Virtually every audio or music forum I visit features someone or other proselytising about the benefits or otherwise of hi res music. In some cases, this includes people unwilling to even accept CD quality, versus 24 bit/ 96 kHz or even 192 kHz formats. I have never been able to tell the difference personally which I accept may possibly be due to my ageing ears or perhaps my audio setup, but surely factors such as mastering, dynamic range, room acoustic treatment etc have far more impact than sampling rate and so on? People seem to get very worked up about it for some reason. Any thoughts?
Hi Res – Pros and Cons
by 92 Comments
There can be hearable difference. Proper headphones are probably the best way to hear it, because of the lack of room acoustics. But even then, poor mastering can ruin hi-res. As ever, too many variables for a blanket statement.
Room acoustic treatments are probably the best sound-per-pound investment anyone can make, but the manufacturers of CD players/turntables/amps/speakers don’t want you to know that. Plus they’re ugly things to have on the wall/ceiling.
Looking at the technical specs, the differences between HD Audio and CD all fall beyond the range of human hearing. Your dog is the only one who can hear the added frequencies. In order to hear the noise or dynamic range difference, you would have to turn the volume up high enough to incur hearing damage.
The differences people hear are due to mastering. The same album can be mastered dozens of different ways- optimized for radio playback, shuffling in a playlist, played on portable headphones, for theatrical use or for high end home stereos. All of these different masterings sound different, and if you play them using a playback method they weren’t intended for, they sound bad. But none of that has anything to do with the flavor of disc or file format you are playing them back on.
Home audio is capable of achieving very high fidelity, but the variables are the headphones or speakers you use or the mastering, not whether you’re playing a CD or a SACD. Even lossy audio is capable of achieving audible transparency with a high enough data rate.
Here is a great article that goes into the nuts and bolts about how it all works. https://web.archive.org/web/20200426202431/https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
With respect, that article is psuedo-science, or psuedo understanding of the science, and I have debunked it on here before… the phrase that comes to mind is “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. But then I have a 35+ year career in audio electronics and the author, let’s hope, does not.
In technology terms, CDs are 40+ years old, two thirds the ages of microgroove vinyl LPs, and they were not, and have never been, “pure, perfect sound forever”. If 16 bits and 44.1kHz sampling was, we’d never have needed to develop better digital audio systems. I wouldn’t record audio in 16/44.1 any more than I’d use my Sinclair ZX81 to work on.
Anyhow, you’re absolutely right to say that it mostly comes down to the mastering and not the medium. Well-mastered CDs can sound fab, as can well-mastered LPs, and most people can’t hear the full potential quality of either medium in a domestic environment. And poor mastering can make any format sound like rubbish.
Well-mastered music on full-range headphones, driven by a capable playback system, can sound breathtakingly good, helped greatly by the lack of influence from room acoustics.
You, sir, are a God. We are lucky to have you here in all your Dullness
Apart from anything else, I feel it’s my professional duty to point out that kind of fake news. One rung down from “don’t do that, you’ll electrocute yourself!”, but guff all the same.
Lodestone of Dullness. a worthy addition to the Lodestone family.
You might have a career in electronics, but you sure don’t know a lot about digital audio!
Apart from an Honours degree in Electronics, specialising in digital Communication Systems, you mean? A career in designing professional recording and playback digital audio and video equipment? And a side-hustle mastering CDs you can buy in the shops? But apart from that, I don’t know a lot.
Anyone can write what they like on the internet and make it sound like they know what they’re talking about but, as ever, the devil is in the detail. And that article is cheesy, and so full of holes it’s Emmental.
Believe what you like, I’m not here to start an argument.
WELL! I’m the Queen of England! And that’s that!
I’m a republican.
Watch out, he’s got a gun!
….oh , the other type of republican.
Watch out, he’s got Semtex!
Anyone got the keys to the basement? I’ve got some fireworks and a bonfire.
I never did pay attention in History lessons. The teacher was fresh out of teacher training college and, er, distracting to us 13-year-old boys. She went out with the PE teacher, natch.
PE teachers are always the enemy. Mrs M carefully waited until after we were married before telling me she’d done a bit of PE teaching back in the day. I live in fear. One day I’ll get home and there’ll be parallel bars in the back garden, and then I ‘m outta here.
