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Topic: 24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44? (Read 34433 times) previous topic - next topic
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24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #50
Hi Arnold, I love to see actual measurements like that.  Now just making sure I'm understanding your procedure. You're sampling a 2.5kHz interval of a "blank" mastering tape with high quality (24 bit?) ADC and the above are the statistics of the scanned waveform. Is that correct?


I'd didn't do the transcription, so I'm taking the words of the guy who did that work at face value.

What I did is filter out the 2.5 KHz interval that corresponds to the region of peak sensitivity of the human ear, and doing summary statistics on it. Summary statistics make sense because other tests show that it in any reasonable interval, the signal is stationary, or has consistent statistics.

In short, I think you've got it right! ;-)

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #51
LPs have a FR that extends beyond 20kHz, but what's there, at what level,  and how distortion-free is it?

Depends, as always, upon the condition of the record and the quality of the recording/playback equipment.


That dependency is only relevant if we're talking very substandard record/playback equipment.


Once LP recording and playback equipment reaches certain very attainable levels, the very modest actual frequency response, noise and distortion limits of a LP are dependent on the inherent limits of the technology. It's limited by things like geometry that are pretty much cast in cement by the laws of physics. This was all pretty well figured out in the 1960s, and is reflected in the best technical papers of the day which are for example, in the archives of the Audio Engineering Society.

Once the inherent limits of vinyl were determined by scientific means, the recorded media industry wisely decided that LP technology was a dead end, and essentially chucked it and went on to digital.

Same thing happened with analog tape.

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As an example though, at least one commercial quadraphonic LP system (Quadradisc) used a pair of modulated carriers for the extra channels' content, cut to the vinyl in the range of 18-45kHz.


Right, but that system was pretty horrible by modern standards. It was woefully unreliable, and even when it worked it was pretty iffy. The recordings didn't last for very many playings and still don't even when played with the best playback equipment now avaialble.

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High end record players can reproduce even higher frequency signals.


Actually they can't. Here's a challenge for you. Look up a CD player tech test at the Stereophile web site. Look up any of the zillions of Audio Rightmark tests that are  on the web. Now find a technical test of a LP playback system that covers the identical same parameters and compare analog to digital.

I'll warn you. I just sent you on Mission Impossible. But, if you know so much, proving me wrong about the above should be easy. Have at it! ;-)

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #52
Dynamic range of analogue vs digital cannot be compared so easily either - the former can provide subjectively useable dynamic range which exceeds that of its digital equivalent, because it 'fails gracefully' above its rated maximum range, continuing to capture information which, in the digital domain, would have simply been truncated (resulting in a clipped waveform).

You're looking at the wrong end.  Where is the noise floor?  As a delivery format 16 bits is sufficient in storing this information.  With the vast majority of the music out there and especially from the artists referenced in this discussion this can be done with fewer than 16 bits.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #53
Average RMS Power:   -98.47 dB   -100.07 dB
Total RMS Power:   -98.47 dB   -100.07 dB
Actual Bit Depth:   32 Bits   32 Bits

Using RMS Window of 100 ms

I think that 16 bits will still do it but noise shaping would be required.


Isn't that already a little worse than 16 bit quantization noise before noise shaping? Since that's only a 2.5kHz interval then wouldn't the noise over the 20 kHz spectrum be +10log(8) = +9 dB. That would make the tape about -90dB compared to the roughly -96dB quantization noise of 16 bit?


Easy enough to check.

Downsample to 44/16 1 bit TPDF unshaped dither:

   Left   Right
Min Sample Value:   -2   -2
Max Sample Value:   2   2
Peak Amplitude:   -84.3 dB   -84.3 dB
Possibly Clipped:   0   0
DC Offset:   0    0
Minimum RMS Power:   -95.26 dB   -95.81 dB
Maximum RMS Power:   -94.76 dB   -95.22 dB
Average RMS Power:   -95.02 dB   -95.52 dB
Total RMS Power:   -95.03 dB   -95.52 dB
Actual Bit Depth:   16 Bits   16 Bits

Using RMS Window of 100 ms

Downsample to 44/16 1 bit TPDF E2 shaped dither:

