Gear / Technical Help > Ask The Tapers
48 kHz vs 44.1 kHz sample rate
voltronic:
--- Quote from: Gutbucket on October 16, 2020, 05:29:38 PM ---
--- Quote from: voltronic on October 15, 2020, 12:38:23 PM ---Some of you may be familiar with this website, which compares the performance of many different software sample-rate converters when converting from 96 kHz to 44.1 kHz. See the Help section for details of the methodology and why they chose those rates to convert. Some look nearly flawless; others atrocious. Could you tell the difference in a blind test?
https://src.infinitewave.ca/
--- End quote ---
It is Halloween season. Those scary looking sweep images may appear more frightful than they perhaps should be without an appropriate frame of reference. Which is not to say there is no reason to use the better performing resampling routines, only that it can be challenging to equate them in a meaningful way with perception and appropriately rank the importance of all this in the hierarchy of all the other stuff we need be concerned with. Be aware, but don't fret too much and frighten oneself into neuroses. Make sure your batteries are charged and the SD card has enough space.
From the FAQ at that site:
"Are most SRCs really that bad?
No. If you look at the decibel scale to the right from the graphs, you can see that the range of these graphs is very wide: down to -180 dB. The distortions generated by most properly designed SRCs are below -100 dB and can hardly create audible artifacts. However SRCs differ in the transition band of the low-pass filter and in the amount of pre-/post-echo and aliasing. The bottom line is that most tested SRCs range from fairly good to excellent, but the graphs are very sensitive to emphasize the differences."
Interesting to revisit that site again years later. The thing most interesting to me now is looking at how many earlier versions of the same software performed considerably more poorly than their more current releases.
--- End quote ---
Yes, I noticed the same thing about older versions of the same software.
jerryfreak:
wow thats quite illuminating. ive been using the izotope plugins in soundforge instead of the default SRCs and im glad i did!
DSatz:
kuba e, thanks for quoting the signal-to-noise specification from your Nakamichi deck. Cassette tape was invented by Philips to improve the convenience and performance of dictation machines. As a teenager I carried around my Norelco Carry-Corder 150 onto which I had recorded (via the microphone) some classical records that kept me relatively sane, and I held the speaker up to my ear to listen while traveling, walking around, etc.; when people started recording music on the system, I think a lot of people at Philips were pleased, but also a bit shocked.
So much for "analog has infinite resolution" ...
The attached screen shots are from an AES paper from the current (virtual) convention. The main prior study was criticized (rightly in my opinion) for using source material that hadn't all been natively recorded 96/24. In this study, the author used pure 96/24 recordings of various genres vs. 44.1/16 versions of the same recordings. The participants included musicians, audiophiles, professional recording engineers and producers, as well as people who simply enjoy getting laid, I mean lay people. They were allowed to listen as long as they wanted, play as loud as they wanted, use their own or other equipment for playback, use headphones, loudspeakers or wax paper and a comb if they wanted--any listening kind of thing that they wanted to do, except open the file on a computer to look at its waveforms or properties. The results weren't significantly better than what you'd expect from a coin toss. More experienced listeners (including the professionals) were no better on average at identifying the differences than less experienced ones. Age made no difference, either.
As far as the experimenter's possible bias is concerned, he is the owner of a recording company that makes and sells 96/24 recordings; this study makes him "look good" only in that he is willing to publish results that don't cater to his commercial interests. (In my book, that truly does make him look good.)
guitard:
--- Quote from: DSatz on October 28, 2020, 10:46:52 AM ---Cassette tape was invented by Philips to improve the convenience and performance of dictation machines. As a teenager I carried around my Norelco Carry-Corder 150
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I forget the details of the recorder, but back in the mid '70s, I used to borrow my dad's cassette tape recorder that he used for dictation at his office. I recorded anything and everything with it: Don Kirchner's Rock Concert and The Midnight Special (by putting the recorder next to the tv's mono speaker). I took it to school and recorded conversations with friends. I pretended to be a basketball game announcer and recorded neighborhood basketball games. I used it to record my first ever concert recording in 1977 when I recorded one-hit-wonder Ram Jam (Black Betty was their hit song at the time) by holding the cassette player above my head about 15 rows dead center FOB (that recording actually turned out surprisingly well).
The sad part is ... I didn't preserve any of those recordings ... typically I just kept recording over the same cassette over and over. At the time, I didn't have the foresight to think about how fun it would be to listen to those recordings 40+ years later.
aaronji:
--- Quote from: DSatz on October 28, 2020, 10:46:52 AM ---The attached screen shots are from an AES paper from the current (virtual) convention.
--- End quote ---
I would love to read the whole paper; is it available anywhere under an open access license? AES wants $33 for a download.
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