[coopersloan]

Huh, I think people truly advocating 192 as a distribution format will be few and far in between, a really good and cheaper sampling system can be put together at 96. Still, a lot of things in this article perplex me.

Human hearing is limited to 20k because frequencies higher than that are perceived as painful? Dont agree with that one.

24 bit doesn't offer any advantages to sound quality? Sheesh.

And the crux of the argument is intermodulation distortion increases when you try to represent more frequencies? Isn't that an argument for a faster power amp?

[mkn]

"Human hearing is limited to 20k because frequencies higher than that are perceived as painful? Dont agree with that one."

Yeah, that's a silly one. I disagree with it, too. It's a good thing it appears nowhere in the fine article. Are you actually confused about the difference between frequency and amplitude? Or did you misread the article?

"24 bit doesn't offer any advantages to sound quality? Sheesh."

As brazzy rightly points out, "Sheesh" isn't a reasoned statement. It's an ejaculation. And, it turns out, the author talked about why sound engineers record with 24 bits; It has to do with pragmatic reasons about leaving room for the highest and lowest frequencies in the audio being recorded without clipping, as well as with the author's discussion of Nyquist considerations in the distributed product.

Your post is wrong in so many ways that would have been easily fixed by reading the linked article with even 8th-grade reading skills that the reasonable reader has to wonder if you're being deliberately obtuse. Are you?

[masklinn]

> Human hearing is limited to 20k because frequencies higher than that are perceived as painful? Dont agree with that one.

You misread the article. It's because there is so little response that being able to hear it would blow your eardrums (and even then, it might still be beyond your ability to hear it). There's no value in that.

> 24 bit doesn't offer any advantages to sound quality? Sheesh.

Not quite what TFA says. According to the article, 16 bits effectively covers the dynamic range of human hearing, so more than that is pointless for music consumed by human beings (hence all the stuff about 24bit being a good idea for mastering & production). If you're storing integers in the 0~16384 range, going from 16 bit integers to 32 bit ones is not going to give you "better ints", it's just going to waste 2 bytes per int. Same thing here.

[coopersloan]

I can admit that I misread the article when it comes to hearing limits. I was reacting to my perception as an audio engineer that a lot of people dismiss the importance of that frequency range.

[lwat]

With good reason!

[brazzy]

"Don't agree with that one" and "Sheesh" are pretty weak counters to detailed, objective arguments based on extensive research and decades of test data.

[coopersloan]

Principle frequencies well above 20k as well as their sympathetic harmonics are pretty easily audible by me, try it.

24 bit is also extremely easy to hear. Arguably more important during the recording phase when headroom is valuable.

Its just as easy to qualify everything with "placebo effect", as it is to be dismissive

[tompagenet2]

There will always be people with slightly wider sensory perception than others, but are you honestly saying that you can easily hear sounds "well above" 20kHz? Have you tested this in a double blind test? I know that sounds like a lot of effort, but it would be interesting. You would be somewhat unusual if you could hear, say, 22kHz.

[nullc]

Not somewhat unusual. A one of a kind specimen.

If you test this and hear something, it's almost certainly because the ultrasonic signal is being distorted by your amplifier and speakers and you're hearing distortion products that are ending up at frequencies you can hear.

[brigade]

As he mentions, with 16-bit it's easy to significantly reduce the dynamic range or clip; you only get the full 120dB range of 16-bit with careful handling and calibration. You don't have to worry about all this with 24-bit - you'd almost have to deliberately screw up the signal to reduce the dynamic range below that of a human's.

Ideally audio engineers would take the effort to do good 16-bit conversion for distribution, but I realize that's too much to expect of them.

[lwat]

Unless you've done a double blind test I don't believe you.