and ‘red book’ CDs and between ‘red book’ CDs and high resolution. If you cannot detect that difference, it may be that your hearing is not sufficiently astute, or, your hifi gear is not adequately resolving. If, you are one of those ‘nay sayers’, who trust statistics and specifications above your ears? I put the following challenge to you. Assemble a good few hours of your favourite music. Listen to it for as long as you can, firstly in ‘red book’ CD format and then in high resolution. Providing you’re not victim of one or both of the caveats above, even if you don’t consciously hear a difference, chances are you will turn off the ‘red book’ CD music a lot earlier than the high resolution music, because high resolution music is far less likely to cause listener fatigue. Try it.
Well, properly made 16/44 recording should be more than adequate for human enjoyment, but the problem is not every 16/44 recording is properly made, especially the 16-bit side, so record at 24-bit is a good thing, so easier to let the 96dB dynamic range to remain after mixing. 44kHz sampling is again adequate, but the anti-aliasing filter during recording session is harder to make. So, again, record in 96kHz is ok, but none the less, proper down sample to 16/44 is good enough. However, IMHO, those up sampling, ie. from 16/44 source to 24/96, is nonsense.
OK I won't sit on the fence. Hires is a scam. Let me explain. Most of the music you listen to was either recorded on tape which doesn't even have cd resolution or at 44khz. Therefore selling hires versions of these tracks is snake oil. Oh and did I say you probably can't ear above 14khz anyway. So what are they hearing these 25khz harmonics with , their subconscious ?
"Sattelite proof" is the new label for future audio equipment.
As I listen to my new system (PS Audio M1200 amps and LS50 Metas) I find myself gravitating to the HiRes Qobuz recordings more and more. They just sound better and clearer and more unmuffled than the non-HiRes ones. There is so much more detail to hear I never knew was there.
Same. I did a direct comparison between Tidal and Qobuz and thought Qobuz sounded much better.
@@WalterReade well you're comparing lossy to lossless so of course Qobuz will sound better 😂
How about Russian satellites falling on speakers, will it damage them?
Not if they've been fed horse medicine.
Don't American satellites also fall?
Is it a case of 'choose your satellite'?
From all the gear the US left behind, there's likely going to be Taliban/Isis satellites falling from the sky shortly.
🛰 🇦🇫
Satellites from the Soviet satellite states.
Paul did not mention a "key" factor, when it comes to high resolution audio:
"The source material"
Most source material is between suck to very good. Very little is outstanding.
And when it comes to popular music, then perhaps 1 in 1,000 songs have outstanding sound quality.
If you think that your favorite pop, disco, or rock and roll songs sound great, then you have not heard a truly great sounding song.
So if you take all of the blundered songs, released by incompetent engineers at the studios, and obtain high resolution versions of those same songs, you will have a clearer picture into just how bad they are (or just how not great they are).
If you take an out-of-focus video, and play it on the best, sharpest monitor that money can buy, then you end up with a super view into how out-of-focus your video is.
The same goes for audio. When you have a super detailed image of a badly produced song, you still hear a badly produced song.
For songs that sound fantastic at 44.1 kHz / 16 bits, then those songs would benefit from a high resolution version of that same release.
-----
Why did Paul create Octave Records?
Because Paul knows how bad studios do their job.
Because Paul knows that studios have an addiction to "Too much equalization, too much compression, too much unnecessary processing, is never enough".
For the mass number of great, popular songs out there, nearly all of them have too much processing, and at higher resolution, you hear the degradation all the more on quality, professionally set-up stereos.
There are many Jazz and Classical songs that were done right, and benefit from higher resolutions. Sadly, they are the exception, when they should be the rule.
Cheers!
Absolutely agree 👍
Paul mentioned this in some other videos (in fact, their number is over 1000 i believe!)
You said a mouthful. In the past six months I have mentioned source material too many times to remember as the last frontier
I appreciate your videos! I recently got my first taste of the hifi world with my Tekton Pendragons I got this year. Originally I only replaced the speakers, using the same yamaha receiver I already had and it was a good overall improvement. Even more recently however I upgraded to a separate power amp, DAC, and preamp, and the difference was even more dramatic to me! It's hard to describe in words what your ears hear, and I think that's where talks about audio often run into difficulty, but the music just felt more alive, and the stereo felt "more stereo-y" haha (i think people usually describe this as the sound stage). DACs in particular are a lot more complicated than I ever imagined, and I definitely don't know all the engineering involved, but they can sound dramatically different.
I remember in the 80's speaker and headphones being plastered with "DIGITAL READY" because apparently these new CD's were blowing up non "digital ready" cones. It was a nice marketing job to make people repurchase speakers and headphones.
Woah.. really?
Yeah, radio shack was all about that for awhile.
I remember it well.
Yep! Radio Shack was bad at this. Didn't help that their "house brand" at the time was called Digital. I still have a pair of 3-way Digitals in my basement. Cabinets have seen better days but the drivers are still solid. 🤣
@Douglas Blake I think Phillips made drivers for DCM as well.
