Understanding lossless, high-resolution, and spatial audio
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- Fayth
- XTA
- 10 Jun 2021
I am not an audiophile
as long as the music has clear stereo separation and bass
I am happy
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- Lccy
- n1u
- 10 Jun 2021
Anonymous, 10 Jun 2021You don't need to have a brick wall filter, 20-22k is... morehttp://bitperfectsound.blogspot.com/2013/11/sample-rate-matters-i.html?m=1
If you do not brickwall, then the signal is recorded as an alias, that is why you have to brickwall.
Why would a higher sample rate not have a more relaxed low pass filter? You have a much larger range to low pass from 20khz than with a lower sample rate.
The higher frequency content that higher rate rates can produce tends to be at a lower amplitude and won't cause any playback problems, what will cause playback problems is if you don't low pass the DAC output as aliasing is also produced on reconstruction, because real world signals have greater amplitude for low frequency content, then that would produce high amplitude high frequency aliases.
The other area where high frequency content could cause playback problems is the noise generated by 1bit DSD where it's shifted to the high frequency region, but the filter is much gentler than with pcm
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- Anonymous
- rJX
- 10 Jun 2021
Lccy, 10 Jun 2021Higher sample rates do not change the original signal conte... moreYou don't need to have a brick wall filter, 20-22k is enough for most cases. And higher sampling rates do not necessarily have relaxed filters.
Those higher frequency content might cause unwanted characteristics in a system which is not designed for those signals.
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- Lccy
- n1u
- 10 Jun 2021
Anonymous, 10 Jun 2021By that claim higher sampling rates introduce more impact s... moreHigher sample rates do not change the original signal content, frequencies beyond 20khz are present in almost all real world audio signals, what higher sample rates allow is to both sample signals above 20khz without aliasing, and a gentler low pass filter that doesn't need to brick wall until 48 or 96khz depending on the sample rate.
With CD audio, your low pass filter must block all frequencies beyond 22.05khz otherwise it will alias. Real world low pass filters have a working range where the amplitude is attenuated. With CD, the low pass filter has to attenuate 96db between 20 and 22.05khz, that's extremely steep for a small frequency range. For 24/292, you have a range between 20 and 96khz to gently attenuate the signal.
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- Pleh
- saI
- 10 Jun 2021
Can't wait for the day for headphone jacks to start returning to phones
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- Lccy
- n1u
- 10 Jun 2021
Samath N8 808 owner, 10 Jun 2021Good article. Read and understood some new things, while a ... moreAs you have mentioned, a higher sample rate has fewer aliasing and impulse smearing/timing issues as gentler low pass filters are used. The latest studies suggest the strong brick wall low pass filters used in cd audio are detectable by humans.
Therefore if you export at 44.1 or 48khz, the quality will be worse than your master.
Pravda looks like he has done his research by looking at an article by monty from xiph where he tries to discredit hi res audio saying current low pass filters are good enough, and claiming higher sample rates produce intermodulation distortion. This is not true. He has done the most to destroy hi res audio.
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- Lccy
- n1u
- 10 Jun 2021
AnonF-964910, 10 Jun 2021Too focused to notice difference, isn't that the point... moreTake this as an example, when you are in the middle of a conversation and you forget what you are going to say, the more you try and think what it was, you still struggle to remember and have to leave it, when your friend is gone and you are not focused anymore, it comes back to you
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- AnonF-964910
- n5n
- 10 Jun 2021
Lccy, 09 Jun 2021When you do rapid a/b testing, it is like a flight or fight... moreToo focused to notice difference, isn't that the point... to notice differences?
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- AnonD-1003038
- puk
- 10 Jun 2021
Anonymous, 09 Jun 2021Apple doesn't support high quality audio. As usual che... moreWho even mentioned Apple?! Also neither does 99% of TWS earphones. What's your point Apple hater?
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- Akinaro
- a0J
- 10 Jun 2021
Two things really should be said:
-Any spatial, surround/3D enchantment suck, it make every track sound weird and echoed. It just doesnt work with headphones, nor with stereo speakers.
-Many times it was proven by just testing it on people that think they are "audiophiles" with amazing hearing that people cant even distinguish 256kbps MP3 from 600kbps FLAC.
Most of improvement in audio in past years come from low latency methods in Bluetooth or... better quality headphones in low end price tag. Big part of those fancy technologies are nothing more than snake oil that put just fancy icon on box.
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- Joe
- 3qM
- 10 Jun 2021
Lossless is everything above mp3, or some other lossy codec (aac, mp4, ogg..etc), pure and simple.
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- Samath N8 808 owner
- Dkq
- 10 Jun 2021
Anonymous, 09 Jun 2021Please remember this fact: Humans cannot discern any son... moreMP3? Your choice of codec is..... might I say..... interesting.
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- Samath N8 808 owner
- Dkq
- 10 Jun 2021
Good article. Read and understood some new things, while a lot I already knew.
As of now, my level is listening to reasonable quality lossy audio + lossless audio + very few high res files on my G8x with Quad DAC using a Soundmagic high impedance earphone.
And yes, I can differentiate between this setup and a 128 kbps MP3 file played on a computer. :D
But, is this inference accurate? ---> "A 192kHz sampling rate means the audio can have a frequency response ceiling as high as 96kHz. As I already mentioned, humans can only hear as high as 20kHz,"
To the best of my knowledge, I think we can eliminate some micro timing/ aliasing issues with higher resolution music.
We're going analogue to digital (which is not good for quality) and need every advantage we can get.
Again, I'm not sure if high res music is really needed, or we can just use it in production and export it in 44.1kHz as Prasad suggested. Any ideas, guys?
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- Anonymous
- rJX
- 10 Jun 2021
[deleted post]Technically speaking uncompressed is better in that no energy is spent in compressing it and in decompressing it every time it's played.
Except if you are streaming, but if you concerned about environment, use local files and don't stream.
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- Anonymous
- rJX
- 10 Jun 2021
dude111, 09 Jun 2021"Also to dispel another popular myth, if your music is... moreA2DP has nothing to do with this, this is related to the playback app pipeline and os mixer.
Your application needs to decode audio to apply DSP and OS to mix with other audio sources, apply DSP, volume normalizing, limit etc, which is then sent to the sink. This all happens before hitting the Bluetooth stack.
You will need a app that has exclusive access to the device, OS stack that passes through the data, make use of Bluetooth hardware for the volume and not use any other DSP to not reencode the audio
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- Anonymous
- rJX
- 10 Jun 2021
ZolaIII, 09 Jun 2021Future of losseles audio lies in high precision (duble and ... moreWhen you introduce floating point, then it's not lossless. Technically 32 but floating point is losslessly same as 24 bit int for audio.
What you gain in terms of dynamic range, you lose in terms of accuracy.
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- Anonymous
- rJX
- 10 Jun 2021
Lccy, 09 Jun 2021The low pass filters do filter out the aliases reproduced b... moreBy that claim higher sampling rates introduce more impact since they have more higher frequency content
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- Anonymous
- rJX
- 10 Jun 2021
Ajith, 09 Jun 2021what's the relevance of lossless audio when there'... moreWhat's the relevance of high resolution camera if your phone has lower resolution screen
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- OwnFix3
- DkL
- 10 Jun 2021
Excellent article, Prasad!
People, don't let the technological evolution make you feel inferior about your listening habits. It is your perception of music that matters. What the artist wants to convey you that matters.