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Why 24-bit/192kHz music files make no sense - and may be bad for you!

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superboyac:
I had this debate recently with a friend, and this is the conclusion I came to:
I've done my fair share of audio experiments and I tend to agree with the article's point.  I can't tell for MOST of these audiophile issues.  I just can't tell if there is a difference or not.  I've tried listening to lossy vs lossless sources, I've compared cheap headphones to expensive ones, headphone amps...and ultimately, I just can't tell if it matters after a certain point, and it seems to agree with what the article is saying.

I think the mastering of music is a much more significant point.  There is an OBVIOUS difference to how music is mastered between the really good guys and the crappy guys.  anyway, probably besides the point.

Renegade:
...And as for discerning listeners claiming to hear a difference where science says there is none, we have a mic preamp in the studio that has an "air" switch, which activates frequency filters above what any human ear can hear. But those frequencies interact with frequencies that are audible, and it is interesting to hear how that switch opens up the top end of say a voice or guitar being tracked - even if "air" isn't right for that particular track...
-Joe Hone (September 23, 2013, 03:16 PM)
--- End quote ---

Case in point there!  :Thmbsup:

Frequencies that home speakers/headphones cannot reproduce are irrelevant without massive improvements in sound reproduction capability in the home....

For now and the foreseeable future, much as sub-audible frequencies may be *perceivable* and have an effect *in person*, they are not relevant for recorded music...
-JavaJones (September 23, 2013, 04:01 PM)
--- End quote ---

*IF* that sound energy is not replicated by the playback system, then yes. *IF* that sound energy *IS* replicated by the playback system, then no.

Nor, in fact, are they relevant for *any* amplified music since there are multiple limits in place there, not least of which are the speakers, but also any live processing being done (reverb, compression, etc.). Even if your entire amplification system is analog, the speakers are still a limiting factor. As are mics that recorded it in the first place, for that matter! There is *so much compromise* throughout any music production process, whether analog or digital, that I think it's a bit silly to cling so tightly to the "purity" of reproducing the finished results with 100% accuracy. Hell, the placement of speakers in a person's room, or how old their headphones are (and thus how much wear they have been subject to, how clean and undamaged their drivers are) will likely impact the sound they perceive far more than the difference between 16 and 24 bit or 192kHz vs. 44.1kHz.
-JavaJones (September 23, 2013, 04:01 PM)
--- End quote ---

You make some good points.

However, they're really not all that relevant to the basic question. That is, the question of limitations in equipment is the same question as limitations in the audio format, just applied to a different area of the recording, storage, playback chain of events.

i.e. The question can be applied to the audio format, the recording equipment, the playback equipment, etc. etc.

The basic question is about how sound energy affects people. Traditional audio science excludes a large amount of sound energy from the question, which I've pointed out is erroneous in my tiger example above, and how Joe Hone has pointed out with the "air" example.

Slayer does some interesting melodic harmonies, but they do it on 2 guitars instead of 1 because the frequencies interact differently. On 1 guitar, it sounds muddy. On 2 guitars, you get a nice, clean sound. How sound energy interacts with other sound energy is a very important consideration - the "air" example above nicely illustrates how inaudible sound energy is important in the equation.

On the practical side, well... it all depends. We simply do not know enough about sound energy to intelligently comment on how practical some of these considerations are. Conventional wisdom would tell us that these extremes in audio fidelity are impractical, or too expensive, or not really worth our time. I'm not going to dispute that. I am going to say that we don't know enough other than we know for a fact that what we know is not a complete representation of reality, i.e. it's overreaching in its conclusions, which is wrong.

As a further example to illustrate just how little we know about the effects of sound energy on humans, consider wind farm turbine sound...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9653429/Wind-farm-noise-does-harm-sleep-and-health-say-scientists.html

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/08/more-positive-developments-on-wind-turbine-sound

http://windeffects.org/wind-turbine-noise

I'm pretty much just picking the top 3 search results there, but they are enough to illustrate some of the points that I've made above. The second article there from renewableenergyworld.com is a skeptical article that makes several mistakes and cites a study that is completely mistake for many reasons that I won't get into. I put it there to show the counter-argument in the debate.

There is a lot more information out there. One of the key things to pay attention to in that debate is how weighted sound is used. By using weighted sound curves, sound energy is excluded, but isn't that what the debate is about?

Now, if inaudible sound can cause harm like that, can it also be beneficial? We just don't know the answer to that question as nobody has really looked into that very much.

But if we discovered that sound in a particular inaudible range could affect people positively, would it be practical to use that? Or would it be cost prohibitive? Would the benefit be greater than any associated costs?

I'm not being a purist - I'm merely trying to frame the science in more realistic terms to reflect objective reality better.

When we actually know enough about how inaudible sound energy affects people, then we can more intelligently talk about how valuable (or futile) reproducing it is.

JavaJones:
I think you're really just making an appeal to ignorance and elevating the value of the theoretical here, which could be the beginning of science perhaps (if it inspires investigation), but is really just speculation. It is in fact fairly easy to test the limits of what our sound reproduction equipment can produce, and that is ultimately all that actually matters in this consideration because in the end all the recording, mixing, and mastering has to get squeezed through those limited speakers/headphones on the listener's end.

But even if you somehow believe the measuring capabilities we have now can't account for every possible effect, as I said above there is really a simple way to find out if any of those "woo-woo" audio stuff is *practically detectable by humans* (whether directly or otherwise!), and yet so far such tests have failed to show a difference even between existing high quality (but lossy) audio formats and their lossless sources, much less a difference between two ultra high quality lossless sources. That being said I will say that to my knowledge no one has done such a blind test with 16/44.1 vs. 24/192 audio, so if indeed these inaudible frequencies are somehow reproduced by audio equipment, even though they're well outside their rated range, and if somehow humans are able to detect them, then there may be value in Pono and other ultra high quality audio storage approaches.

But I think the problem I have with your argument is that it essentially relies on the supposed limitations in our knowledge of audio science, when in fact, as I've pointed out, we don't need to know everything about audio to test *the effects* (to *understand* the effects we perhaps do, but not to *test whether they exist*). I don't think we need to wait until some possible future breakthrough in audio science to determine whether Pono is worthwhile. This is like someone saying "Homeopathic medicine works but our existing science has no way to measure it", to which I say do some controlled studies and we'll soon see. We can measure effects even if we cannot directly measure methods of action.

So who wants to run a blind test with Pono? I can guarantee you Neil Young won't be doing any fair comparisons (i.e. blind, same audio source, multiple subjects) any time soon. :D

- Oshyan

40hz:
Too bad everybody's ears, tastes, and sonic preferences weren't identical.

It would simplify matters greatly.  ;)

Shades:
Years ago I heard (or read, I don't remember) a story from a 70-80 rock band (Slade/Suede or something) that went into the studio, did the recording and then checked how it sounded on a average car stereo. They would rerecord if their music didn't sound according to their standards of 'good'.

Subjective I know, but they would go out of their way to make it sound as best as possible on the average Joe car stereo. And when Average Joe would come to their concert, they could blow him away with the onstage performance.

I always thought it to be very considerate of that band.

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