Do people believe Hi Res is better than standard cd?

whsturm posted:

Interestingly HiFi-Choice (I think or one of the similar 'mags') has a section where it analyses 'hi-def' recordings. Many of them have no extra information in the frequency ranges outside standard definition. I suspect that these are simply 're-coded' from standard CDs rather than remastered from original tapes. 

I'm not sure I agree that as a general state of affairs,  I sample check all my new HR downloads & find modern recordings claiming to carry higher sample rates do so.  Even the older remastered releases generally are not limited to the 21KHz CD limit.

Knowing whether there is a "0" or a "1" isn't good enough.

Knowing when the "0" or "1" starts and finishes is just as important or even more important.

The human brain (mainly via the eardrum) can detect differences of significantly less than a micro-second.

If the recording studio doesn't capture these details, the retrieval system can't recover them.

OK, there is anawful  lot more to it than the above, and add to that, the fact that replay source, pre-amp, power amp and speakers (not mention room, cables and supports) all contribute to our listening experience and preference...................and no wonder we have differing opinions.........

i know that some sites propose true dsd recordings :  these albums are originally recorded in dsd, directly. Some find that the sound is one of the best with that specific recording. But the music is vastly classical.

The vast majority of hd we buy, on qobuz or hdtracks, are analog recordings at their beginning or 16/44 and after they are changed in high rez.

Why modern music is not recorded directly in high rez?   not all music, like commercial tunes, but some albums for jazz or pop, rock....The sound would be even better....

My ears are still fresh unsullied with hires. I couldn't tell as I've never heard any ever anywhere. 

Am I missing out ?

At a recent Linn demo they gave a back to back comparison of Quobuz cd versus high res. Their system did seem to become much more “alive” , but actually seemed to need the higher resolution. Still sounded very poor indeed for a £20k plus system.

TOBYJUG posted:

My ears are still fresh unsullied with hires. I couldn't tell as I've never heard any ever anywhere. 

Am I missing out ?

i see in your profile that you have the unitserve with ndac. You have never tried to download a high rez album and send it to your serve?    you should try, some hirez, not all, are better sounding than the cd version :   better edge, dynamics and extended highs.

TOBYJUG posted:

My ears are still fresh unsullied with hires. I couldn't tell as I've never heard any ever anywhere. 

Am I missing out ?

perhaps it is humorous ?   you haven’t heard any difference between hirez and cds ?

Yes. Sorry. Never tried to download a hires. Don't have a clue how to do it.

Being a Flat Earther, I'm not gonna digest something that's not handed to me on a simple flat round thing.

TOBYJUG posted:

Yes. Sorry. Never tried to download a hires. Don't have a clue how to do it.

Being a Flat Earther, I'm not gonna digest something that's not handed to me on a simple flat round thing.

if you’re not joking, you can go to qobuz.com and download lana del rey , a track or an album, on your pc. Then you send it to your unitserve ( your serve must first share your network). Or also you can transfer your download on a memory stick and put the stick at the back of your serve.   You will see the download in the n serve app.   I saw that you like lana del rey.

French Rooster posted:

TOBYJUG posted:

Yes. Sorry. Never tried to download a hires. Don't have a clue how to do it.

Being a Flat Earther, I'm not gonna digest something that's not handed to me on a simple flat round thing.

if you’re not joking, you can go to qobuz.com and download lana del rey , a track or an album, on your pc. Then you send it to your unitserve ( your serve must first share your network). Or also you can transfer your download on a memory stick and put the stick at the back of your serve.   You will see the download in the n serve app.   I saw that you like lana del rey.

Thank you so much. Sounds really simple.    Can you come round to my house and show me. Really. 

I'm a proper Numpty.

TOBYJUG posted:

French Rooster posted:

TOBYJUG posted:

Yes. Sorry. Never tried to download a hires. Don't have a clue how to do it.

Being a Flat Earther, I'm not gonna digest something that's not handed to me on a simple flat round thing.

if you’re not joking, you can go to qobuz.com and download lana del rey , a track or an album, on your pc. Then you send it to your unitserve ( your serve must first share your network). Or also you can transfer your download on a memory stick and put the stick at the back of your serve.   You will see the download in the n serve app.   I saw that you like lana del rey.

Thank you so much. Sounds really simple.    Can you come round to my house and show me. Really. 

