24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense - Page 15

I found this post especially technically enlightening. Yeeeesh.

The title of this thread starts with "24/192 Music Downloads" and as you well know 24/96 .flac music files on a PC HDD take up less space than 24/192!

Meaning that things change rapidly when it comes to computers and hard disk space needed.

The HDD space needed for hi-rez 5.1 .flac music files is peanuts these days and will only get cheaper as we move into the future of PC computers that have HDD.

The issue isn't HDD space, but rather a personal choice of what to standardize on, so that I don't have to mess around with *different* hi-rez formats when playing hi-rez music files from my PC.

Bigus, thanks for that profound response. And thanks for omitting critical language from my post.

Do you have anything to add of a substantive nature related to the topic(s) at hand? If you do, then I, and I'm quite sure AVS Forum moderators, would welcome that. As I stated and as you transparently omitted when quoting me, some of us don't know who's right and who's wrong. I and others come here to learn and would be most appreciative of anything you can contribute in that regard.

If you feel compelled only to add to the noise-to-signal ratio, well ...

Do you have a mouse in your pocket? I didn't see anyone else here in agreement with you on your notion that somehow hi-rez is an answer to the loundness war. I continued to say: "I don't get that".

A few of us did agree that if music is mastered with highly compressed dynamics (victim of the loundness war), then that damage has been done regardless of delivery being analog/digital or 16/24 or 44.1/96/192. A few of us further agreed that 16-bits was more than sufficient for most all high-dynamic music and quiet venues- At >95db.

Did I miss where folk agreed with you that >Redbook digital audio is somehow an answer for popular music being mastered with compressed dynamics? What post #(s) agreed with that notion?

The following will make it easier to see through the fog. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=267

You didn't? You mean respected mastering engineer's opinion of it being a solution doesn't count either?


As you see, he clearly stipulates that high-resolution downloads is the answer to loudness wars and he is not alone.


Then you are not appreciating where the problem occurs. Recording are created in stereo at high resolution. It is the *conversion* post that to "CD format" where the loudness war starts, not prior to it.

The CD is the format that the labels think the consumers are consuming and hence the push to make it as loud as possible. When you go upstream to the first generation high resolution master, it is not considered a mass consumer offer and hence not subject to loudness boosting per above.


Per above, I don't think you are following where the problem is occurring. No one is creating compressed high resolution masters because no one is telling them to do that there. It is the final mastering to CD that the problem creeps in. In the Youtube Dire Straits demo you gav,e clearly a good quality stereo master exists given the earlier releases that were good. It is in later releases that they go and pump up the sound prior to creating of the CD master.

I suspect the confusion comes from you assuming that the step before CD is multi-channel unmixed content which is not. The talent has heard and approved a high-resolution stereo master prior to "compression" and loudness boosting for the CD.

I figured one profound post deserved another.


Do you? That was my point. Adding a nonsubstantive post which decreased signal to noise ratio only to complain about nonsubstantive posts lowering the signal to noise ratio seemed, well....


Yes, transparent. That is of course the purpose of ellipses. The "critical language" was just a few posts above for everyone to see... I don't think anyone missed your masterpiece due to my duplicitousness. Do you have a problem with the thousands of other daily examples of selective quoting as well? Am I required to respond to each and every letter in your posts if I am compelled to respond to any part of them? Quit being absurd.


... I'll be in good company? Which posts of yours in this thread were technically substantive?

Sorry that pointing out the obvious irony got you so ruffled.

These days the extra small difference in extra HDD space needed for 24/96 PC music files is quibbling and you know it.

I'm a computer person all my life and AFAIK you are too; so you of all people understand my above paragraph.

OTOH it's a valid *small* point of 24/88.1 over 24/96.

It's just that I want/need to pick a format for my own PC HDD hi-rez music collection.

Given that I've not yet started, what would you suggest for:

1) hi-rez stereo

2) hi-rez 5.1


Understood and thank you for pointing that out.


If anything, history is replete with examples to the contrary.

Not that I'm holding my breath on DVD-A making a comeback, but this past month I've gotten 3 different DVD-A music discs with 5.1 sound the best of any of my 5.1 SACD discs.


