In my experience, how a CD is mixed/produced has a much bigger impact on how it sounds than whether it is 16 or 24 bit. But maybe that is not the point of this video.

I used to be an audio designer. I designed some of the best commercial digital to analogue converters, amplifiers and speakers I or my customers had ever encountered. I hold 3 international patents on different aspects of audio reproduction technology. As you rightly say, CD is good enough. Not only because 16 bits is sufficient to store enough levels for even 20 year old ears, let alone 60 year old ears, but also because the magic of D/A upsampling actually gives you more virtual headroom than the original signal contains, due to the fact that musical instruments only produce smooth waveforms when viewed above about 6 KHz or so, most of them much lower than that. So 20 bit D/A is actually quite standard from a 16-bit signal. So, you are absolutely right. CD is not only good enough, if you (as a human) are listening to the very best audio equipment (everything through to the speakers, very important) you will not be able to hear the difference between a CD reproduction and 24-bit streaming reproduction of the same original audio master. As a comment below from "tweaker man" says, the mastering (and recording) is much more important than the medium.

It's all about the mastering of the music, I have Lots of redbook CD's, that are mastered extremely well & they sound outstanding , I have lots of CDs that sound poor, same goes for sacd and Vinyl, so for me it's all about how good the recording & mastering is, no matter what format its on, great video👍

I have some 16 bit CD's that blow away 24 bit. It all depends on mixing and mastering. I'm not ever going to give up my CD collection for a streaming app.

Excellent summary of why 24 bit audio is so important in the studio but not so important for the consumer experiencing the final mastered mix. Well stated.

Have to agree with you. I have found that the mastering of many “hi-res” recordings to be much better so they should better. I have also heard some amazing 16bit 44khz recordings. Wish they would focus more on better mastering and less on bits and sample rate.

While working for Dolby Labs, we had an awesome listening rooom with some very expensive Meridian kit. We often did blind listening tests and we could not tell the difference between CDs and higher bitrate. A lot of this was done when designing the original Dolby Digital codecs (6 channels stored as digital info stored between the sprocket holes). It had to be highly compressed so lots of listening tests were conducted. But, it had to be damn good.

Far more important than number of bits is the quality of the DAC and it’s associated analog output stage. Most CD players and computers have low quality DAC sections. The DAC is where the digital bits are turned back into an analog output signal, which is what the sound being recorded usually started off as, prior to being converted to a digital signal for mixing and mastering. The magic always happens in the DAC if it is a good one…. Same for streaming.

In a professional recording studio you have multiple channels of music that are summed together when they are mixed. They need the 24-32 bit precision so that when each channel is mixed the noise floor remains low. Otherwise, the noise will accumulate in the final mix. Consumers are just playing the music so they don't need, and likely can't hear, the difference. Chances are the ambient noise in a listening room is much higher than any noise introduced by a 16bit playout format.

I completely agree that 16bit for the final product is perfect ... but having dabbled in recording since the analogue days I recently had a "life changing" experience of the advantage of a 24bit recording. It was simply a "master" where a whole section of a live performance was significantly quieter than the rest of the excellent recording. To match the levels in analogue days would inevitably have resulted in a huge increase in background noise but doing the same with the 24bit recording was like magic ... simply matched the level and still no audible increase in the noise floor! Brilliant! The advantage of bit rates above 16, as explained in the video, is the scope it gives for manipulating the source rather than being necessary for the final mixed version.

24 bits is usable for recording. But 24 bit over 16 bits will not give you anything extra in the final mix that you will listen to. 24 bits is usable for recording because you might want to make some element of the recording more prominent in the mix later. That often means compressing that element so that it will sound more up front in the mix. Doing that compression means that you'll also be boosting noise, and often a lot of it. So in that context, having 24 bit accuracy can be a better starting point before going into the mixing stage. During mixing, you'll typically have almost unlimited headroom in a DAW because they typically work with 64 bit floating point accuracy. That's ridiculously high accuracy that will never become an issue in that context. It's just not an issue there. For the final master, 16 bits will be more than fine. Your favorite audiophile Pink Floyd album isn't going to sound any better in 24 bits because it wasn't recorded with that kind of accuracy to begin with. It was just noisy tape while recording on top of another noisy tape while mastering. There are better reasons why such albums still sound so great, but the number of bits has nothing to do with it.

