Article from : Xiph.Org ( Apr 4, 2013 )

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

The ear hears via hair cells that sit on the resonant basilar membrane in the cochlea. Each hair cell is effectively tuned to a narrow frequency band determined by its position on the membrane. Sensitivity peaks in the middle of the band and falls off to either side in a lopsided cone shape overlapping the bands of other nearby hair cells. A sound is inaudible if there are no hair cells tuned to hear it.

Above left: anatomical cutaway drawing of a human cochlea with the basilar membrane colored in beige. The membrane is tuned to resonate at different frequencies along its length, with higher frequencies near the base and lower frequencies at the apex. Approximate locations of several frequencies are marked.
Above right: schematic diagram representing hair cell response along the basilar membrane as a bank of overlapping filters.
 
This is similar to an analog radio that picks up the frequency of a strong station near where the tuner is actually set. The farther off the station's frequency is, the weaker and more distorted it gets until it disappears completely, no matter how strong. There is an upper (and lower) audible frequency limit, past which the sensitivity of the last hair cells drops to zero, and hearing ends.

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Read more at : Xiph.Org

wow,
that article dates back to 2012,
and has been beaten to death.

Nice article, thanks for sharing.

So if we can hear up to 20khz ( most can not ).. , and we use 24bit/48 khz the Nyquist frequeny will be at 24khz.
Why use higher samplerate than the human ear can hear !

Then we have Quantizing happening when we downsample audio bit depth
causing aliasing as i understand it.. !

Aliasing Explained


Digital Audio 102 - PCM, Bit-Rate, Quantisation, Dithering, Nyquists Sampling Theorum - PB15

there's a lot going on beyond what the human ear can hear....
and it's not all about audio,
some of it is about resolution and math.

batsbrew
there's a lot going on beyond what the human ear can hear....
and it's not all about audio,
some of it is about resolution and math.

In the math and the digital domain, yes probably
but can you or someone else tell me if there is any audible benefits ( noticable by the hearing )
by using higher samplerates ?

Besides the negative result of higher samplerate = bigger files more CPu consumption etc..

the math turns into audible payoff,
especially in the 32 bit floating point math,
but truth be told,
the better target would be 60kHz

http://www.lavryengineeri..._for_quality_audio.pdf

The great audio myth : Why you dont need that 32bit DAC

Soundblend
So if we can hear up to 20khz ( most can not ).. , and we use 24bit/48 khz the Nyquist frequeny will be at 24khz.
Why use higher samplerate than the human ear can hear !

Then we have Quantizing happening when we downsample audio bit depth
causing aliasing as i understand it.. !

No - aliasing (imaging) occurs when frequencies above one half the sampling frequency (aka the Nyquist frequency) are in the audio.
 
Reducing bit depth increases quantization error, and if dithered properly this just means more noise.
 
So:
higher sample rate = higher frequencies can be in the audio
higher bit depth = less noise
 
The point is the sampling rate only has to be high enough for the highest frequency you want and bit depth only has to be high enough so that quantization noise + dither is buried under other noise or below the threshold of hearing. Most of the believers in higher resolution format have no idea of how bit depth and sample rate relate to the real world.