CD vs. 24-bit streaming - Sound of the past vs. sound of the future (Turntable tips)
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Tuesday April 18, 2023
David Mellor
David Mellor is CEO and Course Director of Audio Masterclass. David has designed courses in audio education and training since 1986 and is the publisher and principal writer of Adventures In Audio.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @D.Troublemaker: It's an interesting test to see how few bits you can get away with. Back in the late 80s, 90s, and early 2000s NICAM gave us, in Europe and parts of Asia, very acceptable TV sound with just 10 bits.
@jamestaylor9258: I'd love to see measurements on classical guitars and other instruments too. 🤷🏻♂️🤣
@pjpj2639: The music industry keeps selling you these gimmicks….vinyl was no good by cds then back to vinyl
@jayhunthuntcreative: On another note... if the device playing the source has the capability of playing higher bit rates like 24, or 48, the only difference detectable may be slight clarity but that will also depend on the amp and speaker specs whether you actually hear anything at all.
@jayhunthuntcreative: Here's another point. 16 bit contains all the information required for a human brain to interpret at 20Hz to 20kHz. 24 bit makes no difference to the ear and anyone who can do a blind test has never been able to hear any difference. It's just a bigger file.
@jayhunthuntcreative: Signal to noise is associated with the noise of the device/source playing the music and dynamic range is the softest and loudest parts of the recorded material.
@udiorockmeamadeus: WHERE IT WOULD MATTER IS IF you are sampling audio and you want to capture a nuance that cannot be detected with normal audio hardware Another thing to consider is ways of extending past actual audio quality using AI to recognize the pattern of the audio and realistically extrapolate nuances that the original audio missed due to recording errors and poor quality sensors. Even compensate for improperly mic'd studios by bringing out instrument tones barely detectable that no amount of EQ adjustments will pull out.
@udiorockmeamadeus: Muaw = Logarithmic storage..
@udiorockmeamadeus: You won't be able to tell, 24-bit is something like 16,777,216 discrete amplitudes, it has 256 times the resolution of a CD in amplitude. You need sampling frequency more than amplitude resolution, cause of the nyquest stuff.. At 44,100Hz sample rate is not fast enough to represent a waveform of a specifice frequency, 2.5 is the factor used, or 5, So 44100 / 5 = is enough to represent a a rough waveform, but not really very good.. If you are using 16 bit you want to use at least 65236 samples per second, to match the amplitude.. at 24 bit 16 million per second, if you want equal representation across both axis. Digital sound has the most precise rpesentation at low frequencies.. LP records have the most accurate representation of analog waveforms at the beginning of the record, it loses density toward the center of the record.. ``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
@guguigugu: if you actually understand RedBook, all this is plain obvious. all of the arguments that 24bit fans are shilling today have already been considered during the creation of the CD standard.
@stephenbertino8373: Assuming a decent sample rate, such as 48khz, the difference between 24bit and cd quality is palpable. It's heard especially in quiet music. The decay of reverb into silence, for example, is much creamier in 24 bit. Anyone who has spent hours editing material in 16 and then switched to 24 can feel the difference. It's HUGE. There's more detail in resonance and attack transients. It's probably most evident in classical and ambient music.
@Menruleall: For a time, I ripped all my 16/44.1 CDs, and "upscaled" them all to 24/192, believing I was actually getting 24/192 for my Wi-Fi speakers. Eventually it dawned on me that I cannot take from a CD, more than it actually has to give, and that all that extra was simply inaudible noise and wasting precious drive space. So I stopped doing that and went back to bit perfect ripping. Now, my 88mb file is no longer 2gb+.
@Charlie-l1i: My cd player is HD compatible. 20 bit. Can turn it down to 16. 20 has better dynamic range. Noticable
@CapricanDRJ: I refused to sign up with tidal for a long time just because of the criminal activity surrounding MQA. I also tend to avoid any product that lists MQA for the same reason.
@camwells9726: As a mid sixties person with average hearing I doubt I could hear the difference in that area ,
But the quality of the sound system probably makes more difference
@Leptune-Frequencies: Can most people even tell the difference in day to day listening?
@Mercyful_Fate.: If an average listener is streaming 24bit lossless, that cant afford to spend £1k+ on equipment, then a CD ain't gonna make a difference, other than take up room, cost you money and going back n forth changing the disc over.
Most cant afford to treat their room and have expensive speakers. As you age, hearing gets worse. Im just buy a streamer, use lossless audio and also connect up my hard drives that have tons of music ripped at high quality, lots in flac format.
