Can Hi-Res Streaming Improve The Reputation Of Digital Audio?

Megalith

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Do you believe that digital recordings are inferior? I’d like to think that the differences have more to do with modern mixing practices rather than technical limitations.

Digital technology has never been a true friend to audio. After all, digital sampling slices and dices. That’s fine for visual images, which stand still in time. It’s fine for movies, which have always had a “frame rate.” But audio is a continuous phenomenon. Digital technology’s need to sample music at some specific rate and then recompose it into something that sounds like one continuous thing is necessarily a compromise. Add compression algorithms to the story, and we’re no longer listening to music, but a simulation of music designed to fool the ear into filling in the missing frequencies.
 
Vinyl = ridiculously bad channel separation, media wear, distortion from manufacturing and playback.

I stopped reading there where vinyl was the gold standard to compare digital audio to. Someone may prefer the distortion out of nostalgia (same with tube amps), but it's not superior in any technical sense. If the argument goes back to high grade analog masters vs early mediocre digital masters, that's just irrational at this point.
 
fake edit: I do realize the subject is streaming, but vinyl isn't streamed so I criticized that portion of the article.

To add something else, some platforms stream at ridiculously bad bitrates which could be part of the problem, but not in the way the article attacks. High quality streaming audio is already available, and it's snobbery and ignorance behind digital audio which is the problem, not the (high quality) digital audio itself.
 
Vinyl = ridiculously bad channel separation, media wear, distortion from manufacturing and playback.

I stopped reading there where vinyl was the gold standard to compare digital audio to. Someone may prefer the distortion out of nostalgia (same with tube amps), but it's not superior in any technical sense. If the argument goes back to high grade analog masters vs early mediocre digital masters, that's just irrational at this point.
Seems like a gold standard would be closer to audio DVDs.
 
Vinyl = ridiculously bad channel separation, media wear, distortion from manufacturing and playback.

I stopped reading there where vinyl was the gold standard to compare digital audio to. Someone may prefer the distortion out of nostalgia (same with tube amps), but it's not superior in any technical sense. If the argument goes back to high grade analog masters vs early mediocre digital masters, that's just irrational at this point.

I find the current digital formats to be severely lacking in quality. None of the current formats capture the sound of a concert correctly. Live instruments in a closed environment always sound different from a recording.

Maybe we need better capture equipment? Maybe someone needs to invent the successor to mics? Honestly I stopped caring about sound reproduction long ago. I have concluded that nothing revolutionary is slated to happen in my lifetime as we have shifted focus to terrible digital formats like mp3. If consumers are willing to accept that trash then that's where the money is going to be. FLAC is fine I suppose, but once again none of the original recordings are up to live performances quality.
 
Can Hi-Res Streaming Improve The Reputation Of Digital Audio? Short Ans: Yes

Do you believe that digital recordings are inferior? the quest lacks detail (see what i did there), so : Yes

Put simply the more bitrate and sample frequency you throw at it the better. I don't want to go back to analog but at least give me a choice to get really high res digital audio. Sound is just like colours. Some people can perceive more.
 
I find the current digital formats to be severely lacking in quality. None of the current formats capture the sound of a concert correctly. Live instruments in a closed environment always sound different from a recording.
That's mostly by design of the microphone, and not a consequence of the digital format. Modern digital formats, especially in hi-res formats, are fully capable of high enough sample rates to capture far beyond human frequency ranges and bit depth to get within close dynamic range of ideal human hearing.

Do you have something else in mind which does capture "the sound of a concert correctly"?
 
I find the current digital formats to be severely lacking in quality. None of the current formats capture the sound of a concert correctly. Live instruments in a closed environment always sound different from a recording.

Maybe we need better capture equipment? Maybe someone needs to invent the successor to mics? Honestly I stopped caring about sound reproduction long ago. I have concluded that nothing revolutionary is slated to happen in my lifetime as we have shifted focus to terrible digital formats like mp3. If consumers are willing to accept that trash then that's where the money is going to be. FLAC is fine I suppose, but once again none of the original recordings are up to live performances quality.

I still think its not the recordings. Its the mastering for radio, or mastering for ear buds, or just loudness war in general. A non clipping, non normalized recording played back on phone speakers or 20 dolla ear buds ran off of 1.5v chargepump phone amplifiers will sound like utter garbage compared to the radio edits they are streaming today.

