Purchases Today

[flyingdutchman]

Would you pay even more money for 36 bit, 768 kHz master? Even more for a 48 bit, 3,072 kHz master? At some point the resolution is sufficient. If you get a 24-bit 96 kHz master you are getting extremely high resolution, high fidelity reproduction of the thermal noise in the various resistors and transistors in the microphone pre-amplifiers.

There are well-defined scientific/mathematical criteria by which 16-bit 44.1 kHz is enough. My own experience tends to confirm this conclusion.

Well, you've just argued yourself into a corner because on one hand you support 24 bit 96 kHz   and then go on to suggest 16 bit is enough. 

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Well, you've just argued yourself into a corner because on one hand you support 24 bit 96 kHz   and then go on to suggest 16 bit is enough.

I argued that 16 bit, 44.1 kHz is sufficient and there is no benefit to distributing audio files with higher resolution. However, somewhere above I noted that there is a benefit to using a high resolution format in the raw studio master. This is because when recording live you have to turn down the gain far enough that the recorder will never be saturated. This results in loss of resolution.

If you use reduced gain on a 16 bit recorder you may end up with only 14 bits of effective resolution. If you use a 20 bit recorder your reduced gain will give you 18 bits of effective resolution, and you can convert that to take full advantage of the 16 bit output format.

[flyingdutchman]

Which would indicate that recordings that are made in 24 bit 96 Kz (like in the case of many recent Chandos and Hyperion releases) will sound demonstrably better than their 16 bit cd counterparts.

[71 dB]

Next thing you'll say is there's no difference between MP3s and cds. Nothing you say can convince that the lower you get with bit rate gives you still good sound quality while the higher the bit rate somehow makes no difference.

Well, I am not saying that, althou 320 kbps mp3s are very hard to distinguish from CD. What lossy coding does to the signal is gigantic compared to what 24 bit to 16 bit conversion does. That's why talking about the differencies between mp3 and CD is meaningful.

Of course bitrate matters, especially when we talk about low bitrates, but there is a point where we have reached the limits of our hearing (transparency) and that limit happens to be pretty much where CD is. Listening tests have been made comparing 44.1/16 and 22.05/16 audio, and the drop in sound quality is described as tiny, even when the highest octave is being removed! There are more important things that contribute sound quality than bitrates, bit depths and samplerates. Sound quality comes mostly from how the recording is produced, how good work sound engineers and musicians do. That's what counts, not large numbers which are marketing gimmicks.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Which would indicate that recordings that are made in 24 bit 96 Kz (like in the case of many recent Chandos and Hyperion releases) will sound demonstrably better than their 16 bit cd counterparts.

No. That does not follow. My point is that if they used a 16 bit recorder at the sessions they would have ended up with less than 16 bit resolution in the final product, due to the need for maintaining safe headroom in the recording process. That might be marginally audible. Using a high resolution recorder in session tapes allows them to fully exploit the capability of the CD format.

[Mandryka]

I'll just report here that I have a spacial DAC, a cult thing made by an obscure Canadian company called Museatex, when I got it I was astonished at the impact it had on my system's sound. But it can only handle Red Book. Nevertheless it sounds better playing Red Book lossless encoded files than my other DAC, which is also well regarded (made by MSB Technology, an American company I think), playing Hi Res files.

The point I want to make is that the standard of input is good now, and the best place to focus attention I think is further down the chain.

[71 dB]

I get your analogy, but also believe that the higher the resolution the cleaner and clearer you hear those differences in sound or pronunciation.  I'm transcribing interviews for my dissertation right now and I have to say that the cleaner the resolution, the easier it is to hear differences between words.  That is what I believe happens too with higher resolution release downloads vs cds

That is simply a false belief. The sound is 100 % clear to the ear when it's transparent and transparency is reached when we reach the total bandwidth of human hearing (up to 20 kHz at best, typically 16 kHz) and dynamic range in listening conditions (less than 60-80 dB in practice). CD fulfills these specs and is a transparent audio format.

