Thank you for bringing the subject. I happened to utilize dithering technic for low level signal detection (as well as I am highly experienced in audio signal restoration) so I'll try to simplify the explanation of dithering. 1) The reason you can't hear dithering noise is because usually a noise shaping is involved pushing the energy of the noise to the higher frequency where the ear is less sensitives. 2) Noise shaping also increases resolution of the low level signals. 3) signals that are at level lower than the least significant bit cannot be restored without dither. In order to be effective The peak level of the dither signal is usually higher than the LSB by 2-3 bits. 4) A lower than 16th bit signal is not only a signal that is at loudness level lower than -96dB it can be an harmonic with signal level lower than 1 bit, say low level violin harmonics played together with a contra bass. These harmonics are also lost (or heavily distorted) by the challenge to affect the LSB bit 5) when (only) a high frequency section of -90db level white noise is played, the LSB bit will change it's status from 1 to 0 randomly, we will get a noise at RMS level of 3dB with average of 0 volt DC' meaning and equal avenge number of "0"s and "1"s . 6) When playing a 1KHz signal @ -108db level with no dithering, the digital recording value will return a constant 0 voltage because the level is too low to affect the A/D LSB bit. 7) When adding the two signals (1kHz and White noise) together we will still get a DC average of 0 Volts, we will get a noise of about 3dB level, and the long time DC average will be 0VD. However, the digital statistics of the noise will have more "1"s during 1 KHz signal period is at the positive area and more "0"s when the 1Khz period is at the negative cycle. 8) This means that when adding an LPF for a 2KHz at the output of the DAC, we will get rid of most of the noise and can reconstruct the -108dB level 1Kz signal. 9) Luckily for us as humans, our brain can recognize the 1khz since we barely hear the noise shaped dither' so no need for adding an LPF in order to hear the 1Khz. 10) When FR is limited to 20Khz (at 44KHz sampling rate), we will be able to recognize only medium frequency which is fairly good result. 11) A High res sampling rate allow pushing the dither noise shaped signal energy to above the 20Khz range, ( beyond human hearing capability*) and allows for higher audio frequencies to be restored. 12) Is Dither needed for 24 bit Hi Res Signals? to my experience the answer is yes. it is not needed for the recording itself' but it is useful for the reproduction. not all systems are capable of accurately produce a 24bit quality of signals (due to poor DAC circuitry for example or other reasons), in other cases the recorded signal is passing through digital compression channels such as streaming or Bluetooth and Etc. 13) For my work I always use a 24bit 96Khz production with noise shaped dithering of 20 bits (4 bits for the dither). 14) * We can hear information above 20KHz: We can't identify tones above 20KHz (on our age ithe limit is lowered to above 12Khz) , this is what makes dither works: We can hear identify a "20Khz to 40Khz modulated white noise carrying a low level hi-mid frequency (it is not realty modulated, just a sum of the 2 signals) Hope the explanation is not to detailed or too complicated.

Fantastic, the end! Thank you for your explanations on 16 and 24 bit

Good content, and Audio Phil had me laughing really hard. Well done, good sir!

Headroom and post production :)....Nice video as usual. Thanks :)

Hi, really awesome your sarcastic comments in your videos. Ha! I (43) actually used Dolby S HX-Pro AND cleaned the heads recularly. I also used my dad's AKAI 4000DS reel-to-reel. Copying Paul Simons "Graceland" :-) My dad and I, we discussed those things like flutter and distortions factors when buying a tape deck. I guess, when dealing with digital audio (recording) the sampling rate will be more cruicial when using certain effects because of harmonics above the Nyquist frequency, and audible non-harmonic frequency components.

For me it's all about headroom. This is important for the recording and production phases. I was given a raw 24bit live recording where the levels had been incorrectly set for the first few minutes and I needed to bring the levels up to match the rest of the recording ... I feared the worst whilst remembering trying such things in the old world of analogue recording where the previously inaudible noise floor would intrude unpleasantly. I therefore was blown away when I simply selected the low level section and brought it up to the rest of the recording using Audacity. To my ears it was audibly perfect with no noise floor issues at all! However, an end product distributed in a 16bit format (once all the production tweaks have been done) is fine for my ears.

I love your perspective on audiophiles

Nice video. I like your distinction between ‘enthusiast’ and ‘audiophile’. I’ve come to realise I’m the former as I don’t have the money to become the latter. I like being happy enjoying the music with my tech that is good enough. 16-bit 44.1kHz for me 😊

Good explanation,thanks

I regularly show Monty Montgomery’s Digital Show and Tell to audiophiles. It’s here on KZfaq.

