Comment by davesims
14 years ago
Another "ex audio engineer" here, you can believe or not at your leisure. Many hours spent in high-end recording and mastering environments.
I'm not sure what your background in audio is, but everything he says is correct. High end frequencies well past 15k and up (22.1k actually) are widely acknowledged to influence the lower frequencies and play a huge role in the perception of the quality of a recording. This is an old debate with pros and cons on both sides, but in general you'll find the "Golden Ears" mastering engineers (Stephen Marcussen, Bob Ludwig, etc.) come down on the side of higher sampling rates.
Now, if your original recording was mastered to 16/44.1, then a transfer by way of 24/192 will probably actually hurt the recording. But if you're mastering from an original analog or high-quality digital, in my experience there's no question, higher sampling rates deliver better experiences.
I have also spent many hours spent in high-end recording and mastering environments, and it's my observation that most engineers suffer from confirmation bias just like everyone else on the planet.
I've caught engineers using L1-Ultramaximizer (or similar) to bounce a recording down to 16-bit/44.1khz as part of the mastering process, and they're always surprised when they're completely unable to hear the difference even in the most simple cover-the-screen-and-toggle-bypass test.
Audio, perhaps like the wine industry, is a vast bastion of confirmation bias and subjectivity, no argument there.
But I know what my ears hear, and IMO there is absolutely a vast different between 44.1 and 192. I'm not sure how you can even question it. Someone else on the thread was saying it's impossible to hear the difference between 16bit and 24bit. I don't even know what to say to that. It's like telling me the glass of Gallo "Table Red" you're drinking is as good as my '75 Lafite. All I can say is "cheers" and just enjoy.
Regarding your wine anecdote: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/you-are-no...
If I gave you a bottle of "Table Red" with a '75 Lafite label, I'm sure you'd tell me how rich and wonderful it was. The problem here is that, as you said, "I know what my ears hear". You know you're listening to 192, wow it sure sounds great!
You just need to consider more plausible explanations for the difference you are hearing, such as low-quality sample rate conversion on the playback devices you are using, clock jitter that is less audible at 192k than 44.1k, no dithering on the 16-bit output resulting in quantization noise on quiet sounds, etc.
If you're listening to quiet music in a quiet room at high volumes on very low noise equipment, you can hear a difference in the noise floor level between dithered 16-bit and 24-bit, but at that volume level if that music (or movie) also has full-amplitude signals you'll be reaching peaks over 110dB SPL.
With evidence.
As much respect as I have for Bob Ludwig's hard won mastering skills, he also strongly believes in $n,000/foot speaker cable, which is what he has installed at Gateway. So by all means give him well deserved props, but don't assume he's an expert on all aspects of audio theory or practice.
I've always thought the most expensive speaker cable sounds a lot better... to the wallet of the salesperson.