Aphex Twin Syro: Format of purchase

  On 9/6/2014 at 6:33 PM, manmower said:

24-bit probably has its place for technical reasons and studio applications or whatever but for pure listening, is there any scientific evidence that a human subject can discriminate between CD and 24-bit audio?

I failed to get an answer from anyone about this during the Oversteps hype period. I can't even think of a way to analyse the difference. I personally think it's a bit ridiculous!

How about it being a matter of having the best quality recording, whether or not you can hear the difference. It's not that different to buying wav-files, and upon buying immediately converting them to mp3's for personal listening, instead of just buying the mp3 directly.

I'm just gonna hold out for the limited vinyl box from Bleep

(And also preordered the japan CD)

pre-ordered the 24-bit WAVs and sent in a ballot for the $400 deluxe vinyl set

Pre-ordered from windows media player shop in .wma

24-bit wavs and I have the CD pre-ordered on Amazon. Might cancel the CD though. What I really want are some stickers!

  On 9/7/2014 at 8:50 PM, NoResults said:

24-bit wavs and I have the CD pre-ordered on Amazon. Might cancel the CD though. What I really want are some stickers!

Sometimes stuff like that gets sent out with bleep pre-orders. And mebbee record stores will get some...?

I was glad i had the wavs of exai so i could easily load them into max patches w/ a spectrogram visualizer i was playing with! As far as quality i can never tell the difference with anything over 192k mp3.

But I'm excited to get this album on vinyl, only other aphex i have on vinyl is little windowlicker.

  On 9/7/2014 at 3:36 PM, modey said:

 

  On 9/6/2014 at 6:33 PM, manmower said:

24-bit probably has its place for technical reasons and studio applications or whatever but for pure listening, is there any scientific evidence that a human subject can discriminate between CD and 24-bit audio?

I failed to get an answer from anyone about this during the Oversteps hype period. I can't even think of a way to analyse the difference. I personally think it's a bit ridiculous!

Under properly controlled conditions (proper hardware, all files coming from same master copy, etc.), there is no audible difference between a 16-bit 44.1kHz copy, a 16-bit 48kHz copy, a 24-bit 48kHz copy, and a 24-bit 96kHz copy.

The importance of the sampling rate is that frequencies up to half of the sampling rate are perfectly captured and reproduced (see the Shannon-Nyquist theorem). 96kHz DOES have more "data" than the 44.1kHz encoding, but all of that extra "data" (22.05kHz to 48kHz) lies entirely outside of the range of human hearing (up to 20kHz, on a good day).

24-bit samples vs 16-bit samples simply pushes the noise floor down, but you'd blow your eardrums out before you turned the music up loud enough to discern a difference.

There are legitimate reasons to have a higher sampling rate and lower noise floor than CD-quality, but none of them have to do with actual unmodified playback. Applying post-production effects and other manipulations inside of a DAW would be the first reason that comes to mind.

Bottom line: if anyone tells you that they hear a difference between 16/44 and 24/96, they might not be lying (their playback systems could handle different bitrates differently, etc.), but there is not an audible difference under properly controlled conditions.

  On 9/6/2014 at 6:33 PM, manmower said:

24-bit probably has its place for technical reasons and studio applications or whatever but for pure listening, is there any scientific evidence that a human subject can discriminate between CD and 24-bit audio?

No.

And in addition to everything bopslayer said, the only reason to have high bit depths is to have a high dynamic range (so you can clearly make out a whisper as well as a scream). Ultramaximising / hard limiting everything entirely defeats that purpose, bringing the whispers up to the same level as the screams. If anything, I'd be curious if you could actually shave off a few least significant bits of ultramaximised recordings without anyone noticing.

  On 9/8/2014 at 6:14 PM, ZoeB said:

 

  On 9/6/2014 at 6:33 PM, manmower said:

24-bit probably has its place for technical reasons and studio applications or whatever but for pure listening, is there any scientific evidence that a human subject can discriminate between CD and 24-bit audio?

No.

