32bit, 384kHz Ultra-High Resolution - The Next-generation Premium DACjust 192kHz more, bro. i promise bro, just 192kHz more and we will fix audio bro. bro... just 192kHz more. please just 192kHz more. 192kHz more and we can fix audio. bro c'mon just give me 192kHz more i promise bro. bro bro please i just need 192kHz more
@lanodan@volpeon dammit i wrote an explanation here a few times why hi-res audio makes sense. Don't wanna look it up, but trust me, it kinda does make sense.
@newt@volpeon And pretty much all you put only applies to (pre-)production audio. Meanwhile for distribution it doesn't fucking matters, it's like saying you'd want movies in higher res than the display you're going to use them on.
First, the reason why CD Audio used 44.1kHz instead of plain 40kHz is because low-pass filters fucking eat shit. You just can't cut out >20kHz frequencies in analogue, so there's some space to work with.
Second, aliasing is actually a thing. E.g. when you sample sound at 44.1kHz rate (or 48kHz if you're classy), higher frequencies might alias into the audible range and you will get shit instead of the sound you wanted to record. More on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing).
Third, oversampling leads to higher sound quality because it allows dithering to remove sampling noise (aka quantisation error). There are several tricks that allow pushing most of that noise into the upper inaudible frequencies, leaving stuff below 20kHz more or less noise-free. Also, more on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither).
Fourth, going back to DACs, higher resolution DACs work basically with the same principle but in reverse, allowing to reproduce signals closer to the original. Btw they aren't even 384kHz PCM. Most ADCs and DACs today are DSM (like in DSD format) and operate at 2.8224MHz or a multiple of that with 1-bit sample size. Again, more on damn stupid Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-sigma_modulation).
TL;DR you probably should think about hi-res audio not as a means to listen to bat sonar or dolphin orgasm screams or whatever but as a form of anti-aliasing. Sorta similar to MSAA for graphics.
There, you made me do this. I hope you're happy now.
@lanodan@volpeon oh... sure, for distribution and casual listening 16bit/44.1kHz (or 48kHz) is enough. 24bit will make it more than plenty.
However, some dudes are picky and wanna be sure that their music came straight from the mastering table.
Now, if you wanna really have a good laugh, torrent trackers are full of 192kHz/24bit _VINYL_ rips. Afaik vinyl can give you maximum range of around 72dB, which translates to roughly 10-12bits of sample size necessary. Why would someone do this? For shits and giggles, I guess.
@newt@volpeon Meanwhile I feel like if you'd really want better than CD, then you'd need to get the project files, which could actually allow things like "hang on, I want to hear this guitarist more" similarly to how you sometimes can on live stages.
> Vinyl rips
I feel like that's due to the brainworms of vinyl being higher quality than CD for likely just pure nostalgia reasons.
There are many reasons to want better than CD. First, if you're talking about ripping real physical CDs (nuts!), quality of those rips varies wildly. So just looking for higher res files will save you from awful experience of listening to CD read errors (happened to me a few times).
Then there is the fact that LOUDNESS WARS were a thing, and many CDs (nuts!) suffer from that. Avoiding CD rips or CD quality rips can also save you from this.
That last part is also the reason why many buy vinyl instead of physical CDs when preferring physical media.
Also, there is this special kind of schizophrenics who just encode various shit into upper frequencies for lulz. If you know Aphex Twin, he's among them. This is the real sonogram of a real Aphex Twin track.
@amerika@mar77i@volpeon@lanodan oh that's a bad idea. Working with sound in fully digital form is much easier. You probably want to have a high-res ADC as early as possible in your pipeline.