GREETINGS FOR YOUR WORK.KEEP GOING THIS WAY.👌👌👌

Good that you mentioned this, I have a dire straits boxed set which I play through a Marantz CD75, the sound quality is much better than all the others I wondered if it was in 24 bit Quality is amazing

There is one benefit from tinnitus... the whole noise floor sorta becomes pretty much a non-issue. Recording 16 bit CD is plenty good for cassette, yeah I still do that. CDs transfer to cassette much better than vinyl. That being said that vinyl to cassette thing really doesn't work out very well. But it did enable tinnitus due to being able to turn the volume control to 11 without any feedback.

I find your videos very entertaining and informative. I'm the kinda of idiot that would blow a load of money on high end gear just because on paper a number is higher than another number so it has to be better, even if to my ears there's no decernible difference. Your videos keep me more grounded.

This is anecdotal at best so take from it what you will. Years ago, we're talking Pro Tools7 era, I was recording a group and they were going to get the tracks mastered elsewhere. We were about finished when they finally mentioned that their mastering guy wanted 24/48. I said, "Sorry guys, I recorded 16/44.1" This is followed by a little bit of grumbling from the mastering engineer. A few weeks later I get a call from said engineer saying, "This is the best 16/44.1 recording I've ever heard." To me that just came across as silly. I'm sure you've heard better. I'm recording in a project studio in a log cabin with very minimal gear. My only goals were the right mics in the right place and capture the best performance. That same band came back to me for their next album as well. Don't get me wrong here, I wouldn't argue that 16/44.1 is objectively better than 24/48 but to me the difference is minimal. Prior to that time period I was working with ADAT XT20 machines. I subscribe to the concept that if you record garbage at any bit depth and sample rate you'll still have garbage. So, as I said, take from that what you will. I'm not saying that what I did was right/wrong or better/worse, only at the end of the day everyone was satisfied.

Have there been any properly blind tests where people could reliably identify a 24 bit musical signal against the same signal, but degraded to 16 bits and dithered? I would suspect not, but if there was, I'd be more likely to reconsider.

What brought me to watch this entire video, and its arguments, basically reinforces my experiences of digital in another arena… digital imaging… it’s the same technology, just catering to other senses. I was hoping for a clear cut resolve to a single question - are our eyes or ears better at distinguishing noise from detail. After seeing the video I am undecided, but it seems that our ears are actually better at resolving than our eyes… digital images at 16 bit are the absolute precipice of imaging today, well capture at least… scanners go beyond, but it matters little, as our displays are 8-bit based… which begs a different question, maybe more apt to the original… is it the displays which are inferior enough to limit our experiences of digital imaging? In this case the arena of digital sound and digital imaging, go complete circle… in the end, maybe it’s not the source sampling which creates issues, it’s the delivery of the source to us!

1:30 in, You make cutting through the BS one of my most enjoyable listens on KZfaq. The fact that these chairs all have headrests make it the joke of the century...