128kbs/16bit may be alot better than 312kbits if the source material wasnt so screwed up.
 
Seems like a gold standard would be closer to audio DVDs.

Take a hearing test. If you can't hear beyond 20khz, then CD is as good as it gets. Of course for multi channel, DVD or Blu Ray is going to be better. Note that all of this assumes the master is the same for all formats.
 
I find the current digital formats to be severely lacking in quality. None of the current formats capture the sound of a concert correctly. Live instruments in a closed environment always sound different from a recording.

Maybe we need better capture equipment? Maybe someone needs to invent the successor to mics? Honestly I stopped caring about sound reproduction long ago. I have concluded that nothing revolutionary is slated to happen in my lifetime as we have shifted focus to terrible digital formats like mp3. If consumers are willing to accept that trash then that's where the money is going to be. FLAC is fine I suppose, but once again none of the original recordings are up to live performances quality.

Binaural recordings played back on headphones?
 
Did you hear the next big trend is artists issuing recordings on audio tape? And people are actually buying it too. I hear it's totes analog.

Hisssssssssss, hissssssssssss, hissssssssss.

P.S. I have an old Walkman lying around that I had when I was a kid, it still works because Walkmans are nearly indestructible. This trend of making money off the intensely stupid by overcharging for worse quality recordings is damn hilarious.
 
I still think its not the recordings. Its the mastering for radio, or mastering for ear buds, or just loudness war in general. A non clipping, non normalized recording played back on phone speakers or 20 dolla ear buds ran off of 1.5v chargepump phone amplifiers will sound like utter garbage compared to the radio edits they are streaming today.

128kbs/16bit may be alot better than 312kbits if the source material wasnt so screwed up.

This. They master for loudness because it gets higher chart ratings, from stupid people that don't know about volume control. Those biased studies will ruin 20 years or more of audio mastering.
 
MP3s sound like ass for the most part and streaming sounds even worse. You can only compress music so far before it starts sounding funky. People only hopped onto MP3s because 1. They could steal music, and 2. Apple said compressed audio was great. Instant mainstream trend!

Vinyl is better than MP3s but only with a pretty significant investment, one that isn't worth making. I own more than a thousand records, I can't say I would ever buy a new release on vinyl. Especially considering how much quality sound reproduction from vinyl costs. If I was a kid getting his own rig, it takes some money to get a set up that isn't garbage when there are better options that are flat out superior. Plus records wear out and sometimes come with flaws right out of the wrapper.

Flacs and wavs are infinitely copyable. They don't wear out, they don't rot in the case. They are eternal with appropriate maintenance and redundancy. Why the hell would anyone want some other medium? We can have colossal amounts of storage in our pocket, lossless audio is portable. On top of that, you can generate MP3s from flac for your portable player right quick with a single click if your player is too small.
 
Last time I took that mp3 vs FLAC test I got 0/5. Spotify premium is perfect as far as I'm concerned.
 
Last time I took that mp3 vs FLAC test I got 0/5. Spotify premium is perfect as far as I'm concerned.

Last one I did, I got most (or was it all) of them right and it had 2 different MP3 streams too. It's not easy to tell if you're not familiar with the source material, but it's there. There are things that MP3 encoding does to music (esp breathy parts and symbols) that aren't as good.

That said, I probably wouldn't pay 2x as much for lossless streaming. Then again, I just use my own music server. Maybe I'll use Amazon streaming one of these days.
 
I read an article in Audio Magazine (previously Audio Engineering, and now out of print) that covered whether or not extended frequency response is important. The same thing was touched upon in this article, but only bass was mentioned (the ability to physically feel music).

The Audio Magazine article pointed out that if you run a 30khz signal (if I'm remembering that number right, it was well beyond human hearing though) through a system that can reproduce it, crank the volume up and sit there for an hour, then turn it off, your ears will start ringing. This applied even to adults whose upper hearing limit is in the 15-16khz range. So, I think the notion that 44.1khz sampling being good enough because it'll buy you a 20khz frequency response is a bit short sighted.

I recently read an article online (I don’t remember where) that suggested you shouldn’t record audio at higher sampling rates because of intermodulation distortion (IM distortion, or IMD). It pointed out that if you play a signal that is beyond the capability of the playback equipment, you’ll be able to hear harmonics (the distortion) that are below the actual frequency and that can be heard. Another idiotic point--“Don’t record in high-resolution because most people’s systems aren’t of high enough quality to reproduce it well.” Think of it like graphics: “Hey, most people are using integrated graphics, so let’s only support 1024x768 and get rid of all the eye candy. Screw the people that have actually invested in high-end graphics cards.”