Paul, I agree with you that 44.1kHz/16bit should be enough. However, I do think it falls short of "being all it could be" in most recordings. I am pushing close to 500 CDs and about 50 SACDs in my collection. In the collection there are normal CDs that sound fantastic and SACDs that really sound lacking. I truly believe that mastering and engineering plays a very large, but overlooked part, in the sound quality of the finished recording. One of my best sounding CDs is the Animals Retrospective, on ABKCO Records, which was made from a DSD master and engineered by Gus Skinas. The bass goes very low and clean... the highs are crisp with subtle nuisances that are clearly there. By the same token, I have some SACDs that really sound like mush. The one truism I have found is that an Octave Records SACD is always the highest quality recording possible. Even when the artist or their music doesn't suit my tastes, I always enjoy the quality of the recording.
I agree also. I recently listened to a 24/96 recording via Qobuz of an album released this year and it was one of the worst recordings I have ever heard. It was so overly compressed that I had to stop listening after two tracks.
Sooo true! Mixing/mastering people remain invisible and significance of their work understood by few. Paul mentioned in one of his videos it's an art... and many today don't know how to do right.
It's simple;
It's either a well executed release or not.
Endless examples exist of less than ideal sonics in "hi res", ... similarly, there's many releases with quality sonics via Redbook.
Example; Donald Fagan's Nightfly, recorded on first gen digital rig +40yrs ago.
How can it possess adequate sonics, ... let alone stellar sonics?
How?
It was simply well executed ... best practices were employed throughout, top to bottom.
Care was taken throughout the 𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙚 process...
Acoustic environment, mic selection/placement, signal path, gain structure, etc.
Today, the mindset exists that it'd be unthinkable to use recording and conversion from just 10yrs ago!
And of course, the latest updated state of the art gear would likely be preferred.
But 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙡𝙮, simply being mindful (fanatical in Fagan's case) of best practices throughout is key to a quality sonics.
Keith Longstreth: If your best audio quality CD is The Animals Retrospective, I dread to imagine what the worst ones are
The noticeable difference for me has to do not with simply presence or absence of sound, but tonal qualities, perceived dynamics and realism. High res done right sounds so good.
@@astheworldburns3590 Hey Paul, I certainly appreciate what you’re saying and completely agree that without a/b comparison…how can we tell a difference? A couple of points to that. First, we are likely a bunch of audiophiles; I know I am, and one thing we do as audiophiles is tweak, spend money for things we think will improve sound, and for me, A/B compare to try and verify those improvements. I have spent so many hours in my life moving a speaker literally 0.5 inches, sitting, listening, putting it back, moving another 0.5 inches, etc. to get “that sound” I was looking for. So yeah, in an A/B comparison with CD for instance, there is a noticeable improvement. That brings me to the second point, of what is a noticeable improvement? For me, even without A/B comparing, I have a certain standard to which I expect and want from an audio system. Since I’m old, I remember 8-track tapes, cassettes, and all of that. I can tell you unequivocally, that when 8-track and even cassettes were king, I did not like their reproduction of music. The hiss, the dragging, the lack of dynamics, even though we didn’t have better (aside from Vinyl), I knew that we needed better. When CDs came along, I was a teenager. I loved the direct track access, the lack of “tape hiss,” and the increase in dynamic range, it was fantastic. That said, when listening to a CD on any system, from a $500 Best Buy, to what most of us probably have, and up to those multi-hundred thousand $ systems we get to experience at a hi-fi shop every once in a while, a CD, sounds like a CD. It’s good, very good, but there is an nth degree of something missing; there is also an nth degree of fatigue or “squared off hard edges” in music produced from CD. Not dissimilar to early digital amps that could easily be picked out of a group of amps, a CD has a certain overall sound quality. More specifically, a lack thereof. If you recall, JVC introduced a CD format that was basically higher bit rate but still CD…I forget what they called it, but I remember hearing things (and quietness) that I hadn’t heard before at a shop in Columbus, from an Eagles album we’ve all heard a million times. I asked the owner “what is special about that recording? It sounds better” and he told me it was playing on one of those JVC-invented discs.
Fast forward a few more years, and I listened to my first DSD128, and let me tell you; strings sound like strings, not reproduction of strings. Same goes for beautiful female voices, my gosh High-res does wonders for that part of the audio spectrum.
I’m telling you at least my 100% truth, even without A/B comparing, this was the first time I had ever heard music played back and “felt” it like I did, and for the first time, I was finally convinced that what I was hearing was music, was instruments. I couldn’t hear the recording, I couldn’t hear the lack of some aspect of fidelity, I heard the room, the voices and the instruments. To me, it was that step out of the “uncanny valley “ so talked about in computer graphics. I didn’t feel like anything was missing, like something still needs to be improved. What is wonderful, though, is that even if my own standards have been achieved, I know that a new generation will in fact improve upon this. We will get better than DSD or whatever else high-res format, heck you guys are probably already aware of what will be replacing these current formats. I can’t wait.
That's known as bias confirmation. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is.
I would love to hear ' The Beauty of Gray (2 meter session) ' by Live as recorded on CD on the PS Audio IRS5 system. It is one of the better dynamic range recordings and the studio stage set is captured. Yet I can imagine how amazing it would have been in 24/192 or even better when recorded in DSD. People who deny Hi-Res either are not capable to hear or see past their own thoughts, or just have never had the joy of a nice, well set up system. Paul's tips for setup in his book and disc are amazing, they really help understanding and improving.
Since the filters are not the perfect filters of Nyquist theory, people can't appeal to Nyquist when they claim 44.1 suffices. If they had perfect filters, then fine, but they just don't, and therefore in real life, higher resolution gives you more.
Moving from the average Sony Blah Blahs at around 20-60 ohm to Sennheiser HD600's at 300 ohm with an amp to overcome the impedance, I can easily say that the sound quality is very different.
