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Re:24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012) by kierenj on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @05:28AM (#15130784)
I'm not sure how it's not even more "silly" then. Investing in additional infrastructure, equipment, and effort, when all you need to do is turn down the compressor ratio in the mix... Sounds silly to me.
Re:24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012) by LeifCarrotson on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @08:25AM (#15131493)
> all you need to do is turn down the compressor ratio in the mix

The problem here is that the "you" in this sentence is not "me", or even an entity I can really influence, much less control.

It's not really even the audio engineer whose boss is telling him to turn up the volume so high that only the top few bits of the 16-bit recording are in use. The boss is saying this so that the song can be heard when the user turns the volume down because of the obnoxiously noisy commercials on the radio. Those commercials have found that they're more effective when they turn the volume way, way up. And they don't give a whit about the quality of their audio as long as they can sell more cars or tickets or whatever, much less the quality of the songs that play after them, much much less the quality of the songs that someone downloads to listen to offline in a nice listening environment without commercials.

The solution isn't just "turn down your compressor ratio", there's a big, hairy Nash equilibrium/politics problem that can be bypassed by offering 24/192 as a secondary product. If you want to remaster it to 16/48 after downloading, you're welcome to do so.

Re:24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012) by Mediterraneo10 on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @06:30AM (#15131004)
Well, SACD at least offers one further advantage than lower compression: multichannel audio, which is a big deal for classical music, especially works involving spatialization. Investing in a SACD player is well worth if that repertoire concerns you.