[s0ny]

I agree with the arguments. I also use a CD player occasionally, which makes having a CD more convenient. When I purchase a CD, I rip it to my DAP immediately. I was just wondering if it's biologically impossible to hear audio beyond 16-bit 44.1 kHz. If it is theoretically impossible, then I would have no reason to buy hi-res music anymore. If audio beyond CD-specs provide noticeable improvement of sound quality, then I'm willing to prefer hi-res purchases over CD's.

 

[XenHeadFi]

  I agree with the arguments. I also use a CD player occasionally, which makes having a CD more convenient. When I purchase a CD, I rip it to my DAP immediately. I was just wondering if it's biologically impossible to hear audio beyond 16-bit 44.1 kHz. If it is theoretically impossible, then I would have no reason to buy hi-res music anymore. If audio beyond CD-specs provide noticeable improvement of sound quality, then I'm willing to prefer hi-res purchases over CD's.

The universe will be around for a long time so impossible is a pretty strong gate to pass through. Listening to music is both physical (objective) and metaphysical (subjective). I lean heavily towards the objective sides for many things but I completely understand that the emotion of enjoying music is not purely objective.
 
CastleofAaaaaaaaargh gives out good advice. There are reasons why I would buy hi-res music and it has nothing to do with capabilities of the format. It has everything to do with the mastering of that piece of music. If hi-res is the only way to get a great master, then I will spend the money on it. $20 spent on a good master is better than $10 completely wasted on a CD that is compressed to be flat...
 
I now really treasure my late 1980's to mid 1990 CDs. They have dynamics! I just found out that Pretty Hate Machine (1989) has more dynamic range than any of Adele's albums.

 

[upstateguy]

 

 

  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.

 
A couple of things pop out at me.
 
"...it seems like an adult can't hear anything above CD-quality."    This begs the question of whether there is any extra audible material to hear in HiRez?
 
"If you can, get a CD of any of your Hi-Res music and compare."  This is completely ridiculous.  The only valid way to do this is to reprocess your HighRez material to CD quality and compare.
 
"I totally disagree with what you just said about highres differences, so I totally agree with your conclusion...."   I totally agree with what you totally disagree with and I am in complete agreement with your conclusion.

 

[JWolf]

   
A couple of things pop out at me.
 
"...it seems like an adult can't hear anything above CD-quality."    This begs the question of whether there is any extra audible material to hear in HiRez?
 
"If you can, get a CD of any of your Hi-Res music and compare."  This is completely ridiculous.  The only valid way to do this is to reprocess your HighRez material to CD quality and compare.
 
"I totally disagree with what you just said about highres differences, so I totally agree with your conclusion...."   I totally agree with what you totally disagree with and I am in complete agreement with your conclusion.

 
Doesn't matter if we can hear past 20Khz or not. What matters is the quality of the music we can hear.
 
Your valid way is invalid. They way to do it is to listen to what's available. if all you can get is the Hi-Res and the CD, then you listen to both and decide what you like. This is not a compare with a fictitious file that doesn't exist. You compare with what's available and then you decide if Hi-Res is worth it. I do wish a lot of the people onhere would stop trying to muddy things up with invalid comparisons.
 
That last statement is so out of touch with reality. Reality is when we do our own comparisons and make our own conclusions instead of letting others dictate what we should or should not be able to hear. And stop quoting old obsolete articles on what we should or should not be able to hear,
 
s0ny, just do your own comparisons and come up with your own conclusions Forget that article you linked. It's obsolete. Forget what others tell you you should or should not be able to hear. Just do your own listening and make up your own mind.

 

[Arunabha Lahiri]

At the end music is all about entertainment and mental as well as spiritual satisfaction. And at the end all that matters is the music. If someone is happy with high resolution, it's his choice and he has complete liberty to do so. I believe the purpose of this thread is to make people aware of the advertising policy of different audio company and I would say in that case the thread is successful. But if the good masters are only reserved for high res in the future, then that's the way to go. Even apple is rumored to give high res support in iPhone 7. So we can't ignore that either. Our brain is a mysterious thing. Even now we cannot decipher it's functions and all we have are some statistics and hypothesis. We can say that anything above cd quality is pointless. But at the end of the day everything depends on the user's choice and satisfaction.

 

[Roly1650]

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.

That link is an excellent place to start and as relevant today as the day it was published, there have been zero developments in the meantime which would have rendered it obselete. Anybody saying otherwise is either offering bad advice or has no clue what they are talking about.