This is due to distortion. When you crank up regular headphones you misunderstand "Too loud", it's not too loud, it's peaking and starting to distort (and sound like crap) so you back it down.
I can't turn up my HD600's too loud in the old conventional way, and only notice it's been up too loud when I take them off and realize my ears are ringing. That's how clean the sound is, and they sound just as clean and clear at any volume. If I have a head ache, I can turn the volume down low and still hear just fine.
That all being said, your system's throughput is very important. All the best gear in the world won't matter if your source is incorrectly set to 16 bit 48khz when it's capable of 32 bit 96khz. I have to keep an eye on my sound card's settings as either updates or a program will occasionally reset the bit rate down to 16 bit, and yeah you start noticing how narrow and limited the sound has become.
I used to laugh at audiophiles and just say they had more money than they knew what to do with, but my setup is pretty modest at around $700 and it makes all those pairs of $60-100 headphones I bought over the years look like hot garbage. Also know that it will take your ears and brain a couple weeks or so to adjust to what you're hearing to appreciate the difference.
It's not about how much you spend, it's how you spend it and if you're willing to take the time to learn how to use the gear properly.
I have it that we don't understand how our senses work and what they can perceive. There is a study on blind site where blind people can perceive the emotional content of an image. They can't "see" the image, describe the picture, but they can tell you if they get a feeling of sadness or happiness from it. We may not be able to hear (describe sounds outside of our audible range) but that does not mean they don't have an impact on us.
Clarity, sound-stage, and resolution are not wholly inclusionary with frequency response or efficiency. Thai's why we have high resolution sources and and high resolution speakers (like my beloved ribbon drivers).
This may also be a reason, I Think the claims that high res audio is not better may be true for a pure sine wave of high frequency.. But probably when you combine multiple waves beyond the audible range, it can produce frequencies in audible range. In stereos, the frequency beyond audible range is not mixed down (as they are produce by individual speakers/drivers), so the resultant audible range wave between high res and normal can be different.
I love these videos. Thank you Paul.
Two of my favourite videos on topic
Why we need hi-res audio (physiological aspect) th-cam.com/video/r_wxRGiBoJg/w-d-xo.html
How it is achieved in digital audio
th-cam.com/video/jBYZTTErTY8/w-d-xo.html
When I listen to a CD on my system the sound feels like it is coming out of the speakers. When I listen to vinyl or high resolution audio the music sounds like it is encompassing every inch of the room and creates a much more pleasurable experience.
Wow, I was debating CD vs records with somebody (who thought he was more qualified to judge cause he was an engineer who recorded and produced music n I was just a listener?) and so to reassure myself did some comparing again and that's exactly what (among other things) I came up with. CD's sound was clean, good separation , but from the speakers. Records (good condition n noise free), sound was all around the speakers. Coarse then he started throwing in pro digital with higher sampling n bits etc., when I was talking about to CD's. Plus engineers typically listen at a mixing board with near field monitors, not sitting back with a good, not even top system. Personally I think a experienced "listener" has the edge on judging. And he had no idea what my background was, go figure?
@@bradt.3555 The only way to convince a skeptic is to have them come over and sit in front of your system. Have them give you a top 10 list of their favorite albums or songs. Do some research and find which one has the best quality production and get that on vinyl.
I am thinking of one TH-cam network where the moderator and his Zoom guests seem to love their test equipment more than they love audio equipment or the sound of music. “What fools these mortals be”.
Thank you Robin Goodfellow (a.k.a. Puck), you are absolutely correct.
I once attended a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" where the part of Puck was played by two young actresses simultaneously, frequently alternating lines. It worked fabulously well for the character who seems to be everywhere at once.
1. it does sound better 2. if youre actually interested 3. if youre *capable of hearing.*
i maintain 2 people cant run the same speed/distance, 2 people cant read the same fine print, 2 people cant smell the same odors, 2 people cant detect the same food ingredients.... why cant one hear better than the next?
@Douglas Blake , understood. im 62 years old. i worked 38 years on the RR. i was a roadie for rock bands. i love firearms. on hearing tests i top out at 14k. that said...
i have a trophy winning competition truck stereo. my tweeters (Focal krx2) play to 22k.
when i got in my buddys truck, his tweeters (Focal Utopia M) play to 50k.
the difference is immediate & undeniably evident.
i might not be able to "hear" it......... but i know its there.
CD audio (44.1 kHz) does not capture everything we can hear in the sense that it cannot capture the full harmonics of sound that we can hear.
Yes, 44.1kHz sampling is enough to capture any individual soundwave up to the highest frequencies that most people can hear (20kHz or so), but it cannot capture let's say 10 different high frequency soundwaves in the 18kHz-20kHz range, because it doesn't have high enough sampling rate. For this example, you'd need something like 10 (number of soundwaves) X 2 (Niquist) X frequency (19kHz let's say - an average of 10 different individual soundwaves in the 18kHz-20kHz range) = 380kHz - way beyond CD standard.
And yes, we can hear multiple different soundwaves in the 20Hz-20kHz range at the same time. How many at the same time? I haven't seen yet any studies, but definitely waaaay more than one :D
This is the crux of the misunderstanding (and misinformation) issue in the digital domain. Perceptible frequency range (20Hz-20kHz) versus Sample rate. The industry conflates the two concepts and thus confuses people in the process that they are the same thing, but they are not. Sampling rate has to be enormously higher than the perceptible frequency range.
