[Joe Bloggs]

(Below please find: my personal opinion. The following commentary is in no way associated with FiiO.)

We could argue till the cows go home in the 1st thread over the audibility of the improvements that high-res can or may bring about--yet I'm of the opinion that even if high-res audio has arguable quality over standard res, it's still a no-brainer argument that it is bad for music.

To see what I mean, take a step back and look at this from a market ecology standpoint.

First, it's a given that media resolutions of over 16/48 have, at best, diminishing returns over 16/48 in terms of fidelity. Even a spokesperson for a company in the business of making high-res DAPs can admit to that much. :rolleyes:

Secondly, there is a whole class of audio processing techniques that can be applied to music in their final published form, in preparation for playing back through headphones OR loudspeakers. Room correction processing for loudspeakers, HRTF and corrective EQ processing for headphones, among other things. These effects are never subtle, you never need an ABX test to detect their presence in the playback chain, unlike hi-res formats. Hi-Fi customers for the most part have a "thing" against these effects; I don't know why. Perhaps not enough research has been put into these technologies to make them sound good more often than bad. Perhaps it's because the most visible of these effects is the ubiquitous 10-band EQ, which end users can tweak every which way they like with no feedback anywhere on how well they're doing in customizing the sound for their needs (hence results are more often than not atrocious). Or perhaps the endless pursuit for playback systems to push more "bits" through in "perfect" fashion has led the whole market into an intuitive distrust of anything that "messes" with those bits.

Whatever the cause, I consider this most unfortunate, as I've proved to select audiences many times that properly done, such processing can be very powerful indeed in improving sound quality.

Anyway, in this day and age of exponentially increasing computing power, the ability to do these improvement processes seems to be slipping further and further away from our hands. Why? Because the size and load of music formats are expanding in double-exponent fashion! 16/48, 24/96, 24/192, 32/384, DSD64, DSD128, DSD256, DSD512... for the newest of these formats, not only are you looking at a 32-fold increase in bitrate, you're also looking at a format that is violently uncooperative towards post-processing and proud of it! :mad:

Not only do state-of-the-art octa-core CPUs sputter and falter in trying to perform any real-time post-processing tasks on these hi-res formats, customers the world over show NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in having them post-processed in any way--because they're not "meant" to be processed! God forbid it should the player have to convert it to PCM in order to make it sound better!

In the home theatre market, Audyssey is being pushed out of the market in favor of that stupid "Pure Audio" button--a receiver's inability to do anything to improve the sound is becoming a "feature, not a bug!" :mad:

And if you think portable DAPs have it hard trying to process hi-res music, imagine the nightmare that music producers face--you have to record in DSD-wide or something to keep up with the Joneses now--now imagine trying to mix a multitrack recording where every track is DSD-wide!

Oh and the "feature not bug" of not being able to do any processing for the sheer size of everything has bit the recording industry too. "Good!" Says the audiophile. Those pesky EQs and stuff never had any business in an audiophile recording. Right? WRONG! Room correction is just as important in recording as in playback. I don't want to spend days treating my room, tuning my receiver to tame all those room modes, only to hear a 200Hz room mode baked into every "acoustic instrument" recorded in a boxy studio! :mad:

What about the astronomical costs of a DSD-wide mixing system? In a day and age where good standard-res mixing and recording systems can be had for peanuts, independent music producers still get no respect because their gear still gets no respect--for no good reason!

IMNSHO, it is blindingly obvious that for the reasons given above, even if we take the mostly wildly optimistic estimates of the benefits of hi-res over 16/44.1, our ears would still have been better off today, if playback music formats had never progressed beyond CD quality!

Hi-res is here today, and we're going to support it, of course, in the sense that FiiO players will play them to the best of their ability. They're the best formats out there by the specs, and in the world we're living in, you would want to play 64bit 384kHz wavs to get the best (specwise) out of our players. Our players also incorporate proper low-pass filters, so IMD from ultrasonic rubbish won't contaminate the frequencies we actually hear (which hi-res can conceivably better reproduce). But that doesn't mean I can't personally wish they'd never existed :mad:

 

[Exacoustatowner]

(Below please find: my personal opinion. The following commentary is in no way associated with FiiO.)

We could argue till the cows go home in the 1st thread over the audibility of the improvements that high-res can or may bring about--yet I'm of the opinion that even if high-res audio has arguable quