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What makes a bigger difference in sound quality?

orangecat

I was wondering what makes a bigger difference in audio quality bit depth or sample rate?

 

I'm currently playing a .flac file that is 24bit 44,100Khz and 907kbps and I am using the Foobar 2000 upsampler set at 96000Khz with advanced limiter after the upsampler.

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As long as the file is as good or better than mp3 @ 320kbps it doesn't matter. Over 44.1k kHz won't do shit.

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Audio Beyerdynamic DT990pro headphones - Audioengine D1 DAC/AMP - Swan D1080-IV speakers

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As long as the file is as good or better than mp3 @ 320kbps it doesn't matter

But if you had to choose what would you pick?

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I doubt anyone can tell with any accuracy, audio is entirely subjective anyway

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I doubt anyone can tell with any accuracy, audio is entirely subjective anyway

Maybe this forum isnt exactly the best option for a question like this but i don't like having 20,000,000 accounts.

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Maybe this forum isnt exactly the best option for a question like this but i don't like having 20,000,000 accounts.

Try the different settings and file types yourself... 9 times out of 10 you won't know the difference. You may as well save your hard drive space for higher quality porn or something than waste it on 24bit audio files.

Laptop Lenovo Thinkpad X220 - CPU: i5 2420m - RAM: 8gb - SSD: Samsung 830 - IPS screen Peripherals Monitor: Dell U2713HM - KB: Ducky shine w/PBT (MX Blue) - Mouse: Corsair M60

Audio Beyerdynamic DT990pro headphones - Audioengine D1 DAC/AMP - Swan D1080-IV speakers

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Also there are very technically proficient people from the audio world on this forum that will tell you the same thing. Google rates above 44.1k kHz, it's pointless.

Laptop Lenovo Thinkpad X220 - CPU: i5 2420m - RAM: 8gb - SSD: Samsung 830 - IPS screen Peripherals Monitor: Dell U2713HM - KB: Ducky shine w/PBT (MX Blue) - Mouse: Corsair M60

Audio Beyerdynamic DT990pro headphones - Audioengine D1 DAC/AMP - Swan D1080-IV speakers

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Try the different settings and file types yourself... 9 times out of 10 you won't know the difference. You may as well save your hard drive space for higher quality porn or something than waste it on 24bit audio files.

Why downlaod porn when you can just stream it online plus nobody can find it unless you dont delete your browser history...

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A quality 320 is typically cut off, any more won't really matter, especially with a 518.

 

Personally for me I take preference to 320/256 but the absolute floor is 192. Many would argue that none excess of that is needed. 

Error: 410

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I was wondering what makes a bigger difference in audio quality bit depth or sample rate?

 

I'm currently playing a .flac file that is 24bit 44,100Khz and 907kbps and I am using the Foobar 2000 upsampler set at 96000Khz with advanced limiter after the upsampler.

I believe that even a MP3 file will sound better with a good pair of speakers or headphones than tinkering with sample rates or higher bit rate files. If you do get an upgrade in sound quality it will be miniscule and you will need to be inside a completely silent environment to discern any tangible difference when your hardware remains the same.

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Maybe this forum isnt exactly the best option for a question like this but i don't like having 20,000,000 accounts.

Speak for yourself, I've been an enthusiast bordering on professional for 30 years.

 

As for the original question given most music is recorded and trans-coded at 16bit and that the sample rate is frequently bodged to make the file size smaller (or look better) I would say sample rate is more important, and definitely more noticeable. 

 

For a better understanding:

 

Bit depth:

 

5 - 7 = vinyl record

9 - 11 = cassette tape

12 - 13 = 1" high quality studio tape

16 = cd

24 = studio dac minimum requirement.  (not that its always run at 24 bit)

 

 

Sample rates:

 

Just re code and listen for your self you'll understand how they effect the sound.

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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The quality of the recording source (mastering, I think?) plays the biggest part. If the mastering is good, I don't think very high numbers of sample rates make any discernible difference. Try the Philips golden ears challenge (google it). I can't even pick out the 128kbps from the source/original one. 

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The quality of the recording source (mastering, I think?) plays the biggest part. If the mastering is good, I don't think very high numbers of sample rates make any discernible difference. Try the Philips golden ears challenge (google it). I can't even pick out the 128kbps from the source/original one. 

Yea the 128kbps one is kinda hard but sometimes i swear they all sound different and it doesn't help that sometimes there is a small pop sound when switching the audio tracks that throws me off..

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Yea the 128kbps one is kinda hard but sometimes i swear they all sound different and it doesn't help that sometimes there is a small pop sound when switching the audio tracks that throws me off..