 

And in addition to everything bopslayer said, the only reason to have high bit depths is to have a high dynamic range (so you can clearly make out a whisper as well as a scream). Ultramaximising / hard limiting everything entirely defeats that purpose, bringing the whispers up to the same level as the screams. If anything, I'd be curious if you could actually shave off a few least significant bits of ultramaximised recordings without anyone noticing.

 

http://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_16vs8bit.php

Wow! I didn't think you'd be able to halve the data! That's amazing, considering how bad 8-bit samples usually sound. (Then again, half of that may that my conversion script doesn't dither... I should look into that...) Thanks, that's really neat!

On a related note, I still have a soft spot for Amiga mods, and they're mixes of 8-bit samples hard panned the way rock'n'roll used to be. Almost all limitations can have a certain charm to them.

I am going to buy the CD because I like having physical discs.... Notice I said "going to..." I haven't preordered yet because I am hoping there will be some sort of special edition CD that isn't $400... I am running out of hope because the release date will be here before I know it and it's probably too late for something like that to pop up. I just hate it when I buy albums and then some expanded version comes out later.

I'm also hoping some unannounced preorder freebie comes with the CD. I still have the cards and decals from Drukqs.

Whoa, so now I'm watching Monty's accompanying video, and he says most compact cassette tapes were equivalent to about 5 to 6 bits. (I think I'll take his word for it this time... We have a siggen and oscilloscope but no tape deck.) Yet they didn't sound that bad. Yay compression, I guess... Though I'm glad I have the option to not compress my music, thanks to living in the twenty-first century. :)

Do .wmas come in 24bit?

  On 9/8/2014 at 6:26 PM, ZoeB said:

On a related note, I still have a soft spot for Amiga mods, and they're mixes of 8-bit samples hard panned the way rock'n'roll used to be. Almost all limitations can have a certain charm to them.

Yup, me too :D

Although, the hard panning annoys me so much. I always force mono when I'm listening to 4 track mods.

If you pre-order digital files on Bleep, do they get released for download 9/22 at 00:00 GMT?

  On 9/8/2014 at 11:24 PM, Hijexx said:

If you pre-order digital files on Bleep, do they get released for download 9/22 at 00:00 GMT?

If it's going to be anything like when they released minipops, the server will be offline within minutes and no-one will be downloading anything lol.

Seriously, never seen bleep go so slow as when that song was available.

  On 9/8/2014 at 11:24 PM, Hijexx said:

If you pre-order digital files on Bleep, do they get released for download 9/22 at 00:00 GMT?

For some reason I saw the 9/19 date pop up a lot suddenly. Maybe that's the release date for the digital files, and 22/9 for physical release. Just a gamble though! I don't think it'll be released exactly at 00:00 though, whatever the digital file date is.

  On 9/8/2014 at 10:27 PM, Bechuga said:

Do .wmas come in 24bit?

not sure if you're serious...

I think they can, as WMA-Lossless does exist, but there are exactly zero reasons why anyone would ever use lossy or lossless WMA these days.

Seriously. If you're using .wma in 2014, stop now. V0 mp3 (or 320 mp3, or AAC) and FLAC should be standard for PCM when it comes to lossy/lossless file formats.

Back on topic-- I bought the vinyl release, and I may make a personal rip, but I'll probably just end up 'finding' a lossless digital copy when I can.

Lossless or bust.

i ordered the LPs because I wanted to put speedball printers ink on them and make impressions of them on some paper, sort of like art prints. i dont even own a phonograph, im just into having those physical grooves pretty much. i can get the ink off again with cleaning fluid. i will of course avoid getting any ink on the labels, if there are any.

The 24-bit flac of "minipops67 [120.2][source field mix]" is the same size as the 16-bit flac - meaning it's a "fake" 24-bit file, upconverted from 16-bit. I assume Bleep will fix this before the album release.

Vinyl for me. And whichever is the highest lossless option.

  On 9/9/2014 at 12:37 AM, saikobjorn said:

The 24-bit flac of "minipops67 [120.2][source field mix]" is the same size as the 16-bit flac - meaning it's a "fake" 24-bit file, upconverted from 16-bit. I assume Bleep will fix this before the album release.

lol awesome

I'm a abit amazed at how many people here are still buying CDs. I was sure it was a dead format by now.

to answer the question: vinyl + mp3 for me.