[RRod]

  I'm calling upon the authority of a master electrical engineer. But I see where where you're coming from. How could I set up an unambiguous test? I think I have pretty good ears..my only condition is that I can choose the music (not some lady gaga crap)

 
The thing is other master electrical engineers don't think people need to be paying any more $$ for hi-res, so really at this point people just need to decide for themselves. It doesn't seem like anyone has the time/resources/interest to do a new large-scale test of this stuff.
 
The first thing to setting up a test is to verify that your system isn't doing things like producing audible IMD with hi-res files. See the intermodulation tests here. Once you've got that then the typical recommendation is to use the ABX utility of foobar. Being on Linux and hating black-boxes, I resample in SoX, first taking the track down to Redbook and then taking it back up to hi-res (to avoid biases from how your system handles switching sampling rates). We also have to agree on how to handle problems, e.g. the resampling causing audible clipping.

 

[aphex27]

   
The thing is other master electrical engineers don't think people need to be paying any more $$ for hi-res, so really at this point people just need to decide for themselves. It doesn't seem like anyone has the time/resources/interest to do a new large-scale test of this stuff.
 
The first thing to setting up a test is to verify that your system isn't doing things like producing audible IMD with hi-res files. See the intermodulation tests here. Once you've got that then the typical recommendation is to use the ABX utility of foobar. Being on Linux and hating black-boxes, I resample in SoX, first taking the track down to Redbook and then taking it back up to hi-res (to avoid biases from how your system handles switching sampling rates). We also have to agree on how to handle problems, e.g. the resampling causing audible clipping.

 
 

  funny how reading the same article, I come to totally different conclusions.

the benchmark guy spends pretty much the all time saying in as kind a way as he can muster, how DSD is a nonsense format and makes everything more complicated for everybody. for the master engineer, for the DACs, for the end user. all that for an effective resolution no better than highres PCM. I have a hard time reading praises for DSD in this article.
 
he talks about the possible resolutions of the different formats, not about audibility. only you did that.
nobody here will challenge the fact that DSD can measure better in the 20hz-20khz than 16/44. it's not a mystery, not news, and not a debate.
it's when you say you hear the difference, that we start to have more doubts. even more so when you don't care to explain how you made sure that you really heard a difference.

Good stuff dudes..i wish I could continue but don't have the time..cheers

 

[RRod]

   
 

Good stuff dudes..i wish I could continue but don't have the time..cheers

Ta.

 

[XenHeadFi]

  http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=74
 
I have been convinced. No subjectivity about it. 16/44.1<<<<<<<<<<<DSD(kinda=)96/24.
 
Exactly what my ears heard.

 
Did you read what you posted? Siau clearly lists several reasons why DSD is WORSE than 96/24. See points #4 (PCM has better SNR), #8 (DSD requires "Aggressive noise shaping" to remove ultrasonic noise introduced by the DSD format itself. "[T]he quality of DSD degrades very quickly" when processed, like from mixing and mastering.), #9 (PCM's 24 DB SNR advantage is a boon to mixing and mastering, not including the degradation of processing DSD.)  The only benefit over 96/24 is #6 (DSD is able to implement DRM).
 
No where does he say that 96/24 is better for playback. He makes it clear that 96/24 exceeds all current ADC and DAC.

 

[aphex27]

   
Did you read what you posted? Siau clearly lists several reasons why DSD is WORSE than 96/24. See points #4 (PCM has better SNR), #8 (DSD requires "Aggressive noise shaping" to remove ultrasonic noise introduced by the DSD format itself. "[T]he quality of DSD degrades very quickly" when processed, like from mixing and mastering.), #9 (PCM's 24 DB SNR advantage is a boon to mixing and mastering, not including the degradation of processing DSD.)  The only benefit over 96/24 is #6 (DSD is able to implement DRM).
 
No where does he say that 96/24 is better for playback. He makes it clear that 96/24 exceeds all current ADC and DAC.

lol
 
JS: Yeah. And conceptually it looked like a simple approach. And, DSD significantly outperformed the 16-bit PCM systems that were common at the time. As a distribution format, DSD is definitely a big step above 44/16 CDs, and we want to give people the best possible playback of the wonderful DSD recordings that already exist.
MW: And they tried to put in the successor to the CD and that’s where we got a format war.
JS: Yep. Moving forward, we should focus on 24/96, and 24/192 downloads as these formats offer the best quality available.

