I'm willing to assume that such high end cards consist of scads of shielding and
high-end dsp algorithms to remove noise.  But then you have to ask what the
definition of noise is...;-)

In my mind, it's much like the color/resolution debate for video cards.  Sure,
you *could* have 72 bits per pixel, but the human eye really can't distenguish
that from a picture composed with 24 bits per pixel.  But the difference between
1024x768 and 1600x1200 is still quite apparent.  So I can understand the 96kHz.
But I have to agree that 24bit and 36 bit are probably overkill.  It would be
interesting to do a range of sine waves at the different rates to see if people
can tell a difference.

-Adam

(of course, you need the 36bits per sample to catch the special sound made with
tube amps...<grin, duck and run>)


Bernhard Kraft wrote:
>
> On Sun, 18 Jul 1999, marquis De wrote:
>
> >now in the pro-audio world we have 24-bit, 96khz commonly, and in the
> >extreme high end we have 32-bit, upwards of 376 khz! some SSL sound
> >boards cost a million dollars in change!
>
> Just one thing to say to this:
> A "line" level audio signal is about +-0.5V ... If you have a 16-bit
> soundcard the lowest voltage difference which you could produce on the
> "line"-line :) is about 1V / 65535 = 0.0153mV ... So I don't understand
> why to buy a supra-all-featuring-xx-bit soundcard because in such a noisy
> environment like a PC you have noise voltages on every kind of wire which
> are a LOT more than 0.0153mv !!!
>
> experiment:
> Take a piece of wire, make a small coil (a few windings would do it .. 4
> or so), put it into your pc, attach a oscilloscope or a RMS meter to it,
> look !
>
> I think you wouldn't even have to make a coil.
>
> As I heard on a Analog Devices seminar it hasn't much sense to make D/A
> converters for more than 16-bit because at least the 2 LSB's will just
> consist of noise.
>
> comments?
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