But can a hi-fi system ever have too much resolution?
That we would think to ask such a question reflects a general misconception of what resolution is. To be fair, unless you've heard real honest-to-goodness resolution-it's impossible to appreciate its transformative effect on the listening experience. Resolution has for a long time been conflated with threadbare timbres, exaggerated transients, desaturated tone colors, and a general absence of warmth. The last iota of information is ruthlessly laid bare and the sound degenerates into sterility, resulting in rapid listening fatigue.
That characterization is true of products that attempt to sound highly resolving without really delivering resolution. These products hype transient leading edges, are tipped-up in the treble, add a metallic sheen to timbres, and try to impress with sonic fireworks rather then by revealing musical nuances. As they say in Texas, "Big hat, no cattle".
But a hi-fi system that delivers real resolution sounds nothing like this stereotype. In fact, higher resolution renders greater tonal saturation, warmth, and instrumental body by virtue of reveling the timbral microstructure, which only contributes to a sense of realism and life. Instrumental textures simply sound more like the real thing when a system accurately portrays the instrument's harmonic and dynamic structure in all its finely textured glory. Unfortunately, it's these low-level signal components that are the easiest to lose. Resolution is shaved off in every stage of the audio chain, from tonearm resonances, to electronic colorations, the mechanical structures in transducers. It takes extraordinarily skilled design to create products that deliver true resolution.
But isn't resolution way down the list of matters most in hi-fi? Once you get the marco-elements right- accurate tonal balance, extension at the frequency extremes, low distortion, wide dynamic range-resolving the finest signal components seems like a mere trifle to some. My recent experience in my own system, aided in part by clean AC power and vibration control, suggests that resolution vaults the communication between musician and listener to new heights.
Paradoxically, the finer the detail the greater its contribution to realism, and with that realism comes a deeper immersion in the music. In fact, a truly resolving system sneaks up on you during a listening session. At some point you snap out of an altered state and realize how captivated you've been. This spell-like sense of being in the presence of the real thing is created in part because the brain is working less hard to decode the sounds-the high-resolution system has done the work for your brain, allowing you to focus on musical meaning. Second, the system reveals to you aspects of the sound and of the performance that you never knew were there. This phenomenon is particularly powerful when listening to records that you've heard hundreds of times over the years or decades. You start listening to a record you thought you knew intimately only to discover nuances of musical expression that change your appreciation of the album. This discovery of newfound musical expressiveness, coupled with involvement is nothing less than transformative.
That is what resolution is all about and I'll take as much of it as a hi-fi system can deliver.