   Left   Right
Min Sample Value:   -1.56   -1.38
Max Sample Value:   1.66   1.39
Peak Amplitude:   -85.89 dB   -87.43 dB
Possibly Clipped:   0   0
DC Offset:   0    0
Minimum RMS Power:   -99.03 dB   -100.53 dB
Maximum RMS Power:   -97.82 dB   -99.45 dB
Average RMS Power:   -98.44 dB   -99.99 dB
Total RMS Power:   -98.44 dB   -99.96 dB
Actual Bit Depth:   32 Bits   32 Bits

Using RMS Window of 100 ms

Note, a little careful mouth holding is required to get representative results. I had to upsample to 24 bits after the 16 bit downsampling, so that the filtering didn't corrupt the results which definitely happened to a small degree if I did the filtering on 16 bit data.





24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #54

Depends, as always, upon the condition of the record and the quality of the recording/playback equipment.
As an example though, at least one commercial quadraphonic LP system (Quadradisc) used a pair of modulated carriers for the extra channels' content, cut to the vinyl in the range of 18-45kHz. High end record players can reproduce even higher frequency signals.

Hmmm, you quote and answer one question of mine out of several.

So, if people come here expressing a personal desire to exceed the limits of glorious redbook, they'd better have the answers to an array of unduly-demanding questions plucked out of thin air, pertaining to legacy analogue technologies which they haven't necessarily even advocated, about specific noise levels and all the rest.
Obviously the individuals making them up -ahem- reeling them off won't take a poster seriously otherwise, which is handy.

For a quad carrier signal -- that's the one case where it really is demonstrably important to get that ultrahigh frequency signal onto vinyl intact, and to preserve it.  Not so you can *hear* that frequency, mind you.  And btw analog quad is a dead technology, have you noticed?

So, for a typical analog product  (stereo LP not being quite so dead as quad LP),  what is the demonstrable importance of having  >=20kHz signals pressed to vinyl undistorted and at full level? And how commonly is that achieved?

More analogue-bashing and more unduly-demanding questions. Some people do have a special attachment to analogue - in much the same way as some have a special attachment to CD. Both could be described as "religious" attachments, and indeed the plethora of analogue vs digital debates on the 'net often resemble religious wars.
Btw I never expressed any particular affection for analogue, did you notice?

I'll respond to the issue of frequency response beyond the redbook maximum, since some posters keep hammering on it (bit depth having been mentioned far less, interestingly): I'm under no illusions as to the frequency range of human hearing. I myself could hear nothing beyond 26kHz in a test last year.
Some have speculated that content above this range can still influence the way we perceive sounds, and others suggest that the presence of a brickwall filter at a given frequency (22.05kHz for example) - which doesn't exist in real-world sounds - may itself create audible artefacts across the rest of the audible spectrum.
No doubt you'll all disagree strongly with both of these anti-redbook views.

Either way, sharp roll off at redbook maximum remains a largely reliable means of identifying upscaled content published on high resolution formats, and you can't get away from that.

Yes, some 'high rez' releases don't really exploit the touted advantages of 'high rez' (and did you know, many CDs don't exploit the 16bits of dynamic range available to them?).  Yes, some 'high rez' release are just upconversions of previously lowpassed signals.  And actually, even if they were bona fide 96kHz/24bit recordings from start to finish, it might be very difficult tell them apart from a Redbook downconversion in a fair listening test, and even then the difference, if heard, might be due to hardware, rather than the audio format.  Implying that as a consumer audio delivery format, 'high rez' might be more a marketing ploy than anything else.

Last but not least, if you do plan to 'use your ears' to determine if a true 24/96 recording differs audibly from the same recording at 16/44, does that mean you'll do the test blind, or is that sort of thing  too religious for a rebel like you?


I assume your use of the phrase 'high rez' in the place of 'high resolution' is an attempt to cheapen its image? I'd be more impressed if you provided a more scientific analysis. In a professional environment, the behaviour I've seen in this thread just wouldn't cut it.

I've nothing against blind listening tests, but I don't think they're the holy grail, especially when conducted in the non-controlled conditions of individuals' homes. And of course, people at home can fabricate the results to suit their own agendas.

Interesting that you should mention the use of a fair listening test to compare bona fide 24/96 with redbook. That's precisely the sort comparison I'm seeking to make (see post #1).

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #55
Dynamic range of analogue vs digital cannot be compared so easily either


You seem to very much underestimate our ability to analyze these things.

