I know it's stepping into a highly contentious area, but I found the following of interest. I still record at 24/96 and strive to find some improvement using DSD (both Korg machines), but I concluded I was probably fooling myself. I am ordering the September AES journal, but if this is a fair summary then the jig is up.
...See http://www.theaudiocritic.com/blog/
This is entirely consistent with the following AES presentation from...
http://world.std.com/~griesngr/particularly...
http://world.std.com/~griesngr/intermod.ppt Conclusions -
1. Adding ultrasonics to a recording technique does NOT improve time resolution of typical signals – either for imaging or precision of tempo. The presumption that it does is based on a misunderstanding of both information theory and human physiology.
2. Karou and Shogo have shown that ultrasonic harmonics of a 2kHz signal are NOT audible in the absence of external (non-human) intermodulation distortion. (BTW: means they can't be heard in the real world and that filtering them from the recording is a good thing as they can only do harm!).
3. Their experiments put a limit on the possibility that a physiological non-linearity can make ultrasonic harmonics perceptible. They find that such a non-linearity does not exist at ultrasonic sound pressure levels below 80dB.
4. All commercial recordings tested by the author as of 6/1/03 contained either no ultrasonic information, or ultrasonic harmonics at levels more than 40dB below the fundamentals.
5. Our experiments suggest that the most important source of audible intermodulation for ultrasonics is the electronics, not in the transducers.
Some consumer grade equipment makes a tacit admission of the inaudibility of frequencies above 22kHz by simply not reproducing them. Yet the advertising for these products claims the benefits of “higher resolution.”
6. Even assuming ultrasonics are audible, loudspeaker directivity creates an unusually tiny sweet spot, both horizontally and vertically.
digifish