I'm slowly psyching up to the whole thing. I suppose that if I can build a HDD hi-rez structures for both 5.1 and stereo music, then it won't be that hard to add a digital receipt within the HDD hierarchy.


Odds are you're correct, but FWIW I recently got 2 different 2L albums that have mShuttle, but am not holding my breath on that actually allowing me to move bit perfect hi-rez music files from the BD disc to my PC HDD.


OK you put a smiley on that and I'm laughing out loud that the music biz isn't "as bad as they used to be"

But you've more 1st hand experience than me.


Thank you very much for your insight and comments.

I'd say.
Pretty sure I tormented you in dreams for a good while there amir.
Enough to discuss me with Sean while at Harman it seems (unless that is yet another fabrication of yours???).
Btw, I noticed Sean is MIA from your WTF??? forum. Earl bailed entirely. Did it take them that long to realize the charade? The whole facade of "science" smokescreen for the subjectivist woo to hide behind?
I do understand why Ethan would want to remain however.

cheers,

AJ

p.s. missed you at Axpona for that beer amir. Used nothing but good ol' 16/44k
CapFest?? Oh yeah, that's right, you...r associates....are into home automation, audio not so much.

Maybe a full time stenographer?
How you been?

cheers,

AJ

Oh, I dream about you every night AJ. Hoping you now sleep good knowing that.


Anything to cure your insecurities AJ. Unless you think I lied in which case, you have to find another cure.


Back to being yourself again AJ?

Hint: some people are busy with life otherwise (http://seanolive.blogspot.com/. Last post: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2011.)


You are confusing yourself with them AJ . They love to learn and not stuck in their ways like you are. If you survey them, they will tell you that they have learned more about science of audio on WBF in a year than knew their entire audiophile life. A recent comment like that was triggered by Tom Danley sharing his vast knowledge of speaker design. Since you play with speakers on TV, you may want to read about that there: https://www.google.com/webhp?rlz=1C1...w=1600&bih=775



You do? He is not objectivist enough for you? How about Arny? He has been a member for a while with fair number of posts:

"arnyk
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 146"

But sure. Go on a hunger strike and ignore the good knowledge there . I should say, you are getting soft AJ. Your insults are getting so easy to dismiss .


'ol I believe. Good? Seems like sighted evaluation talking

To malign, implicate, or fault Redbook CD because of the loudness war isn't technically fair though. It's throwing the baby out with the bath water. Hi-rez could have squashed dynamics and Redbook can have high dynamics.

The higher dynamic 1985 version of "Brothers in Arms" source that audiophiles seem to prefer was Redbook CD 44.1/16.

It kinda reminds me of some Apple fan-boy logic. Windows still sucks because hackers targeted them for viruses 100-1 over macs at one time.


To discount 16/44.1 as a delivery platform, because of studio or artistic choices technically not tied to it's capability as a delivery platform, isn't really fair in a technical discussion about its ability or inability to carry acoustic information to humans with perceptually tangible criteria. IMO.

To try to make meaningful and detailed comparisons between redbook and hi-rez, or LP and CD, the same source and mix should be a given, it seems to me.

No one is talking about "Redbook CD." We are talking about commercial music released using that format. I can have a plate that holds lobster or hot dogs. Hope the difference is not lost here .


It is what it is as they say. Business factors matter and matter hugely in content business. You can't just go by specs. Folks want to make money and they think louder CD releases is the ticket to get there.


That never happens for the same title. The upstream version is never worse than the downstream CD.


So? You do understand that the high quality version found life as something else and not as a CD. Do you not?


You are not paying the bill for CD master. The labels are (studios make movies by the way, not music ). And they are saying to make it loud. The only way out is to go where they are not looking which is the upstream copy.


We are saying that comparison is moot. High-res music already exists and in all cases it is equal or better than the CD. It never is the case that the CD is better. In that regard, if we can get those bits released then we are golden. If you are unhappy with too high a resolution, you can convert it down to 16/44.1 and be free of someone pumping up the level/compressing it. Everyone is happy.

Hopefully not recently. Been busy ya understand. Just found a little time to frolick tonight.


You don't think I ought to be concerned you were talking to Sean about me?
I would think concerns over the test methods might be more pressing, but alas...