That brings up the next point (which has already been mentioned): most people listen to music through cell phones, tablets, TV’s, and, yes, even receivers that appear to be of high quality, but really aren’t. If you pay even, say, $1000 for a receiver that can provide power to 7 or 8 speakers, and that has all manner of digital processing and who knows how many D/A converters, you’re getting a huge compromise.

Go to a shop that deals in high-end audio and listen to even their lowest end components (as in, separate pre-amp, amp, and CD or DVD player) and there will likely be a dramatic difference in what you’re used to hearing. Can’t hear it? That’s not surprising. Like playing music, if you don’t have a natural talent for it, you’ll likely require ear training. For musicians, this is a long laborious process. With hi-fi, not so much, but over time, with progressive upgrading, you’ll start to hear more and more detail from what you’re listening to.

“Why would I want to do that? Then I’ll be stuck buying really expensive gear for the rest of my life.” Well, ignorance is always bliss. If Beats Audio headphones sound good to you, you probably shouldn’t be reading this in the first place.

Originally, the motivation behind recording engineering was to record it in such a way that when played back, it would sound as close to reality as possible. We are a long way from that now. Just about the only recordings you’ll find nowadays that were recorded in such a manner is classical music.

It all reminds me of something I read in Playboy once. Someone wrote in with the age-old argument about airbrushing the photos. Playboy admitted they did it and replied with something along the lines of, ‘We’re providing a fantasy, not reality.’ Recording techniques aren’t going for reality, so playback equipment certainly isn’t expected to reproduce it.

As far as what Apple is doing with higher resolution audio (kudos to them even though they’re on my boycott list), maybe the entire audio world will shift upward a gear and we’ll get back to where we were in 1987 when compressed music made its debut (and started the decline of quality audio) and start moving forward again instead of backwards.
 
I read an article in Audio Magazine (previously Audio Engineering, and now out of print) that covered whether or not extended frequency response is important. The same thing was touched upon in this article, but only bass was mentioned (the ability to physically feel music).

The Audio Magazine article pointed out that if you run a 30khz signal (if I'm remembering that number right, it was well beyond human hearing though) through a system that can reproduce it, crank the volume up and sit there for an hour, then turn it off, your ears will start ringing. This applied even to adults whose upper hearing limit is in the 15-16khz range. So, I think the notion that 44.1khz sampling being good enough because it'll buy you a 20khz frequency response is a bit short sighted.
.

That you can damage something with ultrasound, isn't any kind of indication it is in anyway audible. You could boil your eyeballs with ultrasound, that doens't mean we need ultrasound for sight.

What you need to do is simple double blind testing.

Note this testing as been done repeatedly and has pretty much proven that >20KHz frequencies are undetectable by humans in music.

It is mainly cranks and those with over-inflated egos that still pursue this.
 
That you can damage something with ultrasound, isn't any kind of indication it is in anyway audible. You could boil your eyeballs with ultrasound, that doens't mean we need ultrasound for sight.

What you need to do is simple double blind testing.

Note this testing as been done repeatedly and has pretty much proven that >20KHz frequencies are undetectable by humans in music.

It is mainly cranks and those with over-inflated egos that still pursue this.

QFMFT
 
I find the current digital formats to be severely lacking in quality. None of the current formats capture the sound of a concert correctly. Live instruments in a closed environment always sound different from a recording.

Maybe we need better capture equipment? Maybe someone needs to invent the successor to mics? Honestly I stopped caring about sound reproduction long ago.

I wonder if anyone can re-create what RCA did with Living Stereo in the Fritz Reiner/Chicago Symphony days. To date, those are some of the finest examples of classical music recordings, and if I recall correctly, they had a very simple setup by today's standards. Those recordings, going off the top of my head, were done in the late 50's early 60's. If they could do it, surely we could do it too?
 
That you can damage something with ultrasound, isn't any kind of indication it is in anyway audible. You could boil your eyeballs with ultrasound, that doens't mean we need ultrasound for sight.

What you need to do is simple double blind testing.

Note this testing as been done repeatedly and has pretty much proven that >20KHz frequencies are undetectable by humans in music.

It is mainly cranks and those with over-inflated egos that still pursue this.

