Do you welcome HD audio?

[chancey]

In recent years almost all aspects of recording, playing and watching media have improved drastically - but the CDs in stores and the digital download content has remained relatively the same. With the rumours surrounding Apples possible move to start selling HD audio (24bit/96khz) on the iTunes store the question remains ... how will this affect you?

[Drubbing]

As far as I read it it's only a chip upgrade from Intel which will allow signal splitting between devices and improve DVD presentation from PCs. As such, it doesn't seem to me to be driven by SQ considerations. It's also been around since 2005 and hasn't taken the audio world by storm.

Regardless of that, there is also another source to consider and that's the recording quality in the first place, which varies a lot. No chip can stuff in what isn't there to begin with, nor can it polish turds.

[chancey]

As far as I read it it's only a chip upgrade from Intel which will allow signal splitting between devices and improve DVD presentation from PCs. As such, it doesn't seem to me to be driven by SQ considerations. It's also been around since 2005 and hasn't taken the audio world by storm.

The rumours, or whatever information is circulating is an example. Pretend that Apple, Amazon or some other large provider started selling HD music - I'm interested to see how many people would flock to or dismiss it.

Regardless of that, there is also another source to consider and that's the recording quality in the first place, which varies a lot. No chip can stuff in what isn't there to begin with, nor can it polish turds.

That's true, but I think since the sound quality difference is so small it's mainly the psychological aspect of thinking "this is higher quality" even if your ears can't tell the difference.

[Byron]

Just read an forum "24bit versus 16bit, The Myth Exploded" something like that in head-fi website. Now I am starting to doubt about 24bit performance......

[chancey]

Just read an forum "24bit versus 16bit, The Myth Exploded" something like that in head-fi website. Now I am starting to doubt about 24bit performance......

If your referring to this: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/415 ... h-exploded
I found that very interesting.

Also check out: http://www.hometracked.com/2007/02/03/s ... -accuracy/
for the explanation of sample rates.

[dingostolemyipod]

HD music does seem to have slightly nicer treble, it's a small difference though. Maybe when i was 12 and had 23kHz hearing range, i may have appreciated the difference more. No, wait a sec, I was 12 and wouldn't have given a rats.

[ihasmario]

I think it's hilarious that head-fi seems to be under the impression that an objectively superior storage format is going to be worse in anyway (due to potentially "too large" dynamic range; even though there are examples of pieces that cannot be contained in the 16bit form because of it).

Regardless, being sent a "raw" 24 bit track that we can master ourselves (or not) would be a vastly superior alternative to what we get for the majority of music, since it's arguably better to mix in 24bit rather than 16, which is why everyone does it.

Frankly I couldn't care if there's an audible difference - since it's going to be microscopic compared to the crap we're fed by some areas of music. Any step closer to true fidelity (i.e. plugged straight in to the brain), is the best step.

[Marcus]

Production quality is way more important.

A well mastered and mixed CD can sound amazing, yet most recently released material is just really, really poor, with virtually no dynamic range so you just get WALL OF LOUD SOUND

[dingostolemyipod]

I've noticed that a lot of blu-rays seem to utilise a greater dynamic range than DVDs, even though the DVDs weren't using even half the dynamic range they could have. Hopefully the whole HD push, actually encourages better production practises across the board, even though the format isn't that much better (mathematically, yes, but perceivably, no).

But when it comes to 32/384, for a distribution format, that seems a bit .
But 24/96 seems like a nice compromise to me, as in you'll never notice an improvement above that.

[Marcus]

Yeah I enjoy the greater dynamic range of BluRay when the movie has been mastered to take advantage of it, but sometimes I end up having to turn the volume up and down because someone, somewhere has subscribed to the commercial radio school of mixing, so they either mash the dynamic range or crank everything over the dialogue :/

Grab your average recently mastered album and have a look at the waveform - a high def version of that is going to sound just as shit.

