Playing at over 16-bit

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by goldfish, Jul 14, 2004.

?

Do you play music at over 16-bit?

  1. Hell yeah! It sounds great!

    18.8%
  2. No... not really looked at it

    18.8%
  3. Why on EARTH would I do that??

    37.5%
  4. Whats 16-bit?

    25.0%
  1. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

    Do any of you play your music at more than 16-bit?

    If so, do please tell me why..!!
     
  2. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    Hehehehehe :D :D
     
  3. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

  4. Kodo

    Kodo SNATCHSQUATCH

    what an OUT OF THIS WORLD poll ;)
     
  5. DanTekGeek

    DanTekGeek Master Sergeant

    these damn audiophiles, they are crazy! if you cant hear it, why have it. mp3 is fine for me.
     
  6. G.T.

    G.T. R.I.P February 4, 2007. You will be missed.

    Not until SACDs get popular and can use it.

    Doesn't matter if you got 24 bit DACs if your source material is 16 bit. Or less. And none if it matters if you're feeding it to cheap computer speakers. LOL.
     
  7. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

    Well, that was a landslide result (perhaps a little biased by the fact that 3 out of the 4 options were "no").

    I'm glad :p Sorry, I just wanted to prove a point that no matter how great your sound card is, there is NO published music in more than 16-bit (unless the only SACD hybrid I know of - Dark side of the moon - is in 24-bit, which I dont think it is because its in 5.1 surround already) and the only current use for anything above 16 bit is during the production stages.

    But then, its a complete waste of time me trying to explain this to people, because when they find somthing that "makes it sound better", they won't belive ANYONE else!

    It's quite hillarious watching people say things like "it makes a biiig difference" "it sounds so much better!" etc. when actually, it sonunds exactly the same :p
     
  8. StratCat

    StratCat Private E-2

    With my sound card Sound Blaster Audigy 7.1 it is a 24bit card. It shipped with DVD audio disc and it says that it is 24bit audio. Is this true or marketing hype? The cd sounds better than my other cds lol...or maybe im confused and suckerd by the hype lol....
     
  9. Just Playin

    Just Playin MajorGeek

    I've got the same card and same sample disc, and it does sound better. The only problem is that it's the only 24-bit disc we will see for a long time, until they start selling portable, car and home players as well. And it better be cheap as a regular CD or I won't buy one, cuz I wont enjoy beautiful music if I'm in the poorhouse.
     
  10. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

    Yes, a DVD Audio disc CAN play 24-bit audio, but other than demo's and samples there are no published ADVD's at the moment. Besides, most home equiptment doesn't have at 24-bit decoder in them, so its not profitable for people to do so yet.

    Also, a SACD would have to be normal stereo in order to be encoded with 24-bit sound... because the 4 extra channels are too big if they are 24-bit. (think, 24 bits in a sample, 6 samples thats 144 bits per surround sample, and with a samplerate of about 44,000Hz, thats 6336000 bits per second, or 792000 bytes ... per second...?!? if we were gonig for 96kHz... sheesh....)
     
  11. fleppen

    fleppen Gumshoe

    to answer your poll, no, I don't, waste of time with my speakers :p
     
  12. G.T.

    G.T. R.I.P February 4, 2007. You will be missed.

    I've got the Audigy & sample disk too, and it does sound good. Question is; on any "remastered" work, what all was done during the remastering??? The better sound may be simply due to more talented remixing and effects.

    If the source material was analog, you may make the argument that 24 bit digital intermediate steps may have aided the final sound by preserving the subtle details better. If the source material was digital to begin with, any data lost during the initial digital encoding is lost forever. So converting from 16 bit to 24 bit is meaningless.

    There is similar confusion in the Old Time Radio newsgroups I visit. Most of the old shows are from the 1930s thru 1950s, and the source material is generally lousy by todays standards. "AM" quality at best, and all in mono. Standard encoding for thise is 32 kilobit mono .mp3, which is adequate for preserving what's there; there is NO true high frequency content in those old shows. In that format, a half hour show runs about 6 megabytes. Some newbies are converting old shows to 128 kilobit stereo like they do for ripping music, which is a total waste. 50 megabyte files that don't sound any better than the smaller files. You can't add data that's not in your source material.
     

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