The whole point of digital high res signals is to have a more detailed image of the real audio signal, whether it's audio, video, image or whatever.
The video world can benefit of resolutions enormously higher than what we have today, and also of refresh rates. The equivalent applies to the audio world as well. It's just that these notions affect the willingness of buyers to spend too much on gear, so the industry almost always and unanimously has an interest in supressing such realizations.
@Douglas Blake Uhm, a speaker can reproduce multiple soundwaves at the same time if engineered properly.
Let's say a woofer is given the signal to reproduce a 100Hz soundwave. While the cone is doing its 100Hz cycle, it can also vibrate at a separate, higher frequency (let's say a 500Hz soundwave) within that cycle of the original 100Hz wave.
Of course, there are limits to how many concurrent soundwaves a speaker can produce based on the electronics, material and other engineering stuff in which I am not an expert. But a single speaker can definitely produce multiple concurrent soundwaves. And when I say speaker, I mean a single driver, so don't draw the wrong conclusion that I mean a speaker with multiple drivers (tweeter, woofer etc.).
@Douglas Blake the whole point of a3d vibrating surface is that it has to be in many different places at once
Most people cannot hear 20KHz. The average 35 year old male has 11dB hearing loss at 8KHz.
@Douglas Blake Where did you come up with the cone having to be in more than one places at once? I did not claim such a thing and there would be no need for it either.
A speaker cone can reproduce multiple higher frequency cycles within the cycle of a lower frequency. The same thing happens with the biological eardrum. While reproducing, let's say, a 100Hz vibration, it can also reproduce a higher frequency vibration that will have shorter cycles that fit within that larger initial cycle.
Envision the cone doing a large back-front 100Hz cycle, but within it, it's doing smaller, shorter back-and-front cycles of a higher frequency. The cone does not have to be in 2 places at once, but can still reproduce one or more additional frequencies within that same large cycle of the initial low frequency wave. That's how we can hear multiple soundwaves at the same time.
@@geoff37s38 That may be true, but it does not invalidate whatsoever the core of my argument of being able to hear multiple sound frequencies concurrently.
I had the reasonably unique (I think there were a couple dozen there at the most, small room) opportunity in the '70's to sit in on a comparison between formats. It was an AES meeting at a Nashville recording studio. They were releasing a Direct to Disc that they had also recorded to an Ampex 2 track and a Soundstream! We heard the disc, the analog tape and digital source played back through the West Lake system it was mastered on! The disc was played on the cutting lathe platter it's master was cut on with an SME arm and V15 cartridge.
100% agreement the disc easily blew the others away.
Although I quite enjoy how my CDs sound with my Marantz player I also get a kick out of using Jriver to upsample my FLAC files to 705.6MHz and using a slow filter on my DAC.
Source material is important. When I was in the Air Force we had a saying, " You can't polish a turd no matter how much you rub it." That being said a quality recording is the best place to start.
The British empire has a very successful history of polishing turds and taking away the real wealth of their colonies
As to the 44.1/48kHz sampling side of digital audio, with respect to our hearing... yes, the RANGE of what we can hear is up to 20 kHz (when you're young, etc.) and Nyquist tells us we require double of this value to capture it all, hence 40 kHz *blabla math, bits* or 44.1/48 kHz. But, the RESOLUTION of what we can hear is about 7 µs (!), as research has shown in recent years. 7 µs translates to 143 kHz, hence *blabla math, bits* sampling with 384 kHz captures all we can perceive. ......... this is what I learned just recently, also I'm new to the "hifi-hobby", so please, correct me or build upon this :)
@Douglas Blake I'm not saying you can perceive frequency above "20 kHz" (and yes, I know about what range is about possible to hear, also w.r.t. age). I'm making the case for the difference between RANGE ("20 kHz") and RESOLUTION (7 microseconds) of what we hear, maybe for want of better terminology. What is your point on sampling, maybe more in the context of the 7 microseconds? (I'll try and dig up my reference for this number)
@Douglas Blake Thanks for your insights! Studying on was and still is the plan.. btw, haven't found the source of the 7 microseconds, but it was on the TH-cam channel of Hans Beekhuyzen that I first heard of it. Greetings from Holland!
Thank You Paul - again !
A very in-depth video on this topic can be found here: th-cam.com/video/SuSGN8yVrcU/w-d-xo.html
I love parametric equalizers, cheap fix for better perceived audio in any system or room.
Perceptual audio coding is what makes the compression algorithm works and according to the bitrate and frequency employed it determines what sounds can be left and which ones gone
Thanks Paul ! I can honestly say I do not understand all of what you say but I am learning a lot from your talks. I have just purchased a set of KLH -5 and hope they will replace my AR-11"s. I run a Marantz 2270 and a technics turn table w/ Ortafon blue cartridge and a Teac reel - reel . Old school yes but I love it. Keep up the good work God bless !!
infraand ultrasonic frequencies can damage your speaker IF the sounds have extreme amplitude (volume).
extremely low frequecies can behave like temporary dc current, which can blow a speaker if its to intense or does not flip in time (but that would be riducously low frequency).
extremely high frequencies can leave the speaker no time to excellerate, so the driver instead heats up. this can be damaging too. but this needs very high amplitude to make it beyond negligable.
low energy sub bass and ultrasonic high res audio information is of no danger and might improve loudspeaker movement naturality.