Ours was ex-army and forced us on cross-country runs in all weathers (and in no undercrackers). I got detention for not running fast enough, because I was supporting one side of my pal Gavin who had his ankle in a plaster cast, but had no letter from his mum. Seems reasonable.
Now, get on the floor and do ten press-ups.
We had an authentic snap-em-with-wet-towels-in-the-showers merchant. A chill goes through me every time I hear, ‘Runnin’ on the spot…GO!’ Which is not often these days, to be fair.
One of my P.E. sadists used to dye his hair. On one memorable occasion when playing football on a rainy day we noticed lines of black liquid running down his face. We never drew his attention to this of course. Perish the thought!
We never played football in the rain again.
Your PE teacher was Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice??
Our PE teacher was the Artist Formerly Known as Sgt. Fury
Billy’s brother?
Wait, I think I’ve just come up with a dynamite sitcom format…
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Another newbie who thinks this is the “rest of the internet”
* gets popcorn*
My money is on Steve – he fights dirty
Ginger guys use their teeth. Ain’t that right, lady.
Technical “experts” on the internet, summarised:
“Aeroplanes without wheels can’t take off from an airport runway. Aeroplanes with wheels can take off.
Conclusion 1: aeroplane wheels make an aeroplane fly.
Cars have wheels and can drive on a runway.
Conclusion 2: cars can fly.”
The fact that the opinion piece above is in the Wayback machine but no longer live on the internet, in the days of Wikipedia and peer-reviewing, probably says a lot about the veracity.
@fentonsteve
Content now present only on the Wayback machine is no reflection on the quality or veracity of that content at all.
I’ll remind you of the content formerly hosted on the website of a magazine called The Word as an exemplar of that observation.
My point being not that it is in the archive, but that it isn’t anywhere ‘modern’ (like Wikipedia) with peer reviewing ability.
Does this mean….. that bloody song might not have been The Lighthouse Family after all?
Anyhow, getting back to the OP.
I’ve seen CDs mastered from cassettes and from vinyl. I’ve seen vinyl mastered from cassettes and from CDs. They all had one thing in common: rubbish sound.
Hi-res files can be great, and most modern vinyl uses them as a source, and you can do all kinds of great things in a hi-res file mastering editor to make the vinyl sound even better.
But are hi-res files/streams/Super Audio CD/Blu-Ray Audio better? It depends. There are a lot of links in the chain before it gets to your ears, and any of them can render the rest redundant.
The point is, as Pencilsqueezer has said elsewhere, if you’re lucky, a good hi-res file can sound a few percent better than a CD.
Ultimately it comes down to whether it sounds better to you.
I wonder if @jazzjet is getting what he wanted out of this thread?
@mikethep Well, it’s veered in some unusual directions but that’s to be expected I guess! My original point was that an awful lot of sometimes spurious conjecture seems to surround this subject when, to me, it largely comes down to whether an album was recorded and mastered to the highest possible standard in the first place. I’m very familiar with the Rudy Van Gelder Blue Note recordings and I cannot say that the Hi Res versions sound any better, to my ears, than the RVG series of CDs.
I think you will find Hi-Res can go to 11!
The hi-res version of Roger Waters “Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking” is only 24 bit / 44khz and so not significantly different to the CD version. A much better bet is the h-res version of “Amused To Death” which is at 24 bit / 192 kHz and does sound rather good in hi-res (especially on headphones)
Joking aside, I can tell the difference with good hi-res music, especially on headphones. As mentioned above, mastering is still the major factor, but given the 24 bit depth gives more headroom for better mastering, it “should” be the case that hi-res can have better mastering.
