Poll: 48kHz vs 96kHz

[jimfisheye]

My question will be if we found a way to make an edge case that leads to an artifact.

The logical explanation would be that it's possible to create artifacts with digital systems. We're not just capturing a sound in the audible range here, we're playing with sound generators in a digital system with the range fully extended above audible (at least before the sound system). And then with anti-aliasing filters in some parts.

We probably have no way to do this and that might be the answer right there. But if the theory was that there are some sounds with ultrasonic content that require preserving and reproducing that to hear back properly. Someone do this:
Analog synth making this sound -> AD (96k) -> DA -> monitor A
Analog synth making this sound -> AD (44.1k) -> DA -> monitor B

It kind of has to be something like this to rule out artifacts.

 

[tonyE]

Keep in mind that any 'square wave' your brain processes is a 20kHz lowpassed version, no longer square. So their different appearance, particularly the 96kHz version, doesn't mean much. It absolutely 'should' look a lot closer to a perfect square wave than the 44kHz (i.e.,. 'lowpassed' at 22 kHz) waveform.

I didn't say that ultrasonic harmonics can't impact the audible range. If ultrasonic content is causing your playback setup to distort, that distortion can have components in the audible range.

Increasing sampling bandwidth (e.g. from 22 to 48 kHz as you've done by increasing sample rate from 44 to 96) does not inherently improve the digitization of content below the lower bandwidth. It just captures more (higher) frequencies. That's just Nyquist. It's possibly the hardest aspect to get one's head around. There are caveats involving antialiasing/imaging filtering, but if done right this should not cause the 'very different' audio you are hearing.

Beyond that, you'd need to supply lots more detail , and the files themselves, to diagnose what's causing the artifact you are hearing.

Well.... the closest you will ever get to a square wave at more than 10 watts will be when your amplifier goes clipping... and you know what happens when you push 5KHz and 10 KHz at 40 watts through a tweeter...

POOF.

Real music has a built in low pass filter and the power handling of our speakers are designed that way. There are very few high frequency transducers that have low mass and high power handling... mostly planar designs...

IMHO, the effects that we hear are due to IM distortion, not the actual frequencies themselves.

 

[Sashaaa]

Can't hear the difference in multiple abx tests, so I'll go with 48khz because of the smaller file size.

 

[tonyE]

Can't hear the difference in multiple abx tests, so I'll go with 48khz because of the smaller file size.

My cell phones and tablets all have a 512Gb card.... they are cheap. By now, a 1TB Sandisk Ultra SD card is selling for $125 or so... and this is with a chip shortage.

Hard drives? Pffft... A WDC Red 6TB is $110...

 

[Sashaaa]

My cell phones and tablets all have a 512Gb card.... they are cheap. By now, a 1TB Sandisk Ultra SD card is selling for $125 or so... and this is with a chip shortage.

Hard drives? Pffft... A WDC Red 6TB is $110...

My music collection takes up 2tb and is already too large to put on my phone in full . Also the main reason it does take up this space and doesn't fit entirely on my phone is I have a lot of 24bit or high sample rate files, if it wasn't for that, my collection would take up quite a bit less space. Honestly the file size has been what's keeping me from adding more music to my collection, because I already can't fit it all on my phone anymore. While yes we have more storage than ever, if the entirety of my music collection was high sample rate/bit depth files, it'd be even larger than it already is.

 

[Sashaaa]

I do want to clarify as well that I don't blame anyone who does feel like there's a difference in quality or even keeps them around for archival's sake (that's generally why I get them). If you do hear a difference by all means listen to the thing that sounds best! I think if I were to pick one though I'd pick 48k mainly because I personally can't hear a difference

 

[JediJoker]

I do want to clarify as well that I don't blame anyone who does feel like there's a difference in quality or even keeps them around for archival's sake (that's generally why I get them). I think if I were to pick one though I'd pick 48k mainly because I personally can't hear a difference

And in many—if not most—cases, there likely won't be an actual difference in content, audible or not. And if a 48kHz reconstruction filter is well designed, its effects shouldn't be audible, either, even if phase shift is measurable. My argument in favor of 96kHz mainly pertains to specific edge cases and archiving.

 

[Sashaaa]

And in many—if not most—cases, there likely won't be an actual difference in content, audible or not. And if a 48kHz reconstruction filter is well designed, its effects shouldn't be audible, either, even if phase shift is measurable. My argument in favor of 96kHz mainly pertains to specific edge cases and archiving.

Ah yeah fair enough. I 100% agree with you're stance then actually, especially the filter part. Those are the same reasons why I tend to keep them around my collection .

 

[tonyE]

My music collection takes up 2tb and is already too large to put on my phone in full . Also the main reason it does take up this space and doesn't fit entirely on my phone is I have a lot of 24bit or high sample rate files, if it wasn't for that, my collection would take up quite a bit less space. Honestly the file size has been what's keeping me from adding more music to my collection, because I already can't fit it all on my phone anymore. While yes we have more storage than ever, if the entirety of my music collection was high sample rate/bit depth files, it'd be even larger than it already is.

Ture... my recorded digitized music library is way past 4TB and my video is pushing 22TB... that's all stored in the LAN's NASs.

But the 512GB chips store my downloaded Tidal (about 600 records now) and whatever I want to copy from the NAS when I travel.

My point being that storage is dirt cheap, so making a decision on the "size" of a file is a bit like the guy I worked with in '04 who ripped his CD collection into MP3s and then sold the CDs.

 

[Sashaaa]

Ture... my recorded digitized music library is way past 4TB and my video is pushing 22TB... that's all stored in the LAN's NASs.

But the 512GB chips store my downloaded Tidal (about 600 records now) and whatever I want to copy from the NAS when I travel.

My point being that storage is dirt cheap, so making a decision on the "size" of a file is a bit like the guy I worked with in '04 who ripped his CD collection into MP3s and then sold the CDs.

Yeah fair enough. It's great to know there's others besides myself who have insane media collections haha! My friends all think I'm crazy for it but I like to archive stuff.