I've just recently discovered your channel within the last week and after several of your videos, I'm really enjoying the don't-take-it-so-seriously attitude you bring to your posts. Dispassionately examining the rhetoric is very helpful in dialing back the outrage on a topic like 16-bit vs. 24-bit. Even if I can hear the difference in bit rate, I'm more likely to hear glaring differences like room noise or poor mic placement, even when I'm listening analytically. Not to say there isn't a difference, but as you point out, there are some differences that don't make that much difference to the end user. But besides that, no single parameter on its own (bit rate, sampling rate, noise floor, etc.) is the silver bullet that provides the end-all definition of what makes a good recording. (To be fair, the misuse and abuse of some parameters can indeed yield a definitively bad recording, but that's not the same as the hair-splitting between 'near-perfect' and 'nearer-than-that-to-perfect'.) That said, from time to time I still listen to -- and enjoy -- CD's, LP's (to a lesser extent 45 and 78 RPM singles), cassettes, open reel tape and even 8-track cartridges. I call it the 'fidelity-to-what?' principle. Music is such a subjective topic when it comes to nailing down what makes it enjoyable for you, and it's mainly an emotional aspiration rather than intellectual. So if I'm willing, perhaps even prefer, to listen to a cassette from the 1980's or a cartridge from the 1970's, I may not be in pursuit at that moment of 'absolute fidelity to the original sound', I may be seeking the same feeling I felt the first time I heard that song, and remembering the people I was in company with at the time. Thinking of the car I drove or the place I lived. Or in the case of media that predates my own life, experiencing the sound the way contemporaries of that technology did. Fidelity to a memory or emotion, if you will. For example, I remember hearing certain songs on CD in the 1980's that didn't sound quite 'right' to me, because they didn't match my memory of hearing them the first time on AM radio in the early 1970's. Expanding from mono to stereo, losing the noise and static, and widening the frequency range emphasized different sounds in the recordings, but often the speed was off, seemed slow. I later learned that some Top 40 stations had a habit of running their turntables slightly faster, perhaps 46 or 47 RPM, so the music would sound a bit livelier (and by gaining a few seconds per song, you might have another minute or two per hour of advertising time to sell). But the point is, better audio fidelity actually interfered a bit with my enjoyment of some songs until I understood what was going on, simply because they didn't match my emotional memory. (I expect this generation may come to feel that way about 128K MP3's.) By the same token, as an audio engineer (and enthusiast), I'm not against creating and listening to the best we can possibly muster in the sonic arts; in fact, I think we should. Right now I work in a small studio that produces mainly podcasts and audiobooks, and I'm always looking for ways to eliminate audio distractions, especially noise. But I take the view that while we should obviously tend to the technical parameters, we should do so in service to the content we are recording without getting distracted into making the technology the main thing. Yet, in all things, charity. Whatever format a person likes and what they are willing to spend on it is fine with me. If I had elephant bucks to spend, I would likely purchase more classic gear, because it's fun! But I will also admit that even then, the grail for me would not be ALL about the sound alone...some of it would be visual, tactile, nostalgic, and again, emotional.

YOU ARE AMONG THE FEW SOUND SPECIALIST WHICH EXIST IN ONLINE COMUNITY.

I have always recorded in 24 bit. However as a consumer format, 16 is good but it is so much easier to maximize the quality of 16bit if you start with 24 and then convert the final product to 16.

Amazing...😊 I love your videos. Always make me laugh.😆😂😁 Most audiophiles take themselves and overpriced gear too seriously.... In my opinion.

Thanks for this explanation. Here’s an anecdotal story of why 16 bits isn’t enough, and why, as a professional video editor, I always do my final mixing at 24 bits, even if the tracks I’m working with start at 16 bits. A couple of decades ago, I put together a “reference” audiophile CD for an audiophile club. I ripped tracks from commercial CDs, assembled them, then burned a compilation CD. The copies sounded like the originals, but the live tracks had applause cut off, and levels of some tracks were too low. So I brought the ripped, uncompressed AIFF files into a Pro Tools project to fix the minor issues. I added fade-ins and fade-outs to the live tracks, and adjusted levels on a few tracks to make things more consistent. I spit the problem tracks out of Pro Tools at 16/44.1 and burned new CDs. I was proud of myself until I listened critically to the results on headphones. All the tracks that came out of Pro Tools sounded noticeably degraded. It was not subtle. When doing final mixing on my video projects, I typically use EQ, noise reduction and compression/limiting. I can clearly hear my processing degrading the 16/48 tracks, which limits how far I can push the processing if working at 16 bits. At 24 bits, the same mix with the same processing sounds cleaner. To me, it’s not subtle. Would my clients care when listening to my deliverables? Probably not. But I care because I know what to listen for and can easily hear the difference.

3:20 Acoustic band? Is that abdominally fitted, and tightened to prevent noisy emissions?

I think here is to compare 16-bit to 24-bit on the dB level is not mattering to much. The signal amplitude will stay the same, but basically you get more steps of the amplitude to recover the original signal. Where white lower bit rate you have to add additional noise in form of ditter that you don’t notice the difference, good examples comparison you can also find in pictures.

Also, think that a very quiet room has a noise level of 20-30dB and you damage your ears if listening louder than 80dB. That is 50-60dB dynamic range. The 16-bit quantization noise will be more than 30dB below ambient noise. Even without dither it can be very difficult to hear distortion 30-40dB below noise level.

very good

While the extra dB is great I prefer having the extended dynamic range of frequency range / response to play with with 24bit - over 48khz . But 1644.. it's fun to record to and people don't generally notice if you pull it off balanced.