Is there a discernible difference between 16/44.1 and hi-res files such as 24/192 24/64 etc? It depends. Listening via good quality headphones being fed by a competent front end through a good headphone amp then the answer is yep but again it depends. The mastering is vital. If it’s been accomplished with sensitivity and care then the difference is discernible but it’s only slight. A higher bit rate/sampling rate doesn’t add more information than is present at lower rates. It can’t add what doesn’t exist in the first place but it offers up what is present with a little more clarity. I find that when listening to hi- res mastering that’s been done well I get a slightly more detailed soundstage that’s a little wider, higher and deeper. The staging within that soundstage is improved making identifying the position of each musical element easier to pinpoint. Added to that is a better controlled low end and a more detailed top end with less midrange bleed into either the bottom or top registers. All good but and I really cannot stress this enough it is even at it’s best only a very minor improvement and only really apparent when listening critically. It’s not a panacea for badly set up audio kit or poorly recorded material.
Discussions around this kind of thing is decidedly in the realm of what John Darko refers to as “audiophile catnip” and he is correct. It really doesn’t matter that much to those of us who care more about the music than numbers and graphs but it’s all good clean fun if ultimately pointless.
See also the numbnuts who cream their jeans over dac chips.
*Edit. The most unusual sampling rate I have found to date is the last album outing from Christine and the Queens. 24 bit / 176.4 kHz. Yes it sounds wonderful.
176.4kHz is easy to explain as it is 4 times CD’s rate of 44.1kHz.
I once had a file in 24/64 which the user intended for broadcast in NICAM (which was 14-bit 32kHz). I’ve never seen another file with 64kHz sampling rate since, but then I have lived a sheltered life.
The AES/EBU spec natively supports the following sampling frequencies: 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192, “Reserved”, “Reserved for vectoring” and “User defined”.
Why do I remember this shit, you might ask? I wish I could give you an interesting answer. The truth is I had to read that spec back to front and inside out so many times, I can recite sections of it with my eyes closed. And I am very dull.
Hi -res rates on both Qobuz and Tidal are usually 24/44.1, 24/88.2, 24/48 and 24/96. Very occasionally 24/192. This is the only album I’ve come across at 24/176.4. I mistyped when I mentioned 24/64 I meant to type 24/96. My bad.
If you think all that is dull Steve you should be privy to my internal monologues about the various qualities of paint binders
Since I acquired a streamer a few weeks back I thought I’d check out the hi res option on my Tidal account.
Can’t say I can hear the benefit. In direct back to back comparison, I could *possibly say* one might sound very slightly “different” but that could be that they come from different masters?
This is listening at home with a fairly decent amp and floor standing speakers. I think my Marantz CD player sounds a little better than either TBH.
I don’t use headphones unless I’m out, so can’t comment on that.
The differences are very slight and unnoticeable under most circumstances. I agree about CD reproduction being preferable. That’s why I still buy the blighters when I love the music enough to justify the outlay.
The difference is again though not night and day. May I enquire what streamer you purchased?
Wiim Pro+
Very happy with it, especially at the price.
https://www.wiimhome.com/wiimpro/overview
It does offer great bang for the buck. ✌️
@jazzjet
You can download a paper here:
https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=18296
“A Meta-Analysis of High Resolution Audio Perceptual Evaluation”
“We undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the ability of test subjects to
perceive a difference between high resolution and standard, 16 bit, 44.1 or 48 kHz audio. All
18 published experiments for which sufficient data could be obtained were included, providing
a meta-analysis involving over 400 participants in over 12,500 trials. Results showed a small
but statistically significant ability of test subjects to discriminate high resolution content,”
Thanks @dai. I’ll have a proper read later. I like the bit about the response of testers improving after extensive training. Not exactly my first thought when settling down for a listening session!
The only reasons why one would need beyond CD quality sound is if your levels are low and you need to make big corrections for that in the mix, or if you plan on doing a lot of signal processing. That’s needed in a studio, not a home. In your living room you’d never get close to the thresholds of perception. When an album is mixed and mastered and bounced down to a normalized commercial CD, there’s no need for anything morello play it back. If you’re a good engineer, 16/44.1 is fine for recording too. One of the best sounding albums ever made was recorded at 16/44.1… Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly. And studio analog tape recorders have worse specs than CDs, so anything recorded before the 1980s isn’t even as good as a CD. The format isn’t the problem. Even LPs can sound good. High fidelity sound has been possible since 1952. The problem is the quality of the person sitting behind the equipment.
A pedant writes: the 3M Digital Mastering System used to record The Nightfly was 16 bit 50kHz 32 track with a 4-track master. It used 12-bit and 8-bit converters to acheive pseudo 16-bit performance.
