Why were CDs recorded in 16-bit/44.1khz?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by MZ_RH1, Feb 5, 2017.

  1. delmonaco

    delmonaco Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sofia, Bulgaria
    I believe that 16/44.1 was the technological maximum back then, and Sony/Philips decided that it's sufficient enough, and they don't wanted to wait and research for another few years in order to introduce the CD with higher sample rate. As long as this (the CD) is a product for home use, and not for professional music reproduction, I think they were right - in order to detect the difference between 16/44.1 and higher resolution audio, apart from very revealing and expensive DAC and amplifier, one have to listen on huge (and again - very expensive and top quality) speakers, and most importantly - placed in a huge space (not the average bigger or smaller room in the house, that is the listening space for most people). It's similar to TV screens - you can't detect the difference between HD and UHD on a 15'' screen (both mastered well), no matter how perfect you vision is, but on 70'' or 100'' screen the difference is so obvious. So for most people, having some normal standard listening room, the 16/44.1 is already an overkill, or at least is perfectly enough. Of course the main and most important thing is the mastering.
     
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  2. curbach

    curbach Some guy on the internet

    Location:
    The ATX
    Why didn't Charles Lindbergh cross the Atlantic in the Concorde? It would have been so much faster. I don't get it :shrug:
     
  3. MZ_RH1

    MZ_RH1 Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Angel Valley, CA
    If CD quality is good enough, then why are vinyl and cassette tape users claiming that those sound better than CDs?
     
  4. tim185

    tim185 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    Just cant throw everything and the kitchen sink onto vinyl and expect it to track properly. Hence, we have limitations and compromises, this is good. Used to work well before we had a billion and one choices in recording and mixing as well! In short, there is pretty much unlimited bass and compression you can throw onto CD and they often do. Why? Because they can.
     
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  5. dennman6

    dennman6 Well-Known Member

    I think I'd be pretty exhausted after "74 minuets". I'm a lousy dancer to start with, and trying to repeat something terpsichorian from that time period would wear me out in a New Yawk minuet. Uh, minute... ;)
     
  6. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    To add to the previous comments, another factor in the choice of the 16 bit/44.1 khz standard had to do with the available technology available that the time CD was being proposed. Digital recorders were expensive, but a digital signal could be recorded as a video signal on videotape. The reason 44.1 khz sampling was chosen is that is worked out evenly when the digital signal was saved in PAL (the European TV standard), if NTSC had been used it would have worked out evenly to 44.05 khz.

    As far as why the bit rate/sampling rate hasn't been upgraded, I think a factor is "good enough." For many people, the Red Book Standard is good enough. I think that part of the issue with CD is not the standard but the application of the standard. No matter what the standard, if the source material is not properly mixed and mastered it won't sound as good as it should.
     
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  7. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Sometimes they almost certainly do, thanks to the mastering process. There are plenty of poorly-mastered CD's out there, whose failings have nothing to do with the format but with the lack of care given to their mastering.
     
  8. enfield

    enfield Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex UK
    Good point.Although it also applies to LP mixing and mastering as well.After recording techniques,engineering,mixing,and mastering have been added into the equation then 16bit or 24bit is normally irrelvent (or P-ing in the wind,as it were).A well recorded and produced album will still sound superb in 16/44.1 .
     
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  9. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    35 years on and 16 bit/44.1khz is STILL "good enough" for 99.9% of the population. I think they should be very proud of what the achieved as CD is one of the top two formats ever created for the retail market and it ain't dead yet!
     
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  10. Litejazz53

    Litejazz53 Perfect Sound Through Crystal Clear Digital

    Because whoever is saying vinyl and especially cassette tapes sound better than a well recorded CD's is just plain confused. In my opinion there are so very few CDs produced that measure up to what this format is capable of. I always found the majority of CDs produced by Telarc and Reference Recordings just outright "exceptional." These two labels produced CD's correctly. I know my next statement will be really controversial, but IMO, I have always found Mobile Fidelity hit and miss, everyone considers this label so cutting edge, but I have purchased not a few, but many Mobile Fidelity CD's and wondered, what in the world is all the fuss about, they were very mediocre at best, which was never my experience with Telarc or Reference Recordings. Other exceptional labels would include the vintage Sheffield Labs with their direct to disc recordings, Crystal Clear, Audioquest, Opus 3, Proprius, Water Lily Acoustics, and lest I forget First Impression Music, beautiful recordings. All of these companies produced and still produce fantastic CD's, and certainly there are NO cassette tapes that even come close to CD's turned out by these companies. I'm curious if other people believe they have experienced a hit and miss impression of Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs? I think if more people owned CD products from the above referenced labels, no one would be comparing LP's or cassettes to these CD's. If I had the choice between say a 180g LP done well OR an SACD produced by say Reference Recording, for me, it would be the SACD in a heartbeat, don't hate me for that statement, but to me, they are that good! :agree:
     
  11. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    To add to this: Some say that vinyl is superior to CD, but I think a factor in this are the limitations of vinyl which prevent the creative team from doing the things that degrade the sound quality (such as a physical limit of the amount of bass that a groove can contain). Imagine what would happen if they applied to modern trends in mixing and mastering to vinyl records: The stylus repeatedly jumping out of the groove because the loudness level is so high that the slightest bit of extra bass causes the stylus to jump. Plus, so much sound continually hits the stylus that its material begins to break due to audio overload causing metal fatigue.
     
  12. Ephi82

    Ephi82 Still have two ears working

    Location:
    S FL
    It's interesting to me that there have been a number of artists who have went to hi res formats (i.e. sACD) to differentiate themselves from CDs.

    Why? CDs have been considered highly inferior to "classic" formats like vinyl.