As an ex recording studio owner 16bit is even more than enough. When we record a single track we record below the 0 db threshold because when mixing multiple tracks total loudness is multiplied. What I'm saying is if even 16bit recording is done with low noise equipment then mixed properly there is no way the end user will be bugged with noise. If your hifi is not up to scratch 24bit signal higher dynamic range will even be more taxing. So guys and gals get your hifi equipment de-noised and don't fall for marketing greed. CHOOSE YOUR HI-FI CAREFULLY OTHER WISE EVEN 50 BIT WON'T CUT IT. IF THE RECORDING EQUIPMENT IS LOW NOISE EVEN 16 BIT SOUNDS WONDERFUL..

A few years ago I set up a test in a good listening room, where I gradually reduced the bit depth on a recording, and asked people to say when they heard a difference. Most people couldn’t hear a difference between 12 and 16 bits, and those that could new exactly what they were listening for (noise).

Thank you for creating these videos. You've done a lot in answering many questions I've tried to figure out and the internet is full of incorrect information that does not make any sense when compared to my personal experience with hifi. From your videos it has all started to make more and more sense and I can understand things I hear better and can pass the knowledge on. Please keep making more!

Good analysis. In summary, 24 bits allows for comfort in recording, without having to bother about recording level, and 16 bits are enough to reproduce the actual dynamic range once the recording has been processed and fine tuned for optimal digital storage taking full advantage of a 16 bit range. Some graphic illustration would have been useful to ease the non engineer viewer’s understanding, though.

It can be said objectively that CD encoding is plenty of dynamic range. After all, the world’s greatest music exists, and has been fallen completely into love with, with CD playback. My producing career spans the years 1975-today so I’ve personally used all the formats. The fundamental reason we moved on to 24 bits was to better accommodate the common studio practice of copying, re-bussing, and other techniques that could easily reveal artefacts in 16 bits. In that, it has worked splendidly. Best to think of it in photographic terms. In 24 bit, we can zoom in losslessly quite a bit.

Agree 100% that's an issue I have been trying to drum into Hi Res fanatics who swear that it is audibly superior to CD even listening on equipment which isn't Hi Res compatible when I have listened more than closely and fail to hear any difference at all. CD is a wonderful medium when it's done properly but try and tell that to vinyl junkies who are listening to a dynamic range of 70db at the very best, which includes inevitable tracking distortion and noise, and you'll be told in no uncertain terms that you need a hearing test. I still buy CDs, I still get much musical enjoyment out of CDs and I would never go back to the horrors of setting up a turntable ever again and straining to hear the system rather than the music OR wasting my money on the con that is streaming.

I loved your explanation and I will check out more of your videos. I just got the 32 bit looper by boss and hope to dither down to 16 bit for performance and recording. I have much to learn and I'm grateful

If anyone thinks they can hear a difference between 16bit and higher bitdepth, there is actually a way to listen to the isolated difference by itself. Load the say 24bit 44.1kHz track into audacity and export it as dithered 16bit same sample rate lossless (wav, flac, whatever else true lossless). Load the 16bit track parallel to the original into audacity and invert it. Now everything that is identical in both the original and converted track is cancelling out. Exporting the audio of both tracks combined into a new 24bit track leaves you exactly the difference of these tracks, simple substraction so to say. Play this as loud as you want. In the very unlikely case that your audio chain offers enough gain to make this track audible, you will agree that the amount of volume would immediately alert everyone in a one mile radius and blow your speakers in seconds if there was either the original or the converted track playing. You can analyze the spectrum of the residual track and find that the noise actually sits as low as -130dB across most of the frequency spectrum. Total signal to noise ratio confuses people a lot.