The same system was used for Joe Jackson’s Body & Soul, and the first mix of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense.
…film or album?
Indeed, both (I assume) as they are slightly different. One’s half an hour longer than the other, for a start.
The audio of the film and the original album are quite different. Byrne messed with it a lot for the LP – massively to its detriment, I have to say.
As with other music films there’s an argument for the album being something other than “the film without the pictures” but Byrne didn’t make it very well here, so the 1984 SMS has now disappeared unloved into history.
Indeed. Not only did the fillum sountrack have a different mix (when the camera’s pointing at Bernie, turn him up, etc) but the original LP hacked chunks out of the music to make it fit on a single LP.
Much as I cherish my original LP, the whole gig was only 88 minutes long, and when I watch the Blu-ray it always seems over too soon.
Unless you are listening in an anechoic chamber through a reference level audio chain then the results might be “small but statistically significant.” No one does listen like that, so I’m happy that in normal circs you can’t tell the difference in a double blind test. If you’re sure you can, then good luck and go with God.
Plenty of references to differences that Normal People can and can’t hear.
Just thought I’d remind the massive that this is The Afterword and normal does not necessarily apply here.
None of this stuff really matters unless one is determined to be “right” in what isn’t even an argument. Why some folk get so exercised over how other people choose to listen to and enjoy music I find utterly baffling.
I tend to agree with this, but your headphones are different to mine so unfortunately you are literally Hitler.
Mein Gott ich wurde belästigt!
For you, zer 24-bit file iss over.
Indeed, and I don’t understand why it only applies to music. I’ve never seen anybody suggest you shouldn’t buy Blu-ray discs because “you can’t see better than VHS”.
In the late ’90s I did some research work with Kodak and the Beeb R&D peeps. Standard definition (1080) Blu-ray: plenty good enough for most content. 2K: cinema quality. 4K: I could only see the difference on static test patterns, and only then if I stood with my nose touching the screen. So we made our telecine film scanner 2K capable, as there didn’t seem much point in anything better.
My telly is capable of 4K but I only have one 4K Blu-ray disc (E.T.), and that came free with the player.
Most of the apparent gain in 4K is probably in the mastering: for most 4K discs they go back to the first-generation negatives. Sound familiar?
I’ve been asked why I waste my money on decent quality audio kit when at my age my hearing is compromised. It’s usually not so politely put I might add. My answer to that is utilising good audio kit helps to mitigate against inevitable hearing losses. I find it confounding how some seek to start arguments around these matters. Why do they care how others choose to listen to music? It’s not a contest. Nobody is going to get a pat on the back and a winner’s medal because they are “doing it right”. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way there is simply each individuals way. I won’t be drawn in future on this kind of subject as I have run out of energy on it because the argumentative subtext surrounding it is tedious. I’d rather spend my time listening to some music. Probably in hi-res.
Don’t get in a tizzy ’bout this, old bean. I, for one, always find your audio advice helpful and informative (even though these days most of my listening is done through me shouting at a smart-speaker..)
Currently listening to Joni’s “Night Ride Home” – a much-neglected masterpiece in my humble opinion and with the added benefit of being one of the most gorgeous-sounding records ever. Sonic perfection !
I thought The Nightfly was supposed to be sonic perfection. Didn’t you get the memo?
Not in a tizzy Lodey. It’s as I explained above. The subtext has become boring and reductive.
You’ve put me in the mood for some Joni. Court and Spark I think.
* Sits back, clicks play, sips tea and let’s out a contented sigh.
You say subtext – I suspect for some the argument comes first, the subject second (not necessarily on this site, and not necessarily on this subject, of course). I’ve never really understood the online imperative to “pick a fight in an empty room”.
I used to be far more combative but I mostly cannot be bothered anymore. I may politely take issue with manifestly dumb comments but not often. Life is too short. I don’t even react when I’m accussed of only being here to take offense when I was simply seeking clarification on one of those dumb comments. I similarly didn’t react when the perpetrator of the dumb comment in question accused me of being “arrogant and pompous”. I assume I deserved that for having the temerity to disagree with him. For clarification I am happy to admit to being both those things occasionally just like every other person I have ever met but that’s probably me just being pompous again.