Sampling theorem says we can reproduce any bandlimited signal COMPLETELY, if we use sampling frequency equal of higher than Nyquiest frequency and infinite bits per sample point for infinite accuracy. We don't have infinite bits, and therefore we have quantization noise added with the signal. To make the noise subjectively much less harmful and to improve linearity at low signal levels dither noise is used. Shaped dither allows subjective dynamic range for 16 bit audio of 110-120 dB! This means we can record signal level 10-20 dB below the least significant bit at the expense of higher dither noise level at highert frequencies where the hearing threshold is quite high.

[71 dB]

If you get a 24-bit 96 kHz master you are getting extremely high resolution, high fidelity reproduction of the thermal noise in the various resistors and transistors in the microphone pre-amplifiers.

So true. So true.  0:)

There are well-defined scientific/mathematical criteria by which 16-bit 44.1 kHz is enough. My own experience tends to confirm this conclusion.

I'm so glad I am not the only one here trying to bring sanity into the bitrate madness.

[71 dB]

Which would indicate that recordings that are made in 24 bit 96 Kz (like in the case of many recent Chandos and Hyperion releases) will sound demonstrably better than their 16 bit cd counterparts.

Yeah, you definitely benefit from higher than CD resolution while producing a recording and nobody is denying that, but music listeners don't need that. A CD down conversion will benefit from the high resolution production too. 24 bits is definitely great in music production. Higher sample rates are more questionable and anything above 96 kHz is just ridiculous.

[JBS]

What Men Live By is apparently on backorder.  Or maybe it's in stock.  Arkivmusic lists it as both on my order. 
This order was made two days ago, so Brian's praise was not a factor.
The horn concertos CD contents are

Works on This Recording
1.   Horn Concerto in E flat major by Christoph Förster
Performer:  Alec Frank-Gemmill (Horn)
Conductor:  Nicholas McGegan
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Period: Baroque
2.   Concerto for Horn, Violin, 2 Violas and Basso Continuo in D major, TV 51 no D 8 by Georg Philipp Telemann
Performer:  Alec Frank-Gemmill (Horn)
Conductor:  Nicholas McGegan
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Period: Baroque
Written: 1708-1714; Germany
3.   Concerto for trumpet & strings in E flat major by Johann Baptist Georg Neruda
Performer:  Alec Frank-Gemmill (Horn)
Conductor:  Nicholas McGegan
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Period: Baroque
Written: circa 1740-1775
4.   Sinfonia da camera for Horn, Violin, 2 Violas and Basso Continuo in D major by Leopold Mozart
Performer:  Alec Frank-Gemmill (Horn)
Conductor:  Nicholas McGegan
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Period: Classical
Written: Austria
5.   Concerto for Horn no 1 in D major, H 7d no 3 by Franz Joseph Haydn
Performer:  Alec Frank-Gemmill (Horn)
Conductor:  Nicholas McGegan
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Period: Classical
Written: 1762; Eszterhazá, Hungary

[Karl Henning]

Looks a nice haul, Jeffrey!

[JBS]

Looks a nice haul, Jeffrey!

Well, can one have too much Martinu?    The horn concerto CD has been in and out of my shopping cart at least half a dozen times...
The Josquin is described as volume 7 of a series devoted to recording all his masses.  Which means, with the parallel effort by the Tallis Scholars, there will be two such sets when completed.

[Omicron9]

Of course they will! 

"This isn't an argument; it's only contradiction!"

- Monty P.

[Omicron9]

Well, can one have too much Martinu?   ...snip!

No.  One cannot.

[JBS]

Also ordered in the last couple of days
[asin]B07GW3PM7Z[/asin]
[asin]B07DS2JC6X[/asin]

[André]

This team's sterling work on symphonies 5 and 8 resulted in magnificent recordings. I have high hopes for this one.



A 5 cd set of opera arias, german lieder, italian songs, operetta arias and scenes from DG's vaults, all for just 6$. With that I should be wunderlichfilled for a while.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

This team's sterling work on symphonies 5 and 8 resulted in magnificent recordings. I have high hopes for this one.

I said some intemperate things about Shostakovich 11 today.   

[André]

Voicing an opinion without concern is one of the privileges of belonging to a good forum  .

[Harry]

On my order list.

[andolink]

A brand new release today of my favorite interpreters of Haydn's quartets doing the Op. 64 set and, as with their other releases in this ongoing cycle, it's sublime.