[miceblue]

Doesn't this kind of all fall back into the ever present argument regarding whether or not your ears can even discern the difference beyond a certain level of resolution?  There have been threads arguing this question, where I'm certain if the responding members had been in one room, they would have come to blows over this.  I personally have come to the conclusion that, for my ears, differences are so minimal or non existant, that it seldom warrants the cost of trying to buy 96/24 or higher. It seems to me that the commercial market for sales of high resolution audio will, for the foreseeable future, carry the caveat emptor footnote.

Right, and I am in full agreement with you. My point was not whether or not I can hear a difference between HD resolutions and good-ol 16/44.1, because I can't; I would be lying to you if I said I could. My point is that the Pono movement is pushing towards HD resolutions, and IF they're selling upsampled CD-masters for the sake of calling it "HD music," then that's just not right. Usually people buy HD music because it's a different master from the CD master. Regardless of whatever resolution it is, be it 24/352.8 or 16/44.1, a different master is a different master, period. Usually HD music is also sold at a higher price. I don't want to be paying a higher price for "HD music" if all it is is just the CD master up-sampled to 24/192 like I have in the past with another HD music distributor.

As stated though, we'll see how the store turns out.

 

[fiascogarcia]

You are missing the point. Leave aside the debate about whether or not we can discern the difference between resolutions. An up sampled file cannot sound better than its source and selling such a file without disclosure is tantamount to fraud.

 
 

Right, and I am in full agreement with you. My point was not whether or not I can hear a difference between HD resolutions and good-ol 16/44.1, because I can't; I would be lying to you if I said I could. My point is that the Pono movement is pushing towards HD resolutions, and IF they're selling upsampled CD-masters for the sake of calling it "HD music," then that's just not right. Usually people buy HD music because it's a different master from the CD master. Regardless of whatever resolution it is, be it 24/352.8 or 16/44.1, a different master is a different master, period. Usually HD music is also sold at a higher price. I don't want to be paying a higher price for "HD music" if all it is is just the CD master up-sampled to 24/192 like I have in the past with another HD music distributor.

As stated though, we'll see how the store turns out.

True and true.  Maybe ol' Neil Young has the right idea, that is, to get musicians involved in pushing how their music will be mastered.  Still, seems like it will be a slow process, especially with streaming becoming the new thing.

 

[RRod]

   
 

True and true.  Maybe ol' Neil Young has the right idea, that is, to get musicians involved in pushing how their music will be mastered.  Still, seems like it will be a slow process, especially with streaming becoming the new thing.

 
Having read Metallica's defenses of Rubin's production, I'm not so sure the artists are necessarily a hope for salvation.

 

[tgdinamo]

HD Tracks tends to sell stuff exactly like this, and I just found out that a 24/192 album I have sounds identical to the CD rip I have. I can't express in words how pissed off I was when I found that out.

 
I have bought many 24/192 albums from HDTracks and in majority of cases there is significant improvement over CD rips I have (of same albums).
Of course it's critical to have top of the line HD system available to hear the difference.
Having said this there are some cases where differences are minimal or impossible to tell and I agree that upsampling should never be done (or it should be fully disclosed) - but I doubt they do this as much as some people think or otherwise most of the 192 albums would not be so much improvement over corresponding CD's (a lot of HDTrack downloads sound as good as my vinyls in most cases).
By the way, the difference is also there between 24/192 and 24-96 albums (from HDTracks) - difference is less pronounced than between either of those resolutions and CD's but it's there.

 

[L8MDL]

Pono has stated categorically that they will not sell up-sampled material and that provenance will be shown when the site gets out of Beta. Time will tell but let's not bury them just yet.

 

[Ableza]

Some people on this site have been trying to bury them since they were first announced, why should they stop now?

 

[miceblue]

HD Tracks tends to sell stuff exactly like this, and I just found out that a 24/192 album I have sounds identical to the CD rip I have. I can't express in words how pissed off I was when I found that out.

