In article , Justin Ulysses
Morse writes:

I thought it was about the 4th or 5th time I said it in these threads
over the past 2 days, and I thought I was repeating myself. But I'm
glad to hear it's starting to gel.

You may well have said it and I could have either missed the post or missed the
point. Either way it is starting to make sense to me even though its still a
little blurry.

Suppose you have an input signal whose voltage at some arbitrary point
in time is 3.26534263219541623 volts. Now, off the top of my head I
estimate that the best approximation of this voltage you can represent
with 24 bits is maybe 3.2653426 volts. And 16 bits would round it off
to around 3.26534. So what's going on in the 24-bit audio that's
missing from the 16-bit audio? A signal in the neighborhood of 2.6
microvolts. Which is pretty dang low-level if you ask me.

Here is a bblluurrrryy moment for me. Is it that there is a _signal_ which is
2.6 microvolts or... is it that there is an error of 2.6 microvolts in the
reproduction of a signal which is the above 3.26534263219541623 volts? To me
this seems like a qualitative difference (no matter how insignificant the
quantity in question may be).

I think its difficult for someone who knows a lot about a thing to explain it
to someone who knows nothing about it because the one who knows is apt to
assume certain understandings on the part of the one who doesnt.

Garth~


"I think the fact that music can come up a wire is a miracle."
Ed Cherney