16 Bit vs. 24 Bit Audio 

+Roy Unit I can explain what's going on, I work as an acoustical engineering consultant. 24-bit audio simply has a higher range of possible amplitude or level values than 16-bit, independent of frequency. This translates to a range of audible sounds of 144dB from the quietest sound to the loudest sound for 24-bit (which equates to roughly the maximum range of human hearing), 96dB range for 16-bit (CD quality), and roughly 50dB for a vinyl record. So with a 24-bit recording you could capture all the detail of a mouse sneezing at 1m followed by a jet taking off 50m away, while a 16-bit recording and a noise floor set at 0dB SPL (sound pressure level at the location of the microphone), would capture the mouse sneeze, but the jet would be all distorted and clipped (falsely being reproduced at only 96dB). Setting the noise floor high enough to accurately record the jet, say 140dB, means the quietest sound you could record would be 44dB SPL or approximately the ambient level of a quiet home. In terms of playing back audio recorded in the above example, pretend you had an amazing home stereo that could accurately playback the full 144dB range of 24-bit audio, in a perfectly sealed anechoic chamber. You calibrate the speaker output so that the levels you hear match the levels of the point of recording. You listen to the 24-bit recording, hear the mouse sneeze, then hear the jet take-off. Assuming you can still hear anything, you play back the first 16-bit recording - the mouse sneezes, then the jet takes off, but this time its only 96dB instead of 140dB, and sounds distorted due to clipping. You turn on the second 16-bit recording, and you hear the soft sound of noise similar to the level of your living room, no mouse sneeze audible, then the jet takes of at 140dB, deafening you again. With a vinyl record, the resulting playback is - with a noise floor of 0dB, the mouse is audible and at the right level, but the jet is only 50dB, and with a noise floor set to capture the jet at 140dB, the resulting background noise is at a whopping 90dB. What you are seeing in the audacity spectrogram is simply that noise floor of the 16-bit file is visible as dark purple, because the range of levels (color axis of the spectrogram) goes from -20dB gain to -120dB gain - a total range of 100dB, while 16-bit only contains information across 96dB of levels, or -20dB gain to -116dB, so the darkest possible color on that 16-bit spectrogram corresponds to -116dB on the color axis legend. As far as listening to the 16-bit vs 24-bit versions, in this case you are only hearing a maximum range of 50dB anyways, because it was recorded on vinyl. For music not piped directly into your brain via USB, you will never notice any difference between 16-bit and any higher bit depth. It's still best to record and mix in the highest bit-rate and sample rates possible, but the final output can be in 16-bit for any practical listening setup.

Personally I have found a good master will sound excellent even as an MP3 file. A terrible master still sounds terrible at 24/96.

I noticed that the 16 bit sounded more 'wider' in frequences and better to listen to. Interesting

The 24 bits are important only when you process the sound because you have more data to work with, just like in photo editing

Nice video. A couple of thoughts for consideration: 1- as producers we spend countless hours trying to track perfect sessions only to then (if mixing in the box) use tape delay, saturation and countless other processes to emulate a vintage or analog flavor. We take our perfection and add "noise"...... Lol 2- What bit depth would vinyl be equivalent to? Reel to reel tape? 3- The final test is always, how does it sound? If you can't hear a difference on a bose wave radio, on a mono speaker or a pair of headphones, my opinion is that it is a non issue. 4th and final opinion: Mastering engineers like to receive files in 24bit so, that's what I give them. Other than that, it makes no difference to me. I think the people who buy records (or iTunes dowloads) but them because they like the music, get a good feeling from it and listen on far less advanced equipment than we use a producers. In most cases they don't even know the words to the song. They certainly arent hearing the things we are trained to hear. So I say, do what sounds good and feels good. That's most important. Just my two penny's worth. I did enjoy the video. Thanks for helping me to confirm my thoughts on the subject.

Unnecessary comparison as the source is poor. Vinyl has an average dynamic range of around 60-70dB, essentially offers about 11 bits worth of resolution. Sampling it at 16 or 24 bits will make no difference. That is why all the old digitization of LP's is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. Even analog studio master tapes using Dolby-A noise reduction can only have a dynamic range of around 80 dB. What is the use of capturing a low grade source at high sample rate?

when you convert from 24 to 16 you are adding dither to minimise quantisation error, this is why you have the high noise on the 16 bit, but that's not due to the 16 bit. if you convert without dither you would have some quantisation error but no high hiss noise added... noise shaping is used to alleviate this, 24 bit vs 16 bit is only dynamic range - 16 bit is well 96dB which is way over what a tape or vinyl used to have. 24 bit is 144dB but this is limited by your converter capacity (I don't think there are 144dB s/n converters, correct me if I am wrong)

I'm sorry, but this video is completely pointless. Using a vinyl source to digitize into a 24 bit file is useless. Even 16 bit audio has greater dynamic range than vinyl (vinyl is about 50-70dB depending on the quality of the record, 16 bit audio has 96 dB). Vinyl is roughly equivalent to 12-14 bit audio. And you aren't even comparing the same master, which makes any listening comparison utterly obsolete. AND, and that's the third problem, you are using a song that was originally recorded onto reel-to-reel tape, which also only has a dynamic range of about 70dB. Utter nonsense.