I have bought many 24/192 albums from HDTracks and in majority of cases there is significant improvement over CD rips I have (of same albums).
Of course it's critical to have top of the line HD system available to hear the difference.
Having said this there are some cases where differences are minimal or impossible to tell and I agree that upsampling should never be done (or it should be fully disclosed) - but I doubt they do this as much as some people think or otherwise most of the 192 albums would not be so much improvement over corresponding CD's (a lot of HDTrack downloads sound as good as my vinyls in most cases).
By the way, the difference is also there between 24/192 and 24-96 albums (from HDTracks) - difference is less pronounced than between either of those resolutions and CD's but it's there.

Here's my answer to that. Well, not my answer but what I would say if I were to provide an answer.

An up sampled file cannot sound better than its source and selling such a file without disclosure is tantamount to fraud.

And that's indeed what seems to be the case for at least two of the albums that I purchased from HD Tracks.

^ 24/96 from HD Tracks, downsampled to 16/44.1


^ my CD rip; looking at the two side-by-side, they're identical plus or minus gain differences


^ 24/96 from HD Tracks





^ 24/192 from HD Tracks, downsampled to 16/44.1


^ my CD rip; looking at the two side-by-side, they're identical plus or minus gain and slight time frame differences


^ 24/192 from HD Tracks

ABX-ing the CD rip and the "HD" download yielded that they sound exactly the same to me when volume matched.

 

[tgdinamo]

Here's my answer to that. Well, not my answer but what I would say if I were to provide an answer.
And that's indeed what seems to be the case for at least two of the albums that I purchased from HD Tracks.

^ 24/96 from HD Tracks, downsampled to 16/44.1


^ my CD rip; looking at the two side-by-side, they're identical plus or minus gain differences


^ 24/96 from HD Tracks





^ 24/192 from HD Tracks, downsampled to 16/44.1


^ my CD rip; looking at the two side-by-side, they're identical plus or minus gain and slight time frame differences


^ 24/192 from HD Tracks

ABX-ing the CD rip and the "HD" download yielded that they sound exactly the same to me when volume matched.

 
 
Sorry - no offense but this is way over my head because I only know how to listen to music (never learned how to listen to graphs and too old to start now at age 51). 

 

[smial1966]

Entirely agree with you, as this stuff is far too technical for my Luddite brain. The graphs are very pretty though.

Sorry - no offense but this is way over my head because I only know how to listen to music (never learned how to listen to graphs and too old to start now at age 51). 

 

[miceblue]

Oh spectrograms? They're pretty easy to read. Standard middle-school science basics: always label your x- and y-axes in a plot. In the spectrogram you have time in seconds on the x-axis (so on the left is when the music track starts, on the right is when the track ends), frequency in kilohertz on the y-axis (so the bottom is 0 kHz and the top is __ kHz; 22.05, 48, or 96 kHz in these cases). Intensity is coloured based on the decibel scale and is labeled according to the legend on the right (the more purple/black it is, the quieter it sounds). Stereo audio has two channels, so the top graph is the left channel and the bottom graph is the right channel.

This is the same exact thing as the spectrogram visualiser in Foobar, but with the whole song in view as opposed to 30 seconds or however long it is in Foobar


It also happens to be a visualiser in Rockboxed devices too




Everyone here knows that CD-quality audio by RedBook standards is 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, which produces a maximum frequency of 22.05 kHz (half the sampling rate) from the Nyquist Theory. Have 96 kHz or 192 kHz sampling rate? The maximum frequencies that can be reproduced are 48 kHz and 96 kHz respectively. From that, you can see the plots in my previous post that the 24/96 and 24/192 plots only show significant information in the ~22 kHz range, which is exactly where the cutoff frequency for RedBook standards is. The purple gradient haze and random horizontal line in the spectrograms are not relevant to the music.

Well okay, how do I know that? Because if you have a proper 24/96 recording, you would get peaks above the ~22 kHz cutoff that you wouldn't get if you were just sampling at 44.1 kHz.

