SOLVED Absolute best sound format?

[MospeadasDark]

penguin you seems pretty interested in this file size thing so here you go. i took an mix done at 16/44.1, which ultimately at some point everything has to be mixed down to to get it onto a cd. it is a 3 miniute and 52 second song with a file size of 40.05 megs. i then resampled at and converted it to 24/96.

Here's where I will recommend an upsample to 24/88.2 rather than 96. 44.1 goes into 96 an odd number. You'll get some weird multiple and your songs will sound a bit weird. Noticable esp if you play classical.

My wavs at 24/88.2 is about 184MB for a 4 minute song.

 

[flaming gerbil]

agree. i did it on a copy just to demonstrate the files size. when i go digital i always use 24/88.2 to keep a nice even resample.

 

[flaming gerbil]

well i shouldn't say i always go 88.2 because i do 96 a lot. 88.2 because i can do it at work. my home studios converters will only sample at 44.1, 48 and 96.

 

[Penguin4x4]

Wait, wouldn't a 30MB file @16/44.1 be 16.7GB @24/96?

 

[Emericana]

jeesh lol my 192 birate mp3's i rip sound great lol i can hardly tell a difference between that and 128 birates and i cant tell the diff between that and a cd

 

[MospeadasDark]

jeesh lol my 192 birate mp3's i rip sound great lol i can hardly tell a difference between that and 128 birates and i cant tell the diff between that and a cd

You sir, are in need of new speakers. Most likely a better soundcard as well.

 

[Check-X]

I don't believe that whole LP's are best hype. For turntablism and mixing, yeah, but as far as sound quality, no. They work like this, a groove is dug out of a slab of vinyl representing the sound. Think like this, you know how a speaker moves in and out real fast to make sound? The printing needle of a record does the same thing, and that's the groove in the vinyl. As the playing needle rides those grooves the slight variations are amplified into a speaker to make them audible. That's not necesarily uncompressed, it's nineteenth century. Sure it's analog, so purists are like, "It's more organic." I don't know about that.

Enough ranting. While doing two semesters of sound work with a sound engineer who's worked with Janet Jackson among others, here's what he uses. AIFF. It's basically a Mac version of WAV files. As long as you have a raw format like WAV or AIFF at 16 bit 48K sample rate that's about as good as digital sound gets (there's a new 24bit format availiable, but it's essentially unused). Any more would be unnecessary. Once you get over 41K samples it's pretty much crystal clear, 48K is kinda just making sure.

--Illah

--Illah

a brand new CLEAN LP on a GOOD clean record player with a hi-fi needle will produce far superior sound than any CD system will. The only reason records sound bad is because down the road they collect dust, get small niches in them and distort the original recorded sound. if Analog sound wasn't better.. why are mobo's now comming with vacuum tubes on them?

 

[Emericana]

sb audigy w/ klipsh 4.1 cant get much better than that

 

[parkan]

You cannot imagine how lucky you are to only work with sound. Working with uncompressed video AND high bitrate sound makes you wish you had hard drives as far as the eye can see... 160GB is barely enough for a simple low-botrate project scratch space.

 

[Avatar28]

No, I don't think it is an exponential increase either. More of a linear increase.

Example, if you make two recordings of the same song, one at 8-bit and one at 16-bit, the 16-bit song is twice the size of the 8 all other things being equal. 24-bit would be 1.5 times the size of 16-bit.

8 bits x 44,100 samples x 2 channels = 705,600 bits/sec
16 bits x 44,100 samples x 2 channels = 1,411,200 bits/sec
24 bits x 44,100 samples x 2 channels = 2,116,800 bits/sec

Edit:
Doubling the sampling rate will also doble in size again. So a 24/88.2 file would be 4,233,600 bits/sec. 8 bits to the byte will give you 529,200 bytes/sec or 31,752,000 bytes per minute (compared to 10,584,000 bytes/min for CD quality audio). That said, I'm rather skeptical that


Oh, and I also checked and I believe that it WAS Huffman encoding that I was thinking of earlier.

 

[Nismo Nate]

What programs do you guys use to burn your Audio CD's?

My buddy and me jsut went to fry's and he got a sony burner 40x but it came with B's recorder gold, and it is having problems, i tried Nero and it didn't reconize the drive, anyone have some sugestions?

 

[Avatar28]

Yeah, try downloading a newer version of Nero. The programs basically have a list of CD burners within the program. When a new drive comes out, it's not in the list and won't be recognized. Go get a newer version of Nero and it may fix that problem. Or use the burning software that comes with the drive.

 

[Nismo Nate]

Yeah, try downloading a newer version of Nero. The programs basically have a list of CD burners within the program. When a new drive comes out, it's not in the list and won't be recognized. Go get a newer version of Nero and it may fix that problem. Or use the burning software that comes with the drive.

Thanx, but I persuaded him to just take it back and get a lite-on from newegg, like mine ... no problems ever....

 

[Penguin4x4]

After crunching numbers and rereading this thread, I'd say use 18/48 .WAV's. They seem to be the best of both worlds, space effeceint, uncompressed, and digitally enhanced(like the picture quality difference between DVD's and VHS's)sound. Am I right?

 

[Azzkiller]

a brand new CLEAN LP on a GOOD clean record player with a hi-fi needle will produce far superior sound than any CD system will. The only reason records sound bad is because down the road they collect dust, get small niches in them and distort the original recorded sound. if Analog sound wasn't better.. why are mobo's now comming with vacuum tubes on them?