But you cannot deny that bit-depth does have an effect on sound. This is very easy to prove. Simply take a 44.1/16 recording and half the bit depth to 8-bit and you can hear the quality difference.

Personally, I think that CD-Audio is just fine the way it is, and that proper mastering is where it's at for good audio. I mentioned Living Stereo in my other post, and I'll mention them here too. Their classical CD's are absolutely fantastic. Read the liners and you'll see that the transfer was very detail-oriented and methodical so that nothing was lost. Slight equalization was also applied in the master to compensate for CD-Audio's perceived "forward-ness" of treble.
 
In Portuguese we use the word audiota, that i helped create over a decade ago from the english audiot and has earned me countless bans on audiots forums. It saddens me to know that we still have those around [H]ere. One would expect that basic signal processing theory could be taught, but there has always been a market to take money from (aud)idiots that refuse to learn that.
 
In Portuguese we use the word audiota, that i helped create over a decade ago from the english audiot and has earned me countless bans on audiots forums. It saddens me to know that we still have those around [H]ere. One would expect that basic signal processing theory could be taught, but there has always been a market to take money from (aud)idiots that refuse to learn that.

So what's the takeaway from your post then? Basically anything above CD-Audio is immaterial?
 
That you can damage something with ultrasound, isn't any kind of indication it is in anyway audible. You could boil your eyeballs with ultrasound, that doens't mean we need ultrasound for sight.

What you need to do is simple double blind testing.

Note this testing as been done repeatedly and has pretty much proven that >20KHz frequencies are undetectable by humans in music.

It is mainly cranks and those with over-inflated egos that still pursue this.

You kind of missed the point, I guess I should have spelled it out.
 
Oh gee, another article by someone who understands fuck-all about audio. I don't mind that most people don't understand how sampling works, after why should you, but I really mind when you get Luddite that starts hating on digital because they don't understand how it works and think it is somehow inferior.

The simple fact of the matter is that at any given price point digital audio gets you lower noise, lower distortion, better linearity, and yes even greater frequency response if you want it than analogue audio. Of course an even bigger advantage is its ability to be perfectly copied as many times as needed, analogue degrades with each generation.

If you are interested in how digital sampling works and why the "oh it's all cut up" argument is dumb a good starting point isthis video. It gives a pretty good overview of the basics, including showing you the signal on analogue test equipment.
 
You kind of missed the point, I guess I should have spelled it out.

So spell it out. How does audio that you can't hear matter? And if you're talking about bass, all of the frequencies mentioned can be reproduced with 44.1khz
 
I remember taking a trip with a boss of mine, our rental car had XM in it. The music sounded soooo bad, at one point I had to switch it back to FM, and immediately could tell the difference. More bass and high frequency, significantly better quality.
 
I remember taking a trip with a boss of mine, our rental car had XM in it. The music sounded soooo bad, at one point I had to switch it back to FM, and immediately could tell the difference. More bass and high frequency, significantly better quality.
That becuase they where using a low bitrate
 
I remember taking a trip with a boss of mine, our rental car had XM in it. The music sounded soooo bad, at one point I had to switch it back to FM, and immediately could tell the difference. More bass and high frequency, significantly better quality.

Wow that's pretty damning, because FM sounds like shit. That said, I've noticed the tell tail signs of over compression when listening to Sirius/XM in friends cars, but otherwise it sounded better than most FM, but that's not good enough.
 
Wow that's pretty damning, because FM sounds like shit. That said, I've noticed the tell tail signs of over compression when listening to Sirius/XM in friends cars, but otherwise it sounded better than most FM, but that's not good enough.

Yep. We were listening to classic rock on XM, and I was able to find the same sort of station locally, and it was much much better.
 
Wow that's pretty damning, because FM sounds like shit. That said, I've noticed the tell tail signs of over compression when listening to Sirius/XM in friends cars, but otherwise it sounded better than most FM, but that's not good enough.

Satellite radio is very highly compressed with crap bandwidth for each individual channel. It is the perfect example of low quality digital (and just how bad digital can be) vs the old digital CD quality standard.

I don't see how anyone could sit down in a car with a decent stereo and think that satellite sounds better than FM, if they actually try flipping back and forth. I'm just using the factory stereo in my 2014 Mustang GT (which isn't all that great) and the difference really is astounding.
 
