I mostly listen to music on a Windows pc with a FIIO Q7, HD560 in Foobar2k, which I consider to be literally baby level gear compare with the setups and gear some users have here. Anyway, I have been checking on rebuilding my music library and I notice that FLACs with 24b-48kHz really sound different from the previous tracks I had, but above that i.e., 24b-96kHz, 24b-192kHz or even DSF tracks does not sound different at all.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, I literally just change from some Marshall Monitors and listening music in windows VLC to this beginner level gear. So, I assume my lack of knowledge and lack of higher level gear is the culprit to me not finding any difference with quality levels above 48kHz. I hope the community can help me with some insights for me to understand a little more, and tweak something’s while I get use to this hobby.
PD. I am not planning on buying more gear at the moment, maybe in the future I will get into more advance level stuff.
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No, now I have good gear and crappy mp3’s. Do not be like me.
I’d say CD quality is more than adequate. (By extension cd quality FLAC).
But audio CD’s are often miffed at by audiophiles, but CD’s are quite good. But I mean physical CD’s and not FLACS.
But it takes really good gear to bring out the best in redbook CD’s.
There’s far too much detail to go into the specifics of why.
Mostly because there are several different ways that high end audiophile brands can ultimately choose to turn a spinning disc to musical excellence.
Bit depth greater than 16 bit on the final (already mixed) track, what significance can it have in view of the indiscriminate use of compression in recordings and the presence of background noise in our homes? And if you are 50 years old, you will not hear sounds above the 12 kHz… But regardless of where the listener lives and how old he or she is, it would be nice to have clip-free recordings, instead of the commonly found ridiculous amounts of digital clipping… Unfortunately, almost all (except perhaps DSD) digital recording formats are defenseless against the carelessness of the producer. This is the only thing I envy for fans of vinyl records, they are necessarily free from clipping (otherwise they would not be playable, at least physically).
actual sound levels in real life scenarios: I sometimes measure sound levels in my living room with nice audiophile equipment, and I also listen to classical music concert halls. I use the NIOSH. app on my iPhone 13 and I calibrated it against a DBA sound meter. It’s accurate to within a few dBs for average levels, although I don’t know if it captures peaks as well as a dedicated sound meter. Nevertheless, I think the levels are close enough for this discussion. In my quiet living room with no traffic outside, and with my furnace fan turned off, the lowest level I can get is 30 dB. the loudest I listen to is 95 dB but I’m scared of damaging my hearing, so I typically listen at 80 to 85 dBs. So that would give me a practical range of about 50 to 55 dB for typical listening. A Typical classical piece rarely has this range. I find that a piece that has a full orchestra at one extreme and a single pianissimo note from violin or a woodwind instrument at the other end to be 30 or 40 dB maximum range. The situation in a live performance is even worse. With all the noise that goes on in a concert hall, I find that the floor is closer 50 dB. A full orchestra may generate 95 or even 100 dB. Similarly, a practical dynamic range of 40-50 dB. For this practical range, 96 dBs is already overkill for high quality systems in high-quality quiet rooms. Incidentally, even vinyl can capture practical range that most people would want to listen to. So, given our listening environments and the new to preserve our hearing for our old age, I think 16-bit recordings are more than enough. Leave the higher resolutions to the Audio engineers, who need them for headroom, but for listeners, 16 bit is just fine.
If you think you’ll be constantly upgrading your gear to higher quality, I don’t see a problem with building your library up. It’s nice to have a collection to pull from to massage your ears.
The simple answer is no, cheap DACs have crappy filters and moving the filter higher moves you out of the sensitive area of hearing.
I would argue that they’re pointless for any gear.
I’ll be honest after a decade of this hobby with my DAP and IEMs and some A/B testing I can’t even tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC.
I just admit to myself that I listen to FLACs purely for the placebo effect.
Hi-Res is pointless. No commercial recording has the dynamic range or frequency range to benefit from the bit depth or sampling frequency.
It’s pointless regardless of what equipment you have.
There is a technical benefit to 24 bit element of it, but it is not perceptible in any regular listening situation.
Most consumer gear doesn’t even have a noise floor enough for 16bit, so yes.
Anything greater than CD quality (16 bit/44.1 KHz) is a waste regardless of the quality of your equipment. What matters is the quality of the specific recording, mixing, and mastering, and to avoid any lossy encoding (MP3, AAC, etc.)
Lossy doesn’t have to be entirely avoided, high bitrates are fine and have minimal if any difference compared to CD quality.
Nah, go ahead and lossily encode, just avoid pitfalls and research what the optimal encoder for your use-case is, and which settings to use for an acoustically transparent output file.
I disagree with regards to sampling rate. If you have 44.1 kHz sampling rate, you need a brickwall low pass filter that goes -96 dB between, say 18 kHz and 22.05 kHz to avoid aliasing on audible range (as per Shannon-Nyquist criterion.