I'm a proper Numpty.

yes, of course, i take my jet tomorrow early morning ....you can prepare the coffee. See you soon, joker !

whsturm posted:

Very interesting. Given that our hearing is presumably 'digital' (i.e. electrical pulses sent to the brain via the ear drum), what is the natural limit of that digitisation? In other words, I assume that there is a natural limit at which the eardrum can respond to external stimuli, convert that to electrical pulses and have the brain respond. And how close is current 'high def' digitisation (frequencies and sampling) to that natural limit? At some point there can be no advantage to increasing bit rates etc. as we won't be physically able to detect a difference with our limited ear drums...

Our hearing isn't actually digital, in fact it's frequency analogue.

The nerve fibre on which the signal comes is dependent on the frequency of the sound, the frequency at which the nerve fires is related to the sound intensity at that frequency.

French Rooster posted:

The vast majority of hd we buy, on qobuz or hdtracks, are analog recordings at their beginning or 16/44 and after they are changed in high rez.

Why modern music is not recorded directly in high rez?   not all music, like commercial tunes, but some albums for jazz or pop, rock....The sound would be even better....

Is that true? I thought most music for some time now has been recorded in at least 24/96

Innocent Bystander posted:

French Rooster posted:

The vast majority of hd we buy, on qobuz or hdtracks, are analog recordings at their beginning or 16/44 and after they are changed in high rez.

Why modern music is not recorded directly in high rez?   not all music, like commercial tunes, but some albums for jazz or pop, rock....The sound would be even better....

Is that true? I thought most music for some time now has been recorded in at least 24/96

i don’t think so, the albums are first 16/44 recordings and upsampled for hirez versions.  There  are a minority of true high rez , on some specialized sites, but the music is rarely interesting ( to my taste ).    It is what i have sometimes read but if i am wrong, i will be curious to learn the contrary.  

French Rooster posted:

i don’t think so, the albums are first 16/44 recordings and upsampled for hirez versions.  There  are a minority of true high rez , on some specialized sites, but the music is rarely interesting ( to my taste ).    It is what i have sometimes read but if i am wrong, i will be curious to learn the contrary.  

I'm not certain how correct that statement is for current digital recordings, but there is a body of evidence to suggest many older "hi-res" offerings are simply up-scaled redbook-level recordings. This same feat can be accomplished via direct CD replay using numerous hi-end CDPs from the likes of Essoteric, SimAudio, Ayon, Metronome, and others. While these CDPs can be used as dedicated hi-res DACs (with USB and SPDIF inputs), they also have the ability to serve as transports that can in real-time upscale an inserted CD at various resolutions up to 32 bit/ 384 kHz. Basically CDP + DAC combos. 

Interesting to read reviews of the variably upscaled redbook CD playback on these devices. Based on the limited reading I've done, reviewers seem to find a happy medium towards the lower end of upscaling. Increasing "resolution" (done on the fly) is less favorable. Resolution nearer or at the native recording format generally sounds preferable. With poorer source material, greater upscaling can be a favorable "tweak".

All told, my take away from reading reviews of these high end CDP + DAC combos is that they are great when used as dedicated DACs for streaming, but don't necessarily warrant their cost when being used as dedicated CDPs - i.e., the upscaling features are generally lost for direct CD replay. Such reviews served as fodder for me to sit pat with my CD5X, but admittedly, one can always parse from a review the qualities that serve one's own inclinations.

French Rooster posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

French Rooster posted:

The vast majority of hd we buy, on qobuz or hdtracks, are analog recordings at their beginning or 16/44 and after they are changed in high rez.

Why modern music is not recorded directly in high rez?   not all music, like commercial tunes, but some albums for jazz or pop, rock....The sound would be even better....

Is that true? I thought most music for some time now has been recorded in at least 24/96

i don’t think so, the albums are first 16/44 recordings and upsampled for hirez versions.  There  are a minority of true high rez , on some specialized sites, but the music is rarely interesting ( to my taste ).    It is what i have sometimes read but if i am wrong, i will be curious to learn the contrary.  

The practically default setting at any studio is 24 bit depth.

44.1 kHZ is a predominant sampling frequency. Higher res is also used - 96 kHZ being the next obvious step.

To prepare a CD - format musi a recording has to be converted to 16 bit - usually done after mastering, when a CD-specific file is being made.