Hopefully what I get is a decent sound that makes heavy metal... heavy 😊
@cubic2011: The 16bit or 24bit is the quantization of the analog signal. But you also have the sampling rate and the encoding.
@Jumbo-D: I don't care, not even a little bit.
@christophersmith4897: Streaming is compressed and if you truly believe it’s lossless I bridge to sell you.
@mikelm222: I think most peoples systems don't even extract the full musical experience of 16bit 44.1khz . . . AND . . . I think when systems come close to extracting the full potential of CDs it really can sound very nice indeed . . . SO . . .IF you have reached this level 1) you'll probably be quite content with the sound of your system . . . AND . . . 2) If you haven't then, what's the point of upgrading to 24 bits if your system can't even manage to fully reproduce 16 bits ?
@chriserskine6879: It depends on what you mean by "better"
@fiddleronthebike: as a professional musician and studio owner I absolutely agree! 24 bit makes sense in the studio because it gives plenty of range during the mixing and mastering process - 24 or 20 bit for the end product doesn’t make any sense. Higher sampling rate makes more sense… in principle - in reality that creates some traps also, especially if you don’t know the equipment of the consumer. 16 bit at 48 kHz is a pretty good compromise and if used properly you don’t need any higher standards
@szeredaiakos: Headroom and intersample peeking in the digital domain only makes sense to take into account if you are resampling.
Also, adding more bits gets you exponentially more accurate, however, human hearing accuracy is logarithmic.
@A.Dude.: Mate, you're a senior,you can't hear whatever you preach, not even if you were a conductor!
@maanhills7982: Flanders and Swann' "SONG OF REPRODUCTION" 1958 , talk about hitting the nail on the head.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @maanhills7982: This is why the BBC is reshowing Face The Music so we can all reenjoy the contents of our toolboxes.
@JasonDuthridge-f1j9e: Are you making me learn now
@JasonDuthridge-f1j9e: My Bluetooth speakers I can hear myself singing and do other things with David gilmour and other bands
@JasonDuthridge-f1j9e: Play play my music I hear myself and I completely numb
@Andersljungberg: There was professional analog recording equipment that could have a dynamic range of 90 decibels. It was dbx. There were also discs that were recorded with the noise reduction system that required a decoder. Techmoan. said of the dbx discs that it was the best thing he had ever heard that the music literally came out of the speakers.
@Andersljungberg: Sony had professional DAT tape recorders that could record with SBM and the aim was that it would sound like 20 bit even though it was 16 bit. It was also published and sold discs with the technology that could be played in a regular CD player.
@Andersljungberg: someone said that sound becomes smoother if the sampling frequency is 96 kHz
@Andersljungberg: Sony developed SBM Super bit mupping they had probably concluded that human hearing was higher than 16 bit in a specific frequency range probably the one that corresponds to the human voice. is called the hearing threshold. that people could hear what was below 0 decibels within that frequency range. observe the frequency response in the ear is not linear. that we apparently hear different frequencies differently, so sound volume
@Andersljungberg: There are perhaps those who say that the vinyl record reproduces better nuances than the CD on a male singing voice, a deeper voice at least if the vinyl record is from the 80s and a more beautiful bass, that something is missing in the bass on the CD edition, for example Phantom of the Opera.
@Andersljungberg: The speakers also play a role. If you have to have a fairly high volume to hear the faintest sounding instruments, then maybe they're not very good speakers. And apparently there are home theater receivers that have a noise level of, for example, 80 decibels.
@Andersljungberg: in practice it's probably about providing more details in the music in the early 90s you could get more details just by buying a new CD player two years later for around the same price maybe 40 pounds more
@dc99yt: CD has to go through an oversampling DAC in order to move digital noise outside the audible range. Maybe the internals of your oversampling DAC is 24-bit anyway, so the question of 16 vs 24-bit is a bit irrelevant. The biggest difference is that if you feed a 24-bit 96KHz digital signal into a DAC, the DAC doesn’t need to work that hard to interpolate the data anymore.
@dana.1546: I am a musician and I write and sequence my music on the DAW FL Studio. From there I can export my tracks on 16 bits or on 24 bits and higher. And I've listen to the same track, one in 16 bits and one in 24 bits and I really couldn't tell the difference but maybe it's because my stereo system isn't that great. I don't know. But I still keep all my definitive mixes in 24 bits in the end because you never know, if I don't hear the difference between my 16 bits mixes and my 24 bits mixes, maybe one day some engineer might wanna listen to my music and HE might tell the difference one day, so...better safe than sorry. :)
@AudioMasterclass replies to @dana.1546: Also, flatten every track into a WAV from start to end. When you want to come back in ten years time to a song that did well you will appreciate this.