 

[aphex27]

  funny how reading the same article, I come to totally different conclusions.

the benchmark guy spends pretty much the all time saying in as kind a way as he can muster, how DSD is a nonsense format and makes everything more complicated for everybody. for the master engineer, for the DACs, for the end user. all that for an effective resolution no better than highres PCM. I have a hard time reading praises for DSD in this article.
 
he talks about the possible resolutions of the different formats, not about audibility. only you did that.
nobody here will challenge the fact that DSD can measure better in the 20hz-20khz than 16/44. it's not a mystery, not news, and not a debate.
it's when you say you hear the difference, that we start to have more doubts. even more so when you don't care to explain how you made sure that you really heard a difference.

Ok, thanks, I understand your point. To be honest what I understood from the article is that hi res PCM is better than CD quality in terms of reproduction (and obviously production) and I assumed he meant within the human hearing range. Not that I understand any of the science behind it  

 

[castleofargh]

 

  funny how reading the same article, I come to totally different conclusions.

the benchmark guy spends pretty much the all time saying in as kind a way as he can muster, how DSD is a nonsense format and makes everything more complicated for everybody. for the master engineer, for the DACs, for the end user. all that for an effective resolution no better than highres PCM. I have a hard time reading praises for DSD in this article.
 
he talks about the possible resolutions of the different formats, not about audibility. only you did that.
nobody here will challenge the fact that DSD can measure better in the 20hz-20khz than 16/44. it's not a mystery, not news, and not a debate.
it's when you say you hear the difference, that we start to have more doubts. even more so when you don't care to explain how you made sure that you really heard a difference.

Ok, thanks, I understand your point. To be honest what I understood from the article is that hi res PCM is better than CD quality in terms of reproduction (and obviously production) and I assumed he meant within the human hearing range. Not that I understand any of the science behind it  

well because of noise shaping and low pass filtering, SACD resolution is a lot less than what the data number would suggest. but it's still very good, there is no debate about this either. just like highres has the potential to be better than CD. the question being what music we record on it? and what is our own hearing threshold for those resolutions? 
when you take an overly compressed justin bieber, increasing the file resolution is only adding zeroes everywhere while really doing nothing for the signal. and in practice, we seem to fail to hear anything past 20khz(and actually below that for the average adult), so CD can do it. and we seem to fail to hear something 80db below music, so is there really a need for more than the dynamic range of a CD?
most logic and most tests agree that it's going from mighty hard to impossible to tell CD from higher resolutions, that's why people like me get suspicious when I read about hearing superiority of a format. because too often what people call the audible superiority of a format is expectation bias, or listening on different devices so one can of course sound better than the other without the format having anything to do with it, some don't notice that they are listening to 2 different masters... that's why we ask for as much controls as possible during a listening test, to make sure all those possibilities are not mistaken for the actual format differences. 
but that doesn't mean I reject the measurable superiority of the format. highres can do better than CD and measurably so. that's a fact. when we argue about audibility we never argue about measurement, those are separate matters and only a few lost lambs can't see how they don't always have to be one and the same.
some like me think "I fail to hear better then CD, so CD is good enough", others think "why settle with good enough when you can have higher resolution?". both are legit choices IMO. there isn't really a wrong answer to making our own choices for our own reasons ^_^.

 

[aphex27]

 
well because of noise shaping and low pass filtering, SACD resolution is a lot less than what the data number would suggest. but it's still very good, there is no debate about this either. just like highres has the potential to be better than CD. the question being what music we record on it? and what is our own hearing threshold for those resolutions? 
when you take an overly compressed justin bieber, increasing the file resolution is only adding zeroes everywhere while really doing nothing for the signal. and in practice, we seem to fail to hear anything past 20khz(and actually below that for the average adult), so CD can do it. and we seem to fail to hear something 80db below music, so is there really a need for more than the dynamic range of a CD?
most logic and most tests agree that it's going from mighty hard to impossible to tell CD from higher resolutions, that's why people like me get suspicious when I read about hearing superiority of a format. because too often what people call the audible superiority of a format is expectation bias, or listening on different devices so one can of course sound better than the other without the format having anything to do with it, some don't notice that they are listening to 2 different masters... that's why we ask for as much controls as possible during a listening test, to make sure all those possibilities are not mistaken for the actual format differences. 
but that doesn't mean I reject the measurable superiority of the format. highres can do better than CD and measurably so. that's a fact. when we argue about audibility we never argue about measurement, those are separate matters and only a few lost lambs can't see how they don't always have to be one and the same.
some like me think "I fail to hear better then CD, so CD is good enough", others think "why settle with good enough when you can have higher resolution?". both are legit choices IMO. there isn't really a wrong answer to making our own choices for our own reasons ^_^.