That’s -331 dB per octave. A ridiculously high requirement.
Compare that with 96 kHz, which requires -68 dB per octave or 192 kHz which needs -40 dB per octave and higher sampling rate starts making sense.
Lossy doesn’t have to be entirely avoided, high bitrates are fine and have minimal if any difference compared to CD quality.
Why would it be a waste? If something is mastered with 24 bit (and has a theoretical dynamic range of 144 dB) surely something has to be lost if you resample that to 16 bit and a 96 dB DR?
Nothing audible though. Once you exceed the limits of hearing, it’s all just numbers used for marketing. Bigger must be better, right?
No one actually has a playback system and listening environment that supports 144dB dynamic range. They are limited by maximum output and ambient noise floor. Nor are there any recordings requiring such a range (even ones released in hi-res formats).
Likewise, there is no musical content beyond 20KHz, and most people’s hearing drops off well before that.
In the early days of CDs, a company named Telarc released high dynamic range recordings to exploit the full capabilities of CDs. They would knock you out of your seat on crescendos, but could barely be heard during quiet passages. They made for impressive demos, but were otherwise not satisfying to listen to. It was too much of a good thing.
Today, many recordings have limited dynamic range which seem lifeless. They seem optimized for listening on equipment with limited volume in noisy environments (in the car over road noise, outside in public wearing earbuds, or played on a small wireless speaker.)
As an audiophile, this is most unfortunate. I would like to hear music with a dynamic range appropriate a typical quiet livingroom and a good stereo with large speakers that can play loud without distortion when required, as in the early days of hi-fi. CDs are more than capable of supporting that. Hi-res formats are overkill.
You absolutely do not want to be blasting your ears with anything close to 144db for any amount of time, if you can help it. That gets into immediate hearing loss territory. Even 96db is hearing loss territory, though not immediate.
I usually listen at 75-77db, which allows for peaks of higher than 77db without problems. Even having 144db is kinda useless for me. The question of whether your gear can produce 144db of audio is in question as well. I’ve also read that microphones can’t really record anything above 20 bits - 120db, in other words.
Really nothing wrong with quality lossy codecs, like Ogg Vorbis 320 Kbps. Very very few people can actually tell the difference between that and lossless.
I’d say most audiophiles can’t tell the difference between opus 160kbps and lossless. There was a post a while back that challenged this sub and only one guy even got it right.
At 256vbr it audibly becomes a wash with 1411.
What sorry?
256Kbps variable bitrate compressed audio vs. CD uncompressed audio 1411kbps.
Yes, but what about it?
The difference between for example 256 Kbps AAC and 44.1/16 is tiny, most people can’t tell the difference.
- i offered no comment on that matter, I only expanded on what /u/nclh77 said into a longer for.
- it seems you are agreeing anyway ? so i am confused?
That’s where the difference between technically lossy vs. perceptually lossy becomes relevant.
If I remember correctly, there were some studies which showed strong arguments, that OGG Vorbis is technically lossy while being perceptually lossless.
Exactly. It’s so good it’s considered to generally be transparent because it is borderline impossible to tell the difference between that and lossless 44.1/16.
Now, I will enter the rabbit hole of which FLACs are truly lossless and which are only upscaled
Only pain, you will find.
Will he finish what he begins?
It will be a never ending labyrinth filled with paradoxes and enigmas wrapped in Twinkies.
Leave the puzzles. Take the twinkies.
On really good gear, the difference is painfully obvious. Unfortunately, it’s also painfully obvious when recording engineers try to sneak in a vocal recorded in a sound booth when the rest of the track was recorded in a vastly different, more acoustically lively recording space.
Name an example of a recording engineer that did that. Audio engineer here. I want to hear what you are claiming you can hear clearly.
I just try to use my ears and not make myself crazy.
I had a friend who was really stuck on DR and lossy/lossless, ‘the loudness wars’ etc
I took one of his hi-res flac files, 24/96 and converted it to mp3 VBR-0 16/44.1 and foobar2000’s DR meter gave it the exact same DR - so much for their DR meter and/or hi-res audio files
…and this is why you HAD a friend.
Sorry i had to lol
Yes compleatly pointless. One may argue that a higher sample rate can result in a more accurately timed reproduction of the soundwave depending on the dac ane its filter but … I doubt you cab hear a difference even with super high end electrostatic headphones.
My uncle has been obsessed with this his whole life. He got electrostatic headphones with a high voltage supply to use it. He even has some patents on electrostatic driver designs.
He does not want to omit the idea that hi res has a benefit to impulse reproduction. Yes you can definitely see the ringing artifacts that the discretisation brings and yes the impulse widens because of this, but i get the impression that this is more a theoretical concept than any real world difference. The brain does not allow this kind of nuance.