@dana.1546 replies to @dana.1546: @AudioMasterclass Yes it's a very good advice indeed, thank you :) and I've learned it the hard way. I wasn't doing it at first but when recently I reopened one of my projects and the VST firm had deleted old sounds after an update of their software and got f#cked up with one sound missing from my project that I couldn't got back, now I extract all my tracks as seperate stems, not to be f#cked in the future.
@gooddaysahead1: Has anyone here been blown away by some 1950''s jazz, recorded in mono?
@budthecyborg4575: 96dB dynamic range is great under the vast majority of circumstances, but today we do things with audio that are far more strenuous than your average orchestral performance.
24bit/48khz is the standard for videogames, when deep percussives are often the focal point of your audio experience, you want the player to feel like a bomb just exploded beside his head, which can practically utilize more dynamic range than normal audio because human sensitivity to bass is far less than treble notes.
"Music" is fine at 96dB but videogames and action movies can use more headroom for room shaking impact.
@budthecyborg4575 replies to @budthecyborg4575: Personally I would prefer if everything were 24bit/96khz but that's a lot of data.
@azanimanaf4001: Need better ears too to keep up
@pascalmartin1891: Decibels are a logarithmic scale. It exists because hearing is not linear. The gain in audible dynamic is way lower than the binary math would suggest.
@JulioCarrasquillo-e7d: Yor forgeting that streaming has audio compresión streaming is garbage
@mrsmith374: I am an Audio Moron, I just listen and enjoy what sounds good to me.
For me it's a no brainer hence the Moron reference.
If you like it enjoy, who has the right and your Ears to hear what you hear.
@sziriuszkibernetikaitarsas542: No problem Sir! You like streaming and desperately hate everything else (strange thing from am older man). I hate streaming and like CD. That's all.
@Jamaica_man_876: 32 bit man here!
@dja.selekta: I grew up with vinyl and cassettes, CD quality is good enough. (Depending on how it was mixed)
@IgorSusman: Not sure I get the point here. 24-bit PCM offers x256 quantization values, but this doesn’t correlate with ~48 dB of the additional dynamic range? If that indeed was the point then maybe the commenter isn’t wrong about “fundamental misunderstanding of digital audio”.
Aside from the fact that 24 vs 16 can be audible in some cases, depending on the material, proper LPCM bit reduction process can be more involved than just the typical dithering+truncating. Apple skips the bit reduction step by simply serving the ALAC encoded 24-bit LPCM and letting its users know that the format works best with external DAC.
The difference between 16-bit and 24-bit is either very subtle or not at all. I don’t think anyone ever promised dramatic improvements. Could it potentially make things worse? Maybe, but not on Apple products. They all are perfectly capable of playing at least 24/48. Internet bandwidth isn’t a limitation these days. So there’s really nothing left to argue about.
You absolutely can’t have 24-bit audio streamed to your devices? Switch to another service.
@gerardoromano3436: Update this video, Tidal no longer uses MQA, come on......
@AudioMasterclass replies to @gerardoromano3436: A simpler solution would be for you to notice that this video is very nearly three years old and understand that things can change.
@QuicksilverSG: 24-bit audio is often desirable for live recordings, especially in situations where you can only estimate the maximumm sound levels you will encounter. In those cases, you typically set peak recording level at around -18db to give yourself plenty of excess headrom. That still leaves over 120db of theoretical dynamic range, which in practice will be limited further by the noise floor of your equipment. During the mixdown and mastering stages, live recordings are usually processed in 32-bits to retain their maximum dynamic range. Once the mix is finalized, however, it will almost always fit easily within the 16-bit dynamic range of CD audio.
@johnwet6969: You forget to say one important thing. Everything is about master quality and these days we live in absolutely stupid times because we have all the tech, but audio industry destroyed almost all great music and all emotions from it, because of LOUDNESS WAR and DIGITAL REMASTERS and from fantastic music they made an absolute garbage (brick wall limiters, auto plugins,...) and now they are selling us this garbage upsampled to 24 bits. This is the crime of century!!!!! Happy man who has his own collection of old CD's and LP's or tapes...
@Webcastering: There is no human being alive to notice/feel any theoretical quality increase beyond the redbook standard.
