44.1 vs 96khz music - double blind study conducted...

[Echo Voodoo]

Your argument could be applied to any scientific study which studies a sample of the population in order to make a statistical inference. It's a very bad argument; if we followed your reasoning we would make no medical progress.

+1

[DWb]

Good point.
All the test shows is the premise of the Nyquist theory is roughly correct in relation to the minimum sample rate required for high quality audio. A true measure of difference would be a piece processed and recorded at each sample rate throughout the entire recording chain (as sergef50 points out) and then played back on source equipment operating at a higher rate than either of them. The claim to use high quality analogue equipment in the playback chain, although valid in providing the best possible analogue signal, is somewhat misleading as it could be perceived as increasing the validity of what the test claims to demonstrate - which it doesn't.

Hang on. AFAICT what the test claims to show is that higher quality formats than CD aren't advantageous for getting music to the listener, that downsampling the higher quality formats to CD doesn't produce a noticeable degredation in sound quality. They aren't trying to show anything about the best sample rate for recording or mixing.

And they specifically say that the test material was released on 'respected audiophile labels' - I don't know much about audiophile stuff, but I'm guessing that that means that even if it wasn't recorded on gratuitously high-end vintage analogue gear it would at least have been done in such a way that the downsampling at the end was the sample-rate bottleneck.

[Michael Benjamin]

this test result is old news. the bitrate and sampling rate madness needs to start stopping now. its no benefit. true multichannels above stereo are the key for a better listening experience with loudspeakers. not bit- and samplingrate.

but yes, if you feel better with 192khz 64 bit atm, just go ahead and save it for the future.

[Spe3D]

I am surprised by the results tbh.

[metamorphosis]

this test result is old news. the bitrate and sampling rate madness needs to start stopping now. its no benefit. true multichannels above stereo are the key for a better listening experience with loudspeakers. not bit- and samplingrate.

but yes, if you feel better with 192khz 64 bit atm, just go ahead and save it for the future.

I'm afraid you've confused playback with recording and processing benjamin. Otherwise, yes old news...

M@

[gwahorton]

Just because something is inaudible doesn't mean it has no effect:
"Psychological evaluation indicated that the subjects felt the sound containing an HFC to be more pleasant than the same sound lacking an HFC." (HFC = High Frequency Component, defined as the set of frequencies above 22kHz, i.e those missed at a 44.1kHz sample-rate.)

And here's another study:
"Increasing the intensity of the inaudible HFC resulted in a significant increase in the comfortable listening level, and the subjective impression of sounds."

this is a totally different and esoteric realm of the idea though...

Surely not: it's a straight refutation of the claim that "44.1khz is just fine for a final delivery format". In well-designed trials, ordinary listeners are happier listening to music at higher sample rates.

[pough]

If you think you can hear a difference, it makes sense, doesn't matter if 4999 other people cannot hear a difference.

Um, if you can hear something that doesn't exist there is a problem with your ears or your brain or both. It certainly doesn't "make sense". While you're more than welcome to enjoy your personal auditory illusions, don't pretend it's superior.

Hang on. AFAICT what the test claims to show is that higher quality formats than CD aren't advantageous for getting music to the listener, that downsampling the higher quality formats to CD doesn't produce a noticeable degredation in sound quality. They aren't trying to show anything about the best sample rate for recording or mixing.

Precisely. This is not a test of music production. It's a test of end products; ie. CDS compared with newer technologies.

[Michael Benjamin]

this test result is old news. the bitrate and sampling rate madness needs to start stopping now. its no benefit. true multichannels above stereo are the key for a better listening experience with loudspeakers. not bit- and samplingrate.

but yes, if you feel better with 192khz 64 bit atm, just go ahead and save it for the future.

I'm afraid you've confused playback with recording and processing benjamin. Otherwise, yes old news...

M@

i dont think so.

44.1 - 24 bit is more than sufficient. 16 bit is still enough, nobody would remark a difference. its all about the mix. what you do with the audio.
you, yourself.
you can do all processing you want. you ears can hear at best 19khz if they are still fresh like in your first years here.
but they are not.

conclusion:
it simply does not matter if you feel another 200 herz more to the "top" compared to all the others.

so tell me again, why do you think its important to record more than, maybe 24 bit and 48 khz at best?

[eduardo_b]

Finally the testbed and the results may be correct, but the conclusion "there is no audible difference" or "people cannot hear a difference" is simply wrong.
you can say at best: "in this test, the number of people that could hear a difference were not high enough to prove that there is a audible difference at a certain level of significance."

Realistically, there is no audible difference that has any meaningful effect on the enjoyment of recorded music. It's really that simple. All this nattering about sample rates is esoteric gibberish. People cannot hear a difference that has any statistical validity because it can't be done. I know this drives the bigger is better enthusiasts nuts, but that's irrelevant. The number of variables simply voids any theoretical differences. The conclusion that people can't hear a difference is, in fact, absolutely correct. Saying it isn't so doesn't mean it isn't so.

[Spe3D]

i dont think so.