The real problem with some of these formats was demonstrated by Amir on his channels. It’s true you can’t hear above 20 kHz no matter what. However having spectral content BEYOND there can cause serious issues for your tweeter if the amplitudes are high enough due to intermodulation distortion, which will be quite audible if the products fall into the audio band. This is due to the tweeter being driven into its nonlinear region. I experienced this when I was doing something stupid such as using my amplifier with my function generator and forgot about it still being hooked up. Since the frequency was ultrasonic I could not hear it when I went to play music. I was promptly greeted with alien sounds coming out of my speakers since they were being blasted with tons of ultrasonics.
Correct!
I did the same with my signal generator a few years back, feeding my speakers with HF beyond the nominated 20Khz.
I couldn't hear anything but, surely I did smell the tweeter voice coils as they...melt!
Expensive mistake.. 😯
@@m.9243 Came close! Fortunately the distortion let me know immediately what was going on, and the voice coils just got a few degrees above ambient. Still scary to feed almost the full power of the amp into those tiny little voice coils. And yeah sucks to hear about your tweeters. Hopefully they had replacement drivers in your case?
@@mysock351C
Yes, I had to get them from France! The speakers in question are JM Lab / Focals Electra 926.
The tweeters were not cheap either.. Made of Titanium and worth $ 370 each.. Live and learn!
sure some of it is out of range, but what is in range is better separated, cleaner and more well defined.
Pro sound guys know .with big power amps with extreme voltage swings it becomes a problem when you need gain up enough to hear low amplitude details and not throw the cone out of the basket during dynamic bursts..2 ways.. and honestly you do both
. 1 make the speaker setup so capable it will handle it..and 2 use some type of averaging...DRC.
To consumers i think hi-res is a niche, but not essential.. some people may prefer the ultrasound added to their playback, which have more directional energy that people can probably *feel*..thus getting better image as sir you advocate... also if a hi-res recording doesn't not filter out the ultrasound it probably cause more damage to the ears than to the loudspeakers.. i live near a power transformer station that radiate constant ultrasound at so-called safe level only on paper. and I hate that sound..
JHFC Hi res damaging speakers? That's like saying sound is racist but I'm absolutely certain there is someone who would say that.
a few times in my life I have experienced db/spl swings from 50db to 145db+...how does this relate to dynamic range?
The cleaner the sound wont damage your speakers, Distortion will.
@Douglas Blake I can also plug my speakers into that wall outlet over there... 😜 but more speakers are damaged by distortion imho
No need in hi-resolution, ive had many high end speakers and setups, and dont even use a dac. Im not complaining and im picky and analytical, i stream good recordings and have no background noise, nothing out of order, imaging, instrument separation, its all there, dont buy into gimmicks, do what works for you.
From my experience, i could hear the difference between cd quality and hires more easily in choral music than in rock or pop music.
Bought a pair of JBL L-100a's in 1978. 3 or 4 years later JBL sends me a letter stating that my speakers are
"Digital ready." I thought... No kidding... LOL! 😁
Which Dac and preamp are you using with JBL L100a speakers.
I've got JBL XPL 160's which were sold as designed for digital audio. Yes, they are. But the best sounding I've ever got them is with a tube 12AU7 preamp with an direct coupled Accuphase MOSFET poweramp. BHK's are not much around in this country...
@@zargamali8531
The JBL L-100a's are not being used now. They are sitting in their JBL boxes. Many decades have passed since I bought them new and the crossovers need to be rebuilt. Presently, I'm using a pair of JBL 4365's speakers. I have two DACs, a PS Audio Perfectwave Directstream and a Denafrips Terminator+. I'm looking for a used Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC now. I've heard very good things about that DAC. My preamp is a PS Audio BHK. Using a McIntosh MC452 amp (much to the chagrin of Paul, lol!)
@@edmaster3147
Yes, I've listened to the XPL 160's, very nice. I've also been thinking about replacing my BHK preamp with an all tube preamp instead of just the the input stage like the BHK. The problem with 'modern' tube preamps they have seem to gone to the 'neutral' side of sound. Good sound, but not anything like older 'tube sounding' preamps. Weather that be a good thing or bad I guess it's all up to each person's taste. By the way, where are you located? I'm in the U.S.
@@Mark-lq3sb I'm in the Netherlands. I got the idea of 12AU7 pre with MOS-FET power amp by the BHK. As I already got an Accuphase amp an Aric Audio pre found its way in my system funny enough, those are so rare over here. I like tubes, but the Mosfets are much more capable to drive the speakers. But if you love the old tube amp sound, Steve Guttenberg just did a review on a Bottlehead tube pre, which he said sounded really 'tuby', perhaps thats something for you.Cheers.
What are those pieces of equipment there to your right? Dolby Digital….?
You design audio circuitry and math isn't your thing? OK.
Im not a fan of p.s audio stuff. Never heard any but prices are insane. But i dont think he designs anything. He manages the company. The engineers do the math.