    Not because cd's aren't capable of sounding incredible, but because the record making people don't use all the capabilities that cd's provide. Why burn a cd when you can get all the audio "quality" you need through compressed and overly loud mixes compatible with streaming and portable formats.
     
  13. Black Widow

    Black Widow Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    99.9% of what population? The compact disc is headed the way of the dodo bird.

    While there's still a large consumer market for MP3's (and whatever Apple calls it's equivalent low-rez file) I imagine that'll be surpassed by streaming w/in a few years.
     
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  14. PhilBiker

    PhilBiker sh.tv member number 666

    Location:
    Northern VA, USA
    DVD didn't come out in 1995. The very first players were shipped in 1997. I had a Toshiba SD-2006.
    CD distorted the market massively. All that old catalog got re-purchased, making huge amounts of money for the recording industry. This is why we got so much great music in the 80s and 90s - the record companies were swimming in cash from catalog re-sales - they were able to spend exorbitantly on new artists. That will never happen again, and we have the CD to thank.
     
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  15. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    I do think it is funny that so many youngsters will never know just how amazing CD tech was at the time. They also like everything in a world of cheap, fast drives and have never got to experience the early drives that took forever to load and operate kind of like the early Bluray players.
     
  16. Archimago

    Archimago Forum Resident

    Yup. And despite all the hand wringing and hype around "high resolution" these days, that 16-bit 44kHz has shown itself to be an excellent choice of technical parameters to handle human hearing limitations.

    Sure, better quality equipment and an ideal soundroom might help with conveying higher resolution, but the chances of that happening is IMO insignificant in terms of accurate attribution to the bit-depth and sample rate as opposed to limitations of the production, mastering, and idiosyncrasies of the hardware. (Despite the testimony and hype of many...)

    Of course I wouldn't mind 24/96 for a well recorded and produced modern digital album. But for the vast majority of stuff out there, it'd be wasting storage space...
     
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  17. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident

    I quite agree with much of what you've written. With vinyl storage space a real problem for me these days I am choosing the exceptionally well mastered SACDs from Analogue Productions and Analog Spark without hesitation. I agree heartily about contemporary MFSL releases, some are very, very good, but many are just so off to my ears. They have a definite house mastering style in place and unfortunately for me I've found too many of their releases lacking entirely or just too polite sounding.

    Recordings mastered with care and produced as quality CD or SACD, can for me provide an equivalent listening experience to the best that vinyl offers. Right now I'm playing Johnny Hartman's "I Just Dropped By to Say Hello" on CD, a 1987 Japanese pressing and it's soooo good! Earlier I listened to the Music Matters 33 1/3 vinyl LP of Kenny Burrell's "Midnight Blue", sensational sonics and an impeccable pressing. However earlier in the day I played the musically very fine new release from Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle and boy does the sound stink, no dynamic range whatsoever, and undoubtably the same digital master as it's CD counterpart, but that's contemporary recording for you.

    If the recording is done right and the mastering follows suit, any of these formats will yield great results. The problem is we who actually care are a niche audience. Yes some companies are making a living off us (thankfully), and hopefully they will continue producing quality product that keeps great music alive and delivered up to the highest standard. But for most people "OK" sounding music is good enough, sad but true. So let's appreciate what the CD gave us and say a little prayer that new optical media stays available for a good length of time to come. In the meantime the thrift shops and flea markets are rife with CD treasures to be found CHEAP!
     
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  18. tim185

    tim185 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    I doubt any of you would be claming 16/44.1 is "good enough" if you had the experience of recording and mixing at 24/48 or 24/96 and then having to dither down to 16/44.1 !
     
  19. Cherrycherry

    Cherrycherry Forum Resident

    Location:
    Le Froidtown
    I would clam:p that. Do you suggest that you hear a grand difference between the exact same mastering at 24/96 and then at 16/44.1? How great is the difference?
     
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  20. tim185

    tim185 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    Recording and mixing my friend, NOT masters.
     
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  21. Cherrycherry

    Cherrycherry Forum Resident

    Location:
    Le Froidtown
    Sorry, I missed your point then. Carry on with the clams.
     
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  22. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    That is a very big call and I don't think holds up to the reality of the "retail" market place. I have many CD's that sound better than their Hi Rez cousins! Three recent SACD's I've got that don't sound as good as the CD are: Cyndi Lauper She's So Unusual and Bowie Let's Dance and Scary Monsters.
     
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  23. tim185

    tim185 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    Its to do with how digital processing works at different sample rates, this is stuff that happens up the chain before we get to hear it at mixed down to "CD quality" , so maybe I shouldnt have mentioned it as it is stuff that is effected by sample/bit rates that may be a bit off topic.
    Some Hi-Rez may just be up sampled 16/44.1 stuff. I dont know this, but I sure as well wouldnt be surprised !
     
  24. Archimago

    Archimago Forum Resident

    Absolutely, use 24/96 in production. Don't think anyone would deny this.

    But converting the best 24/96 to 16/44 with a good resampler and dithering algorithm (say something like iZotope with MBIT+) has never been all that audible. I don't know of anyone able to point to evidence of anything more than very subtle differences at normal listening volumes when done in an unsighted fashion. Obviously I'm not talking about test tracks of 16-bit vs. 24-bit listening to the fades with volume pumped up.
     
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  25. Solitaire1

    Solitaire1 Carpenters Fan

    I think the move to CD was a temporary windfall for the recording industry because of consumers buying replacements but it was one that would eventually dry up (buy it once and that's it). But another continuing source of money for the recording industry was consumers purchasing the same music over and over again due to their LPs/tapes wearing out and the reselling of the same music in the form of compilations (such as greatest hits albums), and that, too, has come to an end.
     
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