I disappear from the site from time to time. It’s unpleasant instances such as these that cause me to remove myself from circulation.
This site is mostly pleasant but not entirely so. I think I am sometimes taken the wrong way and it’s probably my fault for creating a false impression and I do own up to being rather thin skinned nowadays.
Ooh, I wouldn’t mind being “taken the wrong” way” sometimes (but then I do live in a Carry On film 😉)
There’s a wrong way?
Oh, my! Officer Nasty!!
Sewer Robot: you are Brett Anderson and I claim my five pounds.
Well, quite. Even if you no longer have golden ears, they’re still your reference. A rubbish speaker is going to sound rubbish, and a better one will sound better, even if you can’t hear everyhting it has to offer above 20kHz. So why make do with rubbish?
It’s your money and your music, and until the Audiophile Police come and knock on my door, I’m going to make things sound as good as I can. Other people can listen to 128k MP3 files if they like. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.
In the meantime people in their twenties with perfect hearing are listening to tinny shit on phone speakers.
Youth is wasted on the young.
We’ll gloss over the fact that they can’t afford anything better…
George Bernard Shaw didn’t mention that, did he? I imagine it was cut from his first draft.
I think it was GK Chesterton who once said: “The follies of my youth…” etc
I remember an English Lit exam question I struggled to answer along the lines of… Describe in detail a comedic passage you found amusing in the text of Major Barbara. Fifty two years later I’m still trying to think of one.
I had similar issues with “Who was your favourite character in Silas Marner?”
“Patsy Kensit” was apparently the wrong answer.
Of course Patsy Kensit was deemed incorrect any fule kno the correct answer is Jenny Agutter.
They could probably get better sound if they bought less expensive phones* and spent the difference on some good earphones/earbuds.
*iPhone Pro Titanium £999.00 / £41.62 a month.
iPhone 15 Newphoria £799.00 / £33.29 a month.
iPhone SE £429.00 / £17.87 a month.
They should buy a Fiio. 😉
See also: spend less on avocados and buy a house instead.
Someone I know got all worked up and had a moan at me recently about how I was wasting my time when I mentioned that I had ripped a bunch of CDs in WAV format rather than the MP3 he said I should have used. Why would you care.
If only there was a podcast where, say, four knowledgeable middle-aged men, some with a technical background, discussed the subject of music remastering…
Huzzah! Can’t wait…
…and, since Fentonsteve seems too coy to provide a link…
I remember that podcast and very interesting it was too.
The Nightfly always gets brung up when music bods talk about great-sounding records. Am I alone in thinking it aounds brittle, artificial, and over-trebly?
Cold, cold, cold…
Nope, you are not alone.
So does that Joe Jackson album, great though it is, which ought to be supplied with two sheets of toilet paper to stick over your tweeters, NS10-style.
Is that a euphemism??
BTW, three words for ya, @fentonsteve; Quad Tilt Control. Makes “The Nightfly” tolerable to the sensitive ear without recourse to Kleenex.
hurrr
I present “Bob Clearmountain’s Tissue” https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story#para3
Someone’s even done a comparison of tissue paper brands. http://www.bobhodas.com/examining-the-yamaha-ns-10m.php
Stay off the Izal!
I have to ask: if Yamaha NS10’s are too bright – brutally bright – why use them? Why not monitor on a more natural-sounding speaker?
It’s far too easy to make a recording sound nice on a decent studio monitor, the real challenge is to make anything sound nice on NS10s.
They’re a sealed box design (no bass reflex port) and so have unusually low-distortion and even bass (although nothing much below 40Hz).
I have a chum who mixes on NS10s then sends me the files to play on my PMC Transmission Line floorstanders, to check for “sub-bass” rumbles and thumps, before sending his mixes off to be mastered.
Got it. Makes sense.
I’ve seen photos suggesting that the odd classical studio monitored on ESL63s – not easy getting them up on the desk, I imagine…🙂
I seem to recall Abbey Road used B&W 801s. There’s a S/H pair for sale in my local shop. I’d just need a barn to put them in.