Quote
the former can provide subjectively useable dynamic range which exceeds that of its digital equivalent, because it 'fails gracefully' above its rated maximum range, continuing to capture information which, in the digital domain, would have simply been truncated (resulting in a clipped waveform).


Not true in either in theory or in practice.

By "Fails Gracefully" I think that you are referring to the rather large amounts of nonlinear distortion inherent in analog tape media which increases greatly at high levels.  In addition analog tape experiences dramatic losses of bandwidth at high recording levels. There is a reason why most analog tape measurements are made at -10 dB or -20 dB, because what happens at 0 dB and above is not pretty!

Note that the LP is itself notably ungraceful when it runs out of dynamic range. If you record vinyl too hot, the stylus stops tracking the groove, pops out of the groove, falls through a hole in the vinyl or locks itself up in the groove on either side of the groove. Trust me, all of these things make digital clipping look and sound very nice in comparison! This is especially true because some of these failures can rip the diamond tip right off the stylus!

Analog tape and vinyl were a synergistic combination because the use of analog tape masters protected and masked bad things that would otherwise happen if someone actually tried to cut them on a LP and try to play them back. Note that many things can be cut on a lacquer that look OK with a microscope, but can't be played by the best cartridges that can be imagined.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #56
So, if people come here expressing a personal desire to exceed the limits of glorious redbook, they'd better have the answers to an array of unduly-demanding questions plucked out of thin air, pertaining to legacy analogue technologies which they haven't necessarily even advocated, about specific noise levels and all the rest.


BTW is the pity party over yet? ;-)

The questions that Krab asked weren't plucked out of thin air, and are not unduly-demanding of people who know the relevant facts that every vinyl advocate should know.

Some of us are the people who lived through the days when vinyl was all we had, and who watched CD-4 fall on its face.  Some of us have gotten vinyl cutting chips in our hair and pants cuffs.

So far your posts have brought nothing new to the table.

Are we lying in wait and trying to trick you, or have we just been here and done that a zillion times before, going back years if not decades?

You made some stock claims, and Krab kinda gently popped some critical questions that many of us including him already know the proper, scientific answers to.

You know the one about good lawyers never asking questions that they don't already know the answers to?

;-)

The bottom line is that most vinyl advocates don't know the relevant facts.

And as far as the hi-rez thing goes, let me recommend HDTracks.com. If I want to know the titles of tracks with true hi-rez contents for sure, I buy them one at a time and test them..

I did post here a list of about 20 tracks, and my prognostications about whether or not they had a hi rez heritage not too long ago.

A little quickie searching of Wikipedia and Amazon comes up with the following release dates:

Patricia Barber – Nightclub (Mobile Fidelity UDSACD 2004) Original Release Date: September 26, 2000

Chesky: Various -- An Introduction to SACD (SACD204) needs track by track analysis

Chesky: Various -- Super Audio Collection & Professional Test Disc (CHDVD 171) needs track by track analysis

Stephen Hartke: Tituli/Cathedral in the Thrashing Rain; Hilliard Ensemble/Crockett
(ECM New Series 1861, cat. no. 476 1155, SACD) Audio CD (November 18, 2008)

Bach Concertos: Perahia et al; Sony SACD Audio CD (March 12, 2002)

Mozart Piano Concertos: Perahia, Sony SACD Audio CD (October 25, 1990)

Kimber Kable: Purity, an Inspirational Collection SACD T Minus 5 Vocal Band, no cat. no audio CD equivalent found

Tony Overwater: Op SACD (Turtle Records TRSA 0008) Audio CD (March 18, 2008)

McCoy Tyner Illuminati SACD (Telarc 63599) Audio CD (June 22, 2004)

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon SACD (Capitol/EMI 82136) Audio CD (March 1973)

Steely Dan, Gaucho, Geffen SACD Audio CD (1980)


Alan Parsons, I, Robot DVD-A (Chesky CHDD 2003) Audio CD (1977)


BSO, Saint-Saens, Organ Symphony SACD (RCA 82876-61387-2 RE1) Audio CD (July 5, 1991)


Carlos Heredia, Gypsy Flamenco SACD (Chesky SACD266) Audio CD (February 15, 1996)


Shakespeare in Song, Phoenix Bach Choir, Bruffy, SACD (Chandos CHSA 5031) Audio CD (September 21, 2004)

