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What sounds better 16/44.1 CD or 24/48 DVD with ac-3?

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sdevino Fri, 10/31/2003 - 10:15

It depends on who recorded it, who the artist is, what they used and whether or not you like the music.

Identical material in both formats with proper mastering played on a good system should be almost indistinguishable except in an almonst perfect listening room on a prefect playback system.

Example: 16 bit system: theoretical signal/noise = ~ 96 dB
actual signal/noise is about the same. Played back at 90 dBSPL, the noise will be at -6 dBSPL (or 0 dBSPL since there is no minus).

The ambient noise level in a sound proof studio is between 20 and 30 dBSPL. Which is about 100 to 1000x louder than the noise of the 16 bit system.

A 24 bit system has more theoretical s/n but is still limited by the room and ambient environment.

In other words if you can hear the difference its because of something other than the sample rate or bit depth.

Steve

[ October 31, 2003, 03:21 PM: Message edited by: sdevino ]