Is 16/44.1 still a decent quality in 2020?

Most people can’t discern from 16/44 or 320 MP3’s. And that’s taking into account that a lot of peoples hearing sucks. Or they’re older and can’t really hear above 16khz

can I hear a difference when doing an A/B ? Yeah but not in a blind test and my hearing is very good. ( had it tested).

totally agree that mastering and production quality of material is way way more important for the pure joy of listening.
Personally I abhor audiophile music.
I don’t want to hear my gear I want to hear the music.
If that makes sense
I don’t want to put on audiophile music that shows off the capabilities of my system.
thats not what I got it for.

like most of the music in audio shows. God awful.
like you are gonna go home and listen to that same crap on your system.

cheers

 

Firstly my response to your Barry Diament dismissal, who gets a lot of love for his remastering work along with the amazing input he contributed when he was a member of this forum.

As for 16 bit v 24 bit it's often not a advantage and even when you can discern an improvement it is very close.

 

I don't think so. I think it's waste to release mono recordings in SACD format. I mean, there is no 5.1 surround sound on that. Some hipsters claim mono on vinyl sounds better than CD.

 

The dismissal was my mistake in thinking the YouTube video was examples of their recording quality. You might want to read my other responses that point to this fact and my correction and apology.

 

Considering the claims here of hearing the width and depth of the sound stage in higher rez versions of musical passages, the mastering does have a huge influence in bringing that out even editing a 44/16 .aiff CD file.

I discovered this applying a bit of short delay and small room size reflection settings reverb focused on 8kHz to 12kHz which tapered off the effect from those highly directional frequencies. Lifting those frequencies with a 31band EQ in Audacity drastically brought out this large listening space but without echo. But because I was editing a 16bit file, the individual sliders became very sensitive to the slightest touch that I had to slowly push these sliders to bring out this huge echoless sound stage without kicking up a bunch of noise as a result.

 

My apologies, I should have carried on reading.

 

While sacd can contain multichannel, that's not its raison d'être.
Some mono recordings transferred to sacd do show improvements when it comes to smoothness for example the AP Beach Boy's Summer Day's and Pet Sounds on the mono portions.
Mono vinyl can and does sound great owning a fair number of well mastered examples but don't discount mono on high resolution digital formats.

 

Sure, I think there have been some truly great mono recordings (jazz and classical stuff from the Fifties, for example ... someone else more familiar will need to flesh that out) that might eke out a tiny bit more information for the listener in hi-res.

In practical terms? I doubt it. 16/44 is hi-res, to me anyway.

 

Yesterday I finally heard a change (improvement) to audio sound switching to a higher bit depth from 16 to 24..Mac OS native core audio bit depth... making the switch using the Mac utility Audio MIDI Setup through the headphone out port (see screen cap below).

I heard the change of harsh, raspy reel to reel tape hiss turn a silky texture playing a CD rez .aiff file of Count Basie's live recording of "Prime Time" song through a W-King D8 boombox I recently bought on Amazon connected through 3.5mm auxiliary cable from the Mac's 3.5mm headphone out.

The W-King is very loud in EQ mode with an up front highly directional stage and somewhat mono due to its small size. Since I usually listen on headphones I have to have the OS volume set in the middle but through the W-King I maxed the volume out to zero db according to Audio MIDI Setup readouts and adjusted volume on the D8.

Once I heard the change I decided to max out the MIDI setup headphone out to max 96k/32bit making the tape hiss have more static like noise than when bit depth was at 16.

 

In the jump from 44100 Hz to 96000 Hz the file has been completely resampled and is basically a new contruct.
What's it like at 88200 Hz?
At 88200 Hz it is an upsample, and retains all of the information present in the 44100 Hz file, with halfway step points.

 

It is for many of us.

 

Just tried it. You're right!

I gave "Prime Time" a fresh listen at 44/24 and the tape noise was a bit noisy, with a bit of static texture amplified when the cymbals came in at 1:25 in, kind of a dirty sound.

