24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

Practical tips for recording, editing, and mastering.

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

User avatar
protozone
Established Member
Posts: 181
Joined: Tue May 08, 2018 9:02 pm
Contact:

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

Post by protozone »

Lyberta wrote:The convention for floating point is that values are in the range [-1;1]. Everything outside is not guaranteed to work.

WAV audio header has a format field and there are dozen of formats you can put there. But most editors don't support stuff that is not PCM.
Well, we certainly both agree about that. I remember some oddball WAV's with MP3's embedded (not converted, embedded) inside back in the day. That was really annoying but shortlived, thank goodness. I remember using some software that complained if the 24-bit int was packed. I still get errors to this day about different WAV header formats. For example OcenAudio's FLAC rendering produces FLAC's that when converted back to WAV, FLACdrop complains about the formatting, but still converts them. It says something about a "legacy" way of doing things not being quite right.

Also, I remember when foobar2000 started including adding metadata to .WAVs. It seemed really odd at first, but thankfully they implemented it in a way that doesn't choke most old and new editors. I'm thankful that there's a function to strip the metadata back out.

I like AudioMove a lot because the WAV's it creates during conversion seem to always be 100% standard and without anything extra.
Anyways, I apologize for rambling on these forums a lot during the past couple of days. I guess I can go on quite a bit.
User avatar
milkii
Established Member
Posts: 477
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2016 9:08 am
Location: Edinburgh
Has thanked: 92 times
Been thanked: 91 times
Contact:

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

Post by milkii »

Better quality source signal for DSP so folks can make neat spectral remixes/mashups/booties/bastard pop/chopped and screwed/whatever? Better sounding Paulstretch!

But yeah, 24/192 music downloads make no sense.. when there exists DSD!!

What would interest me more though is some form of multichannel-panning/ambisonic-aware-container format that by default mixes down to stereo. Multichannel, so either multiple stereo tracks and+or metadata for stereo field placement at playback, also easy to remix. Ambisonic for immersion beyond plain ol' style stereo representation.

Google seem more interested in something like that, or at least the second part, with their RFC Ambisonics in an Ogg Opus Container, though I'm also holding out for New HDMI audio output format: native DSD (one bit audio) passthrough for Android set-top boxes (feature request) in the Android issue tracker..

they/them ta / libreav.org / wiki.thingsandstuff.org/Audio and related pages / gh

Lyberta
Established Member
Posts: 681
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:15 pm
Location: The Internet
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

Post by Lyberta »

protozone wrote:Also, I remember when foobar2000 started including adding metadata to .WAVs. It seemed really odd at first, but thankfully they implemented it in a way that doesn't choke most old and new editors. I'm thankful that there's a function to strip the metadata back out.
You can put a lot of stuff besides audio data in WAV.
User avatar
protozone
Established Member
Posts: 181
Joined: Tue May 08, 2018 9:02 pm
Contact:

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

Post by protozone »

Lyberta wrote:
protozone wrote:Also, I remember when foobar2000 started including adding metadata to .WAVs. It seemed really odd at first, but thankfully they implemented it in a way that doesn't choke most old and new editors. I'm thankful that there's a function to strip the metadata back out.
You can put a lot of stuff besides audio data in WAV.
Yeah I remember SoundForge, I think it was tried to cram a whole bunch of auto-generated user metadata into WAV files. It was like Microsoft Word's author metadata with pictures, telephone number, date, country, a whole bunch of stuff nabbed from system variables.

Most people probably don't want all their personal info put into every WAV they make by default. Just because I make a file doesn't mean that I want muy computer's name, regional location, operating system, and my email address, my computer username, any user images, etc all crammed into a WAV file that's just supposed to be there to hear.

Luckily, the trend didn't spread too much.
I don't mind stuff like markers and regions--those are useful. But if I want more metadata, I'll use FLAC or WAVpack. At least that's standard modest metadata and not a freeforall.

But thanks for that link. I remember stuff like that too. But not all WAV files are RIFF Wav's either.
By the way, do you work with multichannel WAV's at all? I don't yet, but I used work with multichannel AIFF files a little bit.
Lyberta
Established Member
Posts: 681
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:15 pm
Location: The Internet
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

Post by Lyberta »

protozone wrote:But not all WAV files are RIFF Wav's either.
Are they? The header is RIFF one, I don't expect to find anything else.
protozone wrote:By the way, do you work with multichannel WAV's at all? I don't yet, but I used work with multichannel AIFF files a little bit.
What's so special about them?
User avatar
protozone
Established Member
Posts: 181
Joined: Tue May 08, 2018 9:02 pm
Contact:

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

Post by protozone »

Lyberta wrote:
protozone wrote:But not all WAV files are RIFF Wav's either.
Are they? The header is RIFF one, I don't expect to find anything else.
protozone wrote:By the way, do you work with multichannel WAV's at all? I don't yet, but I used work with multichannel AIFF files a little bit.
What's so special about them?
I didn't claim there was anything "so special" about them. I was asking to find out if you find them useful. It would be interesting to know if there are any nice advantages to using them. I'm open to learning new things.

As for the RIFF WAV's, that's just one type of WAV. I don't think all WAV's have a RIFF header. Although, luckily, the de facto standardization has stabilized so were not swamped with too many different types of WAV's. I don't remember the names of all the different types of WAV's but even Microsoft WAV's are not necessarily the same WAV's as others. Anyways, this topic is burning me out a bit and were off topic. Later.
Lyberta
Established Member
Posts: 681
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:15 pm
Location: The Internet
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense

Post by Lyberta »

protozone wrote:I don't think all WAV's have a RIFF header.
If you have proofs, I'd like to see them.
Post Reply