Pauuuuuul, please explain the details of why, the videos can be as long as you want them to be. I've felt youtube has allot of short quips that are designed for a general audience, I think that conception is ill advised. The audience is thirsting, and is focused, this isn't a general audience, and we all have the time for the depth, and we need desperately need more than just a passing mention. Please consider expanding the depth and complexity, for at least one episode to explain these filter-interactions and sampling rate things. I think it would do the world a great service, also watch out for that oatmeal! it's a gateway to granola!!! lol
Graph a 20,000 Hz sine wave and add vertical lines through it to represent a sample rate of 44,100 Hz. You'll see very quickly that the samples don't even remotely capture the full range of the waveform, because they are barely sampling more than twice per wave, and any given moment on the wave that is sampled is very rarely the peak or valley of the waveform. In fact, the sample may easily be taken at the exact moment the wave is at it's null point, and not "return" to capturing a peak for many consecutive samples. Even if it randomly captures a peak, the subsequent sample will not capture the corresponding negative peak. At 44.1 khz, the A/D is constantly phasing in and out of capturing the input waveform. This phasing, combined with an inability to capture the full amplitude of the waveform for anything other than occasional random samples, and an inability to capture the exact stop and end of the waveform, let alone capture any variation in the waveform (especially important for complicated waveforms from overtones and recorded room acoustics) means that while 44.1 khz sample rates may technically be capable of capturing "something" at 20 khz, it is massively distorted and useless for transmitting information to your brain. If you move to 88.2 khz or higher, suddenly you can now sample a 20 khz tone more than four times per cycle. This is still pretty crappy in terms of being able to accurately interpret the wave, but it's a massive improvement. Once you get down to the range where most of us adults can actually hear (12k-16k) and combine that with 88.2 khz or higher sample rates, now we can finally gather enough info from the waveform for a DAC to approximate an output wave that's getting close to the original waveform. That's why when people talk about the effect of hi-res sample rates, they often talk about how the hi-res version has more "air" and "space," and that the recorded room is more clearly reproduced. Your brain can't echo-locate and tell you anything about the recorded space unless those high frequencies can be captured ACCURATELY, and not just as useless pulsing noise. Same goes for bit depth, where the sound of the room is generally vastly quieter than the instrument. The instrument doesn't need all that range, but the recorded room does (this doesn't apply to noise-gated sources, of course).
Bass frequencies don't need hi-res because the waves are so slow that even 44.1 khz can sample them tons of time per cycle, and you don't need hi-res in noisy listening environments that drown out our brain's ability to echo-locate.
This is not how digital audio works. Here is a good explanation
th-cam.com/video/cIQ9IXSUzuM/w-d-xo.html
@@geoff37s38 Thanks for the link. Took me a while to watch it, but I enjoyed it. I'd be curious to see how these experiements would translate to the real, imperfect, and infinitely more complicated waveforms of actual music, but this was very informative in terms of clearing up some general misconceptions I had about digital audio. Thanks!
Hey Paul @PS Audio, I´m interested in your food diet. Could you please share it with me(us) ? Cheers
If cd redbook standard is so good then why do SACD sound better ??
now paul can distrotiom hurt speakers or is it super snake oil to i want your opion...
have you notice, recently, he become JayLeno of high end audio
Nerve transmission < 1microsecond. Neuro studies on double click resolution show temporal audio detection as low as 7-8 microseconds. 44.1khz sample rate = 22 microseconds. Need to be > 192khz to capture temporal resolution appropriately. This 20khz is good enough argument misses the point.
3:05 "that's just total horseshit". That phrase is also a great descriptor of most of these videos!
Maybe not most of these videos, but definitely a few :)
Oatmeal is delicious
Hey Paul, love your videos. However, the 'comparison' you used at around the 4 minute mark was very misleading/troubling because you made no mention whether the CD and hi-res comparison you did were taken from the same master, therefore invalidating any perceived sonic differences. Unless you compare music taken from the same master and done by the same engineer(s) then any comparison is nonsense.
Wow ... Some People ... 😉
Hi-res files may produce ultrasonic noise that was not part of the performance. Not likely to cause tweeter damage but may cause a nasty response in the tweeter that can cause undesirable effects in the audible range.
but that is the problem with cd quality, high res only improved on that.
but how come that to my ears on my system, Hi Res and DSD sounds so smooth where the same recording sounds more harsh on CD quality?
@@edmaster3147 He's just bs-ing, as many here on Paul's videos do. Hi-res files are not about ultrasonic frequencies, but about capturing and reproducing multiple frequencies in the audible 20Hz-20kHz(ish) spectrum. The industry is just misdirecting people into thinking that they are giving you ultrasonic frequencies, but what they are in reality doing is giving more frequencies in the audible spectrum, hence the higher resolution (higher number of frequencies (aka vibrations) in the audio content).
@@edfort5704 The funny thing is though, that Paul's knowledge makes sense and I implemented some of his tech tips which work spot on. I don't believe that the industry is misdirecting, I do believe that lack of factual knowledge often leads to mistrust.
You are just talking about the D/A converters resolution when it comes to the signal and noise
CD quality is more than enough if the DAC is perfect
Do you not have improvement with 24 bit and higher sample rates?
Cd 16/44.1 is absolutely nice, specially with a transport. But dsd or sacd does sound better when recorded on dsd. I just cant jump in to sacd as there are too few that does it right. Now im just collecting cds and im pretty happy with it. If sacd gets more and more available (wishful thinking), i start collecting those too.
Who decides if the DAC is perfect?
Do a proper blind test between the two like on the lines on what Mark Waldrep ran a couple of years back. Pure A Vs B comparison is pointless if you know which is which. In Mark's tests, blind testing showed statistically that people were not able to detect the differences. It was as if their selections were no different than coin tosses. Anecdotes of some person hearing a difference are useless unless the test was blind and properly/professionally controlled. Nobody on the scientific side of things disputes there are differences. There most definitely are significant dynamic range and frequency differences. But we have to scientifically show that these can be perceived to validate the true value of high-res.