First time I've listened to your channel and I agree with everything you've said. And to that point, I really appreciate being able to buy so many cheap used CDs at the used book store. 16 bits really is enough and if a CD sounds bad it's because it was poorly produced. Adding bits won't fix that.

Unless you have a VERY good system, and VERY good ears - and - you listen to music where it can possibly matter (classical), then 24 bit matters not vs 16bit.

Very good video .well thought out and executed. I love it when you have comments stating sound & streaming. But as you already said there are a limited amount of steamer companies available. Back to 16 & 24 bit I am quite happy using a good quality cd player and getting the best from that .I must say again a Very good video Gerald 😊

24 bit is useful, if not compulsory, at the recording, mixing and mastering stages. Because mixing and mastering engineers will process the signal. Same process with photography : you may recover a full viable picture from a hugely underexposed photography captured with a 14bit full frame sensor whereas you will never manage with an 8bit Jpeg.

I used to have time to sit down and just listen to music, up to the time my first child was born, then life interfered. I now have the best stereo equipment that I've ever owned, but hardly ever just sit and listen to music. I imagine it's the same for the vast majority of people. So I seriously doubt 16bit vs 24bit matters.

I totally agree with you - 16 bits - the best 16 bits out of the 24 or 32 floating bits we use in studios - is good enough for the listerners market :-)

I feel you did and excellent job explaining the practical application of the different bit rates on this video.👍

Entertaining, pragmatic and accurate content. Good job.

The fact that Red Book CD format is still the Gold Standard for end-user audio in 2023 is a testament to those Sony and Philips engineers of the late 70s / early 80s who settled on the format at the time. Does a listener need 80dB of dynamic range? look at the dynamic range of most recorded music, and situate that in the context of the ambient background noise level where it's being listened to, and how loud it's socially acceptable to have the peaks so that that quietest parts are still above the ambient noise level. Put another way... CD is a building with 96 floors, but probably only the first 20 or so are in use.

Thank you for this video. I've been mastering my own music at 16-bit for many years and I don't see a problem with it. I wasn't aware of the volume increase capability of 24-bit but honestly, anyone who listens to music at a ridiculously loud volume is going to destroy their high-frequency hearing, lol. At the end of the day it's all about enjoying the music anyway :)

I remember reading about a study which sought to answer whether a difference could be perceived by humans, between 16 bit CD's and SACD's. From memory they had around 500 audio engineers listen to some A/B tests and note which they believed to be which. The result? None of the participants could do better than a 50% success rate. In other words, their perception was as good as a coin toss. Or in other other words, no perceived difference at all. Meaning that 16 bit audio seems to adequately meet our needs.

Man I really appreciate your vids…, context is decisive 🙏🙏

A voice of reason is always good to hear. Thanks for the video!

Truth is, TOO much is never enough when you have audiophiles with more money to throw around than common sense. They hear these minute differences in recordings because they spent so much money, they'd damn well BETTER hear the difference. The placebo effect alone can convince such people that indeed, the $8700 they just spent on a component in their equipment chain really DID bring back amazing improvement in........well, it just did. Just don't force them into a blind listening test.

It’s almost like the CD had some deliberate research behind it. Shocking they didn’t just wing it! 😂

absolutely great!!! > you get to the point.......... warm greetings from germany and from a german musician

Very much appreciated information. Most of it fly's over my head but I understand enough to as i sad appreciated the information so thank you for this. (First time watching btw).

I’d say you did a pretty good job as an introduction to the topic. As someone who dabbled in mastering for CD delivery back in the day, I would recommend Bob Katz “Mastering Audio, the Art and the Science”. There is no shortcut to understanding dynamics, and that’s the easiest to understand, yet comprehensive reference on the topic.

I do hear noise floor in many of my CDs...... of 70's artists. You can hear the noise floor of the studio master tape via the quality of CD. Remember those labels that said "Because of its high resolution, the Compact Disc can reveal limitations of the source tape"?

THANK YOU! I can't believe after all these years this is still a subject of debate. I have a Deezer subscription which provides 16 bit, 1411 kbps FLAC streaming, and I couldn't be happier.