To mask quantisation errors dithering is applied. Dithering is essentially adding noise, and the higher the bit depth the lower the amplitude of the dithering noise. So most likely, that noise you see is just dithering. If an audio clip is played on 24 bit doesn't mean the dynamic range of it is going to be 144 dBs, it means it can reach that dynamic range if the clip's loudest point is on 0 dB and the quietest point is at -144 dB, but if a song has a dynamic range of 13 dB, you won't find any difference in the dynamic range when comparing a 16 bit version to a 24 bit version of it. So in digital audio, a highest dynamic range doesn't mean you can go louder, it means you can go quieter (except for the floating point modes). Oh and, by the way, the RMS level is not your signal-to-noise ratio, RMS stands for root-mean-square and, to quickly sum up, is just an average level, as opposed to the Peak level, which tells you the loudest level reached. To understand this a bit better I recommend you to take a look at "Principles of Digital Audio" by Ken Pohlmann :) I hope I was of any help to you!

I can't believe that you even have the Audacity to do this. 😉👌

2:50 "might" RU-vid encodes audio as 256 kbps mpeg.

Using a vinyl record as the source immediately invalidates your test. Get a native 24 bits track.

Its like trying yo pour a can of soda in a a empty gallon container. How much soda do you have? Not a gallon, still a can

hi, nice try. the only problem is that I think you should use some real Hi-Resolution sounds and music and then convert into 24-bit and 16-bit audio files. I will share my own understanding with you and share the variables that affect the final listener experience. First: Mastering! the Top result of the listening experience depends on Mastering of the music file. the way sound engineer laid out the elements of sound and music on the song dictates how good, average or bad our experience is. PearlJam for example; their first album had cleaner and more polished sound of recording compared to some of their later albums. an analogy with the visual image can be helpful. an HD picture with perfect dynamic range would look nicer and sharper than a badly shot image with a poor dynamic range of the same subject. no matter how much cleaning and sharpening you can do, it just can't compete with the better version. 2nd: playing equipment. play the same song on multiple devices and you will know some would sound better than others. 3rd: listening system. a song will sound different on different types of equipment and you will get a variety of listening experiences. for example; one of my favorite Alan Parson's song sounds stale on headphones and markedly excited on the car stereo. because the drums and cymbals just jump to bite ears inside the car but play like some low wage, part time retired musicians on the headphones. ( no matter how I pump up the audio.) so, there is a placebo effect but not always. There are High-Quality Songs out there that make you go Whoa...! and that is no placebo effect! try youtuber kyama, dude has got some high-quality sounds and songs. by the way. through Blind testing, one can hear the difference and your 16-bit sound was pale compared to 24-bit sound. I tested that with different people without telling them what to expect and the answer was pretty much the same.

Your test is completely flawed! Both songs you used on your test are originally recorded in 16 bit so changing it to 24bit makes no difference!

The difference between 16-bit and 24-bit is the dynamic range. So when comparing the two, don't use an audio source that has a smaller dynamic range than either of them (i.e., a vinyl record)!

Thanks for a very interesting video. I've watched several such videos lately, and have come to the following conclusion. My personal opinion is that the combination of my middle aged ears, and my consumer grade stereo equipment makes the entire issue moot. There is no way I can hear any audio quality difference between vinyl, CD, or a native 24 bit audio file. Therefore the CD is still my format of choice. Vinyl is fun, and interesting, but takes up too much storage space, and is a pain to convert to digital for modern use such as for digital playback in the car. Digital downloads are convenient, but require that I maintain them digitally, and we all know computer hard drives can fail. This leaves me with having to rely on the vendor I purchased the music from as a backup. CDs are great because I can easily digitize them, and the CD itself is its own backup.

Man of course we are not able to tell the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit according to youtube video. Highest quality, I was able to download this video, cuts at 20 kHz (320 kbps), which is lossy codec, mp3 of highest quality.

imagine somebody hearing this witth his phone speaker

Never mix bits. Start with 24 bit end with 24 bit or start with 16 bit end with 16 bit if not you start to here loudness in certain parts of your drops. Sloppy channeling can cause this to, but long story short what ever you export in digital or analog 16 or 24 bit master it in the same format. make sure your audio box have the same connection in each program you use.

