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by KeplerBoy 844 days ago
so for stuff which didn't properly use the dynamic range of the standard codecs?

Are human ears even capable of hearing 24 bits of dynamic range?

1 comments

Rule of thumb:

We know that 2^10 ≈ 10^3, so 2^24 ≈ 10^(3/10*24) = 10^7.2. This 7.2 is about amplitude, but what we hear is power which is quadratic in amplitude, so take a factor of 2, and you're talking 14.4 bel, or 144 decibel for 24 bit (and 2/3 of that, 96 db, for 16 bit).

(In reality it's a bit more complicated, but that's a good rough guide, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth#Quantization)