The biggest problem with online downloads is you have no way of knowing what the files actually are until after you've downloaded them. The website preview option is usually at lower resolution than the downloaded files, the website maintaining bare-bones bandwith for cost reasons. So there's many an audiophile banging on about how wonderful his 24 bit files are, blissfully unaware that he's actually got 16/44 files in a 24/96/192 container, (ie: upsampled). It really is a crapshoot as to what you actually get, the download websites themselves don't necessarily have 100% the right information on the files, for whatever reason.

With the price of cd's being where they are and the quality possible, (obvious if audiophiles can get tricked into believing cd quality is actually hi-res, see above) then it would still seem like the way to go. Sure you may have to rip the cd, but that's a routine excercise.

 

[s0ny]

For some reason, ripping CD's is enjoyable to me. I just like seeing the progress.

If hi-res music is taken directly from the original master source, providing more real data in the same songs, then I can imagine it to sound different, even if you can't hear the highest frequencies. Being a version that sounds the way it was originally recorded makes it interesting for me. It doesn't necessarily sound better though.

I have some music that has been remastered multiple times over the past decades and the remastered CD versions sound more impactful and impressive than the DSD that I bought. I guess I prefer forward mids and compressed sound. The DSD had raving reviews from audiophiles, but to my ears, it sounded too neutral and weak. The remastered CD-versions were obviously compressed, amplified and edited, but they do sound more impressive because of it. I opened one of the best-sounding 24-bit 192 kHz hi-res purchases in Audacity. It looked totally brickwalled but sounds great. The reviews of that album said the producer did major effort to improve the master for that hi-res version. Even though that album looked like a fake hi-res in Audacity, it sounded way better to me than the perfect DSD.

Like everyone mentioned above, it's probably the source used and how/if it's edited to determine how good it sounds. I almost bought some hi-res albums yesterday, but I had a new years deal of $8 per CD (brand new, sealed). I received them today.

 

[JWolf]

That link is an excellent place to start and as relevant today as the day it was published, there have been zero developments in the meantime which would have rendered it obselete. Anybody saying otherwise is either offering bad advice or has no clue what they are talking about.

The biggest problem with online downloads is you have no way of knowing what the files actually are until after you've downloaded them. The website preview option is usually at lower resolution than the downloaded files, the website maintaining bare-bones bandwith for cost reasons. So there's many an audiophile banging on about how wonderful his 24 bit files are, blissfully unaware that he's actually got 16/44 files in a 24/96/192 container, (ie: upsampled). It really is a crapshoot as to what you actually get, the download websites themselves don't necessarily have 100% the right information on the files, for whatever reason.

With the price of cd's being where they are and the quality possible, (obvious if audiophiles can get tricked into believing cd quality is actually hi-res, see above) then it would still seem like the way to go. Sure you may have to rip the cd, but that's a routine excercise.

 
I do stick by my statement that the article is obsolete. When we listen to music, we do not listen to specific frequency waveforms. Music is not like that. Muysic is a lot more complex and it is a lot more difficult to fill in any missing information. A waveform is easy to fll in the gaps so it is indistinguishable from the original. But music is not like that. That's why we have had the CD vs. LP argument for a long time. The thing is, Hi-Res music isn't just about extending the high end past what you get from 44.1Khz. It's about capturing as much of the audio as you can in all the frequencies of the master recording.
 
Some say Hi-Res is better because it's been remastered better than the CD. Even if that's true, then if you buy the CD you are buying a lesser quality recording.  A lot are saying to downsample/convert the Hi-Res recording and compare that. That's rubbish. You have to compare the Hi-Res with the best currently available on CD because you aren't going to be buying a CD downsampled from the Hi-Res and this, that makes the comparison not really valid.
 
So compare the Hi-Res with the best on Cd and judge for yourself. Don't listen to obsolete articles on waveforms and how 16/44.1 is just fine for waveforms. Music is more complex and thus do your own thinking.

 

[JWolf]

For some reason, ripping CD's is enjoyable to me. I just like seeing the progress.

If hi-res music is taken directly from the original master source, providing more real data in the same songs, then I can imagine it to sound different, even if you can't hear the highest frequencies. Being a version that sounds the way it was originally recorded makes it interesting for me. It doesn't necessarily sound better though.

I have some music that has been remastered multiple times over the past decades and the remastered CD versions sound more impactful and impressive than the DSD that I bought. I guess I prefer forward mids and compressed sound. The DSD had raving reviews from audiophiles, but to my ears, it sounded too neutral and weak. The remastered CD-versions were obviously compressed, amplified and edited, but they do sound more impressive because of it. I opened one of the best-sounding 24-bit 192 kHz hi-res purchases in Audacity. It looked totally brickwalled but sounds great. The reviews of that album said the producer did major effort to improve the master for that hi-res version. Even though that album looked like a fake hi-res in Audacity, it sounded way better to me than the perfect DSD.