Without watching the video, I’d say the difference is roughly 40dBFS in the lowest possible theoretical noise floor. Let’s see, if the video tells me anything else. (…) And no, it doesn’t. Anyone who’s actually working with audio recording, can tell you, that the bit depth pretty much dictates the minimal noise floor. And as for the numbers on Wikipedia: No Equipment on the Planet can even go as low as -144dBFS in noise, especially not, if what you record is a microphone. You’re lucky if you can reach -130dBFS on a microphone, let’s say, while recording a drum kit from up close. Even then though, the input noise will be roughly -125dBFS, if that. But apart from that: 24 Bit is important for recording in studio environments, where the ambiance noise is really low. If your equipment noise is able to be even lower, you can record a higher dynamic range, before the noise floor can become audible. This is important, because of post processing. The music you hear is processen - and quite a bit, as I might add. And many things done in post, reduce the dynamic range of the sound, which is effectively raising the noise floor. The lower the noise floor recorded, the lower the noise floor you have in the master. But does 24 bit make a difference for the listener? Not really, no. Even if you only get a 16 bit recording, the practically possible lowest noise floor is at -89dBFS (RMS) / -86dBFS Peak. To put this another way: even if you listen to your music in 86dB (SPL), which is unhealthy over longer periods, you still would have effectively 0dB (SPL); literally NO noise output. That is IF your equipment can do it. And I doubt, people have a room that is even as quiet as 14dB (SPL), so even if you have the need to listen to it at 100dB (SPL) you have no chance of hearing the noise floor over the ambiance noise in your room. At a reasonable listening level of 70dB (SPL), you wouldn’t have raised noise even in an anechoic chamber. Just to put noise in perspective. As for the noise in your recordings: If you listen to music from way back when, the equipment they used will probably not have been able to reach a noise level much lower than -96dBFS to begin with. So even a perfectly digitized master taken from a somehow pristine master tape, would not have a noise floor lower than what 16 bit of bit depth can do. And let’s say they can make happen in remastering: If your noise floor is low enough, a 16 bit recording will call it literally zero information. So whatever you use for playback will not even register as a noise floor that’s being played back.

Hi Everyone, this is quite interesting, however, everyone is missing the point that even if a frequency is beyond the range of human hearing, we're still affected by it. Our auditory processing responds to frequencies well above the 'standard' 20k limit! Have you ever felt chills from listening to a great piece of music? Or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, have you felt a pounding in your chest when a powerful bass drum is properly recorded? Or maybe experienced the feeling from an explosive device, captured by a news team. Our senses are more aware of all of these things, whether we're hearing them or not! It works to our advantage to be able to capture any sounds around the range of human hearing.. Thank you for the fun! Lary

All a bit rate does is reduce quantized noise. So yes it improves sound quality but it's not that much of a difference between 16bit and 24bit

Lol recorded from a record... That is literally THE worst way to analyze the difference. A vinyl record has about the same fidelity as a piece of rye bread. If you think it can achieve anything near 16 bit, not to mention 24 bit, you need to educate yourself on audio. Try making your own recording with an acoustic guitar and you WILL understand ALL the benefits of 24 bit. especially when you have numerous tracks and work with different 24 bit effects. When the material has been through many digital chains with volume changes etc it will definitely affect the result.

maybe the high noise is too high and quiet to hear... -120dB is 0.000001 in the proper volume scale (0-1). the designer of spek is totally wrong, as volume is one-dimensional (using colors is wrong), linear (using dB to base color scale is wrong) and frequency is in octaves, and therefore logarithmic (using linear frequency scale is wrong). Photosounder does it right, as long as you select Vision Mode for a grayscale spectrogram instead of the ugly blue-yellow-white one.

So this is a very technical and scientific way of telling me to just stick with 16 bit. mixdown. Got it!

I like to stick within the realms of human hearing, but maybe making an albums for dogs would be fun.

As soon as I was told which one was the higher bit rate I could tell, despite there not being a difference. Magic.

Btw you can hear the difference with base for example I lisined to a 32 bit song with a lot of base it almost blew out my sub then I lisined to the same song but 64 bit the base is crispy no Distortion

i bought album online because i couldn't wait for it to get in stores and the first thing i noticed when i eventually bought the cd too was the difference from the cd version and the online version, in my quest to see why the online one sounded better i found the difference was the online one was 24 bit. so now i'm here to confirm if i am/was imagining things. because i actually expected the online to be equal or worse than the cd version hence the reason why i must always have cd. but now that i have noticed the difference i'm prob. not going to buy cd's anymore. i can totally hear the difference with i guess high end headphones.