24 bit vs. 16 bit is dynamic range 144db vs. 96 db. Noise is from YOUR recording system, from the ambient noise of the room through the microphones through the mic preamps and then the rest of the mixing desk, including the AC system of your room or building. Cassette decks needed Dolby B because of the tape hiss inherent in the mylar tape medium itself which was noise at about -50db from the peak of 0db. With Dolby B, C, S; A for the pro recorders and on. You could get to a noise floor of -60db to -80db, maybe. In my DAW I can see the noise floor of MY recording system in my meters. With my blower motors off in my HVAC system and AC line filtering I can get, usually -70db to -80db down from 0db with my mics open in the recording chain. I can see it. Even with 16bit (-96db of dynamic range) I have still not used up all of the dynamic range and my noise floor is higher than -96db of the 16 bit system. I have not reached the bottom of the theoretical. Detail is a matter of sample rate so if I go above 44.1khz I can record more and I like 24 bit/96khz for all my masters. I have tried 16 bit/96khz and cannot hear the difference, but use 24 bit anyway. I read of some studios in NYC using 16 bit/96khz for their masters. I can't hear the improvement of 192khz or 384 khz using 32 bit float. It is just more work to get back to the 16/44.1 of CDs. In my DAW I have pulled some "professional recordings" from CDs and looked at them at the beginning of a track. They usually leave about 2 seconds of blank space before the music starts. I have seen in some commercial recordings a -40db to -50db noise floor before the music starts. They could have used a noise gate, but did not. This tells me their room is noisy from open mics through their recording chain.

Just watched a video by an audio engineer for a record company. He stated that the only difference between 16-bit and 24-bit is dynamic range and you would have to hear the music at insanely high volumes to notice any difference.

I'm an audiophile purest. I only listen to music played back on my "Webster-Chicago Model 7 Wire Recorder". It's the only way to truly experience the musical message that the artist is trying to convey.

Back in the early digital days, I was at a friend's studio where he had a 12 bit sampler. I asked if that wasn't too poor quality to be used in making recordings. He told me (and it made sense to me) that any samples that were used would be inconsequential relative to the rest of the mix.

15 hours old now this video, and the comment section is both as entertaining and insightful as expected (as is your video of course, David! 😎). But in this whole audiophile debate, including the idea that microphone placement is the most important aspect, isn't the _really_ most important aspect overlooked? *THE* *MUSIC* (and the people/band playing it!). I have some genuinely poor quality recordings of one of my favourite blues-rock bands jamming live on stage, with the bass mixed far too loud, the singer's microphone too soft, excessive microphone distortion, analogue clipping; you name it. But both the band and the audience are having a fantastic time, and the groove is unbelievable. Then I don't care about 16 vs 24 bit, or any of the recording flaws; I still very much enjoy listening to it, almost feeling it like I was there, despite all the technical flaws... In some ways a poor quality recording can be a help; if I still thoroughly enjoy the music, then I know there is something inherently good about that music, and the musicians performing it. Music that needs those extra bits to make that extra bit of "magic" happen (sic., no pun intended), I have always found _a_ _little_ suspect. I do have some myself, but that music often seems to have more of an outer-worldly feel, rather than the 'human' touch... (and yes, that's not just electronic music, there's some classical music like that as well).

Whenever I misbehaved my mom said to go to my room without dither. Take that for what you will.

There are advantages of24 bits for the mixing etc, but for a perfectly set gain, aren't the extra bits just recording the noise in more detail?

Should an audiophile listening chair have spikes like speaker cabinets do?

i've listened to 24bit recordings on 24bit hardware (the high end soundblaster cards were very expensive.. so i got them second hand..) and i cannot tell the difference between a 24 and 16bit recording of the same song... might not be listening to the right music, but, old CD releases of movie soundtracks from disney, is i do believe, (disney used to know what they were doing) as good as home audio will ever need to be... listening to the Lion King on cassette i knew when the intro chant was coming... on CD it still makes me jump... The Pirates of the Caribbean soundtracks are really fun to use to demonstrate what 'dynamic range' means and what the 16bits of a CD can really do... as far as decently mastered audio goes you dont need more than 16bit.. i have no idea what kind of godlike ears one would need to require a medium that encompasses the entirety of the dynamic range of a jet engine starting from cold and going full throttle.. at that point you don't need 24bits; you need hearing aids...

For digital recordings lower noise allows greater clarity and separation to be heard or percieved on a good system. The problem is that the sound is so good that you don't need to concentrate to hear it. On vinyl recordings however the very high noise level forces the brain the concentrate and strain to hear the detail behind the noise and therefore the hearer is encouraged to listen to the music more actively and often perceives this as better sound quality even when it is not. Experiment... take a top quality 24bit recording and mix in some snap, crackle and pop from vinyl and it instantly sounds better to an audiophile. Odd that.

