Youth may prefer lower quality music.

[Bludd]

Dynamic range is important too. As a rule of thumb you get 6 dB of dynamic range per bit of sampling rate.

 

[Gubbi]

Dynamic range is important too. As a rule of thumb you get 6 dB of dynamic range per bit of sampling rate.

But at 16bits you are well beyond the point of diminishing returns.

Cheers

 

[Bludd]

96 dB between the loudest and the quietest sound? That may not be good enough for some classical music and the dynamic range of human hearing is much greater than that.

 

[_xxx_]

The max. dynamic range will usually be killed in the process of mastering anyway, see countless Loudness Wars discussions or just give the last Metallica record a listen.

And those 96db are more than enough, since usually the signal/noise Ratio of most devices is about there or even less. Thus adding higher dynamics would be useless since the devices can't reproduce them or a big part of that range will sink below the noise level.

EDIT: heh Gubbi, simultaneosly posted

 

[Gubbi]

96 dB between the loudest and the quietest sound? That may not be good enough for some classical music and the dynamic range of human hearing is much greater than that.

Dynamic range from the lowest whisper to the highest hearing impairing sound pressure is around 120dB. However the signal to noise ratio of the ear is only 50dB (ie. the lowest sound you can distinguish at any given sound pressure is at -50dB).

50dB for SNR, 40 dB for dynamic range and 6dB for guard band, - more than enough.

Cheers

 

[Bludd]

Loudness war is an abomination. Also, since storage space is not at a premium any more, it's not really a big waste using 24 bit sampling.

 

[green.pixel]

The one that he pointed out just happend to be a USB DAC used for PC. But they do come in other variant

Yes, they are also among the best DACs overall, especially the CrazyT.

You're still reading a CD which is just as prone to error as playing it on a CD player, no? Wouldn't it have the same error correction going on?

No. Red Book CD standard has CIRC error correction, which was required by Sony and Philips back in the 80's. Nowadays, we have access to much better methods of encoding and especially storage media, so that kind of redundancy is simply not necessary. When ripping, you are extracting the actual audio data on the CD, not the error correction algorithms and mechanisms.

 

[MfA]

He means that the first time you are ripping it it can still have errors ... if errors getting past CIRC are a problem (which they aren't, since they generally don't, but I'll play along for the moment) they are just as much a problem while ripping.

 

[Scott_Arm]

He means that the first time you are ripping it it can still have errors ... if errors getting past CIRC are a problem (which they aren't, since they generally don't, but I'll play along for the moment) they are just as much a problem while ripping.

Exactly, and I agree about errors not being a problem, which means belt driven CD players that cost a fortune are completely worthless.


On the topic of DACs, I decided to go straight to the audio critic and it looks like the Benchmark DAC1 is a winner ... http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/news/audio_critic_review/index.html

Though you should skip straight to the end for his conclusion and general ranting against audiophile wizardry.

 

[Mintmaster]

I admit unless I'm using some high end headphones I would have trouble noticing the difference between a 320kbps MP3 and a lossless recording with most source material. But as Blazkowicz pointed out, certain types of music lend themselves better to compression than others; throw in a complex album where I know every little nuance and detail, say Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, and I'll spot the difference pretty quickly. Womanizer by Britney Spears... not so much

This is a key point.

Take 10 song samples in MP3 format, and 10 different uncompressed song samples, and mix them up. Can people tell the difference? Probably not with much accuracy, if at all. This is why ABX tests are useless (though it seems that even those are having trouble getting people to discern the two). When I listen to music I don't have a back to back comparison.

What I can notice, however, are major things like deep bass. I got some Sony in-ear headphones way back that were rated down to 6 Hz. That's probably optimistic (and useless if true), but the 20-30Hz sound I was hearing in so many of my songs for the first time was awesome. It's similar with TV image quality. I can notice things like black levels immediately because I have black things in the room to compare it with when the lights are down. However, color gamut and accuracy is a lot harder to pick out or be bothered by, because I don't have another "superior" display right next to it.

I think a far bigger problem in music fidelity nowadays is the studio's urge to raise average volume and reduce dynamic range. MP3 issues are nothing compared to what's lost there.

 

[DudeMiester]

With the price of 1 and 2 terabyte hard drives these days, I have no compunction against storing all my music in lossless formats. Though at present, most is in 320kbit MP3, it is transitioning to FLAC. In the end, all my music pales in comparison to the file size of my video and software collection, so it's rather peripheral to my storage issues.

OT: Does that sound wordy? I do that when I'm tired.