Hello from Sutton Coldfield

Fatmangolf wrote: I'd second Bob's advice on bit depth for record rips. I understand 16 bits gives 96dB range which is about 20dB more than a very clean record on a quiet turntable so there's plenty of headroom in the ADC allowing gain to be applied with any other restoration in the digital domain. I must admit I usually record at 48kHz nowdays but am not suggesting you should do this.

Well I've done some experimenting. I've taken a number of different records which have been recorded at 24bit/96kHz and taken a track off each and output it twice - once at 24/96 & a second time at 16/44.1. I then had a music loving but non audiophile friend play the two versions of each track without telling me whether they were playing A then B or B then A. 

When we looked at the results, 80% of the time I preferred the same version which would suggest that you can hear a difference. BUT the version I preferred was the 16/44.1. At the outset my non audiophile friend didn't know what the differences between the two version was, but she had the same preferences - in her words the 16/44.1 were more music, less hifi.

How down sampling can make a recording sound better I don't know. The only parallel I can maybe draw is in the photographic world. There's a product called the Matabones Speed Booster which enables you to attach Canon/Nikon etc lenses to micro 4/3 cameras while reducing the focal length by 1.4 so a 200mm f2.8 Canon lens becomes an effective 285mm (200/1.4 x 2) f2.0 lens. It does the seemingly impossible of giving you a 1 stop light gathering advantage AND improves image sharpness. Whether down sampling performs some sort of similar magic I don't know.

The one test I haven't tried is recording direct in 16/44.1 vs recording in 24/96 & down sampling but as I delete the original recording after it's been cleaned & output down sampling there's no overhead for recording initially at a higher resolution.