As a HiFi guy I used to be totally convinced that 24 bit listening was better than 16 bit, but then I watched an interview with a mastering engineer. I heard him say that he masters differently for CD than he does for Hi Res tracks on HD Tracks. If that's the case for even some of the mastering engineers, then the argument that 24 bit sounds better (based only on it being more bits) is blown out of the water. Also I have more than one example of 16 bit masters of albums sounding clearly better than 24 bit masters (mastered by someone else). It's about all of the production, and not simply 16 or 24 bit. In general you might be better off with 24 bit releases, but that's only because more attention might have gone into making sure it sounds good, given the known consumer of "Hi Res".

So what is best for me on a Computer PC. i have a sound card that can play 16-bits or 24-bits and betwen 44.1 Khz - 48 Khz - 88.2 Khz - 96 Khz - 176.4 Khz - 192 Khz ... Witch one is best do you think? Thx for a good video. / Sweden!

"BEAUTY - Philips 3000 nose hair trimmer" - LOL - (It worked!) - Made my night 🤩

Dolby C and chrome tapes made cassettes just about acceptable to me.

More bits = more information = potential for better sound. Methinks much of the resistance to this idea is from avid CD collectors trying to stave off obsolescence. Rest assured, your CD collection will never be obsolete as long as you're enjoying your discs. Let people also enjoy their hi-res recordings. We can all coexist in this hobby.

Any audible differences between 24 and 16 bits are likely caused by the lowpass filter of the dac @44.1 kHz sampling rate, not by the difference in bit depth.

Criteriously human, scientific and simple. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Y'know what happens most of the time? Home audio listeners end up with a 16 bit recording sitting in a 24bit container with the lower 8 bits either zeroed off or randomly making noise.

Now U are Talking, MasterClasd is what Im her for!!!!! The spice of the channel some tech , My current faves 16/44>176/24 upsample same for 96/24 when 192/24 not available Nyquest/Shannon was right

I seem to remember early CD recordings or players only supporting 14 bits because 16 bits was a little ahead of the technology. What I do remember is that the Magnavox player I bought in the mid-80's made music sound brittle. Thankfully it self-destructed after a couple years.

It's about how many bits are being used as well as how many are used in the system. Low level signals use less bits, this adds distortion. This is more noticable when using smaller word sizes.

This is very interesting, thanks. I have 2 questions which are not related. Firstly, given that most, or at least many, new non classical albums are to some extent 'brickwalled' is there any point buying the more expensive 24 bit version (say from Qobuz) over the 16 bit version anyway? I don't know but I would love to. My feeling is that the potential increase in dynamic range from the 24 bit version will be more than wiped away by the process of brickwalling the album, so it becomes a waste of money going for the 24 bit version? What is the answer please? Then this ........ Secondly, if an album is available as either 48kHz/24 bit or 44.1kHz/16 bit, but not at all in 96kHz, then if we assume that it was not recorded in 96kHz then to arrive at the 44.1kHz from 48kHz, the bit rate must have been resampled, which will damage the sound at least in part (or visa versa). Would that act of resampling be audible enough to make the purchase of the 48kHz version a better choice just for that reason alone?

This was fantastic when you consider that the Audiophiles will in the same breath say that vinyl sounds far better than 24bit audio. So about half the detail of their 24bit sound file,, that they will say FLAC sounds worse than WAV as there is some form of data compression in haw it’s encoded, but that’s a separate comment. Glad we didn’t take into consideration the noise generated from not using medical grade electric plugs, and how we skimped out with consumer usb cable to our DAC we bought off Amazon.

In this day and age, there's a lot of room correction, digital crossovers, surround sound or other processing, which is applied to the final recording. Not just during production. God knows what other things there will be in the future. 24 bit recordings provide an extra layer of "rounding" to make sure the 14 or 16 bits' payload will still get to us as well preserved as possible, even thirty years from now.

I sometimes repurchase music in 24-bit format when it becomes available, and even though I definitely have the highly accurate equipment required, I perceive very little improvement (at best). Still I purchase 24-bit here and there, because (much as with 4K in the movie realm) I expect that careful remastering has taken place as part of the process, at least usually. The satisfaction of having the definitive version (I suppose that's a third dimension, David, besides noise and detail) of something that's worth having the definitive version of, is often tempting.

