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16 vs 24

Posted by Tony Lauck (A) on February 18, 2015 at 13:32:57

In Reply to: A number of Monty's arguments are suspect posted by Dave_K on February 13, 2015 at 15:11:17:

"Regarding dynamic range, I sort of agree with him that 16 bits ought to be enough for replay, and I don't really understand why 24 bit playback sounds better. However, given that modern recording equipment can achieve noise levels below the 16-bit quantization/dither noise floor, I don't see any logical reason why you wouldn't want to deliver all the information you can record if space is not an issue."

The problem is that the dither noise reduces the S/N ratio of 16 bit audio to approximately 90 dB. Then, the necessary headroom for clean recording further reduces it to about 70 dB. On a clean recording the dither noise may be audible, particularly with large scale orchestral music played back at row 5 concert volumes. If recordings are heavily compressed during the production process than 16 bits is probably enough.

HDCD used subtractive dither. This gains back 6 dB of S/N ratio and removes any remaining correlation between quantization error and the music. This is probably enough for distribution, but if one is going to be incompatible one may as well just use 24 bits today, since bits are essentially free.

There may be an other explanation as well, at least for some mastering engineers. They produce good sound in the "studio master" format, whatever it is. This is a lot of work. Then they listen to how it gets degraded to the CD format (or worse to MP3). Eventually, they give up and conclude that an extra effort to make the CD format sound good is a complete waste of time, since the knowledgeable customers aren't going to buy 16 bits if the hi-res is available. Why bother spending endless time further tweaking the recording to fit the limits of obsolete technology? Just saying...


Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

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