Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[guitarhead]

I have downloaded some 24 bit files from HD Tracks and have compared to 16 bit version, I can't tell a difference. Am I doing something wrong? I'm using MC17 loaded on an ASUS laptop running Windows 7. I'm going into Yamaha receiver via HDMI. I'm using WASAPI Event style output mode. I can't hear a difference. Am I forgetting any settings? Is 24bit a hype? In theory I should be able to hear the difference.

Bill

[eddyshere]

The answer is in your post : (...) in theory (...).
Resolutions and bit depths are different on paper but not in everyone's ear. It would be wrong to expect to see a day and night difference. Furthermore the complete chain plays also a very important role from source to speakers. When people tell they can blind test and hear a difference between 176 and 192 encoded files on their PC logitec speakers....I truly doubt.

[guitarhead]

Thanks for the quick response. I was hoping someone would chime in with some obvious setting that I might have over looked. Maybe it is my ears. I'm usually the guy that can hear these differences. I can here a big difference in lossy(mp3) and lossless(flac) and some friends & family cannot. 16bit & 24bit might be more slight. Maybe my ears are just getting older and damaged from playing in loud bands for years

Bill

[Matt]

The conditions under which you might hear a difference are going to be extreme.

The volume will have to be very high and the room very silent.  And even then, you would only hear a difference if the studio recording actually managed to use past 16-bits.

Because this question comes up once in a while, I've added a bitdepth simulator to v18 to let people test what different bitdepths sound like.  I was just playing around with it, and for example I can easily tell 12-bit from 13-bit in the somewhat noisy room I'm in.  In gets pretty tough after that.  In past testing, I could only hear the difference between 15-bit and 16-bit in the most extreme testing (fancy headphones, silent room, eyes closed, very loud volume, focusing on the noise floor, etc.).

[eddyshere]

I can "feel" (or is it in my mind ?) a difference between 16 and 24 with very good headphones (denon AH-D5000) but still unsure if in a complete blind test I would find it out with 100% accuracy. It really strongly depends on the kind of recording and music.
@guitarhead : yep MP3 vs flac that's a given. Just on a side note : I had various surprises in the past. I started years ago to stream music with a logitech transporter. I "thought" back then that it had a terrific sound until I compared with a NAIM streamer. This was amazing, the transporter sounded like cr-- and as this wasn't enough we alternated both machines on the same amp-speaker combo not through analog but through spdif digital and the difference was also "worlds-apart". This was the day I learned that digital connections can also influence sound quality (...until that day I had always been of the opinion that a digital connection sounds the same whatever source it comes from). Anyway welcome to JRiverMC as if you care about playback quality you will just love it...