Why Distributing Music As 24-bit/192kHz Downloads Is Pointless

"Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple's Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of 'uncompromised studio quality'. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young's group several months ago. Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.
There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we're not going to see any actual improvement.


First, the bad news
In the past few weeks, I've had conversations with intelligent, scientifically minded individuals who believe in 24/192 downloads and want to know how anyone could possibly disagree. They asked good questions that deserve detailed answers.
I was also interested in what motivated high-rate digital audio advocacy. Responses indicate that few people understand basic signal theory or the sampling theorem, which is hardly surprising. Misunderstandings of the mathematics, technology, and physiology arose in most of the conversations, often asserted by professionals who otherwise possessed significant audio expertise. Some even argued that the sampling theorem doesn't really explain how digital audio actually works [1].
Misinformation and superstition only serve charlatans. So, let's cover some of the basics of why 24/192 distribution makes no sense before suggesting some improvements that actually do."

Gentlemen, meet your ears...

more here:
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html


interesting...

yeah, but I amd just curious and anxious actually to take double blind test and see if I can hear the difference.

Unfortunately I don't have good enough equipment to do such tests at home.

To be honest, I can't hear a difference in a 192kb mp3 if the mix is good and the encoder used is good. I do them here using WaveLab and I'm blown away by how good 192 sounds. 160kb on down I can always tell a difference. You get that warbling/watery sound...especially on cymbals.

I don't know....I really tend to stay away from "better quality" type discussions because they are just too subjective to me and at the end of the day, the only people that will take an interest in this stuff and notice the differences if there are any, are engineers and producer types. The main buying public could care less really. Think about it...most of them listen to 128kb mp3 files on their ipods and could care less nor would they tell the difference if they were 192 or 320. I know some would that are really into the sound quality of music...but the majority....ah, they are just happy to have the technology we have today.

-Danny

good points..   and yeah... I agree with the "watery warbling sound" thing... I heard it on a soundclick upload of one of my tunes a few years back... they reduce everything to 128 and I had uploaded a 128. I'm guessing their algorithm software screwed with it a bit.... The piano sounded like it was phased..... I reloaded it with a 320 which they reduced to 128 of course but that did fix the phasing piano sound. 

Dave... of course! 

Good information. I can really start hearing significant differences in anything less than 192 kb/s. I grew up listening to records and tapes so a little noise is "acceptable" to my ears.

Who wants such a big download?? Head-Room -- Enter Here!