@paullaw1438: Sanity at last! Thank you 🙏
@fuga9: Yes agrée.
The human ear is configured for analog, but sounds above the audible frequency of 50-12/kHz are noise or vibration, and the rest is judged by the absolute pitch of the recording engineer, and the full production and production of spatial sound breathes life into each instrument, so 24 bits should not be mistaken as a waste.
@eduardowillio: Eu já fiz vários rip cd rip wav 16 24 ate 32 bits o cd original no dvd tocando nas caixas é muito superior não tem pra ninguém cds originais vai ser imbatível por muitas décadas ainda
@rongreen4536: This is the thing: If you believe 24 bit is better than 16 bit it is. I save my music to my hard drive to make CDs for the car and I save it at 24 bit because my mind tells me 24 bit is higher than 16 bit so it has to be better. Even if it's not true and my ears can't hear the difference it makes me feel better knowing that it's saved at the highest resolution. These days it seems music is more of a mind game that a listing experience.
@obidavekenobe: Correction: technically it is the sample rate that determines resolution. The higher the resolution the more faithful the sound is to the original sound.
@davidnicholas1436: It’s not just the bits but the encoding / decoding of those 16 bits where audible problems arise. The higher the sampling frequency, the greater the risk of encoding ultrasonic noise and thus the mandate for filtering (which has downstream, possibly audible phase impacts)…but with lower the sampling frequency, you increase both level errors and timing errors in the waveform. Improvements in clocking have greatly lowered timing errors but you still have only 16 bits to encode the dBs of the waveform. Advanced DACs can compensate for waveform errors through oversampling / interpolation, balanced again by the need to use filters for unwanted sonic noise. Overall: 16 bit / 44.1kHz seems like a decent compromise.
@obidavekenobe replies to @davidnicholas1436: To add that,Such errors are more likely to occur when you down sample digital audio. Up sampling will have no improvement on sound quality. Unless you’re talking about nyquist theory, then that is a limitation within the digital realm, with is why a filter can help.
@ychanan36: CD 💿
@jwwild1: So if SACD's are only 1bit then normal CD's sound 16x better??
@AudioMasterclass replies to @jwwild1: Don’t worry. All those extra megahertzes compensate.
@electricjazzpiano: Ive started producing tracks at 16 bit 44.1khz.. I can easily do higher but I don't hear any difference so fuck it.
@obidavekenobe replies to @electricjazzpiano: Did you upsample your old library? If you did, it’s no wonder why you can’t hear an improvement in sound quality. You’d just made a larger file.
@JoesMusicAudio: Not to mention modern mastering of music has almost all the dynamic range squished all to heck and back. So most songs have less then 6db of dynamic range from the quietest to the loudest parts of the song 🙂
But yea, he is correct. 24bit is what you want to use when making music and saving your masters to. But 16bit is what you want to convert your files to for distribution. But remember folks, if your arguing over 24bit streaming vs a 16 bit CD your missing the point. You OWN the CD, the streaming service is nothing more than a radio service your paying for.
@JimmyN2: 99% of my 24bit SACDs are night & day better sounding than their Redbook cd 16bit counterparts.
@jameskirk2579: Why the gesture with your fingers when you want to quote something ? ????
@georgemcr1802: oh it's already 2 years old.. ok now I found it ...hi I am nobody ... No budget no good ears no audiophile ... Also I've lost the high frequencies from my hearing due to age and my job over the past years (sth like Good morning Vietnam ...anything just played loud) ... so ignorant and broke I got Pebble Pro on sale for 36 bucks! And if you don't know USB and BT connections are limited to 16 bit 48 KHz while the 3.5 jack taking signal directly from the sound card bypassing Pebble's DAC goes to 24 bit 96 KHz ..And I the nobody the oblivious in audiophile music can hear the difference ... A LOT ... so yes we do need the upgrade if we have the budget to spend...well I don't !!! Greetings !!!
@obidavekenobe replies to @georgemcr1802: Rock on!!!
@jazzlouise: How much dynanmic range do you need? 16 vs. 24? It's a big nothing.
@vertigo0105: The vast majority of Humans simply can not tell the difference in sound quality between Standard Definition CD (44.1 kHz/16-bit) and Hi-Res (48 kHz/24-bit). All of he scientific research on this concludes that almost all partificipants could not tell if it was high-def or Standard. A very small percentage of people were able to tell the difference 60% (instead of 50%) of the time (but could not tell the difference 40% of the time); However they could only do this when expensive high end audio equipment was used, in a sound contolled environment. When not using the high-end audio equipment or sound controlled environment, they could not tell the difference. This small percentage of people were either gifted with above average hearing, or were sound engineers (& some audiophiles) who trained their ears. So the difference between high-def & Standard is extremely subtle for a very small percentage of people under extreme circumstances. Other there is no audible difference!!
