Is There Something Wrong With This?

A friend of mine said to me today, and I quote, " When I play Dark Side Of The Moon ripped to Blu-Ray specs from the original first UK pressing it is stunning, comes in around about 8,000kbs". I don't consider myself an audiophile and have somewhat of a basic understanding of psychoaucostics but isn't there is something wrong with the forementioned quoted statement? Can anyone help me out in putting holes in my friend's equation? Somehow isn't doesn't seem to equate. Now, I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

I would assume the vinyl could technically be ripped to any bit rate but even at 8,000kbs it would sound worse than when played directly from the vinyl.

Dean wrote: There isn't enough information in your friends comment to make a detailed or accurate reply. This is because there is more than one "standard" within the Blu-Ray spec so the audio could be coded at 16, 20 or 24 bits at a sampling frequency of 48 kHz, 96 kHz or 192 kHz with either lossy or lossless data compression. Essentially bitrate is filesize in bits divided by playing time in seconds, it can also be expressed as number of channels times the number of bits per sample times the sampling frequency divided by the data compression ratio.   If the album was coded at the maximum the Blu-Ray standard permits with no data compression it would be 2 channels x 24 bits x 192KHz = 9,216kbs ~ since this number is bigger than 8,000kbs we could assume that either data compression was used or a lower sampling frequency or fewer bits, so...   if it was coded at 20bits @ 192KHz the datarate would be 7,680kbs ~ since this number is smaller than 8,000kbs we can assume it wasn't encoded at 20bits or less   if it was coded at 24bits @96KHz the datrate would be 4,608kbs ~ since this number is smaller than 8,000kbs we can assume it wasn't encoded at sampling frequencies of 96KHz or less   Therefore it is a good bet that the audio was encoded at 24bits @ 192KHz  with a data compression ration of 1:1.152 ... which is a bit low - typical lossless compression is in the order of 1:2 (lossy compression is more like 1:10) ... or the figure of 8,000kps is number that has been rounded up or down and isn't the actual datarate (just an approximation of it.

cannon wrote:    Thanx Dean. I appreciate your response.    I can add that he has his PC hooked up to a 7.1 system with what he says is, " a very nice external sound card (assuming that this card can support 24/192 KHz) that does make every single digital file sound very good". So if you are pretty sure, or better yet, let's assume it was encoded at 24/192KHz, in layman's terms, could I say generally that at 24/192KHz that this would be a case of, sometimes more is not better with some of the tradeoffs? Would he actually (as compared to thinking) be able to hear a difference between 24/192KHz or 20/96KHz? I guess what I'm asking is, is this nothing more than pure overkill?

In a double blind ABX test, of high definition audio against standard CD identifying the correct set-up was no better than flipping a coin - sound engineers and audiophilists did slightly better and guessed correctly 52.7% of the time, however, that is actually a "fail" - if they really could tell the difference they should achieve better than 99.9% every time - 52.7% is within the margin of error for a 50:50 guess rate on a relatively small number of guesses (554). Therefore I think it is highly unlikely that your friend would be able to tell the difference between 24/192KHz or 20/96KHz... and if he left the dust and scratches in the rip, I would be very surprised if anyone could tell the digital from the original vinyl.

Edited by Dean - December 29 2011 at 04:33

The following video deflated my friends ego:

Dean wrote: ^ you are very fortunate in having a friend who is receptive enough to be deflated by the video. Audiophilists I know would dismiss it without a second thought because it dispels everything they want to believe.   There was an interesting observation in the first couple of minutes by James "JJ" Johnson that was very applicable to what happens all to often here when people review an album after only one or two listens.

Tapfret wrote: I almost clicked play on that video until I saw it was 58 minutes long. What sort of digital compression can I use to make only 90 seconds long?