Jump to content
IGNORED

24/352.8 vs. 16/44.1 - an attempt at a comparison


Recommended Posts

12 minutes ago, esldude said:

So I doubt at those low levels you'll hear the noise alone among music.  So I deleted my post about FR. 

 

Or it is a best dither.

FYI, over at 2L they are the most keen on the dither subject. I could show emails about that again ...

Lush^3-e      Lush^2      Blaxius^2.5      Ethernet^3     HDMI^2     XLR^2

XXHighEnd (developer)

Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier)

Link to comment
6 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

 

The best blues I heard from a single man and his bass guitar on the corner of a street in Washington. All fitted. All belonged. A playback system can not represent that. But since that experience I try to see through it. Without the experience nothing is to be seen through.

 

Which reminds me of the last busker at the nearby Aldi - a concrete cavern at the end of the zig zag of the pedestrian ramp. Just voice and acoustic guitar, an older guy - what was special was his phrasing, and expressive vocal rendering, of a straightforward song; the "touch of magic" that makes one an entertainer, beyond being "just a singer" - wasn't there when we came out only a little bit later, what a pity!

Link to comment
31 minutes ago, esldude said:

What it looks like to me is noise.  Remember how we get these FR charts using music.  If the music is very low in level then noise begins to effect the FR charts derived from comparing bins in the FFT.  In these 2L tracks being discussed, the levels above 10 khz are way down in level.  There isn't much there.  So what looks like a FR difference up there is really just more noise in the 16 bit track than the hirez 24 bit track.  

 

That was my deleted post last night.  I'd looked in Deltawave, and thought it had a mild frequency contour around or over 1 db in the treble.  Plenty to be heard as different.  Then I realized it was the signal being so close to the noise floor you were seeing mainly a noise difference.  So I doubt at those low levels you'll hear the noise alone among music.  So I deleted my post about FR. 

 

Bad timing, I've got to go out - but I will revisit that material anon; do some more checking.

Link to comment
1 minute ago, Arpiben said:

 Any chance that 2L is applying apodizing filters with 16/44.1?

It appears the 16/44 has the higher treble.  Apodizing filters usually, though not necessarily will result in a subtle treble roll off. 

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

Link to comment
1 hour ago, esldude said:

It appears the 16/44 has the higher treble.  Apodizing filters usually, though not necessarily will result in a subtle treble roll off. 

 

Well they do have frequency cut lower than fs/2 but with more or less ondulation...

The amplitude and phase curves present some similitudes. Probably an EQ will generate the same artefacts. I am lacking experience in comparing such files. That is the reason I asked.

As a side note, T005 (with higher treble), seems to have undergone additional filtering treatment. I am thinking that T005 is the 16/44 file that was played through HQ player.

Anyhow thanks for your comments.

 

Link to comment

Just had another look at the 2L tracks, and it's worse than I thought - there are major differences in the high treble waveform, between 2L's 192 and 44.1 tracks - definitely not just noise! However, this track, 2L-038 ( Mozart: Violin concerto) , has been, gasp! , remixed - does this make these curious differences go away ... ?

 

Note the original, and the 2016 'redoing' are both available from the 2L website - I need to look at the latest, and see what that shows ...

Link to comment
On 6/16/2019 at 9:03 PM, mansr said:

Hey goldenears, how does this one sound compared to the original DXD and 2L's down-conversion?

2l-092-1644.flac 3.44 MB · 15 downloads

 

Just compared your version to 2L's DXD and 16/44.1.

 

The DXD, played back with no upsampling, filtering or SDM, remains the clear winner for me. It simply sounds the nicest and the easiest to listen to.

 

Against 2L's 16/44.1, yours sounds softer, slightly fuller, almost as though the transients have been flattened a little. Not sure which I'd take given a choice. But they do sound audibly different to me.

 

Mani.

Main: SOtM sMS-200 -> Okto dac8PRO -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Tune Audio Anima horns + 2x Rotel RB-1590 amps -> 4 subs

Home Office: SOtM sMS-200 -> MOTU UltraLite-mk5 -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Impulse H2 speakers

Vinyl: Technics SP10 / London (Decca) Reference -> Trafomatic Luna -> RME ADI-2 Pro

Link to comment
19 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

Just compared your version to 2L's DXD and 16/44.1.

 

The DXD, played back with no upsampling, filtering or SDM, remains the clear winner for me. It simply sounds the nicest and the easiest to listen to.

 

Against 2L's 16/44.1, yours sounds softer, slightly fuller, almost as though the transients have been flattened a little. Not sure which I'd take given a choice. But they do sound audibly different to me.

 

Mani.

So the take away is your ADC wasn't capable of capturing what was on the hirez file? 

Link to comment
On 6/17/2019 at 4:41 AM, Rexp said:

Ah so the point was to see if folks could hear a difference between the original hires and the downconverted 16/44. I guessed T004 was the 16/44, is that right? 

