24 bit 48khz or 96khz? What's better?

[Riziko]

Alright, so I'm a noob when it comes to technical side of audio. I have my Gsx 1200 amp from Sennheiser paired with HD598(waiting for GSP500 to come) and in the audio settings I have few options, I have few 16bit and few 24bit options. I'm guessing 24bit is better? Is there a simple answer for this?

Now under 24bit I have 44100hz, 48000hz and 96000Hz, if I chose 48000hz, I can change to 7.1 and mess around with different modes, but if I switch to 96khz it just says 2.0HD and that's the only option. What's up with that, what should I chose?

 

If anyone can help, thank you

[minervx]

The sample rate is, in very basic terms, relates to the width of the sound spectrum.  Generally, 0 to 20,000 Hz is audible to people.  Realistically, most of us are only going to hear sounds from 50 Hz to 15,000 Hz.  So yeah, you could have 96 KHz or even 192 KHz or even a million KHz, but that doesn't mean any additional utility because it's outside of the range of our hearing.  High sample rates are specs that manufacturers of audio products like to put on the box because consumers aren't very educated and they think higher numbers means more power.

 

44.1 or 48 is all that's needed, even for professional audio.

[Riziko]

1 minute ago, minervx said:

The sample rate is, in very basic terms, relates to the width of the sound spectrum.  Generally, 0 to 20,000 Hz is audible to people.  Realistically, most of us are only going to hear sounds from 50 Hz to 15,000 Hz.  So yeah, you could have 96 KHz or even 192 KHz or even a million KHz, but that doesn't mean any additional utility because it's outside of the range of our hearing.  High sample rates are specs that manufacturers of audio products like to put on the box because consumers aren't very educated and they think higher numbers means more power.

 

44.1 or 48 is all that's needed, even for professional audio.

ty for the help, one more question, Ohm's, so my HD598s have Impedance-50 Ohms, the GSP500 have less and the high end HD700 have 150, what does that exactly mean. I'm trying to find the perfect headphones, but I also play games, so is it even worth spending over 600$ on headphones that give better sound that I can't listen to?

[r4tch3t]

17 minutes ago, Riziko said:

ty for the help, one more question, Ohm's, so my HD598s have Impedance-50 Ohms, the GSP500 have less and the high end HD700 have 150, what does that exactly mean. I'm trying to find the perfect headphones, but I also play games, so is it even worth spending over 600$ on headphones that give better sound that I can't listen to?

It's essentially the equivalent of resistance. A higher impedance will need a more powerful amplifier. If you have a headphone amp most support a variety impedances. If you plug a higher ohm headphones in to the pc they will likely be very quiet. 

As for if its worth it. Its up to you. Try going to Pro audio stores and take your 598s try both the 598s and fancy pants headphones and see if you can tell the difference. 

[Riziko]

4 minutes ago, r4tch3t said:

It's essentially the equivalent of resistance. A higher impedance will need a more powerful amplifier. If you have a headphone amp most support a variety impedances. If you plug a higher ohm headphones in to the pc they will likely be very quite.

As for if its worth it. Its up to you. Try going to Pro audio stores and take your 598s try both the 598s and fancy pants headphones and see if you can tell the difference. 

I do have an amp, but I'm just not sure if spending that much money is really worth it. I started saving up for the HD820s and an amp made for them, but that's gonna be like 2500$, so that isn't going to happen any time soon. But the more I think about it, the less I want them. I want the best audio, but if the difference is small, what's the point.

[r4tch3t]

Just now, Riziko said:

I do have an amp, but I'm just not sure if spending that much money is really worth it. I started saving up for the HD820s and an amp made for them, but that's gonna be like 2500$, so that isn't going to happen any time soon. But the more I think about it, the less I want them. I want the best audio, but if the difference is small, what's the point.

But if your willing to spend 2500 on audio then it must be important to you.

The difference may be small, but so is the difference between an ssd and hdd but its enough that I bought one when 32 was the average size at $150 never went back because that everyday usability was huge for me. 

So if you can tell the difference then it may be worth it. 

[Riziko]

1 minute ago, r4tch3t said:

But if your willing to spend 2500 on audio then it must be important to you.

The difference may be small, but so is the difference between an ssd and hdd but its enough that I bought one when 32 was the average size at $150 never went back because that everyday usability was huge for me. 

So if you can tell the difference then it may be worth it. 

I guess you are right, now I guess the real challenge is to find them, to try them out. They aren't really easy to get your hands on

[circeseye]

oh fyi when changing bit rate ive ran into....some games now and then dont like anything but 16bit...i used to run 24bit 48hz all the time and some of my games had no sound and for the life of me couldnt figure out why...turned out it was cause i had sound set at 24bit....16bit 48hz worked fine ......just thought id throw that out there

[Exaco]

Not sure about others but i personally cant hear a difference above 16bit 44100hz ( if not lower ). 
The higher the better, but i think it wont affect mids/highs that much ( since our hearing is limited ), but it might affect the low end e.g. the bass can be more smooth etc, since we feel+hear bass mostly.  Anyway any decent hi/mid end DAC's probably will have the highest sample rate possible ( 24bit 192000hz ) and you will even struggle to find music files in that quality, most .flac are like 16bit 44100hz ( CD Quality ). I've only seen Vinyl Rips that are 24bit and close to 192kHz

Tl;dr: These numbers don't matter at all as long as it's not super low. 