What is happening when you play 16bit or even 24bit on device that don't support for example 24bit playing 16bit ?

dither is needed any time the bit depth is reduced to avoid quantization noise. combining multiple 16-bit pure digital signals into a single 16-bit output needs dithering if the bit depth is being reduced. I would love to have a listening environment available where -96dB against a max reference level (100dB SPL?) is even detectable; maybe I need to find a local audiophile who has this. from my experience, dolby C does a decent job on cassettes, and dolby S is comparable to noise levels on CDs (we'll ignore wow and flutter), but I'll still take dolby B over nothing at all, especially on type I tapes. I blame the current unavailability of new competent cassette decks and limited availability of used ones coupled with misplaced nostalgia for the sad state of no noise reduction at all on most new cassette releases. ("but it's analog!" yes, but my otari has a lot more hit points than your nakamichi.)

i told A Dj Friend About It, He Said It Dosent Matter People Dont Hear The Differnce But I Could Hear The Differnce Between Mixes The High And The Low Quality

I think you are mistaken about how 16bit/24bit conversion takes place. It is not one bit or the other, there is a conversion process based on the original Nyquist Theorem for sampled signal reproduction. In practice there will be computational compromises in the DAW, which is why many DAWs will use 32bit floating point internally regardless of the bit level of the sampled audio. In other words, there is no masked detail when converting between 24 bit and 16 bit with competent software and hardware.

Cactus sorbet sounds wonderful

How about 32 bit? I have the option to select on my sound card an output of up to 32bit @96Khz.

Ha! I correctly predicted that Audio Phil would be listening to the amplified 24bit - 16bit subtraction difference... 😁 Our own bodies make noises loud enough to mask the extra detail contained in 24 bit audio. Can audiophiles hold their breath for 30 minutes? Or not swallow for an hour?

Yt 320kb is great through a half decent 2.0 or 5.1 system. Just my personal humble opinion.

I spent 5 sec deciding on 16 vs. 24 bit for recording and hours obsessing over mic placement. Mic placement has made more auditable difference to my recordings that bit depth. Spend your time where it really matters.

The cheapest and most effective way to improve detail and soundstage is cup your hands behind your ears 😂 whilst seated in your audiophile chair in a dark room😂

Any recommendations for a good upgrade for my tinnitus, so I will get a noice-free experience? ¯\(ツ)/¯

there is a diffrence in music 16 bits sound boxy 24 bits is still in some kind of box feeling but with 32 bits it dissappear the noise cliping is gone basically

24bit, Dolby C, DBX, and of course, an Eames Lounger for me!!! 😎

Loving the nice debates in the comments and proving that KZfaq can be interesting on a number of different levels.

I concur with your axioms.....are you an enthusiofile per chance?

CD IS ENOUGH.

I think there may be another factor at play why sometimes 24 bit is perceived as better: ISC, (Inter Sample Clipping) or lack of it. 24bit usually goes along with higher sampling fq, at least 88.2. At 44.1 ISC does occur on tracks mastered too hot. at double or higher sampling fq, thus more samples, the DAW would show the signal exceeding 0dB F and thus one would lower the level, thus fas less ISC and the DAC's reconstruction filter can restore as it should. Obviously, at 192kHz even less ISC (and at frequencies where it wouldn't bother anyone). Perhaps that is the better detail, more precise effect one hears with higher bitrate recordings? not the the bit count, but the sampling frequency is what makes the difference. just a thought...

With all the tools available now for recording i find that many "pop" recordings just don't sound very good. I listen to these recordings because the music is still wonderful. All the processing and especially the compression used, can degrade the listening experience. The so-called "audiophile " recordings often sound better because the sound engineers at every step in the process were meticulous in their attention to detail regardless of the bits used. A strong esthetic sense by the engineers in tune with what the artists had in mind makes for great listening experiences. Great recordings sound just fine on today's modest audio products. They can sound very fine on every level of gear .. provided the listening space is reasonable good. Bad recordings sound bad on every system and worse on systems with better resolution. The esthetic sense of the recording engineers sensitive to what the artists were trying to communicate can't be measured. Yet, when great musicians and great recording engineers work together the results can truly be magical. I am very happy when the tools available for recording are improved but in the end, the human beings producing the music is the most critical factor.

oh the shade! 🤣

OK, I confess, I'm a hard-core audiophile with a soundproof acoustically treated room, I don't have a fancy chair, I have a 3 seater on a small podium. My Audio note dac 1.1x signature is an has an 18bit AD1865 chip in it, sounds amazing. I've had dac with 24,32 bit and dsd 1024, in the end the Audio note suited me best. I remember as a kids I use to buy the best blank cassettes I could find, mostly Sony HF/UX ES 90/Metal master. I would use both the EQ and dolby b and c to tweak the sound to my liking. I loved my Sony Walkmans. I was 11 when I got my favourite headphones, the Sony mdr v7's. Love Audio Phil 😂

Is dither worse than the noise of the audience during a live performance?

