Snake oil products shouldn't negate the worth of investing actual good quality speakers (etc). And though sometimes the case that doesn't necessarily mean uber-expensive.

geoff

They could buy the CD - I do ....

geoff

Are there really people that can hear the loss of quality of audio recorded at 16 bit 44.1 (or 48) kHz compared to say 24 bit at 96 kHz? (A blind test of course, with consistency over repeat tests.)

I thought that the main point of the latter was to minimise quality loss due to processing or level adjustment, prior to delivery at the former.

"Listen for the phaser on strummed guitars or delicate (or sometimes not even delicate) cymbal work."
Yeah... for me it's the cymbal work. I can pretty clearly tell the difference between a lower quality recording and a high res one. I can't really explain it but in a good hi res recording the cymbals just shine. In a lower quality recording the cymbals sound a bit muffled. They don't ring out as well. Adjusting for a higher end eq doesn't really clear it up. Even the odd high pitched squeak coming off an acoustical guitar as the finger rubs longways on a string shines in a high res recording and does not in a crappy mp3.

Granted my ears are not so great anymore and it's getting harder to pick up on it, but if you know what you're listening for....

Virtually all of us were born with the ability to hear, listening is a skill that is learned.

In my recording studio control room, I can manipulate what you hear in strummed guitars or delicate cymbal work. I can fatten, then, brighten, dull, adjust attacks, decays, harmonics, spatial location, distortion, compression, eq, reflections, even the PITCH of individual notes IN a recorded chord. MUHAHAHAHAA! I am omnipotent!!! The audio alpha and omega!!!

Buy all the expensive gear you want - *I* alone control all sound.

(not that it goes to me head or anything :D)

Far as vinyl goes, there's certainly a hipster element to it. My 15 year old niece wants a turntable, I suspect mostly because vinyl is "cool" in certain circles. The is the whole ritual to it... when you put on an LP, you're there just to listen, not the casual listening you often do with portable audio. No different than when I put on a Blu-ray, SACD regular CD on my home audio system, only that kids raised on iPods probably never had that home audio system. And if you are comparing it to an IPod through stock ear buds in a typical street school, gym, office, playing 256kb/s AAC files, almost anything is going to sound better if you didn't completely skimp on that home audio rig.

But there is something to the LP resurgance. Ok, so it's technically true that an LP can reproduce audio above 20kHz, that actually happening is rare. High frequencies are much weaker than low (which is why the RIAA companding curve boosts highs by 20dB, as it's cutting lows by 20dB), and most consumer turntables will lose much of that higher frequency content due to parasitic capacitance. Even if you dont, few home audio systems will actually maintain much above 20kHz from turntable to speaker. And that's assuming it's actually even on the recording. Even if the LP mastering engineer received a master without the CD filtering at 20kHz already in place he's probably going to apply a 15-20kHz low pass filter anyway. That's because high frequencies can damage the LP mastering lathe. Unless the project is being 1/2 or 1/3 speed mastered, higher frequencies are not going onto that LP.

And yet, it is absolutely the case that lots of recent LP releases sound better (ignoring the inevitable pops and clicks), even with all that and the reality of only 60-70dB SNR on th LP vs 96dB on the CD. Nd that's entirely the fault of the modern CD mastering process and the "loudness wars". It's common to have CD audio compressed beyond all recognition, even clipping on major releases. You can't put that kind of compression n an LP, it just can't support that much energy (same reason the low end gets that 20dB cut). So in the extreme of loudness war CD releases, the LP is sometimes better. Nothing at all to do with the LP being somehow "magical analog", ough this situation perpetuates that myth.

The article mentions Neil Young's Pono project, which was on Kickstarter early this year. Don't mistake that fr the typical Sony approach of "build a better format and they will come". They are building a very high quality portable player, but no new formats. The difference is the music .. they at least claim to trying to eliminate that gap between artist and listener that's created things like the loudness wars. They plan to offer recordings as close to the actual artists' master as available. To do that, of course, they need a player that can handle various bit depths and rates, but the goal isn't to charge you X for 96kHz and Y for 192kHz digital, but to have that one artist's master (which might be 88.1 kHz or whatever) and get that untouched to your ears. That will give you a profoundly different sound than today's music that's altered by the record company based on their beliefs about what sells.. or whatever compels them.

"In my recording studio control room, I can manipulate what you hear in strummed guitars or delicate cymbal work."

I think you're a little confused.
Sure, you can fake anything you want while recording, but that's not what's being discussed here.

This isn't about creating a track. It's about playing one back and having it sound as closely to the original track as possible.

I understand. I guess my backend point is that the quality of the reproduction is effected greatly in the mix.

Accurate playback has been around for ever. There's not much need to exceed the threshold of hearing - we can record 500% more than what we hear... but what is the point in that? Audio has peaked - we've ACHIEVED perfection, sonically, no huge need to make great that much greater. Unless something IS missing in the great, and most prove it isn't. Yes, it is missing in lower MP3s and loudness wars, but there exists solutions for that already.

Video is catching up to do the same thing. Soon, we'll have all the dynamic range we need, and color space we can see, things to play them back on... then what? Colors outside the spectrum? hahahahaha that will be fun and pointless.