 

I could (and still can) hear a clear difference between the original DXD file (played back with no further upsampling, filtering or SDM, which 99.9% of DACs on the market will perform, to varying degrees), and 2L's down-converted 16/44.1 file (played back with 8x upsampling and filtering, but still no SDM).

 

If there were any point to this thread, it might be to figure how the two could sound different, considering there's very little signal above 10kHz. I decided to share a couple of 16/44.1 captures to help.

 

3 minutes ago, Rexp said:

So the take away is your ADC wasn't capable of capturing what was on the hirez file? 

 

Set to 16/44.1, as it was, it definitely wasn't capable of capturing everything that was on the hirez file. And yet the two captures still sound subtly different to me, but to a much lesser extent than the 2L files played back directly.

 

Mani.

Main: SOtM sMS-200 -> Okto dac8PRO -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Tune Audio Anima horns + 2x Rotel RB-1590 amps -> 4 subs

Home Office: SOtM sMS-200 -> MOTU UltraLite-mk5 -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Impulse H2 speakers

Vinyl: Technics SP10 / London (Decca) Reference -> Trafomatic Luna -> RME ADI-2 Pro

Link to comment
44 minutes ago, manisandher said:

Just compared your version to 2L's DXD and 16/44.1.

 

The DXD, played back with no upsampling, filtering or SDM, remains the clear winner for me. It simply sounds the nicest and the easiest to listen to.

 

Against 2L's 16/44.1, yours sounds softer, slightly fuller, almost as though the transients have been flattened a little. Not sure which I'd take given a choice. But they do sound audibly different to me.

Thanks for checking. I used shaped dither, lowering the noise by 10 dB below 15 kHz. Like this:

image.thumb.png.7b895aebceaa1e072d575bb48a2a9a0a.png

Link to comment
1 hour ago, mansr said:

Thanks for checking. I used shaped dither, lowering the noise by 10 dB below 15 kHz. Like this:

image.thumb.png.7b895aebceaa1e072d575bb48a2a9a0a.png

 

Did you apply this to the DXD during decimation, or directly onto the 16/44.1?

 

Mani.

Main: SOtM sMS-200 -> Okto dac8PRO -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Tune Audio Anima horns + 2x Rotel RB-1590 amps -> 4 subs

Home Office: SOtM sMS-200 -> MOTU UltraLite-mk5 -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Impulse H2 speakers

Vinyl: Technics SP10 / London (Decca) Reference -> Trafomatic Luna -> RME ADI-2 Pro

Link to comment
Just now, manisandher said:

Did you apply this to the DXD during decimation, or directly onto the 16/44.1?

I downsampled the DXD to 44.1 kHz using 32-bit precision, then applied the shaped dither at 16 bits before saving the result. That's how these things are always done.

 

The 16/44.1 file provided by 2L doesn't appear to use shaped dither.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, manisandher said:

I could (and still can) hear a clear difference between the original DXD file (played back with no further upsampling, filtering or SDM, which 99.9% of DACs on the market will perform, to varying degrees), and 2L's down-converted 16/44.1 file (played back with 8x upsampling and filtering, but still no SDM).

 

If there were any point to this thread, it might be to figure how the two could sound different, considering there's very little signal above 10kHz. I decided to share a couple of 16/44.1 captures to help.

Do you suppose it could be the bit depth difference that's relevant here? Have you tried a 24/44.1 downconversion?

Link to comment

Your comparisons of the two captures look incredibly similar:

On 6/15/2019 at 10:11 PM, mansr said:

 

image.thumb.png.4d1baa2fe2770e0b409463ca64686d47.png

 

 

21 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

image.thumb.png.f3a6c54b4d2c325e4db59fa46752584c.png

 

 

I know @pkane2001 is using his newly developed DeltaWave software, but what about you @mansr?

 

Mani.

Main: SOtM sMS-200 -> Okto dac8PRO -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Tune Audio Anima horns + 2x Rotel RB-1590 amps -> 4 subs

Home Office: SOtM sMS-200 -> MOTU UltraLite-mk5 -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Impulse H2 speakers

Vinyl: Technics SP10 / London (Decca) Reference -> Trafomatic Luna -> RME ADI-2 Pro

Link to comment
2 minutes ago, mansr said:

Do you suppose it could be the bit depth difference that's relevant here? Have you tried a 24/44.1 downconversion?

 

I suppose it's the most likely culprit. No, I haven't tried yet... but do intend to, when I have a bit more time.

 

Mani.

Main: SOtM sMS-200 -> Okto dac8PRO -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Tune Audio Anima horns + 2x Rotel RB-1590 amps -> 4 subs

Home Office: SOtM sMS-200 -> MOTU UltraLite-mk5 -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Impulse H2 speakers

Vinyl: Technics SP10 / London (Decca) Reference -> Trafomatic Luna -> RME ADI-2 Pro

Link to comment
11 hours ago, manisandher said:

If there were any point to this thread, it might be to figure how the two could sound different, considering there's very little signal above 10kHz. I decided to share a couple of 16/44.1 captures to help.