I've just moved from a 24-bit recording interface, to one that does 32-bit floating point, and my DAW software supports that. I haven't had it long, so I've only done some preliminary testing. Aside from the convenience of having so much dynamic range that you can essentially set your mic levels after the fact, there is a bit of an audible difference. I honestly wasn't expecting to hear a difference, but when changing only the interface, the 32-bit recordings sound more 3-dimensional, more dynamic, and like I can hear farther into the mix. It's a subtle difference, but enough that I noticed it when I wasn't listening critically at all.

True revolution or Musical Change can happen only if we make different Sounds Speakers and headphones with different response to frequency giving different output results and current situation with low quality, high end and studio sound reproducing devices Listeners are listening not critical like we do and context is different something like just another Track or a just another Story telling through the Sounds/ Music. Like Hz the more is enabling more accurate sound manipulation and processing but end results will be none ... but if devices become more quality then maybe we will hear noticable advantage. Cassettes were blurry for me compared to Digital Disc .

I think it depends on the persons whole set up, I have a pair of Sennheiser HD800 headphones and I used them for a while directly connected to the head phone outs of my RME HDSPe AIO sound card in my studio, I used to get noise at 16 bit or 24 bit due to the connections, I have since upgraded to use the SPDIF out and a Mojo 2 Amp and I can't hear any noise on either, but detail in sound is very different in my experience, using 16 bit in cubase with VST synths sounds really poor, but switching that to 24 bit is a huge difference when producing music the virtual instruments just sound so much better and the extra head room is a blessing.

This reminds me of the issue of recording on a 4 track cassette and later recording digitally. The analog cassette buried a great multitude of sins and the digital put a glaring spotlight on the same. The same guitar player who objectively played better over that 20 year span was taken aback by how clearly digital exposed every mistake no matter how seemingly minor sounding during recording. 😃

I don't think I’d make the difference when I listen to music. On the other hand when I play (digital) piano I’m using an acoustic simulation program named PianoTeq that uses high resolution (32 bits 92000 Hz) which I listen with a 24/96 audio interface and headphones. When playing it’s important to forget that your instrument isn’t real so any realistic detail has its importance, be it the tiny reveberation of the sound once you’ve released the keys, or sympathetic vibrations of loose strings (PianoTeq allows you to adjust the wear of you piano to make it sound bit less brilliant and a bit more convincing, so there may be loose strings). I should try to downsample a recording and see what it does to those tiny details that have no importance for the listener but have some for the performer. Maybe there is a placebo effect or something.

More bits equals less quantization error. This applies across the entire dynamic range, not just in the inaudible portion that is also being captured, stored and reproduced digitally. I don't understand why people who defend the idea that there is no audible difference between 16 bit and 24 bit, cling to an argument that you can't hear any difference across the entire dynamic range because of the differing noise floors, then offer a test that takes place below the threshold of human hearing to validate their argument! The funniest thing about that "null test" is that it applies dither to the 16 bit signal, which further reduces the noise floor of the 16 bit signal and invalidates the test.

In theory lower noise floor means more low level detail.. One can often easily tell the difference between 16 or 24 bit files just by listening loud to the last few bars when the track is fading out. Maybe you can provide a demonstration of this effect. This of course is of little consequence for normal listening.

What about playing "cassette tapes" so much you can hear the other side of the tape playing "backwards".

I’m sure people are tired of hearing from me A EE degreed person who understands digital signal processing and audio as well as higher than audio frequency audio processing and equipment that I am involved with. The 24 bits does nothing but lower the already noise floor even lower or correspondingly gives you many more higher register bits for a more high dynamic range headroom. 24 bits is usually useful only internal to audio processing systems like DAWs and mixing console type systems because as you add any EQ reverb chorus Flanger delay, d-Essing special effects (to remove sibilants from vocals) it’s nice to have all that headroom as all those numbers get crunched together with those calculations getting on but on the final rendered output once you master it to 16 bits to make a CD there should be really no quality loss at all. I get so, so tired of the 24 bit vs 16 bit debate everybody has. Tsk, tsk, tsk. 🤨

Phill....all that kool-aid you're drinking is causing flashbacks. I'm sorry, Betty and Debbie...it's really hard to explain without having experienced it. Have a wonderful day at the spa ❤.

32bit is next!