On topic, a decent player and 320kbps MP3, with a $200 set of earbuds covers 99% of all audio and 99% of all listeners needs. Not that I don't love big sound - I have 4 15" woofers in my place and no subwoofer EVER sounds right to me - but things have evolved into a more consumable platform. Audio perfection was achieved a decade ago....

.... so now, it all circles back to the audio engineer mixing in the studio (and the "mastering", which is quickly becoming a purposeless art)

The old RIAA curve (dictating frequency boost and cut for phonograph cutting and playback) also cuts off anything above 20KHz.

The reason for the high boost is to minimize the obtrusiveness of clicks and pops on playback. The reason for the bass cut is to minimize the width of the track, allowing more music on the disc.

I don't think compression is much of a factor in the CD/LP question. One could cut an LP with heavily-compressed music also, and in fact they did. But what IS cool about an LP is that the process is so old-fashioned and transparent--look, there's the music literally on that track, making the stylus wiggle back and forth. Nothing esoteric or digital about it.

As for super-high frequencies, good luck to anyone over 40. Even for young people, the super-highs contribute very little. Again, Vegas can easily demonstrate this by taking a track, cloning it to a second track, low-pass filtering it, and then subtracting. The very subtle super-high frequency information is what's left. Can you "hear" that information superimposed on the low-pass track? I think in most instances it will be tough. Depends on the cutoff point, of course.

"I understand. I guess my backend point is that the quality of the reproduction is effected greatly in the mix"
Again it's a moot point. It matters not that a recording is full of fake engineered sounds. That's not the issue at all. How accurately can you reproduce those fake engineered sounds on playback is the point.

"Yes, it is missing in lower MP3s and loudness wars, but there exists solutions for that already."
Yup... so why is hi res audio suddenly making a come back? I go back to my original point. There is no longer any reason to have to work with the crappy high compression formats today. Storage space today is cheap and plentiful and even the cheapest of consumer playback devices we have at our disposal can do hi res quite easily. There is no reason to deal with crappy mp3 anymore. Couple that with the fact that any reasonable set of headphones can pretty clear depict the difference between a highly compressed mp3 and say... a high res flac... and well... what you have is a hi res come back.

"On topic, a decent player and 320kbps MP3"
I find it interesting how that mp3 number keeps getting bumped up. About 1/2 a dozen posts up. MP3 at 192 was being discussed :)

Look... MP3 has been given a bad rap over the years and that's it. People don't understand what this 192 and 320 is all about. They simply associate MP3 with the term "low quality" because that's what they're used to. Flac on the other hand is a different ball game. It has never really been associated with the term "low quality" so people don't think of it that way.

".... so now, it all circles back to the audio engineer mixing in the studio (and the "mastering", which is quickly becoming a purposeless art)"

I remember the Professional diving industry when Jacques Cousteau first developed SCUBA. They hated him for it because now for cheap price of $2000 worth of diving equipment.... ANYBODY can become a diver.

Just like the video world. 40 years ago there wasn't really a lot on the way of Professional videographers, but with today's computers and programs, anybody with 500 to 1000 bucks and a bit of imagination can become a "pro"

"As for super-high frequencies, good luck to anyone over 40. Even for young people, the super-highs contribute very little."

I don't think it's as much about hearing higher frequencies as it is hearing the "completeness" of the music. I haven't tested my ears in quite some time but they're now 52 years old so I'd be surprised if I can hear much over 14 or so.

For me it's like listening to a solid line vs a dotted line if you can understand that. Like a crappy digital volume control with 3 db steps vs a higher quality volume control where each step is finer... maybe .5 db steps

I agree with all that. :)

Interesting point is that high end audio files have been around for a decade or more. What primed new interest for Sony to suddenly deem it "profitable"? BEATS headphones??
My friends flac'd their albums long ago. They'll have no need for some new version.

just making conversation.... :)

"and the "mastering", which is quickly becoming a purposeless art"

Nonsense. You obviously don't understand the value of the mastering engineer, and those that release an unmastered project don't understand the important role of mastering either.

Oh, I do. And it has evolved greatly from its original need. But it is true, many don't "get it" and should.

"As for super-high frequencies, good luck to anyone over 40. Even for young people, the super-highs contribute very little."

Hands up those who can still hear the line oscillator of analogue TVs? (Assuming you can find one).

When TV first came out in Australia, the 15,625 Hz whistle radiating from the line deflection coil used to annoy me. Then I stopped noticing it. I thought new TVs didn't do it.

A few years later, I bought a TV and had a younger friend visit, and he said, "That whistle coming from your TV is a bit annoying". "What whistle?", I said, and stuck my head as close as I could, but I could hear no whistle. (These days I can hardly hear the speech!)

"Hands up those who can still hear the line oscillator of analogue TVs"

lol
A show of hands as to who still has an analogue tv....

hahahaha my folks just dumped their last old glass TV. I USED to be able to hear it that high pitched scan freq. I think I'm around 14-15k now a days. My tests in the studio had me around 16-18k on good days.
BUT, I been playing my radio at 11 for two decades now: knowing I'll be deaf later in life, ENJOYING loud music while I still appreciate it (and probably causing hearing loss as well)

I don't have an analog TV anymore, but the 22 kHz from the PC switching power supplies drives me nuts.
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Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

I've got that HF thing going continuously whether or not I have any devices turned on !

geoff