Well, the video is great, but to my understanding there is an error in getting a 24 bits track from an Audio-CD because the CD is already recorded in its standard 44khz/16 bits format (20hz-20khz) and you can't send it back, so you're just taking a 16 bits track and putting it in a bigger room, not a real 24 bits track. That's why you can't tell a difference between them. Both tracks are the same!! You should have done the experiment by rendering an ORIGINAL audio project to both, 96 or 192khz/24 bits (Hi-Res) and 44khz/16 bits (CD quality) and then compare the files (without burning to CD). I have listened to albums like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in standard CD and remastered Hi-Res SACD, The Eagles Hotel California in both formats, Olivia Newton John's DVD-AUDIO (lossless), among others from my collection, and the difference is strikingly noticeable. Equipment I'm currently using: Athena Technologies AS-F2.2 tower speakers (4) + center + Energy subwoofer, Pioneer THX Ultra2 receiver and OPPO DVD Audio/SACD player. To listen to portable digital tracks I'm using the KZ-ATE (15hz-29,000hz) and the KZ-ED9 earphones (7hz - 46,200hz).

I find sample rate plays a bigger role in overall fidelity doesn't matter to me if its 16, 24 or 32bit (good luck finding listenable music in 32bit)

Heard the difference right away. Using headphones the details on the trumpets and highs are richer on the first one. The bass has not much difference at all.

great vid, u put a lot of effor into it, vape naysh

i can differentiate easily the example sound you gave in the video using my slightly worn out headphone, for me 16 bit feels more firm, and the sound produced by instruments feels more contrast to each other than 24 bit. while 24 bit feel more smoother and well mixed to each other. personally i would prefer 16 bit.

Noise difference between 24 and 16 bits is not 50%. It's 48 dB! Each 6 dB changes signal TWICE in power. So 48 dB is 256 times less noise. (144-96=48. 48/6=8. 2^8 =256) But it doesn't matter because 96 dB SNR is already PERFECT. 24 bits are usefull only in studio work for keeping signal quality while it's many times processed with effects. And some noise in 20+ kHz range doesn't make any harm for music because most people can't perceive anything higher then 18 kHz.

Isn't that noise at -110~-115db? That basicly means that it's below your fancy stereo's noise ratio right? So at a point where you'd amplified enough to expect to hear that, you'd instead hear the noise generated by your equipment instead. Am I right?

I can't believe your lack of understanding here. You can not turn a 16bit file into a genuine 24bit file. All you've done is copy 16bit resolution into a 24bit file format. It's like copying a 128kbps MP3 to CD and expecting it to be CD standard - it's not. It's still a compressed MP3 transcoded. It won't get any better. To hear genuine 24bit recordings you need a recording that was recorded at 24bit resolution - the best being at 196kHz sampling frequency. You can't put 10p in the machine and turn it into a pound unless you have the other nine 10p's - crazy 😜

So, my small amount of experience was that if you turn up the volume, the quiet parts stayed relatively quiet, and the loud parts got a lot louder. It's like an HDR photo, it isn't any clearer, it's just that the bright parts are brighter and the darks are darker.

Go analog...an infinite number of bits that digital can only approximate....!!!

Bit depth properly dithered purely effect the noise floor.

The dynamics are different between 16bit and 24bit. That's the major difference. Also the song is a bit cleaned from noice. And I told the difference on the first try. I am using my nokia 6 smartphone and sony inear earbuds.

You may need 24-bit during edition to get 16-bit dynamics in the final result, like you may need RAW images because you get an over/underexposed picture, but a perfectly exposed (or corrected) image can be 8-bit JPG.

cough, dither, cough

32-bit audio only benefits the audio guy thats is doing the editing.

When I got the feeling of this is a more natural sound experience specially when recordings of real instruments I usually got the 24 bit right choice...With synth is getting more difficult

my friend, I think there are many things you didn't take into account. As a result, all your tracks are 16bit. I enjoy listening 24bit because I know how to get that taking into account software and hardware particular qualities and sample rate. All your video is mp4a.40.2@192k, How the fuck I can tell differens if all your "16bit" and "24bit" examples in the video encoded with the same format - this current video and audio format??!

Too many variables..........the quality of your equipment and your hearing range and ability....and experience. If you have spent years doing multitrack recording and mixing, your ear will certainly be more adept at hearing differences, faults and so on. Also 24-bit means the noise floor is further down, away from the music. So in effect you achieve more dynamic range, because the noise is no longer a factor as it is with 16-bit, where it shares the same narrower range. It also means the music has more breathing room, and there is more space between the instruments etc. This means the bass frequencies have more room to exist, without trampling all over the other surrounding frequencies. The top end also sounds more airy as this too has more space to itself. All very subjective of course but this is how I hear things. Normal CD sounds quite flat and congested to my ears, and on badly recorded and mixed digital music it can even suffer from distortion and ear fatiguing overall sound.