@soapberrygreen: I am not sure if 96/24 isn't any better than CD format in home audio. Perhaps 96/24 offers a bit of advantage in some contexts., which is hard to rule out completely. It may have something to do with digital filter design or people being subconsciously affected by ultrasonic frequencies they cannot consciously hear. In my own experience, I have not perceived any real difference, and I won't intentionally seek 96/24 materials. If there really is a tiny difference, it may be like switching from a good RCA tube to a premium Telefunken tube. Most audiophiles are just exaggerating and imagining things all the time. Putting some Scotch tape over the grille of an open headphone may have a bigger sonic effect than 24 vs 16 bit. So don't worry about it.
@MarkMonforti: Both of those paintings on your back wall. Are in a museum 5 miles from my house
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MarkMonforti: They’re fakes. I left them when I stole the real ones.
@MarkMonforti replies to @MarkMonforti: @AudioMasterclassnext time your doing a heist in Chicago lmk, I can be the driver
@holgerhansen5643: Klingt halt deutlich besser.
@rbaxter286: Sorry, I am NOT going to get handicapped by having to stick with GREEDY, VENAL STREAMING SERVICES for my music and audio.
You STILL have not answer the challenge, "Tell us your MIRACLE CURE and DEFEND IT AS REASONABLY SUPREIOR!"
@AudioMasterclass replies to @rbaxter286: Firstly you’re clearly not sorry. You’re somehow angry that people have the opportunity to listen to almost the whole history of recorded music for what used to be the price of a CD per month. Secondly you can buy downloads if you want to. You have the choice. Thirdly, hey my music is on streaming and you can buy my downloads from Bandcamp. Stop being sorry. Go to Bandcamp and buy my music. https://davidmellor.bandcamp.com Put your money where your mouth is.
@trespasser121: As Amazon have been upgrading 16 bit tracks to 24 bit, I could CLEARLY hear the difference
@br549-c4q: If your grandmother installs 16 chocolate chips in one cookie and 24 chips in another, is the 24 chip cookie better or overkill? Is the 16 chip cookie "good enough" or "just right"? Ponder that!
@cpu554: It's all in the mix
@fredlupin: You are totaly right! People listen through crappy speakers on a computer so consumer wont feel any difference.. Plus music sources are awful plugins with huge useless specs. recording bad sources through good convertors won't change the problem. I hear differences between 48khz 24 bit DAT master and a CD, with studio monitors. but the CD is good enough for the audience. And 96 khz and more are useless if we are not working into restauration and noise reduction...
@DjNikGnashers: I always stick to a maximum of 70 mph in my car. Until I get off the driveway.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @DjNikGnashers: I have to reverse off mine so it takes a little longer.
@Supergeologist: Like many others have noted on here its poor, lazy production and sound engineering on modern music that makes the difference. I have some cracking older music that just sounds fantastic. Unfortunately if your tastes are more modern then I might suggest a top end hifi is a waste of money.
@christophervan6966: A chain is as strong as the weakest link. My system is nice good chain but the second I play a badly recorded CD I can hear it. At least with your gazillion bit streaming you are absolved of bad quality CDs.
@grattanvaz1614: Bullshit, not even one and a half times better. Cd still sounds the best. Not interested in the this stupid theory.
@jamesmay3941: What's important is recording engineering, production and mastering. I'd rather have 16 bits of great recording than 24 bits of crap. We also need to remember that ultimately we are trying to reproduce as faithfully as possible musical performances of instruments and voices. I'm the bassist in my band and believe me that in some gigs you wouldn't want to reproduce some of those sounds! Studio recordings are fake versions of live performances and are usually far too perfect anyway. If you're an audiophile and want the most faithful sound, go to some local gigs!
@arturbomert9877: When it comes to quality, remember that we are comparing 16-bit Wave files with 24-bit mp3s
@gribbler1695 replies to @arturbomert9877: MP3 quality is measured by bitrate. A bitrate of 256 kbps is almost CD quality.
