Vai-Tunes - why no 24bit audio?

[microdmitry]

Hopefully someone from Vai.com is reading this. As far as I know, AAC allows one to compress 24 bit audio. So I was wondering if there's a particular reason why mr. Vai doesn't sell 24 bit versions of his tunes in Vai Tunes online store.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really hoping to buy all Steve's records all over again, but this time remastered in pristine 24 bit / 192 KHz.

Wouldn't it be cool if something like this was available today? I'd gladly pay extra.

[Jeroenn]

Originally Posted by microdmitry

Hopefully someone from Vai.com is reading this. As far as I know, AAC allows one to compress 24 bit audio. So I was wondering if there's a particular reason why mr. Vai doesn't sell 24 bit versions of his tunes in Vai Tunes online store.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really hoping to buy all Steve's records all over again, but this time remastered in pristine 24 bit / 192 KHz.

Wouldn't it be cool if something like this was available today? I'd gladly pay extra.

You know vai.com has a forum too eh?

Cool that you like the store! Spread the word. The more people we get that buy stuff there, the more files we pump in there.

Anyway, all the files are encoded at 256k. I suspect it to be the optimimal size/sound ratio. The higher the soundquality, the size of the files grow substantially.

Anyway, we'd love to hear your feedback on the tunes, right here:

http://www.vai.com/phpBB2/viewtopic....&start=285



Thanks,
Jeroen
vai.com

[JESTER700]

Originally Posted by microdmitry

Hopefully someone from Vai.com is reading this. As far as I know, AAC allows one to compress 24 bit audio. So I was wondering if there's a particular reason why mr. Vai doesn't sell 24 bit versions of his tunes in Vai Tunes online store.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really hoping to buy all Steve's records all over again, but this time remastered in pristine 24 bit / 192 KHz.

Wouldn't it be cool if something like this was available today? I'd gladly pay extra.

Lossy compression has different rules than PCM. Assuming the 256k rate is right, you will get better sound using all that to store the 16 bit file. Remember, 24/96 uses 5x the data that 16/44 uses.

[microdmitry]

Yup. I have broadband, so I'm quite comfortable downloading a file that's five times larger. Besides, I think high bit depth/bit rate files will have better compression ratio because the amount of additional information is not that substantial. But yeah, they'll be bigger anyway.

[Drew]

Well, that's the thing... there will be 192 kilobytes of audio data per second present in a 192kbs mp3 no matter WHAT the sampling rate is- Sure, you could encode with a sampling rate of 24Hz, but that means that the codec would have to reject that much more information- it doesn't make sense to up the sampling rate that high unless you're encoding at a much higher frequency. If you're trying to squeeze five times the information into a codec that only has room for a given amount of data per second, all you'll get is five times the loss, which translates to more digital garbling.

at least, that's my understanding...

-D