44.1 - 24 bit is more than sufficient. 16 bit is still enough, nobody would remark a difference. its all about the mix. what you do with the audio.
you, yourself.
you can do all processing you want. you ears can hear at best 19khz if they are still fresh like in your first years here.
but they are not.

conclusion:
it simply does not matter if you feel another 200 herz more to the "top" compared to all the others.

so tell me again, why do you think its important to record more than, maybe 24 bit and 48 khz at best?

Isn't one of the reasons because if you want to pitch something, or re pitch something, you can pitch it further the higher the sample rate before it suffers from artifacts. Also processing synths that suffer at lower sample rates, where they don't as much at higher sample rates - less noise, better bass etc with higher sample rates.

I agree though the end product it does not matter so much if it's mixed and mastered well (as they, the pros, probably do the processing at really high sample rates before it gets to the end product like we hear on commercial cd's etc)

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, just my personal 2 cents.
I almost believe that 44.1kHz/16bit is fine for an almost "greatest" end result listening experience. We may argue about 44.1 vs. 48 and I'm not entirely sure about 16 vs. 24 bit either.
Anyways, I don't think there's any benefits in using anything higher than 48kHz (not applicable to my half-deaf ears anyways, but that's another story...) for the final media - unless it's about masking bad output converters, that is. Old news, really.

For us mere musicians and studio users, it's more about the sample rates and bit depths used during recording/mixing.
And in these cases, it clearly shows that using higher numbers for each of them has quite some massive benefits. More bits offer more headroom (very important especially for acoustic recordings) while a higher samplerate still offers less aliasing on quite some plugins (even if the situation is getting better).

In the end, I can afford working in 24bit since quite some years, but there's no way I can afford (or better: justify) working in 96kHz. If I could afford the latter, I probably would, but I'm afraid I'll no longer be alive/active when that would be the case.

Anyways, even if I could afford working in the highest sample rates, that'd still not make me deliver any final results in anything else but 44.1kHz. Doesn't make much sense, as this test has shown.

As said, just my 2 cents.

[afreshcupofjoe]

Come on people! I don't know why anybody should be surprised by this. Have you people never heard of Nyquist or something? Let me spell it out for the kiddies. A really smart scientist named Harry Nyquist and another really, really smart guy named Claude Shannon figured out a long time ago that a digital signal can be absolutely PERFECTLY reconstructed as long as the sampling rate was 1/(2W) seconds, where W is the highest frequency in the original signal. What this means is that unless you can hear above 22,000Hz, which is very unlikely (a simple test can prove it) then you cannot hear the difference between audio sampled at 96kHz or 44.1KHz. Period. There is no voodoo or magic. It's hard science people.

These kind of arguments really make people on this forum look incredibly dumb. To those of us who actually understand a little bit of math it just seems moronic that people could deceive themselves so deeply. It's like listening to a bunch of creationists trying to attack something so fundamental to modern biology as the theory of evolution just because it conflicts with their own twisted beliefs.

I really can't even believe a magazine would feel the need to conduct such an obvious experiment. To many of us, it would be like seeing an article in Time magazine about how they did a little experiment to validate the theory of evolution, and everybody was shocked that the creationists were wrong; the earth isn't really only 4000 years old. Wow! Headline news everyone.

Please stop before my head explodes.

BTW, digitally processing audio at 96kHz vs 44.1 is another story altogether, some processes COULD be more accurate at higher sampling rates, so this argument is still valid. However, it has nothing at all to do with the test that is the subject of the magazine article, which is just stupid. Let's go find some wacky magazine article that test Newton's laws of motion while we are at it. Maybe someone will insist that they have seen gravity work backwards.

[schriftsteller]

Finally the testbed and the results may be correct, but the conclusion "there is no audible difference" or "people cannot hear a difference" is simply wrong.
you can say at best: "in this test, the number of people that could hear a difference were not high enough to prove that there is a audible difference at a certain level of significance."

Realistically, there is no audible difference that has any meaningful effect on the enjoyment of recorded music. It's really that simple. All this nattering about sample rates is esoteric gibberish. People cannot hear a difference that has any statistical validity because it can't be done. I know this drives the bigger is better enthusiasts nuts, but that's irrelevant. The number of variables simply voids any theoretical differences. The conclusion that people can't hear a difference is, in fact, absolutely correct. Saying it isn't so doesn't mean it isn't so.

Eh. I'm sorry but that's a bunch of bull. Granted, to a consumer there may not be a perceivable difference..most people's ears aren't trained that way. Even so, higher sample rates effect the clarity of songs. With digital audio, quality decreases as frequency increases. 22kHz @ 44.1 is a saw wave... i'm sure you know.. it's called the Nyquist criteria. You must have at least twice as many samples as the highest frequency to be used. At higher sample rates you'll have higher quality high frequencies, effecting clarity of the sound.

And it was said earlier how unperceivable frequencies can effect the quality of any given audio as well.

[Michael Benjamin]

22kHz @ 44.1 is a saw wave... i'm sure you know.. it's called the Nyquist criteria.

uh, yes, but you dont hear that.

[Sascha Franck]

Let's go find some wacky magazine article that test Newton's laws of motion while we are at it. Maybe someone will insist that they have seen gravity work backwards.

Exactly.

Now, let me just set up some test.
But first I need to get some sleep.