It is one thing to understand complex things. It is quite another to be good at explaining them. Your explanation was, to my mind, perfect. I learned quite a lot. Thank you.

What matters the most is the quality of the recording and instrument placement/separation in said recording. Yes you can tell higher bit recordings if they are done right, they sound more involving with a wider soundstage. Then again, the gear you are using also helps to an extend.

Remember the JVC XRCD's? They proved it's all about the way they were recorded. Their CD's smoked a lot of SACD's of the same album in sound quality. Sad when they gave it up because most people didn't care.

To be honest, I started writing a comment half way through the video as I was getting annoyed (the video was still playing in the background). But then.. I backspaced and started all over again, as you mentioned the most important part when it comes to 24 bit: it is very useful in mixing. So - I do agree 100% with your explanation. Nice work!

Excellent video. Thank you

Long live CDs.

I have a few cd's that have been mastered in 20bit but reduced to 16 bit to work on the cd format...these sound truly remarkable.Its all in the mastering and not the bit rate.

It's enough for me too 🤗 great explanation.

Absolutely brilliant! Thank you 🎉

Please note you do not get completely unchanged or uncompressed 24 Bit through Streaming. But you can get that if you instead download the music from some websites that offer WAV or AIFF. But to make it extra complicated I can also mention DSD which is not PCM at all, instead it is a one Bit with an extremely high sampling frequency. Then there is DXD up to 32 bit and 352.8KHz

Well done, I agree with virtually all of this. What I have said for years is that correctly dithered 16 bit is more than enough AS A DELIVERY FORMAT. Of course we track at 24 bit and we mix in 32/64 bit (whether we choose to or not - but many don't people seem to get that part). But as a delivery medium that will no longer be changed, I am happy to have 96dB of dynamic range be the headroom you mention for my rock/pop/R&B songs that will barely have 20 dB or dynamic range anyway. I see you already have a video tackling vinyl which I am yet to watch. Hopefully it supports the premise that it's a heavily flawed format that has some lovely euphonic tones, but is objectively technically horrible when compared to CD.

Great information as always and real world understanding, no nonsense here. Good.

It's always great hear about sound from the goat himself. Thank you Mr. McCartney!

Cd collecting will remain relevant particularly for collectors. There is a huge amount of music that never gets enough attention nor streamed, and is collected by record and/or cds. Also, the noticeable difference among most people of 16 bit to 24 bit is not generally differentiated to the listener. Just look at the record vs cd debate! People enjoy their medium and truth be told audiophiles with their home gear will not pick up on the differences very much either unless their life long journey system can pick it up. And then again the subjectivity of ones own ears and personal taste remain a bigger factor.

As the hapless commentor who pointed out the 256x increase in resolution in 24bit, I totally agree that subjectively this is likely completely undetectable by any actual human ears. I have thousands of cds and am delighted with the format. Most pop cds don't even use most of the dynamic range available with 16 bit effectively because of brickwall mastering techniques.

Just enough is not enough! Loved it.

You’re good mate. Keep the vids coming 👍😎.

I've only mixed one album in my life, so maybe there's something I'm missing. But I used 96/24. And when I downmixed to 44/16 I couldn't hear any difference whatsoever with my professional grade equipment.

My biggest issue with streaming is... When I have grown up listening to a song unfortunately the members of the band that recorded the song (who are now older and wiser)have decided in their mature wisdom to remaster said song. The streaming services only stream the remastered version which to me sounds worse. So... Find the cd if you want to know what it's supposed to sound like.

Really impressed with your explanation, A great channel, hi from Aus.

Thank you for your precise explanation, that's reveal a lot of thoughts about what the people like me can listen on a CD or a Vinyl or a Reel to Reel and whatever. Indeed in these times of surrounding mass missinformation a lot of people talk about numbers and is suggested to listen better when a system can deliver more "numbers" than another, it's a world of confusion and noise for nothing. My experience is that listening some very good vinyl i have the same pleasure of listening the same good CD, with some little difference due to the type of reading system but always pleasure and satisfaction. Thanks two times.