[epoch_frail]

Here is the offending article. Did you know that 25 March is Dynamic Range Day? You can’t make this shit up

Anyhoo, I perceive a difference between lossless CD rips and 24/96 FLAC files. In some cases it is more pronounced, but always discernable; whether it is merely better edges on notes or more outright detail. I can really notice it on DVD-Audio rips, especially when comparing them to the original CD versions. It is least noticeable when comparing versions of the same thing, such as the CD and 24 bit versions of recent remasters. I only notice the difference using full-size headphones anyway, but even then it’s only with onboard sound, albeit with a 24 bit soundcard. I wouldn’t bother with 24 bit otherwise.

[ihasmario]

Consumers never listen to 1812 overture by Tchaikovsky!

In other news, I actually have had some problems with the difference between speaking and explosions - although this is largely a personal problem. I listen really low, so if I want the explosions to be a volume I don't find uncomfortable, the voices are probably too quiet so I have to shift the volume around a lot.

But there's no need to place the blame on a format, when it's the people using it who are doing it wrong.

The storage argument is always lost on me. Assuming they're shipped on discs or usb sticks - it wont take any more space than a CD. Assuming they're downloaded, hard drives are extremely cheap.

The only people who lose in the end are people who feel the need to have 400+ albums on their mp3 player in a lossless format - and I hate people who complain about not being able to do that.

[dingostolemyipod]

The only people who lose in the end are people who feel the need to have 400+ albums on their mp3 player in a lossless format - and I hate people who complain about not being able to do that.

Lossless formats are lossy!

Tell the bastards that, go on tell 'em!

It's true too

[chancey]

The storage argument is always lost on me. Assuming they're shipped on discs or usb sticks - it wont take any more space than a CD. Assuming they're downloaded, hard drives are extremely cheap.

The only people who lose in the end are people who feel the need to have 400+ albums on their mp3 player in a lossless format - and I hate people who complain about not being able to do that.

For most people the rate at which hard drives are increasing in size is greater than a persons ability to acquire music, so it's not an issue like you say.

However, there was a time when I was ripping all my albums in 128kbit AAC, almost all the torrents were 128kbit MP3 and it never occurred to me that one day I would need anything of higher quality. Then 192kbit MP3 started to become the norm and better speakers made me realise I could hear differences between the lower 128kbit and these higher bit rates - I did many listening tests on a few of my songs at different bitrates to see at what point I could no longer hear any audible difference. Only years later did I dawn on me (mainly because hard drives were starting to get big enough) that I should just get the highest quality available, which was ALAC since i'm a big iTunes fan - regardless of the fact that I could not hear any immediate difference.

How far we've come from the days when one would brag "I just got a new computer, 80 gig in drive in that bad boy." But still able to follow the same philosophy of "Get the highest quality available;" then theres no way you can look back with hardware of the future and say "Why did I convert these files down?."

In fact, case in point, some albums you can get on DVD as DTS 5.1 24bit/96khz or similar. To me that seems totally pointless since we only have 2 ears, and those surround headphones with multiple directional speakers are pretty stupid (admittedly haven't tried them.) But who knows I might move into a new place, get a really good surround set and be able to respect the audio source as multichannel - so why waste time converting it down now to rip it again?

As a separate issue i'm sure you've heard the phrase "People hear what they want to hear." Music is emotional and subjective, that's why there is no perfect song or perfect audio setup. Even if the audio quality improves by a seemingly immeasurable amount its likely that our brains will replace a sound with another sound without us consciously noticing anyway.

[spud]

Production quality is way more important.

A well mastered and mixed CD can sound amazing, yet most recently released material is just really, really poor, with virtually no dynamic range so you just get WALL OF LOUD SOUND

This is precisely the crux of the discussion. I offer for your consideration Porcupine Trees In Absentia album which I own both Vinyl and DVD-A copies of. The vinyl is mastered for vinyl and sounds remarkably better than the DVD-A version. The DVD-A version of Stupid Dream however is far superior to the CD. Mastering and mixing are the key.