First experience of 24/192 files
Posted by: Rich27 on 31 March 2013
I recently took the plunge and purchased a 24/192 studio master flac album from the Linn Records site to see what all the fuss was about. I ended up being somewhat disappointed with the whole experience as I found that the files would not play without buffering every few seconds (my streamer being connected by wifi surely being the cause).
Anyway to cut a long story short, with the wife taking the kids swimming, and no iPads surfing for shoes and Octonauts on the iPlayer, I thought I would give it another go (i.e. without the rest of the household robbing my wifi bandwidth).
Oh joy, what a beautiful sound. Played without a hitch or a single dropout. The album, The Avison Ensemble playing Vivaldi's Opus 8. What an utterly captivating performance and a recording to die for.
If you haven't dipped your toes into hi res, and a bit of Four Seasons floats your boat, you could do a lot worse than download this and give it a whirl!
Posted on: 31 March 2013 by Bart
Thanks for the tip, Rich. There is a hi res Four Seasons on the B&W store as well; I've not heard it yet.
I have a fair number of hi res albums now, and my experience is that when the engineering / mastering is spot on, it can sound fabulous. Otherwise, hi res cannot save an unsatisfying mastering, and in general I rank mastering higher than bit depth and sampling rate. In other words, the mere fact that something is 24/96 or higher does not assure me that I'll enjoy the sound.
I suspect that Linn are pretty particular about what they put up with their name on it!
Posted on: 31 March 2013 by RaceTripper
I have never been able to get 24/192 streaming to work over WiFi to my ND5XS. I ran a CAT6 ethernet cable and that works great.
Some of the Channel Classics 24/192 sound fantastic. I have one from Linn that is not so good. And yet, some of my best recordings are 24/44 and 24/96 albums from eClassical.
Posted on: 31 March 2013 by Mort2k
24/96 and 192 are very very nice and such night and day to standard res (with the right recording)
It's a shame it's so rare across all music types.
Rob
Posted on: 31 March 2013 by Foxman50
Im not convinced by the hi res tag yet. I have some cd rips that sound better than some 24/96 flacs, which makes me tend to think, as others have suggested, that its all in the mastering, or should that be recording, and not the pressing.
Its a shame as i think the potential for hi res recordings is huge. if you have a look in hi fi news, i think its this publication, they show that not all hi res is actually hi res.
Posted on: 01 April 2013 by Mort2k
It's not just the recording/mastering it can depend where the 24/96 copy is taken from, some are taken from terrible remasters and as such sound terrible.
I tend to do some research before obtaining any 24/96 stuff to ensure its worthwhile.
When you get a good 24/96 it's hard to beat and side by side test are night / day.
Just extracted the 24/96 from Wish You Were Here immersion BluRay ! Worth every penny, knocks the original out of the park.
Rob
Posted on: 01 April 2013 by RaceTripper
Originally Posted by Mort2k:
It's not just the recording/mastering it can depend where the 24/96 copy is taken from, some are taken from terrible remasters and as such sound terrible. I tend to do some research before obtaining any 24/96 stuff to ensure its worthwhile. When you get a good 24/96 it's hard to beat and side by side test are night / day. Just extracted the 24/96 from Wish You Were Here immersion BluRay ! Worth every penny, knocks the original out of the park. Rob
This is why I haven't been buying anything from HD Tracks. I have no way of knowing how 24 bit downloads were sourced. For all I know they are 16-bit CD files that have been converted.
Posted on: 01 April 2013 by Goon525
I also have the Vivaldi Op 8 you mention. FWIW, I can easily tell the difference between CD and 24/96, but the jump from that to 24/192 seems much smaller. Like you, I couldn't get 192 to work over wifi, so now have an Ethernet connection, which works perfectly. I second the recommendation for HiFi News, which has a monthly feature reviewing hi res issues, and discovering just how hi res they really are. If you buy a digital subscription - £20 for 13 issues - you get access to back copies too, so that's pretty good value.
Posted on: 01 April 2013 by Mort2k
@RaceTripper
Try -
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/
It's a great site for checking out HD audio compared to other formats like CD and Vinyl. Helps a little to ensure you have some Info before you buy
Rob
Posted on: 01 April 2013 by RaceTripper
Originally Posted by Mort2k:
@RaceTripper Try -
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/ It's a great site for checking out HD audio compared to other formats like CD and Vinyl. Helps a little to ensure you have some Info before you buy Rob
Than you for the pointer, but I don't see that site being useful to me. I don't listen to pop music, so am not really concerned over the loudness wars.
What I want to know is if HD Tracks is selling a 24/192 version of Janos Starker's recording of the Bach Cello Suites, I want to know if it really is a high resolution source (DSD, 24/192) or if it's something else that has been unconverted.
That site doesn't have much classical, and most classical CD/SACD releases aren't dynamically compressed like pop music is. Unless I missed something. I did a search for several classical composers and came up with few titles for some (Bach, Vivaldi), and none for others (Mahler, Vaughn-Williams). Jazz doesn't seem well represented either, but I think it also doesn't suffer from the loudness wars.
Posted on: 01 April 2013 by Mort2k
Yes that is a downside of the site , it's not very good at Jazz & ClassicL.
Posted on: 01 April 2013 by RaceTripper
Originally Posted by Mort2k:
Yes that is a downside of the site , it's not very good at Jazz & ClassicL.
As regards dynamic compression, there isn't really anything to report for jazz and classical. Classical listeners especially would never tolerate that kind of nonsense.