Both Sony and Phillips said they were going to improve the CD including sample rate.....but CDs are not the popular .mp3 put the kibosh on that

Betty and Debbie the antidote to .....well you know what! :0)

Seems like Audiophiles have some sort of inverse placebo effect - "I know there is noise/distortion deep in the mix, therefore I can hear it"!

In the modern world of mp3, loudness war, music played on smartphones, I consider myself an audiophile, but 16/44,1KHz is enough for me, because the background noise present on the master recordings is always higher than the ground noise of the 16bit. Than why should I bother with 24/48 or 24/96Khz tracks, sacrificing more storage space? Not to mention that it is already difficult to find records that exploit correctly the entire 16 bit range. Maybe the difference can be heard on 24bit files of some classic or jazz music, but they are not my genre.

A record has if you are lucky something around 50 db of dynamic range and it turns out that most hifi systems can't reproduce it because they will already start to compress and distort the signal so 16bit is already completely overkill and 24bit is not changing anything at all. It is like debating if Thor or the Hulk is stronger. Fun when you are 13 but at some point you grow out of it. And the correct answer is the Hulk of course ;-)

I have spent many hours comparing 16 bit to 24 bit when using the same DAC, and same sample rate. The difference is often very significant when listened to on good gear. I am currently using a MOTU M4 to 2 hafler dh220s to drive kefXq9s. Most albums that were recorded in 24 bit will sound substantially dryer and less rich when played at 16 bit. There is also usually a lot of information from the decay of sounds that is chopped off with 16 bit. So, the the difference in 24bit is that it is not only less dry, more spacious, and richer, but there is more information about the echo and natural decay of sounds in the recording. The increased dynamic range is not always noticeable, but the attack of something both natural and abrupt, like a snare, for example -- will sound slightly different at dynamic ranges above 96 db, even at low volumes.

Generally I do prefer a longer word length, 24bit 48khz is perfectly great data, dynamics, process, latency just works. Curiously I've noticed as this trend 96k bla bla, coincides with the more deployment of room acoustic dampening etc. Bass traps excellent, too much high damp not so good as it can really mask ambient detail, realism is often provided by a sensibly tuned room. So my theory is as the resolution of the source goes up so does the poor off axis response of most loudspeakers, becoming more noticeable, in the reflective range along with timing image smearing ,phase problems, and crazy room dampening is a band aid, apart from bass traps they are cool. Guess Im hoping loudspeaker tech will catch up with the source, DSP is pretty effective but any great great recording starts with a great source and that needs great transducers.

"The reasonable amount of noise from LPs..." I never found it reasonable. It annoyed me when LP was all we really had. I could not drop LPs fast enough when digital audio came out myself.

I have tinnitus. 12 bits are quite enough for me!!!

I will probably have to run some more experiments but it does not sound the same to me. I just downscaled some Led Zeppelin. Not a big difference but clearly more smooth and finer definiton on 24bit. And I listnen on low volume and notebook fan in front of me. IMO it all depends very much on the listening enviroment and loudness too. The more loud you play the more detail those extra bits shall reveal. As to enviroment the more quiet the more we can focus on music detail. Last not least the oversampling magic which is always there is designed to trick our hearing somehow too ... That should not be forgotten . I am professional musician so my ears are long time trained but by no means I can relate to those "pros"| stating that they can not distinguish between 16 and 24 bits.

Never heard the lightest difference between 16 and 24bit. Nor did a younger audio engineer I played blind a/b comparisons to. Unlike what people have been been told 320kbs has audible differences. And with the right music you can tell one from the other. You can even pick 320kbs after its been recorded onto cassette, because the same flaws get written onto the tape and don't go away, despite the higher noise floor and other imperfections. 24 makes a lot of sense for live mixing or mastering. But 16 is better than anything we can hear and plenty good enough for a final product.

Hello DM, After a while this entire topic gets silly. Just put on some music and enjoy. If you look for disappointment, you're sure to find some. So just put on that "Dyke and the Blazers" album and relax ! Bill P.

In my opinion, less noise means more detail. This is why there is a signal to noise ratio measurement. more signal, better detail, less noise, better detail..

But Audiomasterclass didn't go into 32-Bit PCM and 64-Bit Float and they are the new mainstays for 1-1 audiophile recording now. 16-Bit and 24-Bit are both out of date Wave recording technology in your latest Audacity. So where does the headroom change the quality in 32-Bit PCM and 64-Bit Float. lol

GO IN THE CAVE AND STAY THERE.LETS THE QUALIFIED SOUND SPECIALIST TO PRONOUNCE IN THIS MATTER.