[David Maki]

Hi All - I'll introduce myself - name is David - I live about 30 miles East of Cleveland and am self-employed as an importer.  I'm in my home office most of the working hours where I'm always listening to music.  My current setup is literally a pair of PS headphones - bluetooth connected to my Mac and listening to various music via Google Play.  I have a really nice home audio setup, but during the day it's all phones for me.  
 
I'd love to upgrade my current setup - but I'm having a difficult time finding sites that offer high quality downloads of the music that I listen to.  I've searched the forums here for high quality music downloads and all of the sites that have been mentioned are either no longer working or missing a lot of what I listen to.  HDTracks was the most promising, but still lacked a lot of my favorites.  
 
My main question - am I going to experience a huge improvement in sound with some great headphones if the music that I listen to isn't available in a high quality download?  Meaning - If Google Play is my main source of audio or a ripped CD on Itunes - will upgrading to say Audeze LCD-3 with a nice amp/dac be worthwhile to me?  

 

[ProtegeManiac]

You don't necessarily need 24bit, 96khz much less 32bit, 384khz audio tracks. The differences have been argued about ad infinitum - ultimately it's the mastering quality that matters. If you can at least get lossless copies (CDs then rip, or any 16/44.1 FLAC/ALAC) then that's about as much as you can do on your end.

 

Oh and just take note, things are moving away from 16/44.1khz anyway. Many smartphones can do 24/96 without downsampling, so downloads of some albums now are either mp3 or 24/96 studio master copies. No 16/44.1 lossless for albums like Dream Theater's The Astonishing since, by their reasoning, most people who give a damn about getting their music lossless probably have the equipment for it or at least the right software program to downsample it for their source units.

 

 

[David Maki]

Ok - so to dumb it down to my newbie level - I'd still be golden listening to high quality CD rips - not everything has to come from hdtracks or the like to really notice a huge improvement in listening quality?
 
I honestly didn't know headphones like this existed until recently.  After seeing a bunch of higher end headphones pop up on Massdrop it got me interested.  I would love to take my headphone listening experience to a better level, but didn't know if buying higher end headphones like the Audeze that I mentioned would benefit me if the music I'm listening to was CD quality.  

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  Ok - so to dumb it down to my newbie level - I'd still be golden listening to high quality CD rips - not everything has to come from hdtracks or the like to really notice a huge improvement in listening quality?

 

Barring a badly mastered album vs a properly remastered one, differences will come from the hardware. Primarily the headphone, then the amplifier if it matters. The DAC for the most part will only matter in a way similar to the software - as long as you're not comparing a badly designed product to a properly designed one, differences you hear cannot be easily attributed to anything beyond placebo or some kind of error (like even a 0.5dB difference in one configuration).

 

[jessietigres]

@protegemaniac is right. only thing that would be worth is like remastered stuff in 96/24, unless you are like me and just wants to be sure i'm getting everything.

 

[lehuy]

you should listen before deciding to buy something, and it'd be great if you could borrow the headphone or dac,amp for a couple hours or even a day if some of your friends have it  

 

[ProtegeManiac]

@protegemaniac is right. only thing that would be worth is like remastered stuff in 96/24, unless you are like me and just wants to be sure i'm getting everything.

​Or as it might happen in the future, digital downloads might come only in either mp3 or 24/96, like Dream Theater's The Astonishing​, which unlike other albums isn't available in 16bit/44.1khz.