"Jay - atldigi" wrote in message
...

The 24 bit number is more precise than the 16 bit. True enough. What
that means in audio, however, is that the 24 bit word can describe
smaller values than the 16 bit word, thus signals that are lower in
level. The 16 bit number is already describing 96 dB of dynamic range
just fine. If you want to carry the precision further and capture
signals that are lower, say to -144 dB, then 24 bits is your ticket.

The myth is the dynamic equivalent to the argument that 4 samples on a
20kHz sine wave will render it more accurately than 2, and 8 samples
even more so. That's not true either.


I may well be suffering the myth, but my understanding is that it matters
whether you sample a sine wave 2 or 8 times. Tests have been made where
subjects had to determine which sound came first from their headphones. The
same signal was fed to both L and R channels, only the other one was delayed
by 5-15 _micro_seconds.
Some of the people were able to "localize" the sound source even when it was
delayed only by 5 microseconds. This implies that a sampling rate of
192kHz(which results in 5.2 microsecond's sample intervals), for example, is
not only pushing the nyquist rate to the ultrasonic range, but also presents
better channel separation on multichannel systems.
So, it doesn't necessarily matter if you sample a sine wave 2 or 8 times on
a mono system, but on a multichannel system higher sample rates result in
better localization.