I'm skeptical, always have been, always will be! To me there will always be more of a difference between two different masters of something, than the difference between the same master stored on 16/44 or 24/96.

I have a pretty good system and find the quality of the recording has more to do with how good it sounds than if it's 24 bits vs 16 bits (CD vs DVD), my PS Audio Transport can play either in it's native format. Also a disk sounds a little better than the same file downloaded from a sampling service, not sure why but it does. The red book recording uses a brick wall filter that kills anything over 22.05khz but filters being what they are tend to get a bit wonky as you get close to the cutoff so 22.05 is cutting things a bit fine. Better to use a 48 or 96khz scheme (gets you to 24 or 48khz filter) to get that filter well out of the way of top audio frequencies. 196 should be better but I can't tell the difference - maybe it's my 75 year old ears? A top notch 24 bit copy of a track really does sound better than a 16 bit version of that same track 9as long as you up the sampling rates) but on many systems you won't know it because the system just isn't capable of resolving the difference between the two.

Fascinating.

100% agree with the thinking. Another topic is sampling rate but that's a discussion for another video. 🙂

16bit is perfectly good and I totally agree with you that professional usage needs some more headroom. The same goes with sampling frequency. The dynamic range of the CD format is even more than enough. The first time I heard CD back in 90's I was impressed by - the silence! Enormous amount of the silence and "air" in recording which made me fully enjoy the music and sound. AAD and ADD were and still are perfect for listening. As soon as DDD came out all this has crashed because the profit ruled of music production and started "loudness wars". The profit today is trying to sell more and more bits and more and more sampling frequencies although it doesn't make sense. The saturation of all this things evolved "vinyl revivals" and "cassette revivals". And what they have? Dynamic range much lower than digital technology, but even more, this type of media require much more care in mixing and production. That's why mine "best way" is to have CD format, but audio production more or less like you'd make for vinyl or tape. In other words, bring back AAD and ADD where you can even use plugins as A because nowadays they are incredible and at the end limit conditions like you're recording on vinyl...

I just want high quality recordings and to enjoy the music. I’ve heard some 24-bit Hi-Rez that sounded horrible and have many CDs that sound excellent so I agree it’s all about the recording process and the sound engineer

Having been a huge supporter of physical media my whole life, I think I'm finally going to start looking at digital options for the home. I use Spotify and Tidal on the go, but I think I really need to start doing more research on a good setup for hi res digital audio at home.

excellent piece.

Any format like tape/vinyl, cd 16/20/24 bit or 24 bit steaming will do fine if you have great recording and mastering, excellent audio equipment, and amazing hearing.

20 bit is enough for audio because analog amps can not control the voltage smaller then that. But since computers work in multiple times 8 bit we ended up with 24 bit. What’s also interesting is the 32 floating bit converters. This one’s can’t clip (they say) which makes them perfectly for field recording.

I'm having a lovely time right now listening to Screamadelica on CD and I am blissed out!!! I may also be blissed out if I listened to it on Tidal but right now I'm not. I'm in heaven!!!

Very interesting. Thank you!

I can’t tell the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit recordings. My main medium for listening is CDs. I also have Apple Music however I prefer CDs because my playback system is better with CDs than it is with Apple Music. There are lots of additional advantages with CDs not least that with the CD what you have won’t change, it isn’t going to be replaced with a remastered version or something like that.

It’s sample rate that makes the difference in sound quality. When I used to work in studios we do blind tests when everyone was worn out from take after take. I wanted to add some fun in so we did this pretty often. Pretty much everyone could hear the difference between 44.1k and 96k. No one could hear a difference in 16-24 bit.

Great Explanation Sir

Thank you. A really great highlight reel of a few nuanced topics in play: tradeoffs and headroom in engineering, variability of playback/listening/recording environment & equipment, logarithms, sensitivity, semantics, the power of marketing and carefully selected statistics that encourage keeping up with the Joneses, and biases encouraged by past investment, for just a few. Engineers build bridges and airplanes with redundancy and slack to keep people safe and allow flexibility in repairs. Blowing a take due to constraints in gain staging might not be an existential catastrophe, but there might only be one chance to capture an inspired performance true to the original, with enough padding that it's unlikely to have overs, high noise floor, or get jacked up in post.