In November I was in the market for a new pair of loudspeakers and arranged a shop demo of a pair of YG Carmel 2s.   The dealer put together a demo system and I duly arrived for the audition, having no clue about the front-end electronics. The goal was simply to find out if the YGs could produce the kind of sound  I could listen to...a kind of pre-qualification. In between the spreakers was a rack of equipment from AVM and Classe. As the demo started I didn’t even know what was hooked up, only where to insert and retrieve CDs.  I started with a few regular CDs that I knew well, but after a few minutes knew this wasn’t a system for me. The system had a kind of hardness to the treble...an edge that I am very sensitive to and dislike intensely as it makes everything sound electronic and hi-fi like instead of gorgeous and musical. It’s the reason I’d evicted CDPs from my early analog system. I reported my findings to the dealer, who simply said, ‘Let’s try this’ and made an adjustment on the box playing the CDs. ‘Try that’ he said and left.  Well to say that the system was transformed would be an understatement. The hardness and edge was completely gone, to be replace by a beautiful decay and naturalness to the music. Treble notes sparkled and shimmered instead of sounding hard and acidic and I quickly realised that I was hearing a lot more information that had previosly been previously portrayed as treble distortion.  The system was gorgeous and utterly beguiling.....from a clear non-qualifier to a potential winner in one simple adjustment.  I continued to listen to a variety of material and was thrilled at every turn.....I had to force myself to stop listening.

So what had the dealer done?  He’d switched the CDP/Pre-amp/DAC’s processing from standard 16/44.1 to hi-res 24/196.  What remained with me was this. On this particular system, standard  red book  CD replay sucked when processed at its standard 16/44.1, but sparkled with beauty and life when upsampled to hi-resolution. Now I’ve yet to figure out what I was actually hearing, and as a consequence can’t draw a finite conclusion....all I know is what I heard. Playing a red book CD at its standard rates sucked and sounded like most CDPs I’ve ever heard....hard and rather unpleasant. Up-sampling everything to 24/196 removed my reservations about digital replay entirely and presented music in a way I could listen to for hours without the slightest fatigue. 

The conclusion many would reach is that upsampling modified the music to something I liked, which is true, but its the way it did that that’s most important. It removed an artefact of the music that very clearly didn’t belong and replaced it with extra information that added immeasurably to the music’s enjoyment , very clearly belonged to the music’s structure and very clearly had been missing in the standard format replay. Make of that what you will. 

Blackmorec posted:

In November I was in the market for a new pair of loudspeakers and arranged a shop demo of a pair of YG Carmel 2s.   The dealer put together a demo system and I duly arrived for the audition, having no clue about the front-end electronics. The goal was simply to find out if the YGs could produce the kind of sound  I could listen to...a kind of pre-qualification. In between the spreakers was a rack of equipment from AVM and Classe. As the demo started I didn’t even know what was hooked up, only where to insert and retrieve CDs.  I started with a few regular CDs that I knew well, but after a few minutes knew this wasn’t a system for me. The system had a kind of hardness to the treble...an edge that I am very sensitive to and dislike intensely as it makes everything sound electronic and hi-fi like instead of gorgeous and musical. It’s the reason I’d evicted CDPs from my early analog system. I reported my findings to the dealer, who simply said, ‘Let’s try this’ and made an adjustment on the box playing the CDs. ‘Try that’ he said and left.  Well to say that the system was transformed would be an understatement. The hardness and edge was completely gone, to be replace by a beautiful decay and naturalness to the music. Treble notes sparkled and shimmered instead of sounding hard and acidic and I quickly realised that I was hearing a lot more information that had previosly been previously portrayed as treble distortion.  The system was gorgeous and utterly beguiling.....from a clear non-qualifier to a potential winner in one simple adjustment.  I continued to listen to a variety of material and was thrilled at every turn.....I had to force myself to stop listening.

So what had the dealer done?  He’d switched the CDP/Pre-amp/DAC’s processing from standard 16/44.1 to hi-res 24/196.  What remained with me was this. On this particular system, standard  red book  CD replay sucked when processed at its standard 16/44.1, but sparkled with beauty and life when upsampled to hi-resolution. Now I’ve yet to figure out what I was actually hearing, and as a consequence can’t draw a finite conclusion....all I know is what I heard. Playing a red book CD at its standard rates sucked and sounded like most CDPs I’ve ever heard....hard and rather unpleasant. Up-sampling everything to 24/196 removed my reservations about digital replay entirely and presented music in a way I could listen to for hours without the slightest fatigue. 

The conclusion many would reach is that upsampling modified the music to something I liked, which is true, but its the way it did that that’s most important. It removed an artefact of the music that very clearly didn’t belong and replaced it with extra information that added immeasurably to the music’s enjoyment , very clearly belonged to the music’s structure and very clearly had been missing in the standard format replay. Make of that what you will. 

