Is 16/44.1 still a decent quality in 2020?

I thought that AN Dacs do not support hi-rez formats?

 

No, you can't. This isn't even worth arguing about. Why? The DBT people are too convinced that no one can hear something because they can't hear it. The DBT people either don't know what to listen for, or have hearing problems.

 

They support up to 24/96. Although the bit depth is truncated to 18 bits.

 

Exactly! The soundstage narrows and the depth, or front-to-back feeling diminishes. There is less focus. And, you don't even need mega-dollar gear to hear it. But, you aren't going to hear the differences on headphones!

 

Well, then it is a little anfair to compare on a device which simply does not support full hi-rez resolutions.

 

You do understand why it's called "theory", right?

 

They're not testing themselves but others, including claimed golden ears.

I read about one such test done in the 90s IIRC. They wired a clean feed from a microphone in one room with a band playing, to a pair of speakers in another room, plus a second pair of wires from the same microphone that they fed through an ADC, and immediately afterwards a DAC, wired to the same speakers. So one feed clean analogue, another through a CD-rate digital chain as if it was recorded on CD. The two feeds were randomly switched, and subjects were tasked to tell when which was playing.

So, if any of the listening subjects was actually able to tell the distortions caused by the digital chain, they should be able to tell the two sources apart better than throwing a dice. But nobody could, except at extremely high volume when the additional 16 bit noise floor becomes audible. If you could tell them apart, you'd be the first.

That means that 16/44 is transparent for human ears under reasonable conditions.

 

It's always the same discussion...over and over again.
Some people claim they can hear frequencies above 22 khz (which is impossible for humans !!!), other people want to defend lots of money they spent for hi-rez music (which is, in my opinion, useless waste of space...why shall I pay for additional frequencies which I and every man / woman in the world will never hear ??? Such stupid nonsense !!!).
Other wisenheimers tell us that they are able to feel the difference between a CD an hi-res files, but c'mon...that's only self-suggestion and they will all lose in a blind test !!!
In the end, I don't need to check music with spectrum analyzers and other tools when I like how it sounds...I always use my ears and they don't lie
I love CDs for sound quality, but I also love vinyl records for nostalgic reasons, nice masterings of old albums and the memories, connected to them.

 

Of course there is no perfect filter but any decent $200 DAC based on modern IC's has solved the filter issues to the point that they measure flat 20 Hz to 20KHz with vanishing low distortion and noise which is transparent to a human. Higher sampling rates will measure even better of courrse but once you reach transparecy who cares? There is nothing that says DBT tests need short listening windows... You can listen a minute, hour or week and then switch and still have a valid test. Seems like it should be easy to pass the test if there are such obvious "imaging" differences and yet no one has. While no consenses on various small details is going to be reached the OP's original question of "is 44.1/16 decent" seems to be yes. Is it as good as it can get for human listeners is where opinions diverg.

 

Maybe you meant to say even if you cannot...

 

Yes, sorry, typing on my phone )).

 

Yeah, you’ve got a point, although those two bits from 16 to 18 definitely make more of a difference than the remaining six. In fact, the last four, from 20 to 24, should be all but buried in noise AFAIK.

 

I think you're confusing digital with bandwidth limitation. The fact that all storage media and all signal transmission have a finite frequency response, is not an invention of the evil digital engineers, but a fundamental property of our universe. It's a physical law. All analogue media have finite frequency response just the same, and you can't have one that doesn't. It has the exact same consequences as in digital, namely that signals with very high harmonics (say, a square wave) get "deformed" into a wave that incorporates ringing instead of neat square corners. You can't have a storage medium that doesn't do this, so for example recording a square wave on analogue tape will result in the same ringing. And when you downsample digitally from a high res to a low res format, you will get more of this "ringing" because of the sheer fact that you're reducing bandwidth, you can't have one without the other. This is not a defect of a specific filter implementationor a flaw of digital, but it's what you expect and what you actually want if you downsample.

It is not a problem either, because our ears "low pass" as well. We cannot hear a square wave, what we perceive is the waveform after it passed the built-in low pass of our ear system, that is a wave with ringing. So we don't require a medium that that doesn't employ the same low pass, because it would sound the same to us.

We were talking about downsampling of files though, so not real time. There you can have "perfect" filters just in algorithms.