 

Mani.

 

That's not the way to think about it. The signal above 10kHz is absolutely crucial, irrespective of how little there appears to be; every fiddling or adjustment of this region will be very obvious ... note that I'm not talking at all about above 20kHz material, hi-res aspects. Nailing what occurs in the range 10k to say 15kHz to be as accurate as possible is vital to getting convincing playback to happen - getting that region slightly wrong will cause the sense of specialness in what you're hearing to evaporate.

 

A drum kit workout with lots of cymbal splashes is an easy way to separate the men from the boys - the shimmer of the metal vibrating has to ring true, and those frequencies are essential for this.

Link to comment
11 hours ago, mansr said:

I downsampled the DXD to 44.1 kHz using 32-bit precision, then applied the shaped dither at 16 bits before saving the result. That's how these things are always done.

 

The 16/44.1 file provided by 2L doesn't appear to use shaped dither.

Does your 16/44 down conversion sound the same as the DXD? 

Link to comment
21 hours ago, manisandher said:

If there were any point to this thread, it might be to figure how the two could sound different, considering there's very little signal above 10kHz. I decided to share a couple of 16/44.1 captures to help.

 

9 hours ago, fas42 said:

That's not the way to think about it. The signal above 10kHz is absolutely crucial...

 

Where did I imply or say that the signal from 10-15 kHz wasn't important? All I said was that there was very little of it above 10 Khz, as all the analyses have shown.

 

To my ears, the two captures sound very subtly different. Here's Paul's analysis once again:

 

On 6/17/2019 at 5:08 PM, pkane2001 said:

 

image.thumb.png.f3a6c54b4d2c325e4db59fa46752584c.png

 

Do you think that the very subtle difference in sound that I'm hearing might be down to the difference between their respective FRs >10 kHz?

 

Mani.

Main: SOtM sMS-200 -> Okto dac8PRO -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Tune Audio Anima horns + 2x Rotel RB-1590 amps -> 4 subs

Home Office: SOtM sMS-200 -> MOTU UltraLite-mk5 -> 6x Neurochrome 286 mono amps -> Impulse H2 speakers

Vinyl: Technics SP10 / London (Decca) Reference -> Trafomatic Luna -> RME ADI-2 Pro

Link to comment
2 hours ago, manisandher said:

To my ears, the two captures sound very subtly different. Here's Paul's analysis once again:

 

Do you think that the very subtle difference in sound that I'm hearing might be down to the difference between their respective FRs >10 kHz?

 

Certainly possible. We all hear differently. Not just the frequency response, which also varies, but our ability to localize sound is learned at a very young age. I suspect there are variations in how each of us perceives the direction of the sound, and what clues are more or less important. Phase, level differences, subtle frequency changes, reverb / reflections, can all be used in different proportions by our brain. Sensitivity to phase and frequency differences might also be subject to the personal HRTF or head/ear response function.

 

Some can't hear soundstage dimensions or depth with a two speaker set up, others don't hear sound position with headphones, yet others hear things that may be very hard to hear in a 2-channel recording, such as vertical position or sound coming from well in front of the speakers. 

 

My personal opinion is that there are some hard limits on our hearing ability as a species, but within those limits, there's plenty of variation.

Link to comment
14 hours ago, manisandher said:

Do you think that the very subtle difference in sound that I'm hearing might be down to the difference between their respective FRs >10 kHz?

 

Mani.

 

For me, that's where all the action is - the inability of a system to reproduce treble well immediately destroys any chance of the sound being convincing; something like the sharp intensity of a brass instrument is rendered completely wrong - and then it's just a wannabe hifi ...

 

Going back to my earlier post, and, haven't the time at the moment to more closely examine, but 2L is doing "interesting things" to their different formats ... comparing the latest version of the Mozart, 176.4 vs. 44.1 - note, not using 192 this time! - extracting the above 16k content, and then amplifying that to well beyond clipping, we see,

 

1096775980_2LMozart01.thumb.PNG.0b8d11ecddaba0d8c390a28a6dce73f3.PNG

 

The top waveform is 2L's 24/176.4 downsampled in Audacity to 44.1 at best quality, no dithering; the second is the 16/44.1 straight from 2L ... IOW, lots and lots of noise, dithering has been added by 2L, in the high treble ... why?

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

Not to throw a monkey wrench into this discussion, but another way you could do a similar comparision (listening only) is if you have an MQA capable streamer. I have a Lumin A1. From Tidal you can stream 2L labels in MQA 24/352 (DXD) format and 16/44 and do a side by side listening test. I realize this is not exactly the same, but it is a simple test if you have the hardware.

 

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...