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In Reply to: RE: Test with 24/96 vs. 16/44 LITTLE TO NO DIFFERENCE. posted by Archimago on February 13, 2010 at 09:00:59
"1. Either my equipment sucks or these samples suck and there's alot more but I need to fork up more $$$$."You don't need to fork up more $$$$..... There is so much crappy software and artifact-laden music tracks out there, who knows what people hear what they hear........
"2. Or high-def cannot be well appreciated with headphones."
I don't think headphones have anything to do with it.......
"3. Or the upsampling back from 16/44 --> 24/96 somehow reconstitutes the sound."
I've never heard asynchronous sample-rate conversion that I thought was better than mediocre...... It's usually awful.........
"4. Or, there's really not much difference."
There are too many points of degradation taking place. The RFI on PC-based systems negates the inherent advantage of 16/44- Less number crunching per unit time means less RFI. But it must be conventional playback.
Personally I think RFI is the fundamental flaw for running any listening test on a PC.
"5. At this point I'd probably spend a few more dollars to buy a high-def download (maybe at most $5-10 more if it's something I like) when given the option but not expect significantly more revelation in the sound."
I think the two issues are RFI and excessive sample rate conversions...... The only way to properly evaluate 16/44 vs. high-rez is to convert A/D from an analog source directly to the two rates directly (two separate A/D conversions), and avoid sample rate conversions altogether.
Edits: 02/13/10Follow Ups:
Regarding RFI, according to this review:
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/proaudio/emu-0404-usb.html
The 0404 using their measurements got noise levels at -111dB with 24-bit material! Wouldn't you expect much worse results?
Given that this is an external interface, other than the USB cable and maybe noise through the power outlet, the device sits probably about 5 feet away from the computer on my desk which should reduce RFI much better than an internal sound card.
Again, wish there was a way to better quantify the 0404's jitter results.
I did a similar test except it was 88.2/24 vs 44.1/16, so the sampling was not asynchronous.
I heard no appreciable difference even on complex classical.
I personally now run 44.1/24 in foobar2000, the main reason being that I sometimes like to use EQ or "freeverb" plugin (highly recommended!), and don't want to worry about truncation.
Interested in which classical piece you would recommend.
Good thought on the 24-bit output for plugin processing.
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