[LAU] newbie to Linux audio

[Kevin Cosgrove]

On 18 July 2007 at 10:21, Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 23:17 -0700, Kevin Cosgrove wrote:
> 
> > I don't have the hardware required to listen to that, but a
> > friend of mine does.  The disc has two songs on it, a jazz trio
> > (piano, upright bass & drums) and a string quartet.  Each song
> > was simultaneously recorded at three different PCM resolutions:
> > 16-bit/44.1kHz, 24-bit/96kHz, and 24-bit/192kHz.  Subsequent to
> > that they recoded the recordings into MP3, WMA, and AAC.  My
> > friend and I listened to the recordings in order from expected
> > worst sound to expected best sound.  MP3 sounded just OK.  WMA
> > was slightly better to us, and AAC was again noticeably better.
> > The jump from AAC to 16-bit/44.1kHz was dramatic, as was the next
> > jump to 24-bit/96kHz.  Going up to 24-bit/192kHz was also better
> > yet, but not as dramatic.  After that we went back and listened
> > to MP3 again and it sounded as if it was being played through a
> > distortion pedal for an electric guitar by comparison.
> 
> you did this all double blind, right?

Nope.

> if not, then why bother?

I'd never heard any music with quantization/rate better than
16-bit/44.1kHz.  I didn't intend to answer the question of which
format is better nor for which application.  I was just curious
as to what it sounds like.  Now I have a subjective sense of what
it sounds like.  I can sort of remember what 2" 24 track audio
sounds like, but that was in a much better room.  I wouldn't try
to prove it, but I think that analog format sounded better to me
that 16/44.1.  Now I've gone out on a limb.

For my own purposes, I'll be going with 24-bit, because it       
makes sense from the mastering point of view, and because my     
hardware should do that.  I'll find out how well it works when   
I try, and I could try some objective, measurement based tests   
to verify this.  I'm going to also go with 44.1kHz because I'm   
recording against material recorded by my bass player and my     
guitar player, and they run at 44.1kHz.  I believe ardour wants  
all of it's data in the same format for each project, though     
projects can differ from each other.                             

Cheers.....


--
Kevin