Nobody listens loud enough, that they could hear all the detail (even if it was there in the first place). If you wanted to hear that bottom (least significant) bit of 24bit recording, you would have to listen in a totally silent room (with noise floor at 0 db) while your audio would be playing at 144db volume level (i.e. pain in the ears and permanent hearing damage). Now consider a practical 'quiet' room is at around 30db noise, so you must add that to 144 (in order to raise that 1 bit above room noise level) and you get 174 db -- a volume level of instant ear-drum rupture. In reality, there's seldom much more than 60 db of signal in a recording anyway. Imagine recording a band playing at 100db spl while room noise is at 35 db and you end up with a 65 db signal-to-noise master recording to begin with (apart for drummers, few instruments or singers will produce more than 100db of music). No wonder why Vynil lovers don't complain about sound quality (even though Vynil can only hold 70 db (

thank you my fellow audiophile, this couldn't be done any better. i think i covered all of my concerns. now i can continue to save gb's and gb's of space!

Awesome video. I was just thinking about making an A/B test between 24 bit and 16 bit. Now I don’t have to.

The "noise" on 16 bits audio is propositional! When you down-rates the audio resolution from 24 to 16, the converter software will put some noise to reduce the distortion of the digital quantization, and so make the sound more natural to our hears. This noise is called dither.

*24 Bit audio is a waste of space and time. 16 Bit has a volume range of 0db (silence) to 96db (a motorcycle at twenty feet) and a frequency response of 20 - 22,000 cycles (beyond human hearing). All you need.*

Music is like a love affair. If it sounds good to you. that is what matters. you can take a bad recording and play it on a million dollar system and it will sound bad. Now that beaning said I like the 192/24 . I stream TIDAL music.

Interesting approach. One thing though: RMS is not signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)! RMS is the root mean square value (giving an idea of the energy in the audio wave, also used to determine the Loudness). So it is normal that your two samples have the same RMS! And if you try to hear low noise levels above 18kHz, I hope you are below age 20. Otherwise, good luck... And that is just normal. People saying they can hear sound above 20kHz have dog hears. :)

Number 2 is more clean for me

The test has to be 16bit 44hz vs. 24bit 48hz, there is no 16bit 48hz exist, it's 47hz. And that will also degrade the sample rate. So 24bit overcomes better, and i don't know about the human ear 20hz statement made from a scientist, I agree, that "brain" can't notice over 20hz as the brain only does the imagination. They would probably repeatedly picture about some instruments and guess how full they are in position. That's not how you enjoy the art. Don't worry about the 16bit or 24 bit, or how the music crappily recorded, the sound is not the 0101010 matrix, and the most of them are recorded enough in the file and restorable from the mastering engineers who know how to taste the art, so they easily remaster the music from a century ago. While everyone who was imaging a couple of instrument and then argues about this endless topic everywhere. The quality report should not be written by scientists, engineers, doctors. To be fair let bioengineers do it for the next updated statement.

I have been an audio electronics engineer for over 30 years; musicality is more important than figures and the best DAC IMO is the 14 bit TDA1540 modified to Non oversampling.

Try to listen to a modern, high dynamic range, (possibly with multiple different timbres of instruments and dynamically uncompressed voice) hi quality and hi resolution original recording (for example Jazz or classical): you will most probably spot that the 16bit version will sound noticeably more “flat”. It is not at all a matter of more theoretical dynamic or pure SNR.

Of course 24 bit is better. That's like saying 240 Hz monitor isn't better than a 144 Hz because YOU can't tell the difference. Skeptics hold back progress...

my question may be slightly off topic... but, the upper limit of the your chart is 24 khz, and its the upper range where most of the difference occurs. Would it be likely to say the higher the khz the more noticeable the difference would be (between 16 bit and 24 bit)? Coyotes hear up to the 80 khz range, Some predator call makers are using 24 bit recording.

It makes less sense (or none) at the mixdown level (exported file). But 24 and 32bit gives you much more headroom at the recording level and while you work on your DAW. That's about it.

24 bit makes sense if you want to listen to really high SPL. The higher you crank the amp the more of the noise you will get, but you need an amp that has higher than that 96db signal to noise ratio that the 16 bit file has. So you will have to get a high quality amp.This is also worse for cinemas, because in cinemas you should get 105db of audio at the listening position, and 115db of bass. Playing that loud in a scene that is quite you might hear static background/humming noise.

