D/A and A/D | Digital Show and Tell signal video

[El Chiguete]

This is a great video for all of you guys to check out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM#t=539

[Harley Hexxe]

Hey El,

   What I got out of this is a long winded video that simply states: "If you have good enough quality digital audio equipment, then what you put in is what you'll get out of it verbatim."


    Harley 8)

[El Chiguete]

Exactly!

[MarshallJMP]

And bit depth it more important then sampling frequency.

[rnolan]

And bit depth it more important then sampling frequency.

+1  :thumb-up: , anything more than 48khz sample freq is mostly just going to make your file size huge (from a practical point of view), and anything less than 24bit bit depth (word based file formats eg .wav, .aif etc) will give you dynamic range limitations.  But higher sample rates provide higher max freq (1/2 the sample rate is highest feq it can do (nyquist theorem)), but then all your audio gear has to able to cope and not chop the sound at 20khz (like most domestic amplifiers do) and also you speakers etc. And don't fall for the rave that "what's the point you can't hear that high" as all the sum and difference in the upper freq range colour the audible sounds (gives it air), e.g. Sony Super Audio goes flat to 100Khz (2 Ghz sampling serial not word based), so 2 100Khz combine to give 50khz, 2 50khz combine to give 25khz, 2 25kz combine to give 12.5khz (which you can hear)

[MarshallJMP]

Yes they are talking about the noise floor when it comes to bit depth,but like R says it's not only the noise floor but also the dynamic range,16 bit is about 96dB while 24 bit in theory is 144dB (but actually it's around 120-125dB).
This is quite good compared to older audio media like tapes and vinyl records which only had around 50-55dB for vinyl and around 60dB for tape.Now tape had some stuff like dolby,different tape materials,and special tape head bias that could bump it a bit more but it was noisy compared the cd's.

I did test my self and anything higher then 13-14 kHz i don't hear anymore.As a reference i did compare his to my kids that could hear up to 18kHz.So IMO there's no need to go higher then 20kHz,you won't hear it anyway.And about freq combining,that's actually intermodulation distortion and is actually something you don't want in a audio chain,or it should at least be as low as possible.