Which sounds better -24/192 or 32/192?

[starvinmarvin]

Hello. Last year we ripped our CD collection to a hard drive using uncompressed .wav format (CD Redbook 16/44). Now we have access to some larger capacity drives, and we want to re-rip the collection with even higher fidelity. Has anyone here listened extensively to 24/192 and 32/192 rips? Is there any audible improvement in choosing 32/192? Would appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks!

[Spoon]

Re: Which sounds better -24/192 or 32/192?

The CD is 16/44 if you change the frequency, to even higher ones, you lose quality.

Changing the bith depth (24 or 32) does nothing as the lower bits are just zero padded.

[garym]

Re: Which sounds better -24/192 or 32/192?

Hello. Last year we ripped our CD collection to a hard drive using uncompressed .wav format (CD Redbook 16/44). Now we have access to some larger capacity drives, and we want to re-rip the collection with even higher fidelity. Has anyone here listened extensively to 24/192 and 32/192 rips? Is there any audible improvement in choosing 32/192? Would appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks!

ripping a 16/44.1 CD to higher bitdepth or bitrate will do nothing at best, reduce quality at worst. You can't turn a 16/44.1 digital file into a high-res file just by ripping it as one. The ripper will simply pad with a bunch of 'zeros'

[starvinmarvin]

Re: Which sounds better -24/192 or 32/192?

The CD is 16/44 if you change the frequency, to even higher ones, you lose quality.

Changing the bith depth (24 or 32) does nothing as the lower bits are just zero padded.

i beg to differ. For music recorded in 16/44 the D-to-A conversion involves a steep-cut brickwall filter at 22KHz. This filter induces clearly measurable ringing (distortion) of the waveform all the way down to 1/10th of the filter cut-off frquency. Ripping at higher frequency moves the ringing of the waveform during decoding/playback almost completely above audible frquencies. Obviously, the proper way to implement this is for the original recording to be made at the higher bitrate and higher frequency. Even so, some audible improvement may be noticed "after the fact", as it were.

Listening to our Audio Research/Magnepan system in our own living room we compared 16/44 rips versus 24/192 rips of some of our favorite music. A friend of ours sat a ways behind us and cued up the music so we were unaware which rip we were hearing. Selections included arias & duets from the Callas/Gobbi recording of Il Barbiere on EMI, Rosalyn Tureck's live performance of Bach, The Great Solo Works (piano), Reiner/Chicago S.O's Scheherazade on RCA, Bill Evans Trio, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Joe Cocker's Sheffield Steel, John Lee Hooker's The Healer, and others. Complete tracks were played, not snippets. In three listening sessions spread over a month or so my girlfriend and i each expressed our preference for this sample or that sample which we later compared with which ones our friend actually cued up for listening. The lady's selection results were 24/192 preferred 9 times, 16/44 preferred 1 time, and No Preference 2 times. My results were 24/192 preferred 8 times, 16/44 preferred 1 time, and No Preference 3 times. These comparisons were aided (or impeded?) by a glass of beaujoulais which rounded out our usual and familiar listening conditions.

i make no claim that the higher-res rips are measurably superior, but we're satisfied that they are often more enjoyable for us to listen to. On that basis, we wish to avail ourselves of that enjoyment.

So, i ask again. Has anyone had the opportunity to fairly compare 24/192 music tracks to 32/192 and which did you prefer?

[Spoon]

Re: Which sounds better -24/192 or 32/192?

Modern DAC chips already oversample, so yes you are right in a sense, but your source files do not have to be this higher sample rate, the hardware should already do this. Basically who ever designed the DAC or soundcard would have already taken this into account (if you have a decent one).

[mville]

Re: Which sounds better -24/192 or 32/192?

we want to re-rip the collection with even higher fidelity.

You may prefer the sound of Redbook CDs ripped to 24-bit, 192kHz and played back on your system, due to the DACs, DSP involved etc. but you won't get higher fidelity (or hi-resolution audio) files by ripping a Redbook CD 16-bit, 44.1kHz to 24-bit, 192kHz.