You are missing a very important point in this argument. There is no work being done in the 16 bit level, but enormous work done in 24 bit and 32 bit. The more expensive DACs are 24 now and will soon be 32 bit as a standard. Who cares if the hearing can really differentiate, but the manufacturers are making better DACs to and even better tomorrow. In other words 16 bit will never receive additional research in the future.

not trying to brag, but I can tell the difference. 100% of the time I can always tell the difference in blind tests like this. just listen to the high freq tones like that trumpet. you can just hear that lip smacking richness of the horn. sounds like a midi file at 16bit. thanks for this demonstration. Im trying to get my friend to go on tour with 32 bit exports of his backing tracks for the DJ, but he dgaf can you beleive it!

aren't there nuances that the brain picks up without perceiving in the conventional manner and the noise floor of lower bit depth audio can destroy those nuances with that static sound that some hear and some don't? Also I would imagine the quality of the DAC the individuals hearing and equiptment does make a difference, an analogy would be without post processing in RAW format a 24mp camera with a compact sensor in low light with a high iso setting the outcome is a noisy or grainy messy image the picture is there but you would have to squint and a 24mp camera with a full format sensor in the same lighting with the same iso setting the outcome is a clearer crisper and cleaner image with megapixels being the dynamic range and iso being the noise floor or bit depth. I can see a digital image that someone thinks looks good that they took on their smartphone and think, that's shit. With audiophiles I would assume its the same principle they can tell the difference between a good and bad overall sound but then again taking a picture of a shit picture with a good camera still produces a shit picture so I can see why audio up-sampling or trying to DAC a 16 bit original sample to a 24 bit would be pointless and probably worse adding extra pshh blips and blop errors with shit DAC equipment.

I think it matters more what bitrate the songs were originally exported. It seems pretty counterintuitive that a song originally exported in 16 bits for example, could be increased in quality because converting it to 24 bits would be kinda of just like making a recording of a recording, you can’t make it sound ‘better’ or at least it won’t be 24 bit until you re master it at 24 bits.

No expert here, but I've noticed files exported in Audacity all seem to generate that weird cloud of high frequency noise in Spek, whereas other software (like dBpoweramp) does not, even when dithering or converting to another format.

What you see on the spectrogram is either the dither noise used by default before truncation process or the quantization noise if the dither wasn't used. So if you recorded the data directly from analog into 16 bits and 24 bits resolution the spectrograms would look identical.

you can't made this video, youtube compress the audio to 128kbps so this is useless

yes there was all out of difference with nom 1 is 24bit before that you can tell me and it was a good video nom 2 sounds like stereo sound and nom 1 sound like higher sound quality nor the nom 2 i have 7.1 green usb razer headphones and thare all out of difference

Pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine will effectively speed up the metabolism and may temporally give a person the ability to tell the difference, however it's not possible to tell if this would be an hallucination or not. :D

I can tell a difference💯 16 bit sounded better for this sample

Well if you can tell a difference between 16&24 bits go buy a good DAC and speakers and at least, Hi res files with CD version to make A/B. CD quality is absolutely terrible. Try making an A/B between David Bowie, Five Years in 192Khz/24bits then quickly switching to CD. You will be blown away. And I haven’t test DSD yet ! Remind you that your ears might not be enough trained. Especially if you listen MP3,AAC everyday.It takes quite a long time before to recognize the difference. But when you hear it, no way to go back on streaming platform like today (except Qobuz). Because music is emotion and tension it needs a full dynamic range to express its beauty.

Man, I think most people will not find much difference between 16 bits and 8 bits recordings. I did make some tests before MP3 era, and I didn't have much space on HDD to store 16bits samples. Therefore I used 8bit samples and it played quite well! The only problem was some noise if audio is played at low volume, this is all because low signal to noise ratio. 8 bits gave only 255 volume quantisation levels. But if played loud enough, you'll hear no difference. So difference with 24 bits is even harder to notice. Sample rate makes much greater difference! Look, 8 bit @44100hz sounds way better than 16bit @22050Hz.

I'm just a hick from the sticks of Kentucky. I have no audiophile credentials therefore I am absolutely not qualified to profess anything about digital audio. Having said that, I can easily discern 16/32 from 16/44; and, I can easily distinguish 128k from 256k. I can not distinguish 256k from 24/192. What this means to me is I can be completely satisfied with iTunes downloads at a fraction of the expense of hi-res downloads. And, so far, the only useful application for hi-res in my pursuit of recorded music enjoyment has been the pleasure of the multi-channel SACD experience. BTW, I really enjoyed your video. You are a critical thinker ad it shows.

So if an music album is remastered to 24-bit, does it make the album better? Is it worth buying? I have the original CDs, so is it any differences? Is it any better? Is it worth it? Is it like 5.1 surround sound remixes? The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s, White Album & Abbey Road was remastered to 5.1 surround sound. What does 24-bit means? Is it 5.1 surround sound remixes? The Dutch prog rock band Focus is also releasing a 50th Anniversary box set now with remastered material. It says it is a «24-bit remaster». Is it worth it when I already have the original CD albums?

16Bit sound was better (More alive, dynamic) to my ears.

This whole experiment is extremely flawed. If the CD was 16 bit, then upconverting to 24 bit should not add any details that weren't there in the 16 bit copy. you can't create that information from thin air, it has to be present in the source you are starting with. Also, you are guaranteed not the hear 24 bit audio from this because this YT video is encoded in opus (251), which is 16 bit.