Satellite radio is very highly compressed with crap bandwidth for each individual channel. It is the perfect example of low quality digital (and just how bad digital can be) vs the old digital CD quality standard.

I don't see how anyone could sit down in a car with a decent stereo and think that satellite sounds better than FM, if they actually try flipping back and forth. I'm just using the factory stereo in my 2014 Mustang GT (which isn't all that great) and the difference really is astounding.

I wonder if it was always like that or if they added so many channels that they had to increase compression. It's kinda sad that they're not able to do as well as a 192kbs lossy file
 
Satellite radio is very highly compressed with crap bandwidth for each individual channel. It is the perfect example of low quality digital (and just how bad digital can be) vs the old digital CD quality standard.

I don't see how anyone could sit down in a car with a decent stereo and think that satellite sounds better than FM, if they actually try flipping back and forth. I'm just using the factory stereo in my 2014 Mustang GT (which isn't all that great) and the difference really is astounding.

Yea...thing is, most people are not listening to audio in their car for the excellent acoustics and accurate sound rendering. They're wanting elevator music....which satellite excels at on long trips, where you'd otherwise be needing to frequency hop every few counties, you can stay parked on one station.

Further, most people have moderate to bad hearing damage and can't tell the difference between good and bad equipment. Even many amateurs and professionals in the music biz use crap earbud headphones plugged into their cellphone....cranked way the hell too loud.
 
I wonder if it was always like that or if they added so many channels that they had to increase compression. It's kinda sad that they're not able to do as well as a 192kbs lossy file

I am not sure if it changed or not, all I know is that I was really disappointed when I finally got to try satellite radio in a car with halfway decent speakers. Apparently there is a digital standard called HD Radio which is supposed to be better, but I haven't tried it.
 
Yea...thing is, most people are not listening to audio in their car for the excellent acoustics and accurate sound rendering. They're wanting elevator music....which satellite excels at on long trips, where you'd otherwise be needing to frequency hop every few counties, you can stay parked on one station.

Further, most people have moderate to bad hearing damage and can't tell the difference between good and bad equipment. Even many amateurs and professionals in the music biz use crap earbud headphones plugged into their cellphone....cranked way the hell too loud.

Yup, I agree completely, but I don't like it. Whole music industry just kind of went "meh, good enough."
 
That brings up the next point (which has already been mentioned): most people listen to music through cell phones, tablets, TV’s, and, yes, even receivers that appear to be of high quality, but really aren’t. If you pay even, say, $1000 for a receiver that can provide power to 7 or 8 speakers, and that has all manner of digital processing and who knows how many D/A converters, you’re getting a huge compromise.

But what you are saying does not make sense from an electrical point of view. You are saying that there is some quality, that is not quantifiable or measurable, that one piece of electronics can convey, that another piece of electronics can not.

How can electronics convey a signal which they cannot measure or quantify? To me this is like humans trying to explain the 4th dimension. It is impossible for us to express it. Just like people from flatland could never explain out existence. It is fun to fantasize about it though.
 
Just use Monster Cables and call it a day.

This is probably the best advice. I replaced my TV with a Monster Cable HDMI cable. The color depth were much better....also the cable was considerably easier to place in the room. :cool:
 
Yup, I agree completely, but I don't like it. Whole music industry just kind of went "meh, good enough."

Because consumers as a whole have. Most people only recognize "quality" by how loud the bass is.

Every year at work I have an acoustic band group come to my hall I work at. Last year we clocked them at our soundboard position 130ft (crow flies) away, with our calibrated sound pressure mic. 127dB. For about 3 hours. That show BTW is an annual sellout of 2000+seats.
 
Yea...thing is, most people are not listening to audio in their car for the excellent acoustics and accurate sound rendering. They're wanting elevator music....which satellite excels at on long trips, where you'd otherwise be needing to frequency hop every few counties, you can stay parked on one station.

Further, most people have moderate to bad hearing damage and can't tell the difference between good and bad equipment. Even many amateurs and professionals in the music biz use crap earbud headphones plugged into their cellphone....cranked way the hell too loud.

I have moderate to bad hearing damage, and it was obvious (and very unexpected). MP3 cuts some frequencies. Most people can't hear that, but what I heard sounded like a low bit rate MP3 and you don't need great hearing to tell. 'S' sounds and cymbals sound off. There's really no excuse for this when they're essentially broadcasting the signal. Even a 128kbs Vorbis file (possibly 128 mp3) would sound better.
 
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