Phil Leigh;540075 Wrote: > ... 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.
I now ;)but it is fun to explore the limits of the system, it clearly shows me that my system is better than my ears (brain ) by a mile . I'm doing some more 3.5k files to see if they survive the playback chain at even lower levels. At any practical listening levels ? I tried at the highest level I would use with my most quiet records and i can still vaguely hear the -84dB and -90dB files. Mixed into the signal ? probably not, maybe if's it's some very quiet harp music or similar. But in such case the general level is so low that that SN is low to. They will disappear in any pop/rock/electronica recording. -- Mnyb -------------------------------------------------------------------- Main hifi: Touch + CIA PS +MeridianG68J and assorted amps SiriuS, Classe'Primare and Dynadio speakers (including a pair of Contour 4 ) Bedroom/Office: Boom Kitchen: SB3 + powered Fostex PM0.4 Miscellaneous use: Radio (with battery) I use a Controller various ir-remotes and a Eee-PC with squeezeplay to control this ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mnyb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4143 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77725 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
