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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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But you have some new  CD formats.

SACD 
SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc) is a high-resolution audio disc format developed by Sony and Philips (who also developed the CD). Utilizing the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) file format, SACD provides for more accurate sound reproduction than the Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) used in the current CD format.

While the standard CD format is tied to 44.1 kHz sampling rate, SACD samples at 2.8224 MHz. Also, with a storage capacity of 4.7 gigabytes per disk (as much as a DVD), SACD can accommodate separate stereo and six-channel mixes of 100 minutes each. The SACD format also has the capability to display photo and text information, such as liner notes, but this feature is not incorporated into most discs.

CD players cannot play SACDs, but SACD players are backward compatible with conventional CDs, and some SACD disks are dual-layer discs with PCM content that can be played on standard CD players. In other words, the same disk can hold both a CD version and SACD version of recorded content. That means that you can invest in dual-format SACD's to play on your current CD player and then access the SACD content on the same disc later on an SACD-compatible player.

It must be noted that not all SACD discs have a standard CD layer - which means you have to check the disc label to see if a specific SACD disc can also play on a standard CD player.

In addition, there are some higher-end DVD, Blu-ray, and Ultra HD Disc players can also play SACDs.

SACD's can come in either 2-channel or multi-channel versions. In cases with an SACD also has a CD version on the disc, the CD will always be 2-channels, but the SACD layer may be either a 2 or multi-channel version.

One additional thing to point out is that the DSD file format coding used in SACDs is also now being used as one of the available formats used for Hi-Res audio downloads. This offers music listeners enhanced quality in a non-physical audio disc format.

https://www.lifewire.com/all-about-the-cd-hdcd-and-sacd-audio-disc-formats-1846866

 

And Wikis 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD

 

Edited by ØSkald
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Ah...  I miss the 80's sometimes...

I wonder how many people really even know what they're missing now?  They just play stuff through the speaker on their phone or PC and think it's good enough.  *Bleh!*

I had a wealthy friend in San Diego that had these super expensive old-style speakers (i.e., not the active grid kind).  They must have been four feet tall and more than two feet across!  Cost him tens of thousands of dollars even back then...

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3 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

i had a sacd/dvd surround setup  for a while - only one person can sit in the sweet spot

Well i did open the Dream Theater alubum in Vegas Pro. It did open. But i got just stereo sound out of my studio PC. I dont know why. And Sound Forge does not open the audio as  more than stereo tracks. Strange ringt. So i thought. Bothering you more with this or just put on a happy picure?

ujKgqN.jpg.b6b93bb8e0de123ce7ecdd3211df9c3e.jpg

Well here we go...

Edited by ØSkald
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Guys,

Thanks for the advice and counsel. Have to study to understand it all so I can get back with questions with any intelligent content and not waste your time.

Have used r8brain as a converter when conversion needed, based on the older data posted on this link. Most know about this but for those who do not:

http://src.infinitewave.ca/

Things have gotten better over the years.

Still cannot understand the argument that for CD purposes only, sampling at anywhere other than 44.1/16 provides any advantage since the finer data and resolutions have to be thrown out anyway to degrade to the standard, even if there were no consideration for aliasing artifacts. Interesting Oskald's comment that the CD resolution is undergoing evolution to a more advanced standard.

Will try to get a handle on this with a little help from my friends. Hope all are warm and dry.

John

 

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John,  at 24bit you have a lot more headroom to be able to record at lower levels and then process to get to the higher levels without getting the "never-pleasant" digital clipping.  At 16bit recording, you have to be a lot more careful not to clip.  Then there just isn't as much information in the system to get your effects to "work on". 

Yes, you still have to boil that all down to 16bit when done to get it on a CD, but there is a lot that can happen between the time it gets recorded and the time it gets dithered out to 16bit.

Think about it this way: Why not just eat a handful of flour, a handful of sugar, some cooked eggs, a bit of vanilla and some chocolate chips instead of mixing it all together, baking it and having cookies?  I mean, the end result is that you just eat all of the ingredients, so why not just cut to the chase and eat them rather than doing a bunch of stuff to them first.

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Another verry imorptant point is that digital sound do not handle hot signals as analog do. Even digital effects  handle signals at -15dB better than hot signals at -3dB. They sound just not right with hoter signal. And 16 bits makes the noise floor rise up to where we dont want it to be with -20 to  -15 dB signals. Its all about right levels from input to the mix. But of course, its not a rule. Do beak it if you want that "sound".

Edited by ØSkald
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On 1/24/2019 at 5:07 PM, ØSkald said:

I dont know if you have any Inspiration from Christopher Franke, but I can  hear something there.

Well, Christophe Frank was a third part of Tangerine Dream back when I first ventured into that sort of stuff. I try hard to emulate that but the reality is that my stuff is my own 🙂

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On 1/25/2019 at 3:53 AM, John K said:

My opinion, if you are going to publish a CD, do 44.1 k and 16 bit depth. All else upper and lower is lost until they update the CD standard, and you are at the mercy of the integrity of whatever you have chosen to up sample or downsample your final mix.

I gave up on thinking about physical releases quite a while ago. Can't remember the last time I burned a CD with my own stuff on it, probably early 2K.

I upload all my stuff to Bandcamp as 24 bit wav and it is up to the downloader as to whether they download the WAV file or the 320kbps MP3 file. Bandcamp does the conversion to all the other file types, I just upload the WAV.

Also, when I download stuff from Bandcamp I download 320kbps MP3 files because my hearing is fecked and lossless file types are lost on me.

 

Regarding gain staging:-

I don't worry so much about that any more, since moving to 24bit. The "noise floor" is so low, apparently, using 24bit that you can record much lower signals that what you would have done using 16bit.

For 16bit recordings, gain staging, and faffing with that level to get it as hot as possible without clipping was quite important.

So, that's why I would never, ever record in 16bit again.

 

 

cheers

 

andy

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3 hours ago, synkrotron said:

And one about Gain Staging, which, for me, was quite an eye opener:-

 

I was believing that myself to before. But the fact is that, you can so easily loos control. You don’t know where it is bugging the signal chain.  So, it is much better to just keeps the levels down as a rule and then push it if you want that sound out of a plugin. My mixes have been much cleaner and better after I started to go through my signal path before starting to bush things down to not blow the master channel. Point is. It might not matter for the sound if I push the pro channel EQ in CbB, but if I put in the CA-2A compressor in the Pro Channel afterwords, suddenly that sounds bad and over worked. And I have little to nothing to work on. So, it is much better to just fix levels the sooner the better.

My 2 cents. My money, and I stick to it.

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