16/44 vs. 24/96 Format Comparison

[amey01]

Can you clarify what you mean? You mean a tone which is inaudible by itself can make an audible difference when played along with another tone? Do you have a reference?

See post #12. Two things,

1: As in post 12, inaudible frequencies can have an audible effect on frequencies in the spectrum that we do hear.

2: It has also been shown that inaudible frequencies (although not directly heard), can be perceived by humans. [We don't know how].

I'm not saying that I can scientifically prove this stuff - thats the whole point! We don't know.

All I'm saying is to avoid making sweeping statements like "96kHz is useless because we can't hear it" - judge with your ears and don't try to scientifically prove sound quality.

Not so long ago, we didn't understand the difference between types of distortion (even order, odd order, number of harmonics, etc). Many people in the '70s were trading their valve amps for new transistor designs because because 0.00000001% THD "must be" better than 3% or more which was all valve designs were capable of. But it didn't turn out that way in actual terms, did it? Some of those '70s transistor amps (although they measure well) are some of the most flat-sounding, unmusical designs ever produced. To this day we don't necessarily know why, but one aspect for sure is the fact that valves are known to produce more even-order distortion (which can be perceived as musical) and transistors produce more odd-order distortion. So maybe 3% even order distortion is fine, but 0.000001% odd order distortion is offensive?

Same with sampling frequencies - one day we'll be able to fill in the blanks, but as yet, we don't know why.

One thing is for *CERTAIN* though - Redbook (or SACD, or vinyl or whatever) DOES NOT record and/or reproduce everything that we perceive our musical instruments to produce. Simple as that.

[CatBus]

2: It has also been shown that inaudible frequencies (although not directly heard), can be perceived by humans. [We don't know how].

I'm not saying that I can scientifically prove this stuff - thats the whole point! We don't know.

No, I'm saying you CAN scientifically prove this stuff. That's the whole point--if there's something we don't know, we have a method that will tell us.

All I'm saying is to avoid making sweeping statements like "96kHz is useless because we can't hear it" - judge with your ears and don't try to scientifically prove sound quality.

That makes no sense to me. Proving it scientifically means using your ears--the part that's removed is the part your brain imagines.

Same with sampling frequencies - one day we'll be able to fill in the blanks, but as yet, we don't know why.

No, if we can't prove anyone can hear the difference now, there's no reason to believe we'll be able to prove it in the future. Now, if we COULD prove people can hear the difference, we may have to wait before we know WHY, but that's a different thing entirely.