Agree completely..the recording/mastering is by far the most important part of the chain. So maybe people who make records in hi-res (I believe most of them do in fact want to give us a better listening experience) have better recording standards and we confuse the better recording for the format. On a somewhat related sidenote, I've been listening to the Beatles albums that came out on Tidal yesterday. These are are the 2009 remasters which I'd never heard before. I did a little research and found out that these remasters were a 5 year project by some very competent engineers. I know every Beatles song inside/out and can easily say give me these remasters in 192kbps over any previous version in DSD128 ..

 

[XenHeadFi]

  lol
 
JS: Yeah. And conceptually it looked like a simple approach. And, DSD significantly outperformed the 16-bit PCM systems that were common at the time. As a distribution format, DSD is definitely a big step above 44/16 CDs, and we want to give people the best possible playback of the wonderful DSD recordings that already exist.
MW: And they tried to put in the successor to the CD and that’s where we got a format war.
JS: Yep. Moving forward, we should focus on 24/96, and 24/192 downloads as these formats offer the best quality available.

 
I apologize as I just read the bulleted list that you posted. Now, I've read the entire interview and the part you quoted comes at the very end without any explanation or reasons why it is better. Siau does say it, so I am wrong in my post.
 
The vast majority of the article was spent pretty much saying DSD is a horrible format but that Benchmark makes the best DSD DAC to handle its playback. I didn't know that DSD pretty much filters out everything from 47kHz and up or how limiting DSD is for playback usability. As a user, a DSD file pretty much has to be converted to PCM before crossfades/fadeouts/fadeins/gapless playback can be implemented from our music players, but they can't if that DSD file has DRM, like for SA-CD. Even if you could, "consumer" DSD is 1-bit so any manipulations introduces artifacts. Another horrible attempt by Sony to lock-in users into a format that is extremely (edit: NOT) user-friendly and only offers stronger DRM as a benefit (Memory Sticks, UMD, SecureROM even on audio CDs!, etc).
 

  Agree completely..the recording/mastering is by far the most important part of the chain. So maybe people who make records in hi-res (I believe most of them do in fact want to give us a better listening experience) have better recording standards and we confuse the better recording for the format. On a somewhat related sidenote, I've been listening to the Beatles albums that came out on Tidal yesterday. These are are the 2009 remasters which I'd never heard before. I did a little research and found out that these remasters were a 5 year project by some very competent engineers. I know every Beatles song inside/out and can easily say give me these remasters in 192kbps over any previous version in DSD128 ..

 
Totally agree with you here. Releasing better mastered music is right now the most important thing. The sample rate and bit rate wars are just a distraction.
 
Edit: LOL, I originally wrote that DSD was user-friendly...

 

[sonitus mirus]

Initially, I was worried that the powerful and acquisitive music industry would attempt to push higher bit/sample rate files in an effort to get people to repurchase their audio libraries  Unfortunately for this lawyer-controlled industry, many people just don't care about expensive, higher quality music, and when any original music was simply transcoded directly to a new format, people started catching on and there has been some backlash from consumers.   I believe we are always going to have different quality levels of music with regards to the format.  This works out best for the music conglomerates as there is no need to remaster and upgrade their entire, vast catalog; and they can select which music can be upgraded to target a specific market for maximum profitability.  
 
What concerns me is that any well-mastered, higher quality release will only be made available in an expensive HD file, with a lower quality format somehow being inferior either due to a lack of care when creating them or intentionally to artificially create value with the technically higher quality formats.  I can not pass an ABX test with any of the HD tracks I have purchased and my own MP3 created from these tracks, so I don't feel there is any benefit to me from having the more expensive format, provided that the lower bit/sample rate version was competently created.
 
I want good music, and if HD files are the direction needed to get the masters up to snuff, so be it.  The industry will either have to drastically lower the prices, or continue to make cheaper versions available to the masses.  If the streaming files and lower bitrate files are audibly transparent to me, I'm laughing all the way to the bank as I will save a lot of money and can stream the smaller files practically everywhere I go.  If these lower bitrate files are somehow being gimped, I'd probably begrudgingly spend more money on some select music I love to ensure I was hearing the best version.  I'm closely monitoring how things turn out, and it is a major reason for my interest and participation on music/audio sites such as this one.

 

[coli]

From my experience, a lot of the HD recording actually sound worse than CD release. Looking closer, it seem a large part of the music industry equipment/software is 44.1 and then they just upsample it and the suckers buys them for a higher price... Movie industry workflow seems to be different though (and tends to sound better when it comes to hi-res)
 
Edit: Major labels, movies, broadcasters are the only ones doing hi-res right, everyone else are a crap shot, and does them wrong.

