My question to Sony would be, how about making all your music available without 'loudness' compression? I'd rather it wasn't 'hi-res', especially if I'm downloading it, just make the music available with a high quality master. I'd happily pay for that.
I'll join others in wanting to know if loudness war will be ceased, at least in Sony studios? what use is to have a 144 dB medium if only 5dB are used?
will Sony apply a standardized loudness to peak ratio to music recordings just like THX standard applies such L-P ratio to movie soundtracks (I believe it's 20 dB)?
will Sony apply a standardized loudness to peak ratio to music recordings just like THX standard applies such L-P ratio to movie soundtracks (I believe it's 20 dB)?
Some of Frogs analogies seemed Quite difficult to follow....but me being somebody who knows virtually nothing on the subject.....I would only presume That there is a difference in sou d quality,because the source I'd surely the same analogue master tapes?a higher bit rate recording will have masses more information on it.all frequencies that are within human hearing band.each note,each symbol crash,drum beat,Clarinet toot, will have more information associated with it.notes will there fore sound crisper,and have a fuller and richer tone and sound.also separation between instruments would surely be largely Improved.more clarity in general......just like blue ray.
A question I would have been interested in Sony answering would have been what will be the new maximum bit rate and how long before the next higher bit rate comes out that will make us all have to purchase our back catalogues back again.and then again,and then again...and then.....you get my point...hopefully.I am just suspicious that the technology is there to give us bitrates way higher than what will actually be toted to us.forcing us to re purchase all our favourite albums again and again throughout time. ??
A question I would have been interested in Sony answering would have been what will be the new maximum bit rate and how long before the next higher bit rate comes out that will make us all have to purchase our back catalogues back again.and then again,and then again...and then.....you get my point...hopefully.I am just suspicious that the technology is there to give us bitrates way higher than what will actually be toted to us.forcing us to re purchase all our favourite albums again and again throughout time. ??
BigH said:
I would say more depth and clarity too. It sounds like you are there more. You get a real presence of the music. Like someone has said if the recording is bad you can pick up on it more.
It goes just as loud as my Slash Made in Stoke Blu-ray, I play both on -28db but the Freddie Mercury concert has more of what I said above.
MakkaPakka said:
Dodgy memory.
There have been some so called high resolution releases that were just regular releases upsampled rather than 24 bit studio masters. This has arguably done some damage to the image of high resolution music and people's confidence in the file.
Can you provide us with some details about the sources of the files you intend to provide for downloading and how they are prepared (e.g. only existing SACD masters and other CDs that have recently had 24 bit remasters?)
radiorog said:
The point is. And this has been said many times.
According to scientific theory. One which is easily provable in maths (Nyquist-Shannon theory), to reproduce the identical "analogue" signal (up to frequency "x"), you need a sample rate of 2 times x. So the sample rate of CD being 44.1 KHz, you can achieve an accurate reproduction, up to more than 20 KHz, higher than is audible to human ears.
The bit depth of 16 bits gives us a dynamic range of a theoretical 96 dB, which is more than enough for playback purposes.
So. What does higher rates give us...Not much. As Craig mentioned, and as I have tested myself, buying HD music CAN get you better quality...but not because it is HD. I started buying it myself, and indeed, it was marvelous...
And it was just as marvelous downsampled to CD quality, and just as marvelous ripped to 320 Kbps MP3...
What seems to happen, in my experience, is that CDs are made highly compressed, for the instant loudness radio wars, and "specialist" HD versions are more carefully mastered and sound better.
So it isn't the format that is the problem, it's the production...
SO , my question to Sony is "Please can you stop producing compressed CDs?"
My second one would be... "Root kit...what WERE you thinking?"
radiorog said:
You are wrong. As frog points out, the maths proves that CD quality is more than sufficient for human ears. Like frog I have a number of high bit rate recordings on SACD, DVD-A and Blu-ray. I bought them because I like 5:1 sound very much and the conversion to 5:1 exercise is usually aimed at audiophiles (although I would call myself a music lover rather than an audiophile) so is less likely to suffer from the loudness wars. However, many of these recordings have various bit rates and one can often compare the red book version with a higher bit rate version which is otherwise identical. In these cases, I cannot tell the difference. A number of contributors to this forum have taken high bit rate recordings and produced CD quality recordings - they also cannot tell the difference, which is of course what one would expect given the maths. I have no problem paying for multi-channel recordings or even for a recording that is optimised for HiFi and not a car radio, but persuading people that the answer is more bits and more samples when the answer is better recording/mixing/mastering is a con.
chebby
Well-known member
- Jun 2, 2008
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Great thread, guys: looking forward to Andy Maddern's report back from Sony now: should read like a cross between Rogue Traders and one of Esther Rantzen's That's Life exposés, with a bit of righteous indignation thrown in for good measure.
Glad to see we can still bring these confidence tricksters and villains to book: now, shall we get the magazine working on getting Linn, Naim, Cyrus et al closed down for defrauding to us, too? And then force it to close itself down for promoting these supposed advances in audio, so we can all get back to listening to our heavily-compressed MP3 files?
