Where can I find 32bit music for streaming or download?

I have around 4 albums that are 32 bit in my library and I have had them for a while. I don’t remember where I came across them. One is one the L2 Nordic albums and a there are a few more. I haven’t been able to appreciate their amazing quality until I got my current amp ( a boulder amps 866 ). I would like to find more but they seem to be few and far between. Can anyone offer some insight into this.

Because there are nearly no DACs that can use them without (internal) conversion, and not a single ear that can hear a difference between 24 and 32. You probably don’t realize just how silent the bits from 25 to 32 really are.

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I see your Amp supports playback of DSD 64 & DSD 128, you could check www.nativedsd.com for something you like, unfortunately their selection is limited

Hopefully this isn’t a troll post.

In a playback scenario, the noise floor of your amp, speaker, room, amp and even your ears is already well above the 144dB dynamic capability of 24bit…

So in other words, most of the dynamic range ‘benefits’ 24bit offers is lost beneath the noise floor of your system and environment.

Even if you are applying 40dB of DSP attenuation, your system would still have more than 16bit capablity [the threshold of audibility].

As such a jump to 32bit for playback, makes no audible difference, because your just lowering noise floor, below the capable thresholds of room and hardware.

Its a different discussion in the context of 32bit use for studio recordings and mixing.

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24bit recordings are totally adequate for that also.

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Yes I agree.

However 32bit in the studio can provide some benefits for signal clipping/management.

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This is, as far as I’m aware, the only reason for 32 bit and its often achieved by using 2 overlapping ADCs.

It’s nice to have more bit-depth just to run the filter maths and this is why Roon converts everything to 64-bit before doing any SRC or DSP. But storing 32 bits in a file has very little playback benefit. The reason your L2 recordings sound good is simply because that’s a great label with people who actually know how to engineer a great recording. :slight_smile:

Why would you need that? ADCs usually capture an oversampled signal with a few bits, convert to floating point and down-sample. After that, you can convert to integers with any number of bits you want, from 16 to 32.

There is a preamp in front of the ADC which has less dynamic range then the ADC. Stacking the ADCs makes sure you don’t clip at the pre before the sample is captured. Basically… it allows you to turn the pre to clipping without it actually clipping in the 32-bit recording.

There are some videos that explain it way better than I can right now so that’s my basic response off top of my head. It’s been a while since I looked into it. I could be completely wrong. While I’m not AI, I’m certainly just some guy on the Internet.

You can’t get a digital signal with a higher dynamic range than the analog source, no matter how many ADCs you use, would you agree? Also, levels at the preamp output are not that high as to cause analog clipping, like they are in a power amp, and ADC input impedances are high enough as to not overwhelm the preamp. 32 bit samples have a theoretical dynamic range of 192 dB, without any noise shaping, and I have no knowledge of any analog source that can come near that. That’s why I was saying that 24bit recordings are fine for studio, as 144 dB range is still insanely high. For mixing, DAWs can convert to floating point with no loss of range.

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I wouldn’t dream of trying to argue whether I hear the difference or not. I have listened to all the 32 bit tracks I have and have found them more satisfying viscerally overall. The noise floor certainly plays in with that. I am also familiar with psycho-acoustics from way back. Yet I always enjoy it. The benefit of 24 bit material is more palatable for me and I now actively seek 24 bit material. The recording engineering aspect is not lost on me. There is a lot of material which is so poorly engineered I can’t listen to it, which is regrettable. The Boulder Amp is pretty brutal with bad source material. I see that most material is converted to 64 bit float then back down to 32 bit. What is the consequence of this in my system, I don’t know. Anyway, I appreciate the feedback but I will still seek out 32 bit recordings and pretend that I can hear the difference.

Yeah good luck with that -200 dB noise floor :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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The better quality you hear is probably from the very good recordings that 2L makes. As others have pointed out correctly, there is no audible benefit by going from 24 bits to 32.

The only thing that gets bigger is the file size. I have lowered the bitrate of my handful of 32-bit downloads to 24 bit using the built-in converter of dBPowerAmp and there was no audible difference.

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