Livingston Taylor, Ink SACD (Chesky SACD253) Audio CD (September 23, 1997)

The Persuasions, The Persuasions Sing the Beatles, SACD (Chesky SACD244) Audio CD (February 26, 2002)

Steely Dan, Two Against Nature, DVD-A (24,96) Giant Records 9 24719-9 Audio CD (May 2, 2006)

McCoy Tyner with Stanley Clark and Al Foster, Telarc SACD 3488 Audio CD (January 25, 2000)

I would suggest that anything released prior to 1997 would have been originally tracked, mixed and/or mastered in what we would call now a legacy format, either 15 ips analog tape or 44-48-50 KHz sampled digital.  Anything originally released after 2001 is more or less likely to have some HD DNA.

Hope this helps!


24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #57
So, if people come here expressing a personal desire to exceed the limits of glorious redbook, they'd better have the answers to an array of unduly-demanding questions plucked out of thin air, pertaining to legacy analogue technologies which they haven't necessarily even advocated, about specific noise levels and all the rest.
Not exactly.  People are trying to demonstrate that your concerns do not matter if all you're interested in is what it is that you can actually hear.

Obviously the individuals making them up [...] won't take a poster seriously otherwise
Until you can demonstrate that there is a problem that you can hear, why should they?  The answer is they shouldn't, no matter how you might attempt to steer the discussion in your initial post.  Perhaps you should find a different community where people will take you seriously. 

Quote
I myself could hear nothing beyond 26kHz in a test last year.
Demonstrate that you can hear the difference between that Beach Boys song band-limited to 18kHz and not band-limited and then we'll have something to discuss.  Listening tests of pure tones aren't very interesting if your concern is how music sounds, damn that pesky masking.

Quote
Some have speculated that content above this range can still influence the way we perceive sounds, and others suggest that the presence of a brickwall filter at a given frequency (22.05kHz for example) - which doesn't exist in real-world sounds - may itself create audible artefacts across the rest of the audible spectrum.
This forum cares about what you can prove.  Feel free to speculate elsewhere.  Redbook has nothing to do with it.

Quote
Either way, sharp roll off at redbook maximum remains a largely reliable means of identifying upscaled content published on high resolution formats, and you can't get away from that.
Who is trying to "get away from that?"  No one here from what I can tell.

Quote
I assume your use of the phrase 'high rez' in the place of 'high resolution' is an attempt to cheapen its image? I'd be more impressed if you provided a more scientific analysis.
and
Quote
bit depth having been mentioned far less, interestingly
All these and more have been done many times here already.  Let's not pretend that this discussion is unique, m'kay?

Quote
Interesting that you should mention the use of a fair listening test to compare bona fide 24/96 with redbook. That's precisely the sort comparison I'm seeking to make (see post #1).
So what's stopping you?


24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #59
I see Arny has reposted his list from what, only a week or two ago?

It's amazing what you might find if you search the forum.


I guess that people remember their own posts best - if others have made posts like this in the past, and they would repost them or link them, then that could be helpful to our visitor.

Most of us regulars proved this issue to our own satisfaction by logical, scientific means not the arbitrary means that our visitor seems to think about.  I wouldn't want to stand in the way of anybody else doing the same.

The beginning of the journey is the music.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #60
The beginning of the journey is the music.

Amen to that.

That our enjoyment of the music may be altered because of some numerical or graphical analysis is quite sad.  That people may only overcome this alteration through scientific experimentation and those unwilling will never again see the forest from the trees is even sadder still.

If you instead derive pleasure from things like spectral plots and equipment specifications or think that this somehow enhances the experience of the music then I truly feel sorry for you.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #61
People are trying to demonstrate that your concerns do not matter if all you're interested in what it is that you can actually hear.

They're not making a very good job of it, not that I expected them to.
It's not easy to convincingly defend the indefensible. Ad hominems have already filled the recycle bin (so that tactic didn't work), and claims to be on the side of logic, knowledge, science and/or reason mean nothing unless they can be proven.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #62
]

I assume your use of the phrase 'high rez' in the place of 'high resolution' is an attempt to cheapen its image?


No, its the results of using nicknames to describe things that we've worked with a lot.

Quote
I'd be more impressed if you provided a more scientific analysis. In a professional environment, the behaviour I've seen in this thread just wouldn't cut it.


