18 Jul
2007
18 Jul
'07
4:33 a.m.
> There's little discussion about the merits of
24 bits over 16. Same
> for 48 kHz vs. 44.1.
[snip]
The DVD-A didn't answer the question as to whether
it was 16-bit versus
24-bit that made for better sound, or
whether it was 44.1kHz versus 96kHz that made for
better sound.
Certainly something did.
[snip]
That would have been soooooooo much more useful if you had done your
listening as a double-blind test. That is, if you had listened to the
tracks in a random order and then compared your listening experience to
the track formats after the fact. As it is, you could have experienced
a major case of "confirmation bias". You were expecting the tracks to
sound better, and that's exactly what you heard. I don't doubt that
there *was* an audible difference between, say, the mp3 and the 16/44.1
track, but by not doing a double blind test, your results really aren't
useful. Shame about that. I'd love to get hold of that disc and have
the equipment to listen to it properly.
From my reading over the last couple of years what
I've learned is that
the evidence says that:
- 24 bit sounds better than 16 bit at the same sampling frequency
because of increased dynamic range
- 96kHz sounds better than 48/44.1kHZ only when the processing of the
digital data has introduced aliasing and other artefacts related to the
sampling frequency. So 96kHz tracks often *can* sound better than
48kHz, but only because of poor processing somewhere along the way.
- 192kHz is totally unnecessary.
Hope that helps somewhat. Check out Bob Katz's web site and book
"Mastering Audio" for more that you could ever possibly want to know
about this stuff :)
Cheers,
Stuart