We are who we are amir. Not much for charades myself. Yep, Sean must be busy elsewhere. Or else...


By all means post some statistics of your surveys there amir.
If they were anything like those in your "blind' tests...


I play an engineer on TV amir. Please get it straight. The speaker designer thing is quite real life, after my stay at Holiday Inn Express.


This wouldn't be an amir post with an utter misdirection Red Herring of course. Thanks.
Never mentioned anything about Ethans objectivity either. Sorry.


Ya. The sight of that WMP on the laptop screen, playing the 16/44 WAVs..through the $129 jitterbug (10X less performance!!) DAC should have been my undoing eh? Hmmmm.

cheers,

AJ

Good, thanks! I'll give you a holler tomorrow.

The entire discussion is moot if you can agree 24/196 is not superior to 16/44. Adding a second variable, recording quality, does nothing but muddy waters. You need to have one and only one variable in science, which was why I kept telling amir "other things equal". If you have 2 variables, how will you know the impact was due to which of the 2 variables? You can't. The entire discussion is moot. We all know that if you record one media with superior recording, it will sound better. That is understood by everyone, but if the recording is identical then will 24/196 sound better? Answer is no per M&M. There is no study that proves otherwise. Pure speculation and audiophile fantasy.

I know it's against your rules for anyone else to use wiki, but I can't help myself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recording_studio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_...ecord_label%29

Cue the place where you can say I'm just ignorant, and don't know any better than to use wiki as reference.




In a thread about: "24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense"...

After pages and pages of discussion and debate about bit-depth, sampling rate, S/N, noise floor, quantization errors, ultrasonics, human perceptions, dynamic range, and all that...


Comparisons between delivery formats are irrelevant. Wow.

You are on the right track that the debate is moot but it is not due to specs or superiority of one versus the other. But rather, the business drivers. Please read my posts to Dave.


But that is the reality of it. We can only compare one product against the other. Comparing specs doesn't do us any good because we can't get good CD releases.


Well, the situation is as it is. I just got the new Cranberries CD. It sounds just awful. Even in my car it sounds awful. There is no "nice" version on CD. It is the only release. We gave the earlier example of Adele.


It is and as I and others in the industry are saying, the only answer is to go to the high-res master, downloaded online. That is the only backdoor available to bypass the loudness wars. Sorry to say, you are going to get high quality/high resolution music whether you like it or not .


You are not given that choice many times. Instead you are given a purposely damaged CD presentation.


There is no answer in M&M report because there were two variables there and they didn't realize that: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post21755895. Since you know the concept of two variables, then I trust you won't keep bringing up this report as proof.


Proves? We don't have such thing. As I noted the M&M report you keep citing had significant flaw in its protocol. On the other side of coin, there is one report of some people telling high-res music apart as I also post earlier in the thread:


So the situation is not as clear cut as you think.


Speculation is not understanding limitations of tests and running with the tag line.

Therefore, we better use the analytical approach Bob Stuart documented in his AES paper which uses perceptual science to figure out the noise floor and sampling rate we need for transparency. And that points to CD spec as it is not be insufficient. Lucky for us, it agrees with the solution of getting high-res masters.

There are no guarantees that hi-rez will have superior recording quality. A statistical probability is not a fact.

You said: "because of studio or artistic choices." A "recording studio" is a place. It doesn't make a choice. The people who have the distribution right to the music are called record labels. It is them or their talent that is dictating the loudness of CDs. The Wiki article you want is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_label. But sure, this is not a life and death situation as I indicated with the smiley so feel free to use whatever term you like.


OK. Sounds like you want to argue them. Don't let me stop you. Go ahead and argue them.

It is a guaranteed fact that the high-res master from which the CD is produced is as good or better than it. It never, ever, is worse. It is also guaranteed that across commercial releases, the reverse is not true.

This hi-res download approach is a fallback defeatist solution, IMO (i.e., to let the consumer capture the hi-resolution music source before it has a chance to get mucked up further down along the processing chain by label or artist mgmnt. types, or, the artists themselves who want to make their music sound, "a little louder and more forceful" than the rest).