As always, the tech specs are a (useful) guide, but nothing can over-ride your own set of ears as the final arbiter. They are far more sensitive than any piece of test equipment and measure things of which we probably as yet, have no knowledge. This doesn't make the tech-specs totally irrelevant, but...................

And of course that particular DAC might not have been so performant at 44.1/16/2 in terms of reconstruction so required some upfront oversampling and resampling.... if that was the only change done that sounds the case to me... it is harder to manufacturer a precision and georgous sounding DAC at 44.1/16/2 than at higher resolutions... but when you find them... you shake your in disbelief saying I didn’t think CD was supposed to sound like this.... which of course technically it has a very high performance window.

Adam Zielinski posted:

44.1 kHZ is a predominant sampling frequency. Higher res is also used - 96 kHZ being the next obvious step.

To prepare a CD - format musi a recording has to be converted to 16 bit - usually done after mastering, when a CD-specific file is being made.

Actually there are a few masters in the chain. the recording master (the multi track master), the mixed master (typically down mixed to stereo) and then the remaster  which may include processing such as eq and compression for the target distribution  format, distribution and market. 

Actually, it’s harder to make a low resolution anything sound, look or perform better than high resolution, assuming that any conversion software and processing has the capacity to deal with the extra resolution. Whether its hi-fi, video, photography or mass spectrometry, the higher the data rate and bandwidth, the higher the sensitivity, specificity, resolution and dynamic range.  If that doesn’t improve the sound quality, there’s something wrong with the data stream processing

In the example above I took a variety of CDs, with the following qualities....outstanding realism, ability to portray emotion,  outstanding boogy factor, quite bad sound etc.  When I’m in the presence of a great system it’s typically not the best CDs that sound massively better, generally its the average to worst CDs that improve the most. So the conclusion we could reach is that high resolution makes a great number of average sounding recordings sound a lot better.

One observation I would make based on your post is that if high resolution doesn’t sound better than low resolution, that is almost certainly down to the DAC’s lack of ability to maximise the benefits of extra dynamic range and higher sampling rates

It’s also worth noting if the master recordings are sample rated at 96kHz it’s never going to sound optimum for 44.1kHz PCM... for no or minimum digital sampling noise errors the recording master should be a whole multiple of the target rate. Therefore CD should ideally be recording sample rate mastered at 44.1. / 88.2 / 176.4 kHz so as to produce least distortion. Likewise a master at 44.1 kHz is going to introduce distortion and artefacts if upsampled to 96 kHz.

Adam Zielinski posted:

French Rooster posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

French Rooster posted:

The vast majority of hd we buy, on qobuz or hdtracks, are analog recordings at their beginning or 16/44 and after they are changed in high rez.

Why modern music is not recorded directly in high rez?   not all music, like commercial tunes, but some albums for jazz or pop, rock....The sound would be even better....

Is that true? I thought most music for some time now has been recorded in at least 24/96

i don’t think so, the albums are first 16/44 recordings and upsampled for hirez versions.  There  are a minority of true high rez , on some specialized sites, but the music is rarely interesting ( to my taste ).    It is what i have sometimes read but if i am wrong, i will be curious to learn the contrary.  

The practically default setting at any studio is 24 bit depth.

44.1 kHZ is a predominant sampling frequency. Higher res is also used - 96 kHZ being the next obvious step.

To prepare a CD - format musi a recording has to be converted to 16 bit - usually done after mastering, when a CD-specific file is being made.

I know you are qualified to answer, you are working in music and studio recording. You say that 24 bit is practically default setting and also that 44,1 khz is predominant sampling frequency.  So you say that most studio recordings in the world are recording albums in a more than 16/44 format ?  so minimum 24/ 44 format ?   i am surprised by that information because the industry is still producing cds and the digital format to buy albums is mp3 or 16/44 in the vast majority of commercial offerings.    I have also read that hdtracks or qobuz are selling in majority hirez that come from upsampled 16/44 files.

I read this thread with interest but the acid test (which eliminates all variables of mastering etc) is the one proposed by Huge (and which I also tried advocating a couple of years back in a similar thread): take any high(er) resolution file, convert with whichever tool to lower resolutions and try to hear the differences in ABX testing. I use foobar and earphones to do so but with my PC based office system (the one i can run foobar on) I have never managed to do better than 7/10 correct identification - which is statistically below the 95% confidence level. I have the feeling that hi Rez is better on my main system but here I may easily be biased, there is no objective evidence.