bit rate?

[Dylan lol]

im watching this video

and it says sample rate is the number divided by 2, so 48khz is really 24k and since people can only hear up to 20khz thats all u need. but it doesnt mention 16 vs 24 bit, does the bit rate matter at all?

[Snazzy]

most of audio is recorded in 24 bit 44.1khz so lowering the bitrate would lower the quality but you mostly hear the difference when lots of sounds are playing at the same time and its still its quite hard for me to really hear it

[LAwLz]

Yes bit rate matters and no the video is wrong about you only needing 44.1KHz sampling rate (higher sampling rate is used to avoid aliasing).
16bit and 24bit is not the bit rate of the audio, it is the bit depth. The bit depth is how much info each sample contains. 

[Dylan lol]

Yes bit rate matters and no the video is wrong about you only needing 44.1KHz sampling rate (higher sampling rate is used to avoid aliasing).

16bit and 24bit is not the bit rate of the audio, it is the bit depth. The bit depth is how much info each sample contains.

 

so how does bit rate matter, what difference is 16 vs 24 bit?

[TofuAce]

Yes bit rate matters and no the video is wrong about you only needing 44.1KHz sampling rate (higher sampling rate is used to avoid aliasing).

16bit and 24bit is not the bit rate of the audio, it is the bit depth. The bit depth is how much info each sample contains.

 

 

so how does bit rate matter, what difference is 16 vs 24 bit?

 

It is explained here. Btw, I think its great you are expressing an interest into all of this!

 

"16 bits is enough to span the real hearing range with room to spare. It does not span the entire possible signal range of audio equipment. The primary reason to use 24 bits when recording is to prevent mistakes; rather than being careful to center 16 bit recording-- risking clipping if you guess too high and adding noise if you guess too low-- 24 bits allows an operator to set an approximate level and not worry too much about it. Missing the optimal gain setting by a few bits has no consequences, and effects that dynamically compress the recorded range have a deep floor to work with.

An engineer also requires more than 16 bits during mixing and mastering. Modern work flows may involve literally thousands of effects and operations. The quantization noise and noise floor of a 16 bit sample may be undetectable during playback, but multiplying that noise by a few thousand times eventually becomes noticeable. 24 bits keeps the accumulated noise at a very low level. Once the music is ready to distribute, there's no reason to keep more than 16 bits."

 

"In 554 trials, listeners chose correctly 49.8% of the time. In other words, they were guessing. Not one listener throughout the entire test was able to identify which was 16/44.1 and which was high rate [15], and the 16-bit signal wasn't even dithered!"

xiph.org links the source on its page and leads you to here.  Its a paper, so it requries membership to the Audio Engineering Society... but xiph.org links to other places to read up on the discussion around it on forums. Including the BAS supplemental.

[LAwLz]

so how does bit rate matter, what difference is 16 vs 24 bit?

Again, bit rate and bit depth are two different things. Bit rate is the amount of info (usually measured per second) the file contains. For example 320Kbps. This number is affected by sampling rate as well as the bit rate. Think of it this way, sampling rate is the FPS in a game. Bit depth is the resolution, texture details and other such things. The bit rate is the overall experience. High res but low FPS isn't a good experience, right? High FPS but really crappy graphics isn't that good of an experience either, right? (This is just an example to make it easier to understand the difference between bit rate and bit depth, it is not a good analogy for anything else, no need to comment on it)

 

16bit bit depth means that each sample contains 16 bits of data. 24bit means each sample contains 24 bits of data.

If you are just going to listen to music then 16bits (what CDs use) is more than enough. No need to go higher than that.

[ShearMe]

You only need 16 bit audio files, but 24 bit DACs can be quite useful hardware to reduce the noise floor and what not.

[ShearMe]

Yes bit rate matters and no the video is wrong about you only needing 44.1KHz sampling rate (higher sampling rate is used to avoid aliasing).

 

A higher sampling rate can be useful, but it is not necessary, which was the point of the video.

[Dave :)]

I've hidden a couple posts which had nothing to do with the title or topic at hand. Please keep to topic regarding Bit rate and not some other forum politics.

Thanks. 

[Austin Powers]

Um, I have a question, currently running this on my HTPC. If I have foobar2000 playing a 16bit mp3 file and windows sound setting @ 24bit, will I get 24 or 16 bit rate while the music is playing? 

[bowleggedcat]

Um, I have a question, currently running this on my HTPC. If I have foobar2000 playing a 16bit mp3 file and windows sound setting @ 24bit, will I get 24 or 16 bit rate while the music is playing? 

 

16.

[ShearMe]

Um, I have a question, currently running this on my HTPC. If I have foobar2000 playing a 16bit mp3 file and windows sound setting @ 24bit, will I get 24 or 16 bit rate while the music is playing? 

 

As @LAwLz has tried to point out twice, the bit depth is not the same as the bit rate. To determine the bit rate, you need to know the bit depth, sample rate, and the number of channels.

 

- The bit depth is the amount of information in each sample.

- The sample rate is the amount of samples per second.

- The bit rate is the bit depth multiplied by the sample rate multiplied by the number of channels