Is it possible to find/burn 24/96 audio? (1 Viewer)

[Scott O'Keeffe]

This just popped into my mind...does MP3 support 24/96 recordings allowing it to be burned onto a CD? It seems this would exclude DVD-A and SACD since there is no digital output, but what about Chesky 24/96? I see that there are many sound cards that handle 24/96.

Just a thought...anyone help me out here?

 

[Jaehoon Heo]

As far as I know, MP3 doesn't support those 2x sampling rates. New MP3Pro coding may do that, but I guess not.

MPEG-2 AAC and DTS96/24 codings are known to support this, but I doubt AAC's capability to make audible improvement or difference from 48/16 or 44.1/16 materials, as even audible components cannot be preserved in low bit-rate compression like AAC. Current available AAC implementation may not have the right part to code/decode signals over 20kHz, though 64/88.2/96kHz support is in standard specification document.

DTS96/24 is supposed to do this, but data rate would be fairly high, maybe up to raw CD-DA rate.

You should also note that there are no AAC or DTS96/24 codecs you as a consumer can buy and use, even in S/W form. There are some special professional software/products.

If you still want 96/24 contents in MP3 form, how about downsampling them to 48kHz and MP3-encoding them?

 

[Scott O'Keeffe]

Thanks for the info, J.
Interesting point about the downsampling. That certainly is one way to at least be able to get it.
Would be nice if full 24/96 is on the way.
I can now add this to my wishlist.

 

[Keith Paynter]

In terms of storage, you cannot actually make a 24/96 CD. It is not within the specification. All CD's must conform to 16-bit audio with a sample frequency of 44.1KHz to be read by a standard CD player and its cousins.

It is possible to get a higher quality sound out of this configuration when using higher bitrate cards (20-bit, 24-bit, 32-bit support). The software still dithers the audio to be read as 16 bit data, but you will see some improvement.

The sheer size of the bitrate and sample rate as a .wav file make the possibility of archiving .wav files to CD for playback through a digital system somewhat inefficient.

 

[Jaehoon Heo]

If you really want to capture those 96/24 DVD's and encode them into MP3, AND you are good at C programming and WAV file format, I may be able to write a core code that downsamples audio into 1/2 sample rate. Then you should integrate it with WAV file reader, WAV file writer to make a crude S/W that converts 96/24 stereo WAV into 48/16 stereo WAV. Now MP3 encoder S/W can encode the outcome.

If you have some knowledges in signal processing or MATLAB, you can do it yourself. MATLAB has all functions handling WAV files, and downsampling the PCM signals. I hope this helps.

 

[Scott O'Keeffe]

Again, thanks J, and others.

I barely know how to burn a CD. Hehe. Its a miracle I figured out how to download and burn the new firmware for my RP-91.

I think I'll just leave this one alone, but thanks!

Scott