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Is 192kHz hi-res audio recording in studio worth it?


Øyvind Skald

What do you record in?  

27 members have voted

  1. 1. What resolution?

    • 44.1 kHz
      9
    • 48 kHz
      4
    • 44.1/48 kHz
      8
    • 88.2 kHz
      2
    • 96 kHz
      4
    • 192 kHz
      0
  2. 2. Do you think there is a point of recording in more than 44.1KHz

    • Yes
      16
    • No
      11


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42 minutes ago, pwalpwal said:

mixing in your daw of choice, the more accurate the maths (ie, higher resolution) the more accurate your output will be, it's not an opinion, it's science

And when the human ear cannot accurately hear that difference it's called what exactly?

I have tried tracking at higher resolutions and at no point was I amazed by this accuracy or science that you speak of. The only things with audible differences are synths and fx that benefit by the higher resolution.  Which comes down to how they were coded. Tracking audio at higher resolution isn't science, it's a waste of disc space.

Upsampling plugs on render however is a different discussion.

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This is the other side...

Rick Beato : "In this video, we explore the differences between MP3s, WAV, FLAC (lossless), AAC and whether you can tell the difference? or if it even matters? Discussion on mixing, listening, monitors and audion file formats."

I bet she in this  test, has better ears than most of us.

In my mind i think that a "great/max ludness" mix can handle mp3 much better han  more live mixes with  more dynamic.

 

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23 minutes ago, Royal Yaksman said:

And when the human ear cannot accurately hear that difference it's called what exactly?

I have tried tracking at higher resolutions and at no point was I amazed by this accuracy or science that you speak of. The only things with audible differences are synths and fx that benefit by the higher resolution.  Which comes down to how they were coded. Tracking audio at higher resolution isn't science, it's a waste of disc space.

Upsampling plugs on render however is a different discussion.

Cakewalk and every other VST DAWs do oversample softsynths and FXs, don't they? Or how is this really?

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1 minute ago, ØSkald said:

Cakewalk and every other VST DAWs do oversample softsynths and FXs, don't they? Or how is this really?

They don't  by default. But you can select it. What I am talking about is dry audio recording. I can't hear a difference there. Sure add some plugs that benefit from upsampling and that changes, but tracking dry audio? I'm not convinced.

This is where confusion lies. People listen to 2 mixes, mixed at different resolutions and the mixes involve plugs. Of course they hear a difference. But what has that got to do with the dry audio?

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3 minutes ago, Royal Yaksman said:

They don't  by default. But you can select it. What I am talking about is dry audio recording. I can't hear a difference there. Sure add some plugs that benefit from upsampling and that changes, but tracking dry audio? I'm not convinced.

This is where confusion lies. People listen to 2 mixes, mixed at different resolutions and the mixes involve plugs. Of course they hear a difference. But what has that got to do with the dry audio?

Exactly. I have the 96/24 official mixes of Dream Theaters selftitled album from 2013 and i canott hear a difference. I can se that they are in fact recorded in 96kHz by opeing them up in SoundForge and compair the wave forms to the 44.1 version  of the songs. I must say that the 5.1 surround mixes  is cooler...

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1 hour ago, pwalpwal said:

analog is a smooth curve, whereas digital is a stepped approximation to that

Digital is not stepped. 

When your audio is in digital format it is basically a large number of samples, i.e this volume at this point in time, not this volume until the next sample. They are points on a graph,  not blocks.

When you play back your digital audio it is converted back to analogue, ie a smooth curve. If you input a pure sine wave into a computer's ADC and then output it through the DAC, you get a pure sine wave. No steps are anywhere to be heard.

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At this point, 6 out of 15 voters record at higher than 44.1kHz, but only 4 out of 15 think there's any point at recording at higher rate.

I am one of those 4,  so at least 3 of the voters recording at higher than 44.1kHz think there's no point.  9_9

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4 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

yeah but they're listening to the the master encoded to mp3/whatever, so pre-encoding should be as hi-res as possible, and avoid transcoding... having said that, we've always listened to, for example, abbey road mastered stuff on our cheap hi-fi's, so what's the difference really? that's why we check the final version on multiple systems :)

Yep, I agree. It's funny though, I spend a lot of time getting my stuff tracked so that it's the highest quality I can produce. I check and double check through my AKG Studio grade headphones. Next I tweak while listening on the BX5a monitors, listen on my Kenwood home studio for a bit and export the file. Then I listen to the results through my cheap earbuds playing while attached to my cellphone, and through the stereo in my funky OLD pickup truck. If the mix can't pass the cheap headphone and funky old pickup truck test, it's back to the drawing board. I realize that somewhere in the world, someone will actually listen to my music under ideal conditions, so it's that possibility that makes me take the time to try and get everything else right I guess.

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