The premise of the video is to address the common “stairstepping” misconception about digital audio:
Monty at Xiph presents a well thought out and explained, real-time demonstrations of sampling, quantization, bit-depth, and dither on real audio equipment using both modern digital analysis and vintage analog bench equipment.
But Monty goes further into explaining how bit depth affects the stored audio information and playback:
This is a video about the digital vs analog audio quality debate. It explains, with examples, why analog audio within the accepted limits of human hearing (20 Hz to 20 kHz) can be reproduced with perfect fidelity using a 44.1 kHz 16 Bit digital signal.
For street cred, xiph.org is the group that created the Ogg Vorbis and FLAC audio codecs - they know a little about this topic.
I recommend watching the entire demonstration. You will understand your audio files and equipment very differently.
No, he is demonstrating that digitization (sampling) of any audio waveform must be reproduced as the same waveform, because there is only one possible waveform that can fit the sampled points. This is true regardless of the filetype/compression used, though at very low sampling rates (below 8 bits/second) information is noticeably lost because there aren’t enough sample points in a given timeframe, and then you get distortion during playback.
I’m not sure specifically where the line is, but there are physical limits to how fast a speaker cone can vibrate to reproduce the waveform no matter how detailed it is (it would depend on the specific playback device), regardless of whether the source is analog or digital. There’s a point where the level of detail of the sampled waveform doesn’t matter, because there’s no audio equipment in existence that can reproduce that waveform with any accuracy, and 320 kHz is definitely above that point.
It is more likely that the “muddy” quality of the MP3 files you’re referring to is related to choices made while converting/compressing the file, such as the differences in dithering that he demonstrates later in the video.
Nope, mp3 can still be 44kh sample rate, but compression algorithm loses fidelity. Its not 100 % reproducible. This the name lossy compression vs lossless.
Edit To be clear: he’s shown live DAC, not extraction from compressed audio. To illustrate that we can capture the wave and reproduce…but when you compress with lossy, its lost.
Let me share one of the best explanations of digital audio recording ever produced:
D/A and A/D | Digital Show and Tell (Monty Montgomery @ xiph.org)
The premise of the video is to address the common “stairstepping” misconception about digital audio:
But Monty goes further into explaining how bit depth affects the stored audio information and playback:
For street cred, xiph.org is the group that created the Ogg Vorbis and FLAC audio codecs - they know a little about this topic.
I recommend watching the entire demonstration. You will understand your audio files and equipment very differently.
The 44 and 16bit is CD / WAV file quality that he is showing. Mp3 at 320 is close but it still sounds muddy.
No, he is demonstrating that digitization (sampling) of any audio waveform must be reproduced as the same waveform, because there is only one possible waveform that can fit the sampled points. This is true regardless of the filetype/compression used, though at very low sampling rates (below 8 bits/second) information is noticeably lost because there aren’t enough sample points in a given timeframe, and then you get distortion during playback.
I’m not sure specifically where the line is, but there are physical limits to how fast a speaker cone can vibrate to reproduce the waveform no matter how detailed it is (it would depend on the specific playback device), regardless of whether the source is analog or digital. There’s a point where the level of detail of the sampled waveform doesn’t matter, because there’s no audio equipment in existence that can reproduce that waveform with any accuracy, and 320 kHz is definitely above that point.
It is more likely that the “muddy” quality of the MP3 files you’re referring to is related to choices made while converting/compressing the file, such as the differences in dithering that he demonstrates later in the video.
Nope, mp3 can still be 44kh sample rate, but compression algorithm loses fidelity. Its not 100 % reproducible. This the name lossy compression vs lossless.
Edit To be clear: he’s shown live DAC, not extraction from compressed audio. To illustrate that we can capture the wave and reproduce…but when you compress with lossy, its lost.
There is a website where a person put mp3 output back through as input multiple times till the sound gets garbled through entropy. Couldn’t find the link, but this dude did the opposite and captures what the mp3 algorithm drops. So when you listen to it it is mostly quiet but a lot of sounds left behind. https://www.factmag.com/2015/02/19/listen-song-made-entirely-data-lost-compressing-suzanne-vegas-toms-diner-mp3/