Like everyone mentioned above, it's probably the source used and how/if it's edited to determine how good it sounds. I almost bought some hi-res albums yesterday, but I had a new years deal of $8 per CD (brand new, sealed). I received them today.

 
I've head some highly compressed Hi-Res that are not worth being in Hi-Res. It really is a shame that good music can be allowed to be ruined like that.

 

[nick_charles]

   
... specific frequency waveforms. Music is not like that. Muysic is a lot more complex and it is a lot more difficult to fill in any missing information. 

 
 
This is at least the second time you have said this. The first time I ignored it, but you are spreading misinformation. It does not matter how complex a waveform is as long as none of the component frequencies are above fs/2 then it can be reconstructed perfectly well with a DAC operating at a given fs. the argument that a complex wave is harder to render is incorrect. Please visit here Jim leSurf on Waves 
 

 where B is the signal bandwidth. Given this information we can, therefore, reconstruct the actual shape of the original continuous signal at any instant ‘in between’ the sampled instants. It should also be clear that this reconstruction is not a guess but a true reconstruction.

 

[JWolf]

   
 
This is at least the second time you have said this. The first time I ignored it, but you are spreading misinformation. It does not matter how complex a waveform is as long as none of the component frequencies are above fs/2 then it can be reconstructed perfectly well with a DAC operating at a given fs. the argument that a complex wave is harder to render is incorrect. Please visit here Jim leSurf on Waves 
 

 
Have you compared Hi-Res to CD-Res and if so, what was your conclusion based on your listening?

 

[RRod]

   
I do stick by my statement that the article is obsolete. When we listen to music, we do not listen to specific frequency waveforms. Music is not like that. Muysic is a lot more complex and it is a lot more difficult to fill in any missing information. A waveform is easy to fll in the gaps so it is indistinguishable from the original. But music is not like that. That's why we have had the CD vs. LP argument for a long time. The thing is, Hi-Res music isn't just about extending the high end past what you get from 44.1Khz. It's about capturing as much of the audio as you can in all the frequencies of the master recording.
 
Some say Hi-Res is better because it's been remastered better than the CD. Even if that's true, then if you buy the CD you are buying a lesser quality recording.  A lot are saying to downsample/convert the Hi-Res recording and compare that. That's rubbish. You have to compare the Hi-Res with the best currently available on CD because you aren't going to be buying a CD downsampled from the Hi-Res and this, that makes the comparison not really valid.
 
So compare the Hi-Res with the best on Cd and judge for yourself. Don't listen to obsolete articles on waveforms and how 16/44.1 is just fine for waveforms. Music is more complex and thus do your own thinking.

 
The ideal reconstruction of a PCM signal is perfectly compatible with a frequency-view; that we can't attain the ideal doesn't mean suddenly the view is thrown out the window.
 
I'll agree with you that it's missing the point a bit to talk about what a resample of a hi-res track sounds like if you can't get the master on anything but hi-res. That's the results of the sad cycle of loudness, where companies started to make things loud, people started to accept it and then expect it, and now good sound is considered a "niche." Still, that you can take a hi-res master and take it down to Redbook with no audible issues just shows how unnecessary the intertwining of hi-res downloads and good mastering really is.
 
To @s0ny: Find a master you like and get it. If having it in hi-res is a pain for your hardware/software setup, it is quite easy to take it down to CD and have it sound just as good. Do searches for your albums on sites like Steve Hoffman's forum and the loudness database to help you find masters you might want.

 

[L8MDL]

I've head some highly compressed Hi-Res that are not worth being in Hi-Res. It really is a shame that good music can be allowed to be ruined like that.

Examples?

 

[Cerastes]

   
When we listen to music, we do not listen to specific frequency waveforms.

Indeed, however you have to understand that those specific frequency waveforms dictate WHAT we can hear... one does not simply listen to something that is not there.
 

   
Muysic is a lot more complex and it is a lot more difficult to fill in any missing information.

Not true per se... sure music can be somewhat complex, however at the end of the day it's pure math.
 

   
That's why we have had the CD vs. LP argument for a long time.

The only reason why we are still having this argument is simply because being a hipster is a thing, and people are having nostalgia boners and those people as a whole have no idea what they are talking about and cannot accept the fact that the CD or digital in general is the superior format overall.

 

[RRod]

Examples?

 
A version of Countdown to Extinction available from a certain hi-res retailer sounds a total mess compared to either the original release or the MoFi version. Bloated bass, sibilant voices, bleh.