I pretty much agree with everything you said here. In my very humble opinion the difference between 44.1/48khz sampling rate and 88.2/96khz is much more significant (and audible) than the difference between 16 and 24 bit. 24 bit is nice to have but I suspect that very few people can reliably detect the difference from 16 bit.

Everyone knows that real audiophiles don't listen to music. They look at frequency response curves, modulation transfer functions, and S/N ratios.

Nice to hear a man with technical knowledge and intelligence!

Great video. It all comes to samplingfreq, and the DAC at the end. Just to keep the samplingnoise down, and liniarty in the DAC. Lot of the older CD playes suffers with quantisasion noise, but when the 1bit/bitstream was introduced this improved a lot. But still, a good mastered CD in 16 bit will stil be quit enough for most persons.

I used to save my audio in 16 bits , 48kHz, then I switched to 24 bits 96kHz and I must say, the sound is much richer. Of course it wont matter much, if you listen on your phone speakers, but in my home studio I can clearly hear the difference which is probably not 256 times higher, but at least twice as high, judging with my ears alone. Also nice video, I like the fact, that you don't cut every 2 seconds like modern UKpostsrs do.

Overall, I think you make a good case for the topic. If I disagree with any of it, it won't be by much. However, I don't think you are taking all of the factors that effect sound quality into consideration. And just to be clear, I believe you're being 100% truthful. There's just more to the story. I'll just list a few examples that you may find useful' The first thing that needs to be considered is measurements and specs. They can only take you so far. For me personally, when I listen to a stereo system, the most important thing I listen for is timbre. For example, does a cymbal sound real or does it sound like a piece of metal dropped on the floor? Specs can't tell you that. I have done some research into the matter, and I found a few institutions that were trying to come with a way to measure timbre. They're not even close. The reasons cited were timber is a very complicated quality, and that makes it very difficult to measure. Its not something simple like frequency response. This next point is really a continuation of the measurements problem I mentioned above. This has to do with the quality of your CD player. The difference in sound quality between different CD players can be huge. When SACD's first came out, I went out and bought a decent low to midrange player to try the new format. (For anyone who cares, I believe it was a Sony 9000ES, but it was a long time ago, so I don't want to say I'm 100% sure.). When I compared the same recordings on CD and SACD, the SACD sounded better. At this point someone always asks if I was comparing a remaster to an original. No. It was the same recording. However, things became much more interesting when I took a CD and played it on my expensive, high end CD player, and compared that to my new SACD player. No comparison. The higher specs on the new format could not overcome the lesser format played back on superior gear. I believe this is why there's always a heated debate on the topic. Not everyone is listening to the same system with the same music. One last thing I wanted to address concerning CD players and DAC's, is how most people evaluate them. Most judge these products based mainly on the digital porting of the player, such as the DAC chip. The chip plays an important role, buy by no means tells the complete story. How the chip is implemented is far more important. Most of us usually ignore the analog stage of a CD player or dac. The analog section can easily have a much bigger impact on sound quality than the dac chip. If you gave 5 designers all the same transports and DAC chips and asked them to build a CD player, all 5 would sound different. How much will vary, but there will be differences. I do have quite a bit of experience with these types of products, and sometimes I'm asked to give advice what to buy. My answer is don't listen to anyone. Use the advice you get as a guide, but you make the decision. If you can't try a product and evaluate it for yourself, don't buy it. If you don't hear a difference worth paying for, spending money on it is foolish. Just because I'm getting good results does not mean you will. Try before you buy. One thing I see happen all the time is when someone buys a product and they don't get good results. It gets labeled snake oil, and a negative opinion is formed. Down the road, you have different equipment and more listening experience, and the product you labeled as snake oil may enhance your system. That's why its important to make the best choice you possibly can.

