Kellen;482383 Wrote: > All of this talk about the new Touch being able to play 24 bit files > [snip] > Anyone technical enough to explain this so that I might be better > informed whether or not to replace my Classic with a Touch simply to > play higher bit depth music? Remarkably, in all of the replies so far, nobody has pointed out that your SB Classic can play 24 bit files anyway. The Touch can do 96kHz sample *rate* (while the Classic only does 48kHz), but they both support the same bit depth.
Kellen;482383 Wrote: > As I had it explained to me the only thing 24 bit gives you over 16 bit > is an increase in the dynamic range that can be encoded. True. Kellen;482383 Wrote: > I also read that the added bit depth resolves the music more accurately > in the dynamic range where the music actually lies since you will be > quantizing the amplitude at more sample points in the process. Unless the music you're sampling has signal below -96dB, this is false... Suppose you have an original analogue signal with a S/N ratio of 80dB. What this means is that the noise in that signal makes it impossible to know what the instantaneous voltage of the signal really should be beyond a certain degree of accuracy. For a 80dB S/N ratio, the degree of that uncertainty is about 1 part in 10,000 (ot thereabouts). If you digitally sample it at 16 bit accuracy (where the degree of uncertainty in measuring is about 1 part in 65,000), then all that happens is that you are unable to accurately sample the noise below the -96dB point. So you end up with a recording where all of the wanted signal and some of the noise (between -96dB and -80dB) is captured perfectly, and the rest of the noise (below -96dB) is lost and replaced by other noise (also below -96dB) that is generated by the digital sampling process. If you sample the same analogue signal at 24 bit accuracy, you also perfectly capture the wanted signal, and this time get to accurately capture the noise down to -144dB. So by recording at 24 bit, all you do is more faithfully record the lower level noise. (Note that all the figures used are theoretical maxima - in practice a typical 16 bit sampler will probably only get down to about -90 or -93dB, and a good 24 bit sampler will get down to about -120dB). -- cliveb Transporter -> ATC SCM100A ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=71039 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