Spectral analyzers are tinker toys compared to the human central nervous system. Trust your ears.
@Douglas Blake Probably not, but does that really matter, except when designing circuits to make sure there have not been any blatant design flaws (hey, it happens)? Rhetorical question, it doesn't. I listen to diverse genres of music, not test signals with the biochemical kludge that is the chain from my external nervous system to my brain; my personal version of an ongoing trial-and-error process that has gone through God knows how many iterations over literally billions of years since the first common ancestor of life on Earth. It's a messy process, yet here we are. That includes the engineers who designed and fine tuned your aforementioned scope and FFT analyser. Paul McG recently gave an example of when they were comparing the two finalist designs for their newest phono preamp. Both measured nearly identically (nothing is ever identical) and both met the design criteria by numerical analysis. When they plugged them into their reference system for evaluation, one gave a reasonable facsimile of the 3-dimensional sound fields of the voices and musical instruments in the recording venues. The other sounded as flat as the proverbial pancake. Which one do you think was advanced toward production? Another rhetorical question. Don't confuse measured precision with the complex external reality (What a concept! -- Robin Williams).
@Douglas Blake Looking back over my previously message, I find no indication that I believed that you do not listen, that is pretty much the default position for people who watch and comment on PS Audio posts. Presumably to a thoughtfully assembled system. Doubtless not the same as my thoughtfully assembled system. It's still a reasonably free country with many and diverse options.
And I too am weary of these little on-line debates, while the many significant challenges facing people in the wide world tend to get set aside; some of which are too quickly rising to existential levels. We have both expressed our positions with abbreviated arguments within the limited time-space of the comment chain and which are not likely to change these aspects of our respective world views. So let us part ways on our chosen paths for now. The frequently anastomosing nature of reality may bring us together again. Or not.
By that logic no need for radar.
@@ryacus Why stop at radar? There is the whole continuum of the electromagnetic spectrum ranging from beyond the cosmic microwave background radiation and high gamma radiation. Massively useful for astronomy beyond that tiny sliver of what human eyes can see. And frequencies of sonic pressure waves beyond that narrow bandwidth of what the human ears can hear. Other biochemical lifeforms have senses that exceed ours in many ways. Yet when it comes to what is generally called art that is experienced and evaluated by H. sapiens (frankly a rather pompous self designation), it is irrelevant.
Maybe someday, artificial intelligence may be able to evaluate aesthetics as we do (and good luck finding a commonality of opinion in these matters) to a lesser or greater extent, but will it consider that as something other than a waste of bandwidth? To focus on just music for this forum, that is something that is important me, including the reasonably good, yet none-the-less imperfect reproduction of imperfect recordings. I appreciate the work of clever engineers and their tools to make this possible. However, when I personally listen to music in its broad variety of genres, my all too human nervous system is what I have, not a spectrum analyzer which would useless to me anyway for this enterprise.
Paul,
if I separate the plus and minus legs on my speaker cable. I figure this would eliminate any capacitance and inductance between them, Right?
So my question is, how far is the minimum distance to eliminate any mentioned L&C effects?
Love it and yes I have heard that difference!
I think the big reason hi Rez is nonsense is because less than 10% of all recorded music ever is high Rez. Does it really matter if it sound better if it demands you limit your potential listening material by 90%? In my books, it limits my potential enjoyment of music by at least 90%. And to the uptight OCD audiophile who will inevitably respond to this comment.......ok then, your right, I'm wrong. Now take your meds and try to calm yourself.
people need Hi-Res ears lol....
I wish someone would speak to hi res lossless portable players over a good set of headphones. Wondering if I should get one for music on the go.
My Topping NX4-DSD portable DAC/amp playing bitperfect USB source material from Neutron Player on my old phone sounds really good for the money (Neutron bypasses any system drivers). The NX4 seems to pair a lot better with IEMs than my big Sennheiser HDs, but for portable use, that's fine. People also seem to like the Monoprice Monolith portable DAC/amp for the same use-case. I wouldn't buy a propriatary gadget specifically for "transporting" digital audio files or streaming sources as they're never going to be as future-proof or tweakable as something running a major OS paired with an external DAC/amp (which you can upgrade any time you like) and a good app like Neutron.
I can lie in bed, pop in IEMs, and access my entire digital collection of hi-res, redbook, and compressed files from my network drive without moving or disturbing my wife. And if I want to switch over to watch Paul's latest post or listen to an audiobook, all I have to do is open those apps.
when it's compressed to 44.1k 16 bit, is the information really still there to up sample to 192k 24 bit, especially when it was mastered at 96k 24 bit?? having a hard time wrapping my head around this one. i understand the bit but not so much on the freq. sounds like filtering to me. especially since it's far beyond human hearing and most high end speakers seem to roll off before 20 k.
This may help
Why we need hi-res audio (physiological aspect) th-cam.com/video/r_wxRGiBoJg/w-d-xo.html
How it is achieved in digital audio
th-cam.com/video/jBYZTTErTY8/w-d-xo.html
@Douglas Blake maybe, if you have time, you can pick some examples from there two particular videos and post them here in comments, please? I'm interested in truth after all
👂🤛
👋💪🙏
im new to high res audio, im young so i dont have a good set up (i use a win10 laptop and have a razer headset that outputs in 24/48kHz) but even i can tell the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/48. Pink Floyds DSOTM bluray is the best one, listen to the CD then listen to the Bluray and you will definitely tell the difference
@Douglas Blake thats why i used the DSOTM immersion box set. IIRC the CD has the same mix/master as the stereo 24/96kHz mix/master. IMO the DSOTM in high res is the best album in high res.