(Next week: why everyone who claims to have flown round the world is clearly lying, as we all know it's flat, and has dragons round the edges)
Glad to see we can still bring these confidence tricksters and villains to book: now, shall we get the magazine working on getting Linn, Naim, Cyrus et al closed down for defrauding to us, too? And then force it to close itself down for promoting these supposed advances in audio, so we can all get back to listening to our heavily-compressed MP3 files?
(Next week: why everyone who claims to have flown round the world is clearly lying, as we all know it's flat, and has dragons round the edges)
radiorog said:
Well some of that is incorrect, many recent recordings are digital not analogue. 24 bit does not have everything. 32 bit is already being used in music. I'm been using 64 bit on digital photos for some time. If you want to compare with digital images then its like printing at 200dpi v 300dpi, I doubt you would see the difference, or using 24 bit instead of 16 bit.
The big question is how much will these recording be, when you can buy 24 bit Blu Ray Audio disks for about £12-£15 and you can get about 8 albums on them.
As others have said the most important thing is the recording and the mastering, 24 bit will not make a bad recording sound good.
- Feb 3, 2006
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Hi all.
Just a little update from yesterday. Unfortunately the meeting was a little more focused on the hardware than the software and as there was no representative from the Sony Music present, it wasn't possible to get many of the answers on questions about future formats, download services etc. I'm currently in the process of trying to make contact with the music label to see if we can get any more information...
Just a little update from yesterday. Unfortunately the meeting was a little more focused on the hardware than the software and as there was no representative from the Sony Music present, it wasn't possible to get many of the answers on questions about future formats, download services etc. I'm currently in the process of trying to make contact with the music label to see if we can get any more information...
The_Lhc said:
I'm not judging it on the conclusion, it's just a funny post
-- I also found it funny how quickly things turned into an argument about formats. It's pretty comical if you visualise all the participants as a group of people going nuts in a room for no apparrent reason. If it was on TV I'd watch it...although if it was on TV it would either involve swords, guns and lots of blood, like a Tarantino movie, or the madness would be the result of a mysterious viral outbreak, like in an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
SiUK said:The_Lhc said:
I'm not judging it on the conclusion, it's just a funny post
-- I also found it funny how quickly things turned into an argument about formats. It's pretty comical if you visualise all the participants as a group of people going nuts in a room for no apparrent reason. If it was on TV I'd watch it...although if it was on TV it would either involve swords, guns and lots of blood, like a Tarantino movie, or the madness would be the result of a mysterious viral outbreak, like in an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
The problem is, we're being shafted.
The record companies produce the dynamically compressed dross so it plays loud from the off. Then they create a "need" for a higher resolution version, drop the silly dynamic compression and charge over the odds for it and imply that because it's 192/32 or whatever silly figure, it somehow is superior for playback...It isn't, or rather it doesn't need to be, and the HD aspect of it all is a gigantic red herring to slap a premium on for people who actually care about the sound quality of what they are listening to.
Give us the nice production values on normal CDs. That's ALL that is needed.
steve_1979
Well-known member
- Jul 14, 2010
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fr0g said:
Good post clearly written. I'm not sure why so many people are unable (or unwilling) to understand the simple and provable fact that:
"According to scientific theory. One which is easily provable in maths (Nyquist-Shannon theory), to reproduce the identical "analogue" signal (up to frequency "x"), you need a sample rate of 2 times x. So the sample rate of CD being 44.1 KHz, you can achieve an accurate reproduction, up to more than 20 KHz, higher than is audible to human ears.
The bit depth of 16 bits gives us a dynamic range of a theoretical 96 dB, which is more than enough for playback purposes."
steve_1979 said:
Nyquist Shannon is completely counter intuitive, the proof of which requires a grasp of integral mathematics and the concepts underlying fourier transforms. Given that there are posters on here who are convinced that changing their mains cable brings marked benefits to their system performance, I think you might be aiming a little high with "I'm not sure why so many people are unable (or unwilling) to understand the simple and provable fact..."
chebby
Well-known member
- Jun 2, 2008
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andyjm said:
Next time I am enjoying listening to my humble 320K AAC and ALAC content (via AirPlay), i'll try to to remember how EDITED un-credentialled I am to have the privilege!
I have tried one or two Linn 24/96 downloads in the past but (a) they were too expensive, (b) the files took up too much room for my purposes (no patience or desire or room for a dedicated NAS set-up), (c) I was not impressed with what little improvement (over ALAC) the 'full-fat' 24/96 version might have been offering. At the time it was via a Beresford DAC (optical from an iMac) into a Naim amp. Subsequently I went in a completely different direction aimed at optimising quality, convenience, flexibility, space (physical and memory), simplicity and fun.
As far as I can tell I got it just right. The latest 'incarnation' of my system (the new M-CR610) now does all the 24/192 stuff too, but I am not interested because (apart from a, b and c listed above) the 'hi-res' sites will probably never offer even a small percentage of the content I enjoy.
Higher mathematics and physics were absent at all stages of my decisions when changing system (sorry science dudes) and have been - mercifully - absent from my enjoyment since. (Not an oscilloscope or spectrum analyser in sight!)
I am also still using the same mains cable that Marantz saw fit to provide in the box. (I know I should have lab tested and DBX'ed a whole bunch of alternatives first, but I trusted the manufacturer like the uneducated simp you might suppose me to be.)
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