I disagree with your statement. The dynamic range on LP's simply is not as great as a compact disc. I have a turntable and listen to tracks on the record and then on a cd. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Records have that cool retro feel to them, and to me, really that is their only advantage over cd. Cds on the other hand have a higher dynamic range, and greater frequency range. Now technically, I suppose records could have greater in both, but I have never found that to be true.

The reason Vacuum tubes are used on a motherboard is for gimmick purposes only. If you ask me, transistors are better than tubes. They are more efficient and introduce less distortion to the original signal. Now that is not to say that you cannot have a good tube design, but why, other than for the fun factor? I mean you could even have a tube design that outperforms a comparable transistor based design. But has anyone noticed how few amplifiers there are out there that are vacuum tube based and have more than 100w of output? They really stink in high output situations due to their inefficiency.

Oh, and a transistor based amplifier is still analog. The only amplification designs that could be considered digital (but its all a technicality if you ask me) are class D, T and their variants.

 

[Azzkiller]

penguin you seems pretty interested in this file size thing so here you go. i took an mix done at 16/44.1, which ultimately at some point everything has to be mixed down to to get it onto a cd. it is a 3 miniute and 52 second song with a file size of 40.05 megs. i then resampled at and converted it to 24/96. it's file size increased to 737. 4 megs. now imagine a 40 track mix. hard drives fill up very fast. this is the conundrum with dvd audio, we don't know if consumers would want 24/96 or surround sound. it's got to be one or another, not enough storage space for both. you either have to have a standard "cd" done at 24/96 or six channels of sourround at 16/44.1 i'd be interested in what people think, since i know people involved in making these decisions. me as an engineer i'd prefer 24/96 but most of us think consumers would prefer surround sound. personally i don't like mixing surround.

Gerbil:

I think I may be a bit confused. Are you saying that you have a sound file that was originally encoded at 44.1khz/16bit and you upsampled it to 24/96, or that your original file source was of higher resolution? What I am trying to understand as to why upsampling anything would do anything. First, wouldnt this be akin to trying to make an mp3 into a redbook cd, the redbook cd could only be as good as the mp3 file, no better. Second, how can any of you hear past 20khz anyways for 96khz audio to matter? Third, how do you know your loudspeakers and amplifiers have a frequency response to 48khz?

I can understand why the new sound technologies could use higher sampling rates of 24bits, but increasing the bandwidth seems to be rather pointless, perhaps you can enlighten me?

 

[Richard]

Alot of the arguing about which sounds better, is purely subjective. And as such, will never arrive at a conclusive answer.

I will agree with you though. Given equal quality components. CDs will yield the most accurate sound.

I still maintain that speakers are THE most important and decisive factor in determining music quality. You could have a $20,000 set of components, but if the speakers are lacking, you might as well have a cassette.

Touching on the tube vs transistor amplification. I like a good tube amp. It's a very sweet sound. You rarely see a cheaply made tube amp. Of course, that is probably large in part of the reason why they tend to sound so good. That's not to say that tubes are more true. Tubes, introduce a level of distortion. (Pleasant sounding distortion maybe, but distortion nonetheless.)

Transistor based amps are a dime a dozen, and many of the popular brands are very low quality in build. A disturbing trend, because 20-30 years ago, transistor based amps were fantastic in quality. Yeah, they were big and bulky by todays standards, but I have some components that are 25 years old that still sound wonderful. They truly don't make things like they used to. Now most things are cheap plastic, with weak power supplies. Oh, but they look cool. <sigh>

 

[Lochreas]

---X--- what are you going to do with this really high quality sound you store?

Yeah, I was wondering this also. Are you going to be recording music or something? I plan on upgrading my system soon for recording my original music and some of my band's stuff, so I'm also going to need the best quality. I haven't did much research on it yet because in about a year I will be going to the Recording Workshop in Ohio, but it will be done on my pc. Are those TerraTec cards good for digital recording on pcs?

 

[Azzkiller]

Alot of the arguing about which sounds better, is purely subjective. And as such, will never arrive at a conclusive answer.

I will agree with you though. Given equal quality components. CDs will yield the most accurate sound.

I still maintain that speakers are THE most important and decisive factor in determining music quality. You could have a $20,000 set of components, but if the speakers are lacking, you might as well have a cassette.

Touching on the tube vs transistor amplification. I like a good tube amp. It's a very sweet sound. You rarely see a cheaply made tube amp. Of course, that is probably large in part of the reason why they tend to sound so good. That's not to say that tubes are more true. Tubes, introduce a level of distortion. (Pleasant sounding distortion maybe, but distortion nonetheless.)

Transistor based amps are a dime a dozen, and many of the popular brands are very low quality in build. A disturbing trend, because 20-30 years ago, transistor based amps were fantastic in quality. Yeah, they were big and bulky by todays standards, but I have some components that are 25 years old that still sound wonderful. They truly don't make things like they used to. Now most things are cheap plastic, with weak power supplies. Oh, but they look cool. <sigh>

Absolutly, I believe speakers play the most important role. I am glad you see the limitations of tube amps in relation to fet based ones. A lot of people dont realize that there are tradeoffs in every amplifier, and you have to choose between each carefully.

If you ask me though, I would say that even those cheap things with a weak power supply sound the same as the high quality amplifier at low power, it is only when we start getting to the limits of the linear range of the amplifier when they truly start sounding different.

P.S. What do you think of the expensive audio cables that cost hundreds of dollars?

 

[james.miller]

kindof off subject.anyway...

has anybody mentioned mp3pro? ive got to versions of a song:

1) encoded in mp3 - 192k
2)mp3PRO - 64k
they are very nearly,and i meny 'VERY' nearly identical.
encoded in mp3pro it was just over 2mb. incredible