This "solution" is akin to killing ants roaming your kitchen counter top by striking them with a hammer, when squashing them with some tissue paper would be more than sufficient for the task. Not to mention, it would save you from leaving behind some nasty looking dents & chips.

Making abundant full-resolution download opportunities available for all music titles will result in a lot more storage space being eaten up on consumer hard drives and over-burdening cloud storage locations. Each coming with higher associated costs for what amounts to no real good purpose. It parallels the hammer-on-ant annihilation approach. This proposed solution places an extra burden upon the consumer that needn't be there at all. Especially when it's highly questionable how audibly beneficial the higher resolutions are for most and perhaps even all music-buying consumers (I will leave that particular debate to others for the moment).

From your cited "respected" mastering engineer endorsement of this solution to the 'loudness wars', I suspect (or perhaps I simply missed where he outright stated it as such) he is in the camp which believes higher resolution formats intrinsically and obviously sound better. From that perspective, yes, I could understand how this particular "let the consumer download everything at full resolution" solution would not only be the practical one, but also the ideal one to them.

When you place someone on "ignore", you are still subjected to seeing a portion of that persons posting activity whenever that ignored poster is quoted by some other poster. So placing someone on ignore is not a fail-safe solution for total avoidance of that poster. But it does still cut down the viewing of a significant portion of their posting activity.

So it is entirely within reason that Krabapple is being truthful about having you placed on ignore, and yet, he is still seeing some snippets of what you are up to. Certainly enough to be able to quote you here or elsewhere on occasion.

If you look at this very thread, you've directly responded to his posts at least a couple times. Note that he has not responded to you in those examples. Very likely because he hasn't seen your posts because these are precisely the types of posts which would be invisible to him.

So I would humbly suggest that you re-evaluate your "poster [Krabapple] saying he has me on forum ignore list where all the data clearly points otherwise" assertion.

I realize that but it does not apply here since no one quoted me. Indeed I checked that before writing my response. My answer was the last bit on the topic and we moved on to loudness war and such.


As I said, since no one quoted me that is not what happened. Since this is not the first time Krab has claimed to have me on his ignore list yet slip and quote me, I say we have reasonable evidence that this is Kabuki theater he is playing .


Oh he is reading them alright. Why do you think I respond to him?


Well, per above, the data supports what I say (as does the tone of his language in HA thread -- clearly he is upset with my statement and is hoping for a response). Thanks for coming to his defense by the way. He is a good guy. He just got upset at me for arguing with him on how compressed audio worked. This is his way of showing me his dissatisfaction.

Defeatist? It is a convenient optimization, not a defeat.


Reminds me the first time I was in Germany, some 20 years ago. I rented this dinky little subcompact car for sightseeing on the weekend. They were supposed to deliver it to the hotel. The agent comes and after I fill out the paperwork says they didn't have the car I rented but there was a substitute in the parking lot. I go there and guess what? There is a new BMW 5 series with 35 kilometers on it! You would not believe the fun I had pushing that to its max RPM on the autobahn. So in my book, this is a bit of a bonus. I get the high-resolution master as the talent heard and approved. If I want smaller files, I can get that from it.


First of all, that trend has already started. You can download fair bit of content in high resolution already. And it costs very little even with inflated hard disk prices. Unless my math is wrong, one hour of 24-bit/96 Khz music takes up 2 Gigabytes uncompressed. With lossless compression, it will be around 1 Gigabyte. For $120, you can get a 2 Tbyte drive which will hold 2,000 albums. The cost to buy said albums will set you back $20,000 to $30,000. Paying $120 to store them is nothing in that context. Cloud storage is shared across all the customers buying the content so it is not material even though its cost per bit will be higher than this example. And of course they make money selling you these tracks.


There is real purpose. Please read Bob Stuart's paper.


All the questions go away if we get the same bits that were produced in the recording studio and approved by the talent. Any other copy will create debate so why go there?


It is "ideal to them" because they have already prepared that copy and they love for us to hear what they heard not a forced converted one (with or without loudness pumping). What would you like them to do? Experiment and keep pushing the bits down until someone complains and then give us half a step above that?