@Douglas Blake i mean the box could always be wrong, we are talking about info the record labels put on there and they're totally 100% right all the time.
Be happy, you are young and have a good hearing.
@@magicscreengames4353 im pretty sure ill be deaf when im older, i listened to music so loud in my youth that even the loudest setting on my phone is too quiet
According to my Geiger counter, DSD makes speakers emit ionizing radiation (only 3.6 roentgens though, not great, not terrible)
lol, climb a 14'r and you get more from the sun.
Lest someone reading your comment actually believes you, if that were true, the speakers would have to also emit energy in the visible spectrum, so they'd have to literally be glowing hot when doing what you claim them to do :)
does it depend on the performing artist or genre? Deathmetal perhaps a higer count?
If I am hit by a satellite why should it be russian and not american?
more likely a Chinese sattelite xD
Dynamic Range we can't "withstand"? I know what my take on it is! It's like the Georgians thinking that if you travelled faster than 30 miles per hour your body would explode! 🤣
Well considering that most rooms resting level is about 30dB or higher, CD range is 93dB so in most cases to get full CD dynamic range you’d be listing at 123dB+. If you’re listening that loud then you WILL incur hearing loss after a short time. That has been proven, the Georgian’s did not prove the 30mph thing, so it’s not similar.
@@noahnovotny2100 Dynamic Range is not equivalent to, nor does it have anything to do, with _Acoustic pressure_ or "loudness".
@Douglas Blake I'm aware of that. But, getting back to the point, _Dynamic Range_ is not equivalent to, nor does it have anything to do with _Acoustic pressure_ or "loudness".
@@gregf9160 Dynamic range is defined as “the ratio of the loudest undistorted sound to the quietest discernible sound, expressed in decibels, that a system is capable of producing.”
So it actually has everything to do with sound pressure level. Specifically, it has to with the difference in the loudest and softest in which a system can be perceived. Like I mentioned previously if you are in a room with 30dB resting white noise, then to have a perceived dynamic range of 93dB, you have to have a sound pressure of 93dB above the minimum of 30dB. So 123dB, nothing complicated about it. That’s assuming that the sound engineer used that full amount of dynamic range, which is unlikely.
Overall, I’m not saying dynamic range of the recording is irrelevant, but in most cases, you will be limited by the dynamic range of your room, speakers, amp, or even the recording itself, well before the recording media runs out.
@@noahnovotny2100 no, it doesn’t. Dynamic Range is a measure of bandwidth, not power. The fact the decibel is used as a unit of measurement (actually, just comparison) both of power and bandwidth is irrelevant, they are not the same thing. Anything and everything can be measured in Db. Bandwidth and Power are related of course, but are two distinct and unrelated things.
The vegetarian just made an analogy about how limiting your dietary intake to certain foods on paper might look OK but really isn't in reality... that is a lot to take in :D :D
So he's not big on every genre of food, but still likes variety in the ones he does like. I'm not on the same page as him, but I'm not big on seafood.
@@soulshinobi But I'm not big on living to be 100.
Could you get hit by yellow ice from a plain yes I think it's quite common lol
Why would a flat open land be throwing yellow ice?
There is unquestionably an audible difference between MP3 files and ‘red book’ CDs and between ‘red book’ CDs and high resolution. If you cannot detect that difference, it may be that your hearing is not sufficiently astute, or, your hifi gear is not adequately resolving.
If, you are one of those ‘nay sayers’, who trust statistics and specifications above your ears? I put the following challenge to you. Assemble a good few hours of your favourite music. Listen to it for as long as you can, firstly in ‘red book’ CD format and then in high resolution. Providing you’re not victim of one or both of the caveats above, even if you don’t consciously hear a difference, chances are you will turn off the ‘red book’ CD music a lot earlier than the high resolution music, because high resolution music is far less likely to cause listener fatigue. Try it.
If you suffer from listeners fatigue you are a weak human and should be not breed.
@@ryacus what makes you assume I’m human?
Well, properly made 16/44 recording should be more than adequate for human enjoyment, but the problem is not every 16/44 recording is properly made, especially the 16-bit side, so record at 24-bit is a good thing, so easier to let the 96dB dynamic range to remain after mixing. 44kHz sampling is again adequate, but the anti-aliasing filter during recording session is harder to make. So, again, record in 96kHz is ok, but none the less, proper down sample to 16/44 is good enough. However, IMHO, those up sampling, ie. from 16/44 source to 24/96, is nonsense.
Paul, profanity [horsesh*t] is unnecessary and offensive to some. Please be professional. Thanks much
Click click click, need I say more. 👍
OK I won't sit on the fence. Hires is a scam. Let me explain. Most of the music you listen to was either recorded on tape which doesn't even have cd resolution or at 44khz. Therefore selling hires versions of these tracks is snake oil. Oh and did I say you probably can't ear above 14khz anyway. So what are they hearing these 25khz harmonics with , their subconscious ?
Hires root beer? I haven't drank that in years.
Could you get hit by yellow ice from a plain yes I think it's quite common lol