24bit vs 16bit playback

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I think you will find that the antialiasing filter sets the timing resolution.

And the sampling frequency determines where the antialiasing filter has to be.

Otherwise you'd be saying that it is perfectly fine to use a 48k sample rate with a 35k antialiasing filter.
As it is a 48k SR rate requires a filter no higher than 24k so logically SR determines the possible filter frequency and thus the timing resolution/frequency response.
 
Guys, I don't understand some things here, could you simplify for my basic understanding please, I believe I'm mixing the concepts:

Let's take a simple TDA1541A : 16 Bits ! 95 dB noise floor. And this thought exercice :

If playing a material of (for instance) 115 dB dynamic behavior,what does it mean ?

Assuming it is a concert event with a relative silence at around 35 dB in the rows but that you can too hear the notes played lower (20 dB for instance). WHere are the limit of the 16 bits with this reccording (imagine it has no post treatment and was reccorded with high dynamic studio stuffs, etc) ?

Is it 115 (reccording) - 95 dB (dac chip)= 20 dB missing : I will hear 20 dB of compression on the peaks ?

Is it 115 - 20 dB (the lowest level hearable in the live event) = 95 dB of dynamic I can only hear during the event (difference is masked at lowest volume by the noise of people in the concert room) ; and so if 95 dB is equal to the behavior dynamic of the chip in relation to its noise floor does it mean I can hear all the 95 dB real dynamic of the concert event in real ? (assuming the dac can drive the speaker and is setuped with zero dB of attenuation to be abble to play at concert level)

Sorry to ask the basic....😕 assuming the exercice is to listen to at concert level (non amplified= real dynamic behavior of a big concert for instance which can have impressive peaks in milli seconds which make it for me so lively and the hifi borring in relation to the true event).

Thanks you if you can illustrate it in relation to the bit dpth of the dac chip ? (Let say the pre, amp, speaker allow more than 115 dB noise floor to simplify my understanding !)
No, it does nothing to the peaks (unless something is wrong). The "dynamic range" thing is just like anything else. If you record (with properly set levels, etc) a performance with 115dB dynamic range to a cassette recorder, noise will be maybe 50dB down, and you'll have a hard time hearing any part of the performance that's more than 50dB below the maximum level.

The "magic" part of ADCs and DACs is you can make the audible noise LESS than the usual statistic of number-of-bits-times-6dB to get the noise floor (as in 16 bits x 6dB = the "standard" CD noise floor of 96dB below max).

There's two things that happen:

1. Dither eliminates (okay, technically it decorrelates) distortion of low-level signals in digital systems by adding white noise.

2. Noise shaping is the same as dither except that the noise is filtered so that it's in the least audible band (generally above 10kHz) and thus much harder to hear on playback.

I've always enjoyed reading this - it's not strictly about audio, but I feel it explains the dither thing really well:
http://www.ti.com.cn/cn/lit/an/snoa232/snoa232.pdf

There are also Wikipedia articles on these things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_shaping
Could you clarify the digital signal levels for me?

16bit allows 2^16 = 65536 discrete levels of sampling.
Are those 65536 levels from maximum -ve peak through zero to maximum +ve peak?

i.e. from -32767levels to +32767levels and including zero level? But that loses one level since that adds up to 65535 discrete levels.
Where's the missing level?

Or is it different? Does zero not get allocated a "level"?
Signed 16-bit numbers use two's complement arithmetic (there's surely a Wikipedia article on this). The range is from -32768 to +32767, so it really is 65,536 discrete levels.

I would certainly edit that statement if it were in my power to do so. It's correct but incomplete. Perhaps somewhere else on that page is a statement about how noise at the LSB level decorrelates quantization distortion?
It's not a locked page, so it's within your power. You [as in anyone who can access Wikipedia] can click "edit" and make it say anything you want, but vandalism and such tends to get fixed fast - there are even bots that detect and fix such things.

But Wikipedia is a bit of a strange beast. You can add something that's correct, and it could be taken out by someone else with the explanation "this other article explains that." I usually stick to fixing links and undoing silly vandalism and such.

But maybe here's "this other article that explains that:"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-sigma_modulation
 
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First of all I love that article. The arguments about why the higher sampling rates are worse are particularly interesting... inaudible high frequency components causing audible distortion artifacts.

@Eldam:

Never mind the dynamic range of 24 bits, but the ability to reproduce the finest detail might be more of an advantage over 16 bit. I understood the human ear is able to register 21 bits accuracy under ideal circumstances.

If what you mean by "21 bits accuracy" is "21 bits dynamic range", that rings true. It may even be higher. In extremely quiet environments (ie. anechoic chambers) good human ears can detect sounds under 0dB. The upper limit is a bit more vague, since the ear starts distorting / compressing once you get up over 100dB. Plus y'know, hearing damage. On the other hand, good points have been made that we don't have microphones etc. good enough to capture this extreme range, nor do we have environments which can benefit from this dynamic range of sound playback, outside of research institutions.

There are so many better things to worry about than sample rate and bit depth. I mean come on, we are still (predominantly) using 2 speakers to create a soundfield. This is basically insane from any kind of "realism" perspective, which is usually where the "high-res formats" arguments come from.

16 bit audio isn't the bottleneck in audio record/playback systems - the 2 channel system is! That, and transducer technology (speakers and microphones).

Finally, I've yet to see demonstrated that sounds above 22kHz are perceptible in any way.
 
The events I go to have a somewhat older audience. Flashing boobs is NOT what you'd want to see. A few years ago, my buddy Raymond Koonce and I went to a private show by Shawn Phillips (who's been playing with top acts for more than half a century- the guy played on Sgt. Pepper!). After the show, we helped him load his equipment onto his tour bus and I jokingly asked, "Where are the groupies?" Shawn sighed and said, "At my age, what you get are droopies!"
 
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