 

Someone on the other forum wrote that the source sound files they use are 44khz/16bit. So it's better to set the PC's sound setting to match it, so the sound won't get resampled. That's how I passed the mp3 artefact test.

 

By far the hardest is the timbre test, the frequency band. Knowing if it's boosted or cut is easy. Knowing which frequency band is head banging....

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No, FLAC Does Not “Sound Better,” And You Are Not An Audiophile Because You Use It – Here’s What It Actually Is And Why It’s Important

Yet another sound-related post – lately, I have heard more and more individuals preaching the sonic virtues of FLAC with literally no idea what they are talking about. They spout annoying, misleading, elitist crap that has no basis in reality whatsoever. Let’s learn about FLAC, why it’s good, and why it isn’t, shall we?

What in the fuck is “FLAC”?

FLAC is an audio encoding format. It’s also a very good one for a number of reasons. FLAC is a “lossless” format, meaning none of the data from the source recording is compressed or removed (assuming you use the same bit depth [not the same thing as bit rate] and frequency range). This is inarguably a good thing. Lossless is the word of the year (or last 3) among audiophiles (and those who like to consider themselves audiophiles), but the implications of lossless have been twisted and manipulated in ways that are just not factually supported.

Why is FLAC awesome (and is it awesome)?

Yes, FLAC is awesome. Really, it is – as much as I hate FLAC listening purists, FLAC has a real place in the digital audio world that should not be overlooked.

You probably know of one other lossless audio format (even if you don’t know it’s lossless) called .WAV. Yep, that same, good ‘ol format that your Windows system sounds are encoded in (though that’s 8-bit and usually mono). WAV preserves 100% of audio information in 16-bit 44.1KHz stereo format when ripping audio from a CD.

FLAC is better than WAV for two reasons. First, it does everything WAV does (lossless audio), but in a much smaller package (WAV is extremely inefficient in its use of space). Second, it allows the use of more tags (including “illegal” tags in Windows) for marking files. That’s it. Otherwise, same juice, different label. WAV does have the advantage of being more editing / DJ-friendly (also less work for the CPU since it’s hardware decoded), but that’s not really relevant to what we’re talking about here.

This gets us to why FLAC is awesome. It’s all about preservation and archiving! FLAC uses less space than WAV, and allows more precise tagging, making it ideal as a long-term digital storage medium for audio. No matter how many times you copy it (well, in the relative sense), generation after generation, the source audio remains virtually unaltered.

Real audiophiles love FLAC because it helps preserve recordings in their original state, even after multiple rips, digital copying, etc. And because it does so in a comparatively space-efficient format.

This is why MP3′s are bad for archiving. MP3′s have something of a poor generational half-life. You start with an MP3 rip of a CD – even at 256Kbps, you’ve already lost audio information. That MP3 then gets sent to a friend of yours, who burns it on a CD. More data lost (probably a fair bit, too). Your friend loses the digital original, and re-rips the MP3 from the CD to give it to a friend – by now, there is a very noticeable loss in audio quality in the file. Errors and irregularities have started popping up, and in the strictly archival sense, the song is now basically worthless as a record of the original.

Why FLAC isn’t awesome (read: it’s not because it “sounds better”).

If I have one more person tell me that they “refuse” to listen to their music collection in anything but FLAC, I’m just going to start linking to this with only the word “bullshit” in response, because FLAC stupidity is reaching epidemic proportions.

The reason most audiophiles like FLAC has very little to do with the actual quality of the audio. Talking about FLAC as the “superior listening format” just makes you sound like an uninformed prick. Saying you use FLAC because it “sounds better” is like saying you only drink your wine at 53.7 degrees Fahrenheit because that is the “best temperature.” To both people making such statements, I would have this to say: get the fuck over yourself. It’s nothing more than self-perpetuating elitist spew.

You store your audio in the most optimal format available because that means that whenever you do finally decide to make copies, burn CDs, or transcode it, you’re using the best source possible. You don’t buy a $100,000 wine cellar so your wine is at a 53.7 degree drinking temperature, you buy it so your wine lasts as long as physically possible - again, it’s all about preservation.

Yes, FLAC has the complete audio source, and from a strictly technical perspective, is qualitatively superior to even a 320Kbps MP3. However, anyone claiming to be able to consistently tell the difference between the two correctly in a true blind test is just absolutely full of shit. A properly encoded* 256Kbps MP3 is virtually indistinguishable from its FLAC counterpart in a “better vs. worse” sense even with very good audio equipment.

