The Truth About Hi-Res Audio

Is there an audible benefit to "Hi-Res" or 24-bit audio? Watch this video to find out.

#headphones #audiophile #iems #earphones #audio #speakers #hifi

[suntanglory]

I challenged you and other high res septics to listen to only high res audio, 24/96 or higher for a month and go back to CD and mp3. Please come back and tell us your findings. It's like saying you can't see the difference between 720p, 1080 and 4k resolution videos. The difference in this high res audio is not about what you can hear or not more like how it's delivered, what you are actually hearing. A more powerful vocal can be reproduced on high res, a lower res simply reduces this same power for example. The difference is like a wild lion verse a hand raised lion. They might look the same but they are very different beast at the same time. It's not necessaryily about range put the energy at which that range was produced. Not necessarily about hearing but the clarity and imaging. The clarity of that range, the amount of life in that range, things that science measurement would not be able to show you. Instruments sounds true and realistic not a resemblance of the instruments. Sometimes the song might not necessarily be better on higher res audio, that's the mistake people are making, because now you are hearing the true song rather than the sweetness of earphones and speakers when listening to lower res audio.Hearing what the artist intended might not actually be to your taste in some cases. 😂

[_innerscape_]

While our ears can't reach bats and cats zone, there's Dave Rat that made and experiment with a super tweeter: if pointed on the back of the head something can be heard, or felt, it's more a tingling sensation. The video is called "What? Humans can 'hear' above 20k?'

[joesalyers]

Ok for final files yes it is pointless 48K sampling rate for deliver files is perfectly acceptable, but during the recording and mixing stage we have found that aliasing buildup causes frequency masking due to modulation from the the hard knee lowpass filter placed on the audio input. Most studios are using analog equipment to capture (the recording/tracking phase) audio and even if you just use an audio interface the analog side (mic preamp and line inputs) of that equipment extends up to frequencies well above 24 kilohertz.

Rupert Neve, the inventor of things like the modern mixing console as well as the VU meter and what many engineers consider the greatest mic preamp ever made the Neve 1073 wanted to have his tools be linear from at least 10 hertz to 100 kilohertz to stop inter-frequency modulation because it happed to him with his Air montserrat studio console there was a modulation happening at 50 Kilohertz that effected frequencies all the way down to around 1K.

The Larvry white paper is a study of sampling rate from the gold standard in master engineering audio converters and recommended that a sampling rate of 80Kilohertz or a 0 to 40Kilohertz would be the optimal bandwidth while also using a final antialiasing filter at 24Kilohertz on your final output file to trap the aliasing behind a linear phase brickwall low pass filter. This reduces aliasing in the audible range and in turn will allow for the cleanest most accurate recording.

As far as bit rate is concerned. For integer (fixed) bit rates like 16, 24, or 32 bit the differences are only how low the noise floor is. The real need is actually for floating point converters since most mixing consoles have a +10 dBu more headroom compared to mastering grade audio converters. The average output for a professional audio interface is 14 dBu while my console a Soundcraft MH-2 doesn't clip until +26 dBu so to actually capture the sound of a driven console no integer based converter can handle the actual output signal so this is where dual switching 32 bit floating point converts would come in handy as a tool to capture the full breadth of a tool like an SSL 4000E mixing console or a Rupert Neve 5088 or Neve 88RS console. But the 32 bit floating point files are really only useful to audio engineering and not for a final public release stage.

Just my thoughts. But yep I agree for final delivery, high sampling rates aren't really that important and don't really add anything for the end user, especially those who use replay equipment made for consumers and the higher sampling rates aren't beneficial to the end consumer who just wants to hear their favorite record. 48K is the standard for final delivery because of Google, Apple and Hollywood choosing 48K as the required sampling rate for deliverable video, so the music industry followed this as well.

[nizukaid]

I don't usually use 24bit cuz they take too much space...16bit is fine for me.🤙

[tw__]

I would like to suggest you to start a video series about you manually EQing sucide tier cheap and expensive IEMs to listenable IEMs. Consider this as ear training exercises.
Add a bit of thirst traps by eye rolling and screaming, yelling noises that we discord server members would love to watch!

[monkeytrix]

Thank you - this is genuinely useful & shines light on a lot of nonsense.

[Perenbarn]

24bits just make sense in a production environment for processing. The human ear does not need that resolution.

[muhammadmahdirezapour]

I always wondered what is the benefit of “hi-res” audio. Watched many videos and most of them were claiming that its audible like sony, but it wasn’t logical and scientific at all cause of the limitations of human ears perception. But after your video, i knew i was right. Thank you.

[firebrand_vinay]

For Music Production - 24 bit 96 KHz or higher to help with editing.
For Music Playback - 16 bit 44.1 KHz is enough, extremely diminishing returns beyond that.

[StickySli]

This is a blessing. I was stressing myself whether to use 48khz or 96khz on a modular DSP system I'm developing and this is perfect for making the system cheaper and with less featuritis. For anyone wondering, I'm talking about the A²B protocol which is limited to 48khz sample rate.

[VanDungLe]

I have my hearing cut at 17khz. Should i care that much about 24bit?

[astifcaulkinyeras]

So no audible difference if I set iTunes and my ADI-2 DAC FS to 48/16 or leave at 192/24?

[h_enrix_]

If you aren't a bat, there's almost no difference.

[pasi]

Nomrally dither is being used to reduce a given noise floor to even lower levels by shifting the noise to less audible regions. How is the noise floor deeper on non dither then though? Is it just because those are not native 24bit files? Would dither then make sense in the mastering process?

[Gabrielnfs]

I remember reading somewhere that using the windows volume to lower volume can result in loss of bit depth, maybe in this case 24-bit would be useful to make sure you don't reach below 16-bit depth

I have no idea if it's actually true or how it works though, feel free to look into it/do some research but I really can't remember where tf I read this

Edit: I read it in a head-fi thread, titled "Effective number of bits---or why "you have to keep software at full volume" is nonsense" (the title is clickbait), I still have no idea if it's true or how it works but if you wanna read it just look up that title in a search engine and you'll find it

[fuzail]

What is your opinion about 16 bit 44khz flacs from qoboz vs YouTube Music Opus at 160kbs 16 bit 48khz..

[kyron]

The brain runs at 250kHz so theoretically a high sample rate should be be reproduced more accurately.

[cawto]

what about the higher bitrate tho? I mean, sure, a lot of 24/96 dont even feel like hires cus it wasnt recorded well and stuff. But on tracks that are made for that and have a lot going on... usually I do believe there's a difference on how much information I can hear from each. Sure, again, it's not something I think I could pinpoint but again, I do think I feel the music different. When my shit is on 48khz bcs windows changing it without my knowledge I know it's on 48khz and put it back to 192khz

[susokraut]

There should be a honorable mentioning, no?

[ArkadeFunk]

I only listen to 32bit 768khz files on my stereo echo dots. I have a custom convolution filter that allows them to produce such a high resolution that I can hear the difference.