I'm not sure that you would call a "professional environment". If by "professional environment" you mean where actual recording and mastering engineers converse, many of those places have to look way, way up to see what you see around here. I frequently go to parties with current and present AES board members, regional vice presidents, and AES Fellows. Not much difference between there and here.

BTW if you think your comments set any kind of super standards for professionalism, well not so much. You are pretty good at reciting the usual audiophile myths, but after that I haven't seen any good technology to speak of in your posts.

Quote
I've nothing against blind listening tests, but I don't think they're the holy grail,


Nothing is the Holy Grail! Nobody has ever found the Holy Grail. We did find blind tests and while they aren't perfect, they are way ahead of what is in second place.

Quote
especially when conducted in the non-controlled conditions of individuals' homes.


Again I question your standards. I know for sure that there are a number of JAES papers (fully refereed) where the underlying tests were unapologietically done in people's homes.

Quote
And of course, people at home can fabricate the results to suit their own agendas.


What is that I said about libel?  ;-)

Of course people can fabricate what they want to. Thing is there are at least two ways to debunk that. One is to ask people about their procedures in detail, and the other way is to try to duplicate them.  Anybody who has actually done the work talks about it in a certain way and knows certain things. The part where the results are duplicated or not is very foolproof.

Quote
Interesting that you should mention the use of a fair listening test to compare bona fide 24/96 with redbook. That's precisely the sort comparison I'm seeking to make (see post #1).


Trust me, I didn't start on my quest for truth by calling the people I was asking for help a bunch of liars! ;-)

Actually, there was almost nobody to ask when I started. I mostly asked me and my multiple personalities... ;-) Oh, and my wife had a degree in experimental psychology so she knew something about experimental design and statistics. When I did my first testing re: 24/96 I made my own samples from scratch.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #63
People are trying to demonstrate that your concerns do not matter if all you're interested in what it is that you can actually hear.

They're not making a very good job of it, not that I expected them to.


Welcome to the real world my boy! If you walk up to a bunch of people and call them liars and then ask them to help you find the truth, there is a basic contradiction in your behavior that you should have noticed by now! ;-)

Quote
It's not easy to convincingly defend the indefensible.


Its even harder to defend what you already tried to defend and had it go the other way, and more than once.


Quote
Ad hominems have already filled the recycle bin (so that tactic didn't work), and claims to be on the side of logic, knowledge, science and/or reason mean nothing unless they can be proven.


You didn't start out asking for proof, now did you?  My review of this thread and its predecessor is that you came in with your guns blazing and didn't stop shooting, even when a few olive branches were laid at your feet.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #64
So, if people come here expressing a personal desire to exceed the limits of glorious redbook, they'd better have the answers to an array of unduly-demanding questions plucked out of thin air, pertaining to legacy analogue technologies which they haven't necessarily even advocated, about specific noise levels and all the rest.
Obviously the individuals making them up -ahem- reeling them off won't take a poster seriously otherwise, which is handy.



You act like you're the first gunslinger to visit this town.  In fact you've offered nothing new yet to an old, old discussion, and your standard issue skepticism is being met with standard issue replies -- hardly 'plucked out of thin air'. 


Quote
More analogue-bashing and more unduly-demanding questions. Some people do have a special attachment to analogue - in much the same way as some have a special attachment to CD. Both could be described as "religious" attachments, and indeed the plethora of analogue vs digital debates on the 'net often resemble religious wars.
Btw I never expressed any particular affection for analogue, did you notice?


You're the one who brought in analog tape performance as requiring something better than Redbook. It's not bashing to point out the problems with that stance.


Quote
I'll respond to the issue of frequency response beyond the redbook maximum, since some posters keep hammering on it (bit depth having been mentioned far less, interestingly): I'm under no illusions as to the frequency range of human hearing. I myself could hear nothing beyond 26kHz in a test last year.


You're claiming you can hear 20-26kHz?  Wow.  Either really great ears, or really high playback level.  Or, mistake?

Quote
Some have speculated that content above this range can still influence the way we perceive sounds, and others suggest that the presence of a brickwall filter at a given frequency (22.05kHz for example) - which doesn't exist in real-world sounds - may itself create audible artefacts across the rest of the audible spectrum.
No doubt you'll all disagree strongly with both of these anti-redbook views.