[Pariah]

17 hours ago, minervx said:

The sample rate is, in very basic terms, relates to the width of the sound spectrum.  Generally, 0 to 20,000 Hz is audible to people.  Realistically, most of us are only going to hear sounds from 50 Hz to 15,000 Hz.  So yeah, you could have 96 KHz or even 192 KHz or even a million KHz, but that doesn't mean any additional utility because it's outside of the range of our hearing.  High sample rates are specs that manufacturers of audio products like to put on the box because consumers aren't very educated and they think higher numbers means more power.

 

44.1 or 48 is all that's needed, even for professional audio.

Hi, I think your confusing sample rate with tonal frequency. This is a bit misleading. Have a nice day.

[Volbet]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

Hi, I think your confusing sample rate with tonal frequency. This is a bit misleading. Have a nice day.

It's not at all misleading. The sample rate of an LPCM signal is directly correlated to the maximum frequency of the signal produced by the DAC circuitry.

The reason why the 44.1 KHz standard was adopted for CDs is due to fact that it can reproduce a maximum of 22 KHz in tonal frequency, or just about the highest frequency a human can possibly hear.

Look up the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem for a more in depth explanation of the correlation.

[Pariah]

4 minutes ago, Volbet said:

It's not at all misleading, since the sample rate of an LPCM signal is directly correlated with the frequency the signal can produce.

The reason why the 44.1 KHz standard was adopted for CDs is due to fact that it can reproduce a maximum of 22 KHz in tonal frequency.

Look up the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem for a more in depth explanation of the correlation.

Ah ok, makes sense. I will look that up fo sho.

[an actual squirrel]

21 hours ago, Riziko said:

Alright, so I'm a noob when it comes to technical side of audio. I have my Gsx 1200 amp from Sennheiser paired with HD598(waiting for GSP500 to come) and in the audio settings I have few options, I have few 16bit and few 24bit options. I'm guessing 24bit is better? Is there a simple answer for this?

Now under 24bit I have 44100hz, 48000hz and 96000Hz, if I chose 48000hz, I can change to 7.1 and mess around with different modes, but if I switch to 96khz it just says 2.0HD and that's the only option. What's up with that, what should I chose?

 

If anyone can help, thank you

I have read that the gsx 1200 only supports 7.1 with 16 bit. Is this not true? You were able to get 7.1 and 24 bit together at 48khz?

[GoldenSound]

23 hours ago, minervx said:

The sample rate is, in very basic terms, relates to the width of the sound spectrum.  Generally, 0 to 20,000 Hz is audible to people.  Realistically, most of us are only going to hear sounds from 50 Hz to 15,000 Hz.  So yeah, you could have 96 KHz or even 192 KHz or even a million KHz, but that doesn't mean any additional utility because it's outside of the range of our hearing.  High sample rates are specs that manufacturers of audio products like to put on the box because consumers aren't very educated and they think higher numbers means more power.

 

44.1 or 48 is all that's needed, even for professional audio.

Thats not at all what it means.

Sample rate is in simple terms how frequently the DAC updates the position of the signal that is being generated. Not the frequency range (although technically you are correct in that you couldn't output a 90khz signal on a 44.1khz dac, though also as you said, anything above ~20khz is inaudible anyway)

 

This article does a great job of explaining it in depth:

https://www.presonus.com/learn/technical-articles/Sample-Rate-and-Bit-Depth

 

This image shows the effect of increasing sample rate: 

 

Bit depth is similar, it affects the number of distinct values that the signal can be read as. 
As you can see in this image, having a higher bit depth means that there are many more "levels" that the value can be, meaning the resulting signal is more accurate.
                                                                                         

 

With 16 bit depth, there are 65,536 possible values, whereas at 24 bit there are 16,777,216. 

So what settings should I use?

First, always set the bit depth to the highest value your dac supports. There is nothing to lose by setting it higher.

Secondly, with sample rate LEAVE IT AT 44.1khz! The vast majority of audio sources (windows sounds, Spotify, youtube, even TIDAL lossless) are encoded at 44.1khz. Meaning if you are set to 44.1khz, you can play these audio sources "natively", as they were intended to be.
 

If you set your sample rate to 96khz for example, your audio doesn't get better, it likely gets worse. This is because all of your audio needs to be resampled to a new sample rate to be played. And it is therefore changed from the source audio, and will sound worse (even if the difference is almost imperceptible in some cases.) It doesn't magically make it better.

Its kind of like playing a 1080p source video on a 1440p monitor. Yes, the resolution is technically higher, but the source video needs to be resampled and it actually looks worse than if you were playing it on a 1080p monitor. 

 

[The Animator]

so whats better 24 bit or 16 bit 

[mariushm]

I'd set it to 24 bit 48 kHz

16 to 24 bit is basically lossless .. 16 bit content can be padded with one empty byte to have 24 bits sent without altering the original data..

48 kHz ... it's better than the CD's 44.1 kHz and upsampling from 44.1 to 48kHz is not a big deal, doesn't consume a lot of processing power and doesn't cause any noticeable loss. Games and other programs can natively mix sounds internally and work otherwise at 48kHz.

 

Anything higher than 48kHz is indeed not worth it