 

[castleofargh]

  From my experience, a lot of the HD recording actually sound worse than CD release. Looking closer, it seem a large part of the music industry equipment/software is 44.1 and then they just upsample it and the suckers buys them for a higher price... Movie industry workflow seems to be different though (and tends to sound better when it comes to hi-res)
 
Edit: Major labels, movies, broadcasters are the only ones doing hi-res right, everyone else are a crap shot, and does them wrong.

old stuff shouldn't come as a surprise, and even modern stuff where people mix whatever sample they like wherever they got it, some 44.1 for sure. even mp3 might end up in the mix. is it still highres music? when only 1 track in 20used to make the song isn't highres, is the song highres? at this point we see all the ridicule of this resolution based system as it becomes more philosophy than sound quality.
and remaster when I grew up,they had been linked to "best of" in my mind. a way to resell the same old stuff in poor quality with a cheap fast remaster that too often sounded worst than the original.
to the point that subjectively, I still to this day have a negative bias when I read "remastered" on a cover.  it should make me dream of all the improved stuff modern tech brought out, but it actually scares me away most of the time.

 

[s0ny]

I bought several hi-res 24-bit albums, 96 kHz, 192 kHz and DSD. Were they wasted money? I paid $25 for each online. My local retailer sells brand new CD's for $12, which seems a better deal (physical disc, booklet, case, just more retail value-for-money). I read a lot of threads and websites such as these:
 
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
 
and it seems like an adult can't hear anything above CD-quality. Then, there's the statement that it matters in quality experience even if you can't hear those frequencies/resolution. If anything above CD-quality is pointless, then I should stop buying hi-res music? I honestly have a huge preference for retail, because of the physical product, but I'm willing to go for hi-res if the quality is audible.

 

[JWolf]

  I bought several hi-res 24-bit albums, 96 kHz, 192 kHz and DSD. Were they wasted money? I paid $25 for each online. My local retailer sells brand new CD's for $12, which seems a better deal (physical disc, booklet, case, just more retail value-for-money). I read a lot of threads and websites such as these:
 
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
 
and it seems like an adult can't hear anything above CD-quality. Then, there's the statement that it matters in quality experience even if you can't hear those frequencies/resolution. If anything above CD-quality is pointless, then I should stop buying hi-res music? I honestly have a huge preference for retail, because of the physical product, but I'm willing to go for hi-res if the quality is audible.

 
It's not just about frequencies above what you can get at 16/44.It's about making the frequencies you can hear the best they can be. yes I know you'll get a lot of people saying the reason Hi-Res sounds better is because of a better master used. But it's about what's available. If you can, get a CD of any of your Hi-Res music and compare. Listen for yourself what you hear. Don't listen to what anyone else says. Do your own comparing and make up your own mind and then come back hre and post your concitions.

 

[castleofargh]

 

  I bought several hi-res 24-bit albums, 96 kHz, 192 kHz and DSD. Were they wasted money? I paid $25 for each online. My local retailer sells brand new CD's for $12, which seems a better deal (physical disc, booklet, case, just more retail value-for-money). I read a lot of threads and websites such as these:
 
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
 
and it seems like an adult can't hear anything above CD-quality. Then, there's the statement that it matters in quality experience even if you can't hear those frequencies/resolution. If anything above CD-quality is pointless, then I should stop buying hi-res music? I honestly have a huge preference for retail, because of the physical product, but I'm willing to go for hi-res if the quality is audible.

 
It's not just about frequencies above what you can get at 16/44.It's about making the frequencies you can hear the best they can be. yes I know you'll get a lot of people saying the reason Hi-Res sounds better is because of a better master used. But it's about what's available. If you can, get a CD of any of your Hi-Res music and compare. Listen for yourself what you hear. Don't listen to what anyone else says. Do your own comparing and make up your own mind and then come back hre and post your concitions.

I totally disagree with what you just said about highres differences, so I totally agree with your conclusion. ^_^ don't listen to what anyone else says

 
@s0ny the end result is how happy you are listening to your music or owning your music. music is about pleasure, real or imagined, what really matters is how we feel about it not how it really is. to me a CD means I'll have to rip it. for 1 CD it's nothing, for hundreds of CDs, how much of my life did I waste doing that?
now of course just downloading some file, it's not like having a physical object. I understand that that too. I guess you could go for DVD audio or SACD to get a physical object and highres, but then trying to get the music on a computer or a DAP a be a nightmare.  but in the end what matters is you. if one option annoys you, get rid of it. nothing justifies being bothered by something that is supposed to bring us joy.
about highres, can you hear a difference? do you want a given master that wasn't pressed on CD?  those are mainly the questions you must ask yourself. for the rest, CD resolution is already amazing. we come from k7 tapes and vinyls, compared to that CDs are high fidelity already.