Are we spoiled by 24 bit audio?

[Michael Jones]

Imagine pulling out some old vinyl, letting a diamond neddle drag through the grooves as the disk spins at (hopefully) 33 1/3 rpm. Any scratches, dust, you'll hear 'em if there is.

Then imagine pulling out and old cassette. Remember metal tapes? Sounded pretty good, but man they sure were hell on heads.

Now-a-days, most of us pull out a CD, pop it in a player, and let it go from there, thinking how great the detail is on it.

Imagine if you will, walking into our acoustically controled project studio, firing up the DAW, critically listening to our latest masterpiece on dedicated higher end monitors on a 24 bit audio system.

Imagine that same project studio, setup with those same monitors and listening to that masterpiece at 24 bit in 5.1 surround!
What a difference huh?

I was in the car the other day, listening to a commercially released CD, By a very well know artist, and I was thinking to myself, you know, this sounds OK, but.....it's not 24 bit, and it sure isn't 5.1

Now I know a car is not a studio but....Are we Spoiled?
Yeah, I'd say so.
Nowhere to go from here but up.

[crawdad]

I like things recorded on every format thats ever existed. To me, its much more about the performance and the song than about bit depth. The magic is created more by the people making the music than by the medium its recorded on. No matter how perfect the recording is, even the most experienced ear won't listen to it if the artist is lousy or the songs are crap. The best we can hope for as engineers is to have talent at the source to work with. Anything less is a frustration and little more. I'd rather hear a boombox cassette recording of a great song that a surround sound master of some garbage tune sung by a wanker wannabe.

I'm all for technology and for improvements in recording as a science. I also try to keep in mind that its function is to capture and augment the performance of humans who make music. There is no beauty and no wonder without the great performance. A great recording of garbage, is just measurable but meaningless frequencies.

[darrin_h2000]

yes

[elevate]

No matter how perfect the recording is, even the most experienced ear won't listen to it if the artist is lousy or the songs are crap.

I agree, somewhat. At some point in the past few years I've got to the point where it's kinda hard to listen to music if it's a crap recording. A crap recording does not capture the moment, it places its own nuances and skidmarks all over the place and basically just ruins it. It's a shame that, generally, lame bands get the bucks for the good recordings and the good bands struggle with budget recordings.

[mixmkr]

I haven't gotten to 24 bit 5.1 yet.. I'm still going thru my 'old' 20 bit Layla, and recording at 16 bit in Cooledit. I've been satisfied, and haven't felt the need to upgrade yet at this point. Probably will in the future, for sure...but I'm going to wait a year or two and see what develops before ANOTHER new computer, software, etc...

so spoiled....not yet.....uninformed....ahh....?? But then again, I don't record $36,000 pianos much either

[BrettB]

In contrary to that, it is amazing how few people seem to mind the loss of quality you get with mp3's. I'd rather listen to good vinyl record than to a badly decoded mp3.

[MiXit-G]

Im with you on that one Brett, in fact i like the sound of a scratchy old vinyl every now and then...ahhhhh.

[wes480]

I dunno....I kinda go back and forth on the mp3 thing.

Sometimes I think I hear a lot of distortion and such...

right now I am listening to a VBR encoding of John Mayer - Neon....sounds freakin awesome on my stereo (marantz reciever/Boston Acostics VRM60 speakers, Boston PV600 Sub).

Around 2,100 dollar setup or so...even though just bookshelf speakers. But, I don't think the cd would sound any better..

I'll probably buy it today, we'll see

[Michael Jones]

hmmm, ya'll are missing the point. I'm not talking about musicianship, that goes without saying. I'm talking about technological advances and how difficult it would be to go back to an older, antiquated method.

[crawdad]

Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the instant access you have using a hard disk system as opposed to waiting for tape to rewind, fast forward, etc. I pulled out my old ADAT the other day and I got pretty antsy waiting for it to locate. I am so used to hard disc now, I'd hate going back to any tape format.

As for the 24 bit, I've worked in both 16 and 24 bit. For the kinds of things I do, 16 bit works fine. If I were recording delicate stuff and all acoustic instruments, I'd use 24.

[MartyMcFly]

Personally...I like the loss of sound quality you get on MP3's...It almost makes them sound like old records