Wrong on one count.  I don't deny that indifferently designed filters near the human hearing limit could have audible effects.  I question whether that accounts for the widespread audiophile disparagement of Redbook. That simply hasn't been demonstrated.


Quote
Either way, sharp roll off at redbook maximum remains a largely reliable means of identifying upscaled content published on high resolution formats, and you can't get away from that.



A 'rolloff' can mean lots of things.  A *sharp rolloff at ~22kHz* indicates  a 'redbook' (44kHz) sampling stage somewhere in the lifecycle of that signal . No one has said otherwise, have they?  And you were told very early on that  yes, 'high resolution' printed on the label, doesn't guarantee that the content exceeds 22kHz.  Caveat emptor. I showed you some examples where the content was spectrally not 'rolled off' at 22khz  and I could show you some where it was.  More news: some remasters are less 'high fidelity' than their previous issues.  And you can put a cracker jack ring in a Tiffany box, too.   


Quote
I assume your use of the phrase 'high rez' in the place of 'high resolution' is an attempt to cheapen its image?


Er, no, it's just a common abbreviation, and not typically considered derogatory.  Heck, Audio Asylum -- you know it, right?  audiophile web hangout? disdains Redbook, dotes on SACD, DVD-A etc? -- calls its high-resolution audio subforum the  'High-Rez Highway'.  You want to go complain to them about disrespect?


Quote
I'd be more impressed if you provided a more scientific analysis. In a professional environment, the behaviour I've seen in this thread just wouldn't cut it.


Go read your post #1 again, honcho.


Quote
I've nothing against blind listening tests, but I don't think they're the holy grail, especially when conducted in the non-controlled conditions of individuals' homes. And of course, people at home can fabricate the results to suit their own agendas.



Blinding is a protocol prerequisite for a professional research report abotu audible difference, if you hope to get it published, so, sorry, in that sense, it certainly is a 'holy grail', whether you think so or not.
As for informal blind tests,  the caveats you cite are also true of sighted ones -- with the added sauce that a sighted test, done in all honestly and with the best intentions and practices, remains *inherently* flawed. 


Quote
Interesting that you should mention the use of a fair listening test to compare bona fide 24/96 with redbook. That's precisely the sort comparison I'm seeking to make (see post #1).



Is that what you're seeking? Then do tell us how you plan to make it fair.  We can help you out there.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #65
You act like you're the first gunslinger to visit this town.  In fact you've offered nothing new yet to an old, old discussion, and your standard issue skepticism is being met with standard issue replies -- hardly 'plucked out of thin air'.

Well, I'll take skepticism over dogmatic defensiveness any day, thanks very much.
To me, a sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Those who are always dead sure about everything they believe and about everything they are doing in their life frequently turn out to be idiots.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #66
However, a spectrum analysis of their content always shows a sharp roll-off at either 22050Hz or 24000Hz, suggesting that these releases are nothing more than upscaled versions of previous 16-bit 44.1 or 48kHz releases (complete with the so-called 'loudness war' compression in most cases).

Do you think that the microphones used to capture the music had an unlimited frequency range/response?

When you have SACDs/DVD-As with content above 22/24kHz, how do you tell that it was properly captured by the microphone and that it faithfully reflects the sound being captured (when you can't hear it and compare it to the real instrument)? They could just push the base signal through an overdrive effect (without any low-pass filter) and use the resulting garbage above 22kHz as the filler for these hi-res formats (so that obsessed people see "the stuff" on the spectrogram and feel good about it).

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #67
Once LP recording and playback equipment reaches certain very attainable levels, the very modest actual frequency response, noise and distortion limits of a LP are dependent on the inherent limits of the technology. It's limited by things like geometry that are pretty much cast in cement by the laws of physics. This was all pretty well figured out in the 1960s, and is reflected in the best technical papers of the day which are for example, in the archives of the Audio Engineering Society.

Once the inherent limits of vinyl were determined by scientific means, the recorded media industry wisely decided that LP technology was a dead end, and essentially chucked it and went on to digital.

Same thing happened with analog tape.


