but I'll bet you could sell 8-bit pop music CDs today and nobody would
complain about the sound quality.

Given the quality of the mp3's I hear in my thieving friend's cars and
computers... quality doesn't seem to matter to a good percentage of
listeners. They sound decidedly Ensoniq Samplerish (circa 1988, 8bit/22k?) A
lot are tuned for 96kbps download speeds, not to be confused with 96khz,
128kbps is approximately like a cd which has some data compression problems
(depending on the mp3 encoder and settings). A lot of casual listeners don't
know (and probably don't care) what they are missing.

Sad that they are stealing, tragic that they don't care what they are
missing in terms of quality. It is a testament to their engineering that
these recordings are even 1/2 listenable after such abuse. Maybe RIAA will
help fix this: )

These people wouldn't even notice the sound quality if they were to (ahem)
buy such an 8 bit cd. Their ears are already accustomed to it. It would
sound like the rest of the stuff they listen to.


"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1069010813k@trad...

In article
writes:

So what has happened? Yes, we have increased out dynamic range by 6 dB
between the loudest and softest signals the system can represent. But
we have increased the resolution throughout the system: from a 6dB
increment to a 4 dB increment.

Continuing to a 3 bit system: dynamic range is 18 dB. Values are 0dB,
2.25 dB, 4.5 dB, etc. to 18 dB. Wth each additional bit the dynamic
range is increasing, but ALSO the resolution is increasing everywhere
in the system.

So your next question should be: "What do I HEAR that's different?"

A good way to answer that question is to listen to some very low bit
rate recordings. I know this sounds like blasphemy, but once you get
up to about 8 bits, you don't get the sense that you're increasing
resolution, you get the sense that you're reducing the background
noise level into which the signal disappears. So yes, your ears are
able to RESOLVE a lower level signal in the presence of noise because
the resolution down there is better.

However, on the practical side, since most of the music we listen to
today has a dynamic range of less than 10 dB and is played back well
above the system and ambient noise floor, you don't get much of a
chance to take advantage of the added resolution. Of course it doesn't
hurt to have it there (for the occasions where you actually can use
it) but I'll bet you could sell 8-bit pop music CDs today and nobody
would complain about the sound quality.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
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you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
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