amcananey
Forever a 500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2010
- Posts
- 887
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- 43
While I listen to some opera and jazz, most of my music is hip-hop, rock, folk and electronica.
When I was shopping for my DAC and reading reviews, a lot of the reviews focused on whether DACs were capable of reproducing music recorded at above standard CD resolution (44/16), and in particular on whether they could handle files above 96/24.
Most of my music is ripped as FLAC files from CDs. I generally find this to be a cost-effective solution, but I occassionally run into CDs with copy protection that makes it impossible for me to rip the CDs [/rant on/: This drives me insane. I pay money to buy CDs new from Amazon and wind up with a completely useless CD (I don't even own a CD player, so I have no way of listening to the CD), while others happily go about downloading files for free. Record companies should encourage people to buy CDs, not discourage them from doing so! Also: if CDs are copy protected, it should say so prominently on the CD packaging itself and in the Amazon item description. /rant off/]. After having this happen a few times too many, I decided to look for alternatives.
I figured that buying music online would eliminate the need to rip CDs and avoid any copy protection risk. But I don't want to buy mp3s or other compressed files online. I want at least full CD quality. I'm aware of HD Tracks and similar legal download services, but their selection of modern/pop music is vanishingly small (less than 50 albums altogether!!!). It is almost all jazz or classical music.
So here is my first question: who here is listening to better-than-CD quality popular music and where are you getting it from?
I have a hard time believing that more than a tiny, tiny fraction of the Head-Fi community is listening to this music, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone is so hung up on DACs being able to decode this stuff. It seems to me that a DAC that decodes standard CD resolution files (which - as far as I can tell - they all do) should be sufficient for 99% of us.
HD Tracks does have a couple of older rock/pop albums available for download as hi-res FLAC files. But I can't figure out whether these files are really going to be any better than the CD versions of the exact same albums that I already have. Presumably these albums were recorded on analog equipment. What is the likelihood that transferring those analog recordings to hi-res digital files is going to result in anything that actually contains greater information than a standard CD recording? Transferring a low-quality original to a high-resolution format doesn't increase the amount of actual audio information available, it just results in a bigger file size. If you have a 4 megapixel picture and you re-photograph it with a 24 megapixel camera, you don't have any additional visual information. You have a huge file with 24 megapixels, but only 4 megapixels worth of information.
Thus my second question: is there any point to buying high resolution versions of music originally recorded on analog equipment, if I already have the CD? Will there be any difference that is audible to a layman?
I suppose there is an argument that a high resolution format can more accurately reproduce the continuous information in an analog recording, but I am doubtful that the difference in quality (compared to a "mere" CD-quality recording) will be audible to the vast majority of people. The bottom line is that you will still be limited by the information in the original recording.
Let me know if I'm missing something big here...
Best,
Adam
When I was shopping for my DAC and reading reviews, a lot of the reviews focused on whether DACs were capable of reproducing music recorded at above standard CD resolution (44/16), and in particular on whether they could handle files above 96/24.
Most of my music is ripped as FLAC files from CDs. I generally find this to be a cost-effective solution, but I occassionally run into CDs with copy protection that makes it impossible for me to rip the CDs [/rant on/: This drives me insane. I pay money to buy CDs new from Amazon and wind up with a completely useless CD (I don't even own a CD player, so I have no way of listening to the CD), while others happily go about downloading files for free. Record companies should encourage people to buy CDs, not discourage them from doing so! Also: if CDs are copy protected, it should say so prominently on the CD packaging itself and in the Amazon item description. /rant off/]. After having this happen a few times too many, I decided to look for alternatives.
I figured that buying music online would eliminate the need to rip CDs and avoid any copy protection risk. But I don't want to buy mp3s or other compressed files online. I want at least full CD quality. I'm aware of HD Tracks and similar legal download services, but their selection of modern/pop music is vanishingly small (less than 50 albums altogether!!!). It is almost all jazz or classical music.
So here is my first question: who here is listening to better-than-CD quality popular music and where are you getting it from?
I have a hard time believing that more than a tiny, tiny fraction of the Head-Fi community is listening to this music, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone is so hung up on DACs being able to decode this stuff. It seems to me that a DAC that decodes standard CD resolution files (which - as far as I can tell - they all do) should be sufficient for 99% of us.
HD Tracks does have a couple of older rock/pop albums available for download as hi-res FLAC files. But I can't figure out whether these files are really going to be any better than the CD versions of the exact same albums that I already have. Presumably these albums were recorded on analog equipment. What is the likelihood that transferring those analog recordings to hi-res digital files is going to result in anything that actually contains greater information than a standard CD recording? Transferring a low-quality original to a high-resolution format doesn't increase the amount of actual audio information available, it just results in a bigger file size. If you have a 4 megapixel picture and you re-photograph it with a 24 megapixel camera, you don't have any additional visual information. You have a huge file with 24 megapixels, but only 4 megapixels worth of information.
Thus my second question: is there any point to buying high resolution versions of music originally recorded on analog equipment, if I already have the CD? Will there be any difference that is audible to a layman?
I suppose there is an argument that a high resolution format can more accurately reproduce the continuous information in an analog recording, but I am doubtful that the difference in quality (compared to a "mere" CD-quality recording) will be audible to the vast majority of people. The bottom line is that you will still be limited by the information in the original recording.
Let me know if I'm missing something big here...
Best,
Adam