@arturbomert9877 replies to @arturbomert9877: @gribbler1695The Dali Clocks poster is theoretically the same as the artist's original canvas and painting😉
@nunyabidness7547: your hearing never improves..only gets worse
@TerryPoulin: This is perhaps one of the better explanations that I've ever seen, and didn't involve maths chalked on a blackboard or a signal on an oscilloscope. I must say, the bit of cheek over 8-bits sampling especially nicely done. Both as a programmer, and someone who considers CD a suitable reference for what I can hear, I can appreciate this explanation. The next time someone grumbles at me over sample rate and I feel like pointing here, well, there's no solutions to some problems.....
@mdp581: What the listener needs are speakers that convey the sounds of the recording, whether 16 or 24-bit. Its the same as photography equipment, results from a very expensive camera will not be seen if the lens used is not of decent quality.
@tonyhirst9319: There’s no mention here about playback equipment. I have a Hegel H360 driving Keff reference 3’s. CD’s are played through a Hegel Mohican connected with Audioquest Water XLR cables. I stream through a Bluesound Node connected with a €100 coaxial cable. CD playback is better than streaming in every way. If I have the music available on CD that’s what I’ll listen to. I’m thinking about upgrading my streamer to match the Mohican but first step will be to upgrade the Coax cable.
@TurboMountTV: From a listening point of view, did A/B testing: Apple Music 24 bit lossless sounds better than Amazon 24 bit. No doubt, Amazon Music lossless is good, but I could easily tell the Apple Music difference. But I prefer the Amazon App interface, so there is that ;-)
Then there is new ATMOS format, which is even better and CD doesn't do.
@billstensrud8201: I may not be qualified to comment but in a blind test I was able to identify high res audio vs cd quality audio from Apple Music over 90% of the time in 50 samples. It was incredibly obvious.
@aleks2194: I think the thing to take away from this is that streaming is finally delivering good audio
@paulomontero12: Cd's sound better on my system. Everybody's system is different all depends what u have.
@theancientvoice9272: Well, I recently tried to make the maths on an annual high res subscription, and I concluded I would be better off running on ebay and build myself a fancy and large discothèque, I would probably take years to listen fully. 16bit is well enough to enjoy the music and make the most of my equipment. By the way, with AI music becoming a thing I'm sure my kids will be keen to inherit my originals, just saying. Streaming services are trying to sell you something you can't own and that doesn't ring well in my hears
@cskabos: You are all wrong!! Technicly there is no 8 bits different!!!! No dac can perform better then 21-22 bit in a laboratorium!!! SINAD. But a 16 bit can do 15.5 bit…… and bit does not makes better sound at the end you all see the same analog signal!!!
@guily6669: I use 68bits because we all know what happens after that 🤣
Anyway I use 24bit but can't really hear any difference between 16 and 24 bit or higher even on lossless audio at same exact sample rate on my crap 5.1 speakers...
My soundcard maxes out at 32bit 384Khz but it's all pointless for me, I use like 24bit 88Khz if I remember well and even at this rate I can't notice any difference by lowering it and going above is even worse cause some games seem to not like above that and causes audio issues.
@Zickcermacity: Very often the Hi-res 'remeaster' of a CD from the 1980s will be loudness-war smashed, so you'll have a 24-bit over-compressed mess ot listen to!
@Zickcermacity: The biggest difference between Red Book CD and High-resolution (24 bit or higher) is how well the mastering was done for each.
@rillloudmother: Word up. 16 bit CD quality is definitely better quality then 99.99% of consumer sound reproduction systems can produce. Never mind the audiophiles, lol.
@Michael-xz1nk: I’m very happy with the 16bit I get from Youtube Music (pId streaming). When I have tested Tidal and Qobuz p, I could not hear a difference. I also found their libraries did not compare to YTM.
@kingofbonngo: Now he's coming at me with technical facts again, when it's really about faith.
@normundsveselis8349: Slightly different view about can you spot difference between 16bit and 24bit. I remember, many early CD players had just a 80dB dynamic range due to problems with analog circuits. Later sound cards. Initially 16-bit, then 24-bit cards. Usually these 24-bit cards had better analog circuits than 16-bit. Therefore, 24-bit sounds better. This is just another confusing element in this topic.
@OscarJung-bw8bs: Actually, Spotify is 24-bit now... and Tidal does not use MQA anymore
@mikechaplin1566: The 16 bits gives you a sufficient S/N ratio, but 24 would still give you more discrete levels, and I assume that a top-level DAC could turn that into a more precise analog signals because there are 256 more 24-bit discrete levels between each discrete 16-bit CD level.