... or to put it even more bluntly: Whether or not you can hear a -96dB (16 bits) test tone at your normal listening position with your amp on FULL tells you precisely nothing because: 1) You never listen at anything like this level, so you would never hear any musical signal at this low level under any circumstances - this is Clive's point... how can you hear what you can't hear because its too quiet to hear? 2) Any musical information at this level will be swamped (masked) by the much higher levels of surrounding information
I can give you some examples: 1) If you press your ear against your tweeter you might be able to hear some hiss from your preamp etc with the volume up full - do you ever hear that hiss when listening to music? 2) Anyone who has any experience in recording studios will know that if you listen to a naked vocal track or any acoustically-sourced track for that matter, there are various extraneous noises inevitably captured... breathing and movement sounds etc. Unless they are above a certain level (and its a lot higher than -96dB!!!) when you mix that track in with the rest of the tracks, the extraneous noises seem to disappear. I'm NOT talking about Ringo's squeaky drumstool here... 3) If you don't believe any of this, go here and discover that it is possible - in a 16-bit wav file - to mix in a brass marching band with Brahms Lullaby in the bottom 3-4 bits and NOBODY can hear it! You'll need to install ADM to decode the test files, but once you've done that you can play the wavs on your squeezebox. If anyone can tell these files apart by just listening to them, THEN we can have a valid discussion about the importance of the LSB's in real audio performance at normal listening levels. With true 24-bit recording, 24-bit is NOT better than 16-bit because it captures low-level detail better, it is better because 24-bit (which is really 20+ bit in practice) provides more accurate values for the level of each sample that it captures. It also makes subsequent dsp more accurate. -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal... Touch(wired/XP) - TACT 2.2X (Linear PSU) + Good Vibrations S/W - MF Triplethreat(Audiocom full mods) - Linn 5103 - Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Townsend Supertweeters, Blue Jeans Digital,Kimber Speaker & Chord Interconnect cables Kitchen Boom, Outdoors: SB Radio ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77725 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