Example:

At the 3 inch radius of a LP, a groove is about 19 inches long. Now, lets put a 30 KHz carrier on this track. Each cycle of the 30 KHz is 0.63 thousandths of an inch long in the track. (lets ignore for a second the fact that the sidebands of the music on the back channels are encoded at frequencies of up to 50 KHz which is a 0.38 thousandths long wave).  Now, one of the sharpest radii I've ever heard of being used on a cartridge is 4 micrometers which is 0.000158 inch or 0.16 thousandths of an inch. This is more than 1/3 of the length of the 30 KHz wave on the LP.  To understand this, take a piece of regular 8.5 x 11 inch paper and draw a sine wave on it the long way. 1/3 of 11 inches is about 3.67 inches so find something round and about that diameter that you can slide over your picture of a sine wave. like a tuna fish can.

How well does a tuna fish can follow our sine wave on a regular piece of paper? Not so well. The first thing we see is that the tuna fish can cannot track the inside of the peaks of the sine wave, to say the very least! This means that tracking of our 30 KHz sine wave will be attenuated and that it will also have a lot of harmonic distortion. This is all because it can't fit into the peaks very well.

To quantify this, my tuna can could only track 3 inches into a peak that was 3.5 inches high. The loss due to radius effects was about 14% which is close to the amount of nonlinear distortion we would measure in the real world.

This is just one of many examples of why the LP format is fundamentally flawed at the geometric level. Sure you can make the stylus even smaller, but the wear on the LP with even 1 gram tracking forces is excessive.

Discussion of detals of modern high performance LP stylii

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #68
However, a spectrum analysis of their content always shows a sharp roll-off at either 22050Hz or 24000Hz, suggesting that these releases are nothing more than upscaled versions of previous 16-bit 44.1 or 48kHz releases (complete with the so-called 'loudness war' compression in most cases).

Do you think that the microphones used to capture the music had an unlimited frequency range/response?


Even more daunting is the loss of high frequencies in the air.

Everybody should try this online calculator:

Online calculatorof attentuation of HF sound

For 40 KHz and pretty normal looking temperature and humidity, I get 40 dB per 100 feet.  This is huge!

No mic can pick up sound that has been attenuated like this with any degree of fidelity!

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #69
You act like you're the first gunslinger to visit this town.  In fact you've offered nothing new yet to an old, old discussion, and your standard issue skepticism is being met with standard issue replies -- hardly 'plucked out of thin air'.

Well, I'll take skepticism over dogmatic defensiveness any day, thanks very much.
To me, a sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Those who are always dead sure about everything they believe and about everything they are doing in their life frequently turn out to be idiots.


You seem very sure that we are either lying, closed-minded, or just plain wrong. ;-)

I think that you just aren't well-informed. Yet! ;-)

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #70
Example:

At the 3 inch radius of a LP, a groove is about 19 inches long. Now, lets <truncate for brevity>


[sceptic-mode]You're just trying to obfuscate your replies to my baseless assertions with long-winded maths. Clearly this shows you are being dogmatically defensive.[/sceptic-mode]

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #71
Strange definitions abound: dogmatism, religion and now skepticism.  Funny how people who demand objective evidence for proof of falsifiable claims are being branded as religious and dogmatic by "skeptics".

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #72
So, if someone came here claming that the world is flat, and we offered proof that it is not, does that make us closed-minded?

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #73
You act like you're the first gunslinger to visit this town.  In fact you've offered nothing new yet to an old, old discussion, and your standard issue skepticism is being met with standard issue replies -- hardly 'plucked out of thin air'.

Well, I'll take skepticism over dogmatic defensiveness any day, thanks very much.
To me, a sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Those who are always dead sure about everything they believe and about everything they are doing in their life frequently turn out to be idiots.


Seems like the skepticism most appropriate here would be of your own understanding of the subject.  Clearly you're out of your depth.  I recommend shutting that trap of yours and paying attention to the people trying to help you.  You'll never learn anything if you assume you already know everything.

24/96 releases sometimes just upscaled 16/44?

Reply #74
Just to pile on, the 26 KHz hearing claim has to be bogus. It's like saying you can see gamma rays. If it's not a typo, then the test must've been flawed. First, exactly what chain of sound-generating and audio playback equipment were you using that is even capable of producing and preserving such frequencies? Many amps, speakers and headphones roll off above 20 KHz. Second, what did you do to test and control for aliasing? It's quite common for audio setups to produce audible "ghost"-frequency tones when playing a higher-frequency, inaudible tone.