Grateful Dead Music Forum

I'm a lover of quality music just as much as the next guy, but I must say that this encoding might be a *little* over the top:

"HD MQS (Master Quality Sound) files are 24 bit / 176 KHz"



Now, for those of you that are unfamiliar with the Nyquist frequency, it basically states that the highest frequency preserved will be exactly one half of the sample rate. The human hearing range is 20 - 20kHz, and this is (partly) why CD's are sampled at 44100 samples/sec... the highest preserved frequency will be 22,050Hz, just past the limit of human hearing.

These recordings will preserve frequencies up to 88,000Hz... just around the upper range of a bat's hearing capability.

Is there something I'm missing?

I was kind of wondering the same thing. The debate over whether or not 24bit recordings that are encoded at higher sampling rates sound better or produce a more accurate representation of the original analog signal has been debated forever, and from the listening tests I have studied the listeners were unable in most situations to tell the difference between 24/44.1 and 24/96 and some even 16/44.1 vs, 24/44.1. I record at 24/96 and I think these recordings sound better than my former 16/48 recordings. They seem to have more depth, a more accurate rendering of the space in which the recording was made and a greater level of fine detail. But it may all be in my head. I am certainly using a higher quality A/D converter than I was 15 years ago. At least the noise floor is lower.

As far as the JGB 24/88.2 are concerned, many people seem to think that using a sampling frequency of 88.2kHz produces a more accurate rendering when the file is decimated down to 44.1kHz. In all of my testing I can not hear a difference between 96kHz -> 44.1kHz vs. 88.2kHz -> 44.1kHz.

Ok, engineers! Let's hear your thoughts!