J
jgohman
New member
There are many products selling on the 24/96 feature and I want to start a discussion regarding whether this is overkill in many (but not all) circumstances.
I was a mastering engineer for Sony music for several years and have had many discussions, teleconferences, etc. with company engineers on issues like jitter, sampling rate, dithering, etc. In many cases the discussions were qualified due to the fact that we were a large company distributing DVD's, high profile cd's, and other products.
I am not saying that the home computer recording project studio does not justify the quality of higher sampling rates and bit resolution, but here are my views on why these improvements end up mostly as hype:
1. The sonic improvement of jumping to 24 bits is signal to noise ratio. And it is significant. Only, for anyone with their computer in same room as their monitoring environment, this S/N ratio jump is easily drowned out by the sound of the hard-drive and fans in the CPU box. So, I think that anyone who claims to hear the difference between 16 and 20/24 bit (on the basis of signal to noise ratios) must have one heck of a quiet studio. The car or living room won't cut it either. I am not saying there isn't an audible sonic difference between different A/D converters though. And (for manufacturers) why take 24 bit converters and slap them on the PCI board? I understand: cost. But that S/N boost is foofed (new word) out by the stray RF flying around the motherboard and adjoining PCI cards, let alone the electronics on its own PCI card. (Also, 24/96 requires a huge amount of HD space)
2. The reason to go to 96 kHz sampling rates is mainly for DVD production. How many project studios are doing this? Really, I am wondering- maybe there are quite a few. The other reason to jump to 96k would be to improve Frequency response. The frequency response of your recording will be half of your sampling rate. Can anyone hear to 48k? No. But sometimes upping the sampling rate is justified by moving the brick wall filter artifacts out of our range of hearing. I don't think I can hear the artifacts of 44.1k in my home studio. The artifacts are so low level that the previous discussion regarding S/N applies here. All I can hear is my hard-drive and fans. And my hungry cat.
I'm not trying to sound like a know-it-all. I really would like to see input. We all have views and I want to learn from them.
I was a mastering engineer for Sony music for several years and have had many discussions, teleconferences, etc. with company engineers on issues like jitter, sampling rate, dithering, etc. In many cases the discussions were qualified due to the fact that we were a large company distributing DVD's, high profile cd's, and other products.
I am not saying that the home computer recording project studio does not justify the quality of higher sampling rates and bit resolution, but here are my views on why these improvements end up mostly as hype:
1. The sonic improvement of jumping to 24 bits is signal to noise ratio. And it is significant. Only, for anyone with their computer in same room as their monitoring environment, this S/N ratio jump is easily drowned out by the sound of the hard-drive and fans in the CPU box. So, I think that anyone who claims to hear the difference between 16 and 20/24 bit (on the basis of signal to noise ratios) must have one heck of a quiet studio. The car or living room won't cut it either. I am not saying there isn't an audible sonic difference between different A/D converters though. And (for manufacturers) why take 24 bit converters and slap them on the PCI board? I understand: cost. But that S/N boost is foofed (new word) out by the stray RF flying around the motherboard and adjoining PCI cards, let alone the electronics on its own PCI card. (Also, 24/96 requires a huge amount of HD space)
2. The reason to go to 96 kHz sampling rates is mainly for DVD production. How many project studios are doing this? Really, I am wondering- maybe there are quite a few. The other reason to jump to 96k would be to improve Frequency response. The frequency response of your recording will be half of your sampling rate. Can anyone hear to 48k? No. But sometimes upping the sampling rate is justified by moving the brick wall filter artifacts out of our range of hearing. I don't think I can hear the artifacts of 44.1k in my home studio. The artifacts are so low level that the previous discussion regarding S/N applies here. All I can hear is my hard-drive and fans. And my hungry cat.
I'm not trying to sound like a know-it-all. I really would like to see input. We all have views and I want to learn from them.