Hmmm... Are you saying that's why 16 bits was the chosen standard, because it matches the average dynamic range of standard human hearing. Anything above would basically be a pointless exercise. If it is mixed correctly (and not compressed to shit), 16 bits would be enough, the noise would be below the threshold of hearing. Never understood why 16 bits were the chosen standard, such 'low resolution' appeared to be an odd choice to me, but it actually makes sense, if my crude assumption is correct. RAW 16 bits at 44khz on a 700 MB CD makes for roughly 2 hours of listening time, without any overheads. I don't know much about CD technology, but I'd guess there is a fair amount of error correction with non-négligeable overheads. So again, given the average listening time of roughly one hour / seventy mins per album.... The original standard makes sense.

RMS is not Signal to noise. An SNR of -17 would be terrible. RMS is "Root Mean Square" so signifies the average audio level in dBFS. Glad to see you are informing people about 16bit vs 24bit though. The only difference between the two is the noise floor. This can be proven by a null test. There are still some people that claim to be able to "hear" a difference, sadly they are mistaken as the only difference is down 90dB under the music. Just to qualify these statements I've been a professional sound engineer for 25 years and work for the major labels mixing, mastering, post production and consulting.

Basically the bit depth change the SNQR, this means that higher bit depth will handle more volume levels it goes from 96.33dB for 16bit and 144.49dB for 24bit, this mean basically that you will not hear a lot of differences in the frequencies ( i suppose you use a 48Khz sampling rate, as your max graph frequency is 24000Hz ), but in the levels. If a 16bit sample have a value of 1, the same sample at 24bit will have a value of 0.666, this means that on your spectrum analyzer, the lowest high level are near two times lower with 24 bit depth. :)

Do you guys really believe that anything recorded in the early early 80's could benefit from a 24 bit remaster, when having been primarily recorded back then for vinyl, as CD's were just started to show up ? Most recordings (even after 1995) do not take advantage of dynamic ranges at or exceeding 80 dB. Even when recording sound in a full quality 24 bit, 96 KHz capable studio, the benefit of that can be negated by the potentially excessive compression used in mastering, in an attempt to bring up the volume and appeal to the pop culture consumer masses. Caveat emptor.

You choose the wrong music to compare. Musics with large dynamic range will sound much better on 24 bits. I mean with dynamic ranges of 20 LU's or more. For example classic music. Especially in those moments where the instruments are playing quite low you will hear thequality difference between 16 bits and 24 bits.. Also, it is important to remember that once information is gone it is gone, forever. For example CD's are encoded using 16 bits so recording CD music into 24 bits encoded file won't make any difference at all. Also LP's and cassete tapes have low dynamic ranges so encoding them into 24 bits also won't do any good.

everything you hear on the vinyl record is on the cd minus the brickwall limiting & eq adjustment made by the cutter during vinyl transfer.the problem is unless you have a digital to analog (dac) chip that can convert all the music from the cd 99% of devices don't?your only going to get 2 dimensional sound instead of vinyl 3 dimensional sound & hi-res audio is still (2d) unless you can decode it properly! same goes for sacd/dsd audio without proper converting you get the same (2d) sound. thats why i post process all my digital/cd audio to sound like vintage vinyl.takes about 10 minutes to process a cd. the key is to change only the sample rate (44.1) & not the bitrate (16) as changing both together & you lose the (3d)sound. also when upsampling the sample rate only go up 1 level from 16/44 to 16/48 any higher & you lose the sound by putting the audio into too large of a container. also it makes a difference what converting software your using - although all software upsampling from 16/44 to 16/48 improved the sound quality i have only found (1) software that crossed the line into the (3d) vinyl realm that software is weiss saracon converter.now after you upsample from 16/44 to 16/48 you downsample back to 16/44 & the (3d) vinyl sound is clearly heard from the converted digital file & you can play back on any device & the (3d) vinyl sound will remain.i have made some before & after upsampling examples using cd/digital audio for you to listen to & judge for yourself here is the link let your ears decide my friend www.dropbox.com/sh/l9aqeyo3c2oyf71/AAAsgmH_Dfnps84cnlJd3UFUa?dl=0

Nobody is hearing that noise above 20k. The audio setup required to experience the dynamic range of 24bit would be crazy, and then environmental factors like the room or nature would muddy the sound, make the setup obsolete, and thus hearing and enjoying any difference would be moot. Record 24 bit, render and playback 16 bit.

