[nnnnni]

There's also the fact that you can FEEL some sounds that you can't hear.

Chris Randall of Sister Machine Gun (at least used to?) use a low-frequency generator at live shows to produce a sound that the audience could feel but not hear in order to make the music more intense. I suspect that you'd gain some of that effect with a larger bit size.

...or I could be completely wrong. Whatever.

[badsock]

The increase in sample rate to 192kHz only allows frequencies above 22KHz to be represented (i.e. no effect whatsoever on the low frequencies that you mention). Pushing the bits to 24 only lowers the noise levels (which at 16 are already demonstrably imperceptible).

What you mention, though, points directly to what /will/ improve the quality of sound reproduction: speakers. It gets harder and harder to move that much air with precision as you get lower and lower in frequency. It's a definite technical limitation, but it's to do with very high-power amps and giant speakers, not the recording format.

We have (to the degree that humans can prove that they can perceive), perfect reproduction from digital recordings, perfect amplifiers for reasonable prices (at lower-than-concert-power-levels at least), but we haven't yet developed good enough speakers to cover the whole perceptible range of frequencies to anywhere near the same degree.

Audiophiles love to try and improve the whole chain, but really the only place it matters is at the very end.

[leoc]

According to this interesting-looking article here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/02/feature_the_future_l... the problem isn't frequency response but things like time delay, and it's not due simply to the very end but also to systems leading up to and around it like inaccurate crossovers and speaker cabinets that introduce time delay.

[badsock]

Agreed - my definition of "the end" being anything past the far end of the speaker cable.

[murki]

The entire sub-bass genre is based around that concept. Case in point James Blake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOT2-OTebx0&hd=1

[cozzyd]

Well, first of all there is no problem with encoding low frequencies here (we do all the time! like the fact that the notes are not all played at the same time...).

What you feel is parts of your body resonating (because the low frequency sound is exciting modes of your body). This is unlikely to happen at high frequencies, partially because it would necessarily be much smaller parts of your body (see [0] for a diagram of typical body resonance frequencies) which we probably don't feel and because attenuation of sound greatly increases at higher frequencies (for example, see [0] for air), making it likely impractical to excite any such modes. My guess is that you might cause some tissue damage if you had significant ultrasonic excitation in your body (see [2] for something that may or may not be true...).

[0] http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/37543/does-the-hu... [1] http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/general_physics/2_4/2_4_1.html [2] http://www.tovatech.com/blog/4376/ultrasonic-cleaner/ultraso...

[neonkiwi]

You hypothesized about tissue damage from ultrasonic excitation, so this tangential post may be of interest. Tissue damage from ultrasound is an intentionally-caused phenomenon being used (and experimented with) in some non-invasive medical procedures, where focused energy can locally ablate a tumor for instance. HIFU, high-intensity focused ultrasound, is the technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_focused_ultrasou...