 

So the way to create a 44.1 release is to first record in high-res and then downsample to 44.1? Why isn't 44.1 good enough to record in? You are arguing against yourself.

I use good headphone amps. Amps with wide bandwidth and controlled square waves with no overshoot or ringing. I don't tend to like amps that have overshoot and ringing. Here's the measurements for my latest headphone amp. Bandwidth from DC to 500 kHz at 30 ohms and DC to 600 kHz at 300 ohms. Very controlled square wave with no overshoot or ringing. This is the kind of amp that allows me to hear a difference between CD and high-res. Cavalli Liquid Gold X measurements

 

Yes that is what is being done these days.

16/44.1 is good enough, After all that's how all the old recordings were done, and they're fine. Hi-res just gives more wiggle room if the level wasn't set right, and it keeps additional errors in post low, so it is preferred these days. But it's by no means necessary.

 

No it isn't. It is still very common for albums to be recorded in 44.1, mastered in 44.1 and released in 44.1. I just bought an album like that. Recorded this year. And its sound quality suffers because of that.

 

If you say so. In any case higher sampling formats are more typical in a professional environment.

Which album? And how can you tell its shortcomings are due to the sampling format?

 

If it's recorded in 24/32-bits, mixed, edited and then dithered down to 16-bits once everything is done, that will go a long way to keeping quality high.

IMO, 44.1kHz is fine.

Also wondering what album you're referring to?

 

Can you please give me one specific album/song name where you can hear it?
I wanna buy it, then downsample and compare. Hires original vs 16/44.1 vs 24/44.1.
Cheers!!

 

Didn't read through all this, but I haven't changed my own feelings on the matter for some years now. Which is that I believe 24-bit may have some benefits over 16-bit, but anything beyond 22khz frequency, for me at least, likely a waste of time.

I will still record in 24/96 however, for my vinyl rips and his includes stuff I know that could have been 16/44.1k sourced. Reasoning is that 1) storage space is cheap and will just get cheaper over time. So "playing it safe" here and 2) vinyl pressings themselves introduce distortions that the ear may find pleasing so again can't hurt to record at a higher rate.

As for my portable setup...Vorbis still being used, 192kbps currently. Good enough for my ears and what I'm using. Archives stay as FLAC.

 

If you’re interested, I can give you an example where I felt there was a difference in an earlier iteration of my setup. It was this:
Handel: Messiah (Dublin Version, 1742) | Linn Records

The story is that I had the CD and ripped it. Later I downloaded the 24/88.2 version but since my EmmLabs DAC couldn’t play anything higher than 48 kHz, I downsampled the download to 24/44.1 using dbPoweramp converter. I felt that decay and ambience was a tiny bit better on the 24 bit version, and that this resulted in a better drive that was more like what I found with vinyl.

 

Here's what you do not understand: to give you an example would require me to provide you with an A/B test and/or results, thereby you trying to make me PROVE I hear what I hear. You ain't slick!

 

With all due respect sir/ma'am, you have asserted that you CAN hear a difference multiple times in this thread.

I am not asking you to prove or not prove what you can hear.
But I believe that you are being too coy and disingenuous when you make these claims and refuse to give an example.

Imagine if I said that i saw a cloud which looked like a smurf driving a fire truck.
You ask which cloud, I reply, " i wont tell you, i dont have to prove what I see!"

Thank you for your time.
Tosses $0.02

 

No DAC can be had for $20 by Creative Soundblaster Play 3 it is 96kHz/24 bit my $69 is Sabaj D3 it is 340kHz/36 bit I'm close with the numbers anyway ,soundcards in PC and Computers sound awful so I got the Creative Soundblaster what it does is take the place for my Computer soundcard and gives music depth and clearer more concise sound .I use my other DAC for my Stereo or to play my CDs through when I first heard it I felt the drum and understood what a soundstage really was ,we all hear differently Im not saying anyone is wrong just what is available already you can get THX audio George Lucas used for Star Wars ,I was at the Symphony for Beethovens 9th and Whos Next blew me away but then my friend had to take it back and I can't afford the THX even the cheaper portable is $260 ,I'm satisfied without it DAC though is worth investigating ,I play CDs at 96kHz/24 bit from my umm dongle on my PC it sounds good and is enough for now Thank You rsdno

 

I meant at start No a DAC can be had ........I could not find an edit