jarome wrote: > > The number of bits, to my ear does make a difference, especially on loud > congested music, for example a symphony playing many parts loudly and at > the same time (ives Symphony No. 3). 16 bits gets congested. >
Begs the question raised by the use of more unscientific, placebophile poetic language. What does "Congested" mean? To me "congested" means Intermodulation Distortion which really means nonlinear Distortion. Friendly advice: If you are going to try to school knowledgeable people about audio, first know the appropriate words of art and what they mean. If you want to listen to audible amounts of IM, let me introduce you to two legacy formats, LP and analog tape, that are rife with it. In contrast, properly dithered digital is free of IM or more properly any kind nonlinear distortion. No, not inaudible IM. None at all. Unless you intentionally futz with it, the digital domain is utterly free of any kind of frequency response, phase, amplitude or modulation distortion. Any of that one might find in the digital domain actually comes from the analog domain. For example, if you generate any kind of frequency response, phase response, THD or IM test signal in the digital domain and analyze it there, there are no added artifacts or spurious responses. The frequency response you measure is not +/- 0.1 dB. It is +/- zero dB or as close to that as your numerical calculations allow. > > It is hard to have the instruments maintain their unique place in the > soundstage. > That sounds to me like problems with channel balance or separation. Again, in the digital domain those are perfect. If you find any kind of errors there, they probabaly come from the signals tarry in the analog domain. > > In principle, by doing some slights of hand (interpolating -randomly- > between bit levels) CDs claim to be able to get 19 bits, which might be > sufficient. > Wrong. The thing you seem to be alluding to is not slight of hand. It is how proper digital works and has worked since digital audio was developed by Bell Labs starting in the 1930s. You seem to be referring to shat knowledgeable people call "Shaped dither". With perceptually shaped dither, 16 bits can deliver the subjective equivalent of 120 dB dynanmic range which is by the way, equal to SACD. > > And I have heard some very good sounding CDs. But not that many. > If you don't like what you hear on CDs. blame the people who might actually have some responsibility like the artists and production staff. They obviously peed in the soup because CDs are sonically transparent. That means that if you do a fair job of recording them, they are not possible to audibly differentiate from their analog sources. These days everything starts out and finished up analog, right? > > Remember that with 16 bits, there are only 65,000 levels (half > negative), so there is a inherent 1/325 % distortion due to imperfect > representation of the sample height. > That is false, and by claiming this we have a tacit admission of (1) No formal education related to digital audio and (2) No practical hands-on experience with digital audio at any reasonable technical level. In fact if you properly (IOW, just follow the cook book and don't pee in the soup) record a pure sine wave with 16 bits, any try to measure its distortion artifacts, it has none. > > I care more about 24 bits than 96 kHz, since I am old and am lucky to > hear above 15 kHz. Yet another audiophile myth. The r eason why cutting off all music above 20 Hz causes no audible effects is due to masking, not due to any inability to hear isolated test tones > 15 KHz. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ arnyk's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=64365 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106935 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
