96KHz/24bit - apparently we're wasting our time....

[Drumstruck]

Hey all,

Have a look at this - sell off all your high end gear - apparently we're all wasting our time and should be going 44.1/16bit....


http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

[ChrisW]

The article is about 192Khz no? Not 96Khz.
As such i shall continue to work at 24bit/96Khz.

[Manning]

Vaguely related... whatever happened to 1-bit recording?

I read some panting blurb a few years back about how it was going to "revolutionize everything".

Did it just die off, or are people actually using it somewhere...(?)

[jkhuri44]

bloody neil young, leave the science to the engineers.

[Text_Edifice]

Thought 1 bit had been round for a while, korg have one if I remember correctly. Been discussed on here before yeah?

[GlennS]

He's just talking about the delivery medium isn't he? Personally, I wish I didn't have to worry about dithering to 16 bit at the end. After you get it sounding as best as you can you have to go & change how it sounds, ever so slightly, with dither. Also, when I was recording to HD24 (which I still sometimes do, and continue to use it as an AD converter) it sounded substantially better at 48kHz because the clock was not as stable at 44.1kHz. It sounded better to mix or convert to 44.1 at a later stage. So even if there's no point going above 44.1/16 for the delivery medium there is still the issue of what's going to work best in the production environment before you get to that stage. Although I would hope that the HD24 is an exception in this regard it still serves to illustrate a point.

I must say that I did enjoy listening to CD's for most of my life, and was somewhat less satisfied with compressed formats. I was pretty disappointed when I discovered a few years ago that there was little or no benefit in loading uncompressed audio on my iPhone 3G.

[Manning]

Thought 1 bit had been round for a while, korg have one if I remember correctly. Been discussed on here before yeah?

Maybe... I searched but I was summarily rebuked by the search gargoyle:
"The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: bit 1."

[GlennS]

Maybe search for DSD or Direct Stream Digital, which is 1 bit.

[Manning]

Thanks to the revised search criteria provided by Glenn above, I found two quotes from Nymo, both dated June 20, 2009

In the near future, all daws will record to DSD..PCM will be dead...

I archive the DSD files so they are ready when PT vers 10 uses DSD ;-)

I'd love to hear Nymo's update on these statements. (BTW, zero disrespect at John intended by dredging up these old comments - the man has probably forgotten more than I'll ever know).

[Drumstruck]

He's just talking about the delivery medium isn't he? ...........

I would like to believe that too, but couldn't find anything that specifically said that. For me all the article needed was a clarification that for listening back through low grade media high sample/bit rates were unnecessary or perhaps detrimental. The blanket statements about 44.1 being all you need because that's all you can hear raised my hackles


deep breath and as Chong said "mellow.... mellow....."

[GlennS]

The second paragraph:

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

[Text_Edifice]

He's just talking about the delivery medium isn't he? ...........

I would like to believe that too, but couldn't find anything that specifically said that.

Title of the article is "24/192 Music Downloads...and why they make no sense", a sentiment I'd agree with.

Also the article acknowledges, for example, that 24 bit makes sense in context of audio recording production.

Appears written by software engineers / multimedia types so there's little room / credence given to a discussion that there may be elements of sound that are perceived by recordists / listeners beyond the 22kHz upper Nyquist limit of 44.1k PCM audio. Like many things audio related if you think it sounds better, why care what someone on the internet says ;-p

I'd make the observation however that in my own experience varied understandings of sampling theory – particularly as it relates to sidebands, oversampling and anti-aliasing – have somewhat muddied the waters around this topic both in discussions I've had with much more experienced engineers and my own understanding over the years.

[The Tasmanian]

96k 24 bit recoding on cymbals/snares /acoustic guitars /piano's /harpsichords /strings /synths etc is the bomb.
Anything with extended upper harmonics is so much better at 96k.

I'm very happy to continue to waste my time on 96k.
Still waiting for multitrack DSD too - that will be even better

[Text_Edifice]

Manning - this was the Korg unit

http://www.korg.com/product.aspx?pd=417

Think the same tech (DSD) is in at least one of Korg's mobile / handheld recorders too.

[GlennS]

What about Pyramix Chris? That's multitrack DSD & has been around for quite a while.

[The Tasmanian]

I wish I could Glenn but too much pressure exists to stay on Pootools so I am compatible with everyone else's poo.

[jkhuri44]

just accept stems , and be a massive snob

[The Tasmanian]

stems of poo

[jkhuri44]

why dont we have subs that go down to 5hz at JB Hi fi yet? this is what i wanna know.

[Text_Edifice]

Because of the poo stems generated by brown notes?

[jkhuri44]

^ excellent, glad i could degenerate the thread this far.

[GlennS]

I'm refraining from posting something vaguely humorous referring to "frequency" & "bits".

EDIT: Oops! I didn't refrain after all.

[Text_Edifice]

^ excellent, glad i could degenerate the thread this far.

It's like the show us your mics thread but with no prospect of audio porn.

[Drumstruck]

You guys are the masters of degeneration - love it.

[Ben M]

I have one of those Korg DSD recorders (MR1000). My short review would be...What you put in, is what you get out.
To my ears anyway.

[jkhuri44]

^ the idea with those is the sample rate is so high, it bypasses the need for filtration? (someone that knows more about bits plz fill this in for me).

rough translation - good shit.

[Text_Edifice]

Think I recall a sample rate of 2.82Mhz? Bit depth obviously doesn't work in the same way as PCM (two's compliment, typically fixed bit depth etc.).

[Ben M]

I just checked and the rate is 5.6448MHz in DSD mode.

[The Tasmanian]

I'm hoping Korg will make a stand alone 24 track DSD recorder - they spent a fortune on the format.

[Manning]

Here's a 53 page forum argument on this very topic that lasted two years on prosoundweb.

http://repforums.prosoundweb.com/index. ... 128.0.html

It features such luminaries as Dan Lavry and George Massenburg, who take care to exchange numerous professional pleasantries with each other before proceeding to argue like screaming cats.

Regardless, I found it interesting, so I thought I'd share. I'm only up to page 10, so I can't speak for the remaining 43 pages.