... Ok, then. *shrugs* I'll not attempt to speak for Krab here. I know if I had someone on ignore, it would be less of a matter of that person offending my delicate sensibilities and more of a means of forced self-discipline to keep myself from being tempted to respond to a poster who may have a previous history of getting under my skin. Sometimes that which irritates us can still tempt us, so limiting your exposure might be the best prescription available. It lessens opportunities to go chase that person back "down the rabbit hole", as someone is fond of saying.

In other words, perhaps you make him feel dirty and while he mostly stays far away he can't entirely quit you either.

I've read this and the remainder of your post, of course. Thanks for the reply. I disagree in parts, but I don't have the time nor stamina to continue on. I've done my usual bit of posting dilettantish dabbling here and now it's time to shut it down. I'm not fond rabbit holes and it's nearly 2am by me. You've already cost me sleep time.

PS: I think you are a posting robot. Infused with the instructional set and personality of your Amirm creator, who is busy drinking piña coladas on some distant shore, yucking it up that we've all foolishly fallen for his haywire circuited stand-in.

Furthermore, we now know for sure that when presented with a large collection of recordings over a period of years, up to half or more recordings secretly lo-rez, and some with appreciably higher rez: all the audiophiles and all of the music critics and all of the golden eared reviewers don't hear any differences. If they heard differences they kept it a secret.

Thank you Stereophile and TAS. You did our testing for us! ;-) Meyer and Moran can sleep well tonight knowing that their critics did their work for them, and they did it right!

The introduction and run of SACD and DVD-A as products unwittingly created the largest DBT known to man. The outcome was that nobody heard a difference.

What I don't get Amir, is why you lend just credence to what that recording engineer said? The guy goes to some show, hangs out with some recording engineer buddies, they toss a few down, and what does he come back with? Renewed hope! I guess he can call it that. How's about instead we call it wishful thinking? Or maybe a temporary cash cow as record companies once again look to sell us, the buying public, one more copy of this or that? After all, it works reasonably well for movies. Movie comes out. Rerelease comes out with director's cut and commentaries. Re-release comes out with alternate endings. Re-re-release comes out boxed with sequels and prequels. Re-re-re-release comes out in 3D. Gets a limited theatrical re-release. And so it goes. Give me a fookin' break here!

Maybe as an expert he might consider that if hi-rez or whatever you want to call it, starts to make a significant impact the studios or the recording artists will once again look to juice it up and the whole process will begin once again. Just because you call him an expert so what? History is replete with experts getting it wrong. How many computers did Watson say would likely be needed? Dewey defeats Truman? What happens to the Broncos when Manning takes a hit and turns into a paraplegic? High speed rail travel? Edison didn't think the phonograph had commercial value. And what about you as an expert getting behind HD DVD?

Expert? Bah! Cue up The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".

Credence is very light word compared to the pedestal that Amir puts this small time guy on.

But this is a pattern. It doesn't matter how old or frequently debunked the reference is, if it bolsters his position...


Very insightful words, but the guy has a little bit better CV than that:

I know guys like this, and they are not stupid, or lazy, or drunks, or inexperienced.


Mastering engineers get a lot of no-glory work. If a record company exec wants something with its dynamic range smashed to smithereens, and has money to spend, do you think that good old Greg will turn him away? Nope.


I'll bet money this guy has never done a reliable listening test in his life. Just like more than half of the other eggspurts that get shoved under our noses.


In this case, guys like Greg probably cheered on the record company executives who pushed DVD-A and SACD, right until their failure flushed their careers down the porcelain convenience. Thing is, while their careers died, Greg and hard-working smart guys like him had work and got paid. Their CVs got longer and hooray for the King, the King is dead!


If memory serves, 8?



Ouch. I went back and read a few of the posts that Amir made back in his glory days at MS. He was controversial while he was in the hot seat, and lots of people danced on his grave after he retired.

In retrospect DVD-A and HD DVD shared something in common - they were retro technology just trying to wring more sales out of a basic format that was less than the best we could do at the time or later.


HD DVD failed, and Blu Ray won. On paper, Blu Ray was the superior technology, no? Now that we have it, it seems like a solid advance, given that people will put really good video on it. Of course I've seen any number of Blu Ray releases that aren't even DVD quality video. But that's not the fault of the format.