I love these videos. They explain and debunk. I have CDs that sound absolutely marvelous, without any unwanted noise and also SACDs/DVD-Audio that sound horrible, so it is not a matter of bits...if we have enough. Someone said that "perfect is the enemy of good"

I like the sound of 16 bits 'done right' - much better than mp3! I use Tidal and it sounds pretty good - I still like the sound of a nice CD though. When I'm mastering I use 32 bit floating point with no dither, for my final mixdown, and 24 bit and 16 bit with dither for the masters I'll deliver - headroom is comforting! Great video again

Adding to the comments about mastering, the streaming services have their proprietary loudness and dynamic range standards, in order to offer a consistent level. They modify the level on top of the mastering. On top of that the modern records and also the modern remasters offered on the streaming services are affected by the so called “loudness war” of music production, that reduces the dynamic range to absurd levels in sake of absurd loudness. That remastering is done using tools such as compression , limiting , saturation, aural exciters etc, mostly on digital domain. While that is supposedly done to a industry standard now, when I compare some of my old CDs to the remastered “master” version available on Tidal, the difference is very obvious for me, the streamed remaster is louder than my old CD but that reduces the quality . I consider those 24 bits are wasted in many cases. But I can only speak about pop music.

Grabbing popcorn for the comment section

Thanks for the chuckles.

I love your videos, they are so informative. Can you say something about the CD loudness wars that ruined CD’s?

I have heard so many albums in different formats and heard flac's with around 800kbps bitrate sound better than 24bit-192khz files. Mix, capturing, so many factors that contribute to it sounding good or not

More than 16-bit is really only useful in multi-track recording, as the noise level of many tracks together could (at least in theory) make a meaningful difference between 16 and 24 bit. But as stated in the video, when we're talking about a mixed track (even if it's surround sound), 16-bit offers more than enough dynamic range for even the most critical recordings. As such, buying 'High-res music' is a bit of a scam. People that claim to hear the difference with 16-bit are most likely hearing the difference between two masters of the same material. In other words, if the 24 bit version was directly converted to 16-bit, nobody would be able to hear the difference in a blind test.

Spot on! Good video.

Great explaining Thanks!

Streaming = you don't own it.

For sound quality? 16bit and 24bit will sound identical, 24bit has a higher dynamic range but its utterly pointless for any music listener, im not sure why people keep dragging up this old argument, it was proven in 1982 that a redbook CD will be all the sound you will ever need. All this high res nonsense is there to make money nothing else, in fact it can sound worse due to harmonics and crosstalk in the high frequencies. What i find laughable the most is when people spend thousands on turntables and amps to try and make a vinyl record sound bit-perfect like a CD, vinyl was never capable of reproducing perfect sound, and it never will be no matter how much you spend, a cheap £20 cd player from tesco will sound better than any record deck. And BTW only classical music can saturate a cds dynamic range, rock/pop etc are absolutely horrible, most songs today have 12db Dynamic range due to the over use of sound crippling compressors A rolex is 256 times better than a casio, but they both still tell the correct time.

Interesting video and I agree with it. Sounds better in theory than in reality :) But on the other hand, listening to a CD, it turns out that the CD player has 24, 32 and even 2x 32 bit converters to improve the sound. I noticed that it is better visible (audible) on lossy files such as mp3, where such a player can fill in the gaps. So the better the audio equipment, the smaller the differences in listening.

The best channel on UKposts. Takes the cake.

We already should have 32bit/384Khz audio CDs

Anyone who knows anything about recording, mixing and mastering can appreciate the skill on the sound engineer(s) no matter what the sample and bit rate same goes for the equipment used including microphones the hardware and then how its all put together on the final mixdown. But to the listener it depends on their own system and whether or not its capable of making the most of the source, playing back through studio monitors as against a Hi-Fi sounds incredibly different same goes for the system in your car or listening on headphones cos I have quite a few and they all sound different - by design

Great video!!!. I guess - and this is just a guess, that high bitrate format would also make sense in applications like live concerts, movie theatres, etc. where you have a lot of dynamics

Thank you!