*Yes, there are bad MP3 encoders out there. Eg, old versions of LAME – and they do sound worse and are more error / artifact-prone.

Unless you’re using an audio setup that reaches into the thousands upon thousands of dollars, sorry, I just refuse to believe you can hear the difference unless you’ve got pitch-perfect ears or have spent years and years doing professional audio work. Even many of those people will tell you that, if the difference is there, it doesn’t matter – your ears aren’t an audio-measuring supercomputer, much like your tastebuds aren’t a mass spectrometer.

The bottleneck is always your equipment.

Audio equipment is one of those things you can spend small fortunes on to get the “very best” products out there. And that’s because the very best products require expensive components and materials, extremely precise and specialized construction techniques, and levels of perfectionism in engineering that border on the absurd. And at that point, even if the end product is better, you reach a level of diminishing returns that make such investments unwise for most people (unless you have the money to burn).

Equipment is bar-none the best way to improve the quality of your sound. Equipment is like the engine and ignition components of your car – audio format is like the brand of gasoline you use. Sure, it can make a difference, but only if you go out of your way to actually use something that is bad. Otherwise, it’s insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Would you pay $0.20 more a gallon if Shell guaranteed its gas improved the power output of your car by 0.08%? No – not unless you’re the lead engineer of an F1 team. That’s what FLAC audio quality is – it’s the last little bit you can squeeze out of a near-perfect setup.

You know how Pandora at 128Kbps sounds coming out of my big 300W reference bookshelf speakers through a dedicated stereo amplifier? Fucking fantastic – and don’t tell me otherwise.

From: https://warmleftovers.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/no-flac-does-not-sound-better-and-you-are-not-an-audiophile-because-you-use-it-heres-what-it-actually-is-and-why-its-important/comment-page-1/

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Someone on the other forum wrote that the source sound files they use are 44khz/16bit. So it's better to set the PC's sound setting to match it, so the sound won't get resampled. That's how I passed the mp3 artefact test.

 

By far the hardest is the timbre test, the frequency band. Knowing if it's boosted or cut is easy. Knowing which frequency band is head banging....

Ill have to try it again with different audio settings because the 128kbps test was stupid hard sometimes all 3 sounded different.

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Ill have to try it again with different audio settings because the 128kbps test was stupid hard sometimes all 3 sounded different.

 

And that right there is a classic example of confirmation bias (placebo effect),  two samples are definitely identical however because we are looking for a difference the brain starts to hear one.

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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And that right there is a classic example of confirmation bias (placebo effect),  two samples are definitely identical however because we are looking for a difference the brain starts to hear one.

Yep I know that 16 bit 44,100k is perfectly fine but i still like having the higher quality and stuff anyways even if i cant tell the difference also my hardware is not high end enough to make a difference either.

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Yep I know that 16 bit 44,100k is perfectly fine but i still like having the higher quality and stuff anyways even if i cant tell the difference also my hardware is not high end enough to make a difference either.

 

Now all we need is for everyone else to understand it. :ph34r:

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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Now all we need is for everyone else to understand it. :ph34r:

I'm getting into higher end audio slowly. i understand most of whats going on and stuff like that but I hate seeing people download a youTube copy of a song and the quality is bad and they dont even know it.

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I'm getting into higher end audio slowly. i understand most of whats going on and stuff like that but I hate seeing people download a youTube copy of a song and the quality is bad and they dont even know it.

 

So long as they are not trying to convince the anyone they know best, then ignorance is bliss. Sometimes I wish my ears were semi tone def, then I could 100% enjoy music without spending a fortune on gear.

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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So long as they are not trying to convince the anyone they know best, then ignorance is bliss. Sometimes I wish my ears were semi tone def, then I could 100% enjoy music without spending a fortune on gear.

I want to get a really nice pair of Martin logan speakers if i ever get the money but that wont be for a long long time.

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I want to get a really nice pair of Martin logan speakers if i ever get the money but that wont be for a long long time.

 

Speaking of speakers, found this article the other day, and it's amazing and hilarious at the same time:

 

 

Back in the 1920s some engineers at Bell Labs stretched a pig intestine, pressed it with gold leaf to make it conductive, charged it up to 1,000 volts and stuck it in between two big metal plates. They transformed the music signal coming out of the amplifier up to around 5,000 volts peak-to-peak and achieved the most accurately reproduced sound ever. After three days, however, the decaying pig intestine smelled so bad that they couldn't get anyone to listen to their setup.

 

Just a little fun fact for morning smiles :)

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