Don't assume that 32 bit floating point has enough resolution/precision here. 32 bit IEEE-754 floating point have 23+1 bits in the mantissa, but one of those bits is for the sign (+/-), so only 23 bits actually count towards precision. So, there might not be enough precision in a 32bit floating point number to accurately represent 24 bit sound. Also, I'm almost sure that youtube only uses 16 bit MP4 encoded audio.

nice video, nice discussion, nice links! Re: 24 vs 16 filesize. Not best to say 'nearly twice as much', when you readily know you mean exactly 50 percent more, which you went on to express that anyway. Not a criticism, since you clarified it well, but of course your discussion deals directly in quantities, so a correction almost worth mentioning. I have a relevant question.. does the noise floor 'add up' when mixing (combining) tracks in a DAW. This might make is more important in that case to record at 24 bit.

I have this album on Vinyl, it might have been recorded on analogue tape, but the liner notes say it was mixed digitally, it doesn't say what machine was used but you can bet your ass that in 1982 it was 16/44.1 (maybe 48kHz ) making recording it at 24 bit pointless, just buy well mastered albums and enjoy your music on a good hifi system, forget hi-res, nothing but a waste of space

What about the sensitivity of the human ear? It could also be that we cannot hear the higher frequencies as much as the middle and lower frequencies. This could be the reason that one cannot really tell the difference.

Really good RU-vid article Roy. Thank you. [Spoiler] In a way I'm surprised I thought the 2nd clip better. Hmmm.. that gets me wondering why...

Yes I hear the difference. 1. Sounds more clear and 2. Sounds less clear, like music with tv static. It also sounds like few music notes were missing. Also I am sorry but u have shitty hearing range for not being able to hear the difference. Also before buying an audio equipments please do a top 10 earphone and top 10 amps on Google. Also hearing frequency range changes the more u listen to high resolution music or songs. Also scientist says that hearing range of human are "about" 20 to 20,000hz. They confirmed "about" not absolutely. There is a game song called (the last song) from drag on dragoon 3. I listened to that song from 3 different earphone they always sounds a bit different. a. Xiaomi Piston 3, b. Samsung ehs64 stereo, and my last c. 1more single driver. Please listen to them in abc order but use only one earphone at a day. Please do try so that your shitty hearing range may become better.

I think 24 bit sounds better than 16 bit . Converted my mastered 16 4trk songs using software sound forge . Convert or re-saved my 16 bit WAV into a 24 bit WAV . I did absolutely nothing except that . And I could Hear the guitars better and drums in the mix although he’s right , it’s hardly noticeable to the average listener

I guessed it. 16 bit sounded smeared and noisy. I viewed the video in 1080p and listened through my NS-10s at a low level. Odd that converting 16 to 24 would make that much of a difference. It shouldn't. If anything it should just sound the same. It's possible that when it converted to 24bit, it sank the original "noisy" track down and left enough headroom to make the track sound cleaner. I don't know how the technology works and It would be subjective to say it sounded better, but I think it did.

Bit of a flawed experiment unless you have the original recording captured and mixed at 24bit to begin with. No point taking a 16 bit file and saving it out at 24bit regardless of your daws internal 32bit float which just equates to more working internal headroom within your daw. Interesting that you see a greater noise floor. Does Audacity apply dithering to 16bit conversions by default?

You can imagine this like taking a lower resolution image and up-converting it. Our TV's do it all the time with video that is at lower resolution than our TV's native resolution. With imagery a process called interpolation adds pixels to increase the resolution.... It does not improve the image. The same can be said for audio recordings. A record was used to record two tracks, in 16 bit, and in 24 bit. The failure here is that the record is a poor master to record from. Try again with a master track that was recorded digitally in 32 bit, then you can hear the difference between 32 bit, 24 bit, and 16 bit respectively.

The fact you used FLAC as opposed to wav or AIFF, your test is already flawed. FLAC is not as lossless as advertised. A wav or AIFF 96Khz 24 bit is 4096 kbps. that does make a difference. Also, what soundcard are you using? I've been in mastering for a bit over 30 years, and use a reference set up at home for restoration work and archiving my own analog recordings. If you A-B an uncompressed version with a FLAC , you may notice a granular aspect to high frequencies. Your gear isn't up to this kind of comparison testing.

Here is the truth. If you're recording at home chances are you Need to record 24 bit at 193 kHz. if your recording a professional song that was done by a professional record company then 16 bit at 96 kHz is fine because they use very expensive compressors and mastering equipment and software to bring the sound down to 16 bit. No video will tell you this !!

On my sennheiser headphones 1 the 24bit did come across slightly louder but i didn't hear any difference in quality I think you would probably get a slightly fuller sound from 24bit on a smartphone who knows,the same arguments where being made over flac and 320 mp3's for years but now the difference is night and day

If you hear the difference between 16 and 24 bit, it’s just your brain telling you what you want to believe. In reality, by Nyquist Theory you can’t hear the difference. Maybe with sone mega modified ears you could…