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speakers for 24/96 audio

is it correct to assume that 24/96 audio would be indistinguishable from cd quality when listened to with speakers with a 20khz 3db and rapid hi frequency roll-off?

Or more precisely, that the only benefit comes from the shift from 16 to 24 bit, not the increased sample rate, as they higher freq content is filtered out anyhow?

related to this, which advice would you have for sub $5k speakerset with good higher freq capabilities for 24/96 audio?

thanks!
mizuno
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
Al, I found video to show what happens when sampling just above Nyquist frequency. It might be possible to fix the output with sinc or other reconstruction functions but only if signal lasts a lot of cycles. If signal is short and disappears reconstruction will have huge error.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy9dJgGCWZI
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Thanks, Kijanki. The one thing I would question in your comment is the word "huge." I'm sure that a suitably chosen test waveform comprising a very short burst of high frequency energy, and put through a 44.1kHz a/d + d/a, can result in an error that will appear huge when viewed on an appropriate time scale. But as the saying goes the proof is in the pudding, and I've felt amazed at times at how good SOME cd's that contain a lot of transient high frequency energy can sound.

Best regards,
-- Al
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
Al, Huge errors applied to the highest harmonics only will result only in small sound change. There will be small difference in sound of cymbals and perhaps in ambiance.
I use 16/44 and like it, but try to be educated about it. That's all.
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kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
Bob - Thanks for the link. I suspect that THD is a dominating factor at higher power. Noise issue itself is non-existent in my opinion because if I cannot hear anything in a silent room at full power (dead silent) I don't worry. Many amps with similar 80dB THD+N performance are showing -120dB noise floor on the other graphs. Also, small amount of noise helps to increase resolution - technique known as dithering widely used in photography.
I would be more concerned with THD and it doesn't look good.

I don't know what is relationship between THD and resolution but I suspect that resolution will still bring better sound. Another reason for that is quantization noise that is smaller at higher resolutions. DAC1 does very good job here by using sigma-delta converter that pushes quantization noise to higher bandwidth (oversampling).

I think that our hearing ability ends up slightly above 16-bit perhaps 18-20bits but I'm more concerned with sampling rate because low sampling rate in addition to phase shifts in steep low pass filters increases quantization noise (or size of square steps to make it simpler).
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