Stopped the player (Mac OS internal hitting the space bar player). Didn't play through an app like Quicktime or Audacity. Switched to 88kHz in Audio MIDI Setup and played it again and the noise got even quieter almost at the point I could barely hear it especially when the cymbal ride came in. WOW! a lot cleaner cymbal ride sound.

 

So this high rez stuff is really about finding the right settings according to the OS platform DAC playing through and being able to crank it up without directional frequencies dirtying up the sound stage. So this is a DAC issue but how am I suppose to capture that clean output in a high rez file? Record through Soundflower?

 

I think the key to it all is keep the serious processing to a minimum.
If you have something recorded and mastered at 24/192000, make sure that the playback processes are kept to a basic level.

If you want to reduce the sample rate divide it by half or quarter, so 24/192000 sub-divides to 96000 and 48000 quite easily.
If you recorded and produced at 24/176.4 it's 88200o or 48000.

Mixing between the 2 sample bands is not trivial, and can be detrimental to sound quality if done on the fly.
To resample from 24/96000 to 24/44100 is best performed using DAW software.

 

Because I discovered this dirty tape his noise texture change in relation to DAC settings listening on the W-King at loud levels I still have to rule out the fact that in YouTube reviews and sound tests this listening device was confirmed to have an internal compressor for high frequencies.

I couldn't test it with the Count Basie CD file but did test it on trumpet screech artist Maynard Ferguson's "La Fiesta" which is VERY high pitched and sure enough I could hear the compressor tap down Maynard's screeches but tastefully. Of course I couldn't play this song loud enough to hear tape hiss.

But the Count Basie "Prime Time" was a much quieter intro section anyway and I didn't hear a compressor effect so it was definitely on account of the DAC settings through MIDI setup.

 

Compressors have been in use in radio and recording studios for a very long time (pre WW2).
Chances are the Maynard recording will have used one.

Weirdly enough, recordings don't sound all that natural without compression.
A microphone doesn't respond in the same way as the human ear/brain interface, and using a compressor in the recording process goes some way to addressing this.

 

The CD file I play unedited doesn't seem to have enough compression. I can't even play "La Fiesta" on my vintage box speaker system too loud without running for the treble or volume knob which is why I don't play it much. The W-King is better at this but not as nuanced due to its size and lack of stereo imaging. But nothing's ever perfect in life anyway.

 

Bear in mind that the producer will have been considering contemporary playback equipment.
If the CD recording was from a tape transfer things will sound hotter that they did back in the day with all the process steps - lacquer cut and onwards.

The Beatles monos were produced for playback on Dansettes and the like.
Same with The Stones.
Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck too.

 

yep, basically keep the math as simple as possible when changing sampling rates- integer math only if possible.

 

I use 24/48 for all my needle drops and recording bands live. I think the bit depth gives more detail (and extra headroom when recording live). I don’t think I can hear anything above 24k (or even close to that).

 

I think I experienced just what you described in regard to reduction in sound quality but on live play back applying a 31band EQ on a CD rez file in Audacity set to 32bit Floating point/441k with the headphone out port in Audio MIDI Setup set to 24bit/88kHz. (not to be confused with the W-King playback). In Audacity I got intermittent crackling and tiny pops through my headphones I've never gotten when I had the headphone MIDI setup set to 16/441K.

I put the MIDI settings back to CD standard and the pops and crackly noises went away in Audacity when applying EQ edits. In addition there seems to be some kind of issue or disconnect between the way the live edit playback sounds adjusting the EQ sliders in Audacity compared to after the edits are applied and brought back to zero db using Amplify effect and then saved to CD standard .aiff which sound as intended without the pops and crackles.

It could be my sound card is crapping out. Not sure.

 

Sampling rate has no effect on the time offset between the channels. In other words it makes no difference regarding interaural time differences.

 

I replaced a couple analog amplifiers with Sonos Amps which use a Qualcomm DDFA: Direct Digital Feedback Amplifier modulator. It does such a good job converting the line input from my turntable that I hear no drop off in fidelity when comparing the same source into my all analog setup.

This same modulator is used on Denon, NAD and Bluesound amplifiers.