^ that's a legitimate 24/96 master, with true frequency content above ~22 kHz; this track happens to be a percussion track, which tend to have a lot of natural ultrasonic frequency content



Too long; didn't read, the underlined portions are what's important and relevant for the current discussion. XD


[rule]
tgdinamo
If you really think you can hear a difference between HD sampling rates and RedBook standard sampling rates, I've prepared tests you can try for yourself
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2816447/96vs441.zip (46 MB)
This is the same file as the spectrogram above, with legitimate frequency content over 22 kHz. The only differences between the two are the sampling rates.

Or how about 16- vs 24-bit?
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2816447/16vs24.zip (21 MB)
Same song. The only differences between the two are the bit-depth (both are at their native 96 kHz sampling rate).


Chances are you heard a completely different master of the same song despite it being the same album. Same album ≠ same master. Lucky for you I prepared a different test for that as well.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2816447/Different_Masters.zip (21 MB)
Seal's "Crazy" song. Same song, different masters. I even downsampled the original HD version from 24/88.2 to 16/44.1 to make the test fair in terms of sampling rate and bit depth. The test should be easy compared the previous two and be sure to volume-match them (I already calculated the ReplayGain values) since they are different in volume.


And again, "It's the Masters, Damit!!!"
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/its-masters-damit




Because Neil Young claims MP3 sounds so bad, here's another test (using the 24/96 file above)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2816447/24_96vs256CBRLAMEMP3.zip (20 MB)

Well that's MP3, what about iTunes quality (256 kbps AAC)? Same track
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2816447/24_96vs256CBRAAC.zip (30 MB)

 

[tgdinamo]

Oh spectrograms? They're pretty easy to read.

 
Now I'm actually sorry I was joking about not understanding spectrograms (got you to do a whole lot of explaining for nothing). It's not that I can't read them - its more of a philosophy with me - I just don't believe in them.
I feel music should be all about listening and I don't want anything visual to influence/bias that experience (this is one of attractions of Tera for me - closer than other dac's in experience to how I used to listen to vinyl when I was back in high school).

 

[meat01]

Seriously, thank you for taking the time to explain this and back up your claims with actual facts and research.  This is interesting to me, even if some people may think it is off topic or more sound science material.
 

 I feel music should be all about listening and I don't want anything visual to influence/bias that experience

 
 
Unfortunately, there is a lot of bias in the audio world and people are unwilling to judge things how they sound and refuse to do blind tests.

 

[tgdinamo]

 
Unfortunately, there is a lot of bias in the audio world and people are unwilling to judge things how they sound and refuse to do blind tests.

 
Why should I have to judge anything or do blind tests when I can just enjoy listening to music instead?
I do understand there is another aspect to this hobby which some (many) people really enjoy (comparisons of devices, headphones, etc) - but to me I just wanted to find a really great setup for listening to music (best I could afford to fit my music lifestyle) - and that's it - now that I have that it's all about listening to music.

 

[doublea71]

   
Why should I have to judge anything or do blind tests when I can just enjoy listening to music instead?
I do understand there is another aspect to this hobby which some (many) people really enjoy (comparisons of devices, headphones, etc) - but to me I just wanted to find a really great setup for listening to music (best I could afford to fit my music lifestyle) - and that's it - now that I have that it's all about listening to music.

It can save you a bit of money if you avoid buying up-sampled music that is being passed off as something it isn't. Over time, that could mean a new amp or a new set of headphones. There is an incentive to be a bit discerning imo.

 

[Head Injury]

   
Now I'm actually sorry I was joking about not understanding spectrograms (got you to do a whole lot of explaining for nothing). It's not that I can't read them - its more of a philosophy with me - I just don't believe in them.
I feel music should be all about listening and I don't want anything visual to influence/bias that experience (this is one of attractions of Tera for me - closer than other dac's in experience to how I used to listen to vinyl when I was back in high school).

Time to bring up the taboo subject:
 
If you're all about listening and don't want anything visual for bias, you have taken a blind or ABX test of Redbook vs. hi-res audio, right?