[sdiy] Taking a Step towards Digital Synthesis?....

[Jay Schwichtenberg]

Glen,

Most of my experience is from listening to converters about 3 years ago. I
was using manufacture reference boards (AD, AKM, Crystal) so they were
pretty tweaked to try to sell their products. I'll admit there is a
difference but to me the greater 'delta' in sound quality was between 16 and
24 bits and not 44.1 and 96. Was 96 kHz better, yes, but I really had to
listen hard to hear the difference where as 16 bit and 24 bit recordings
were obvious. I think I could justify 50% size increase going to 24 bits vs.
the 200% going to 24 bits/96 kHz. Here is where loss less compression would
come in but when I did it a good compression level was 50% but more likely
30% was obtained. Ideally having 24 bit 96 kHz would be nice. But if I were
to spend the money on a new format I'd spend it on 24 bit/44.1 kHz.

In the recording area there is the point of down converting when doing
recording for CD. When I was into it I could tell what software (Cakewalk,
Cubase, Logic, CEP) did the down conversion. From talking to people that do
a lot of recording they still say that you need high end stuff to do a good
job converting from 96 kHz to 44.1 kHz.

Forgot to mention in another post that here is one spot where specs are
iffy. Even though a converters specs maybe the best around you need to look
at the whole 'system'. PCB, power and the quality/type of analog components
are major factors. A lot of manufactures cheap out on these. Most converter
systems are speced on the converters and not necessarily on the system. Few
people either run there equipment through an Audio Precision or if they do
publish those results. Best advice I can give people is make sure you can
return what you buy if you don't like it.

No matter what good listening to one and all.
Jay



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glen [mailto:mclilith at charter.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 11:38 AM
> To: Jay Schwichtenberg; Colin Hinz; synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: RE: [sdiy] Taking a Step towards Digital Synthesis?....
>
>
> At 01:07 PM 1/7/04 , Jay Schwichtenberg wrote:
>
> >In my opinion 24 bit 48 kHz either raw PCM or with loss
> >less compression would be the ultimate.
>
> I wonder why everyone is so focused on bit depth, instead of the sample
> rate? Almost everyone I have spoken to would rather have 24 bits at 44.1
> kHz than 16 bits at 96 kHz. I don't understand this one bit.  ;)
>
>
> >The reality is that most of the 24 bit/96 kHz stuff is marketing garbage.
> >The limit of converters making real audio is about 20-21 bits.
>
> Once again, your focus seems to be on bit depth. Apparently you don't feel
> the much higher sample rate brings anything useful to the 24/96 format?
>
> I believe that the 44.1 kHz sample rate is more of a problem than the
> 16-bit depth. I can hear a certain grittiness in the overtones of
> a 44.1 or
> 48 kHz recording that are much reduced (or gone) in a 96 kHz recording. I
> haven't had the pleasure of hearing any higher sample rates, so I
> can't say
> if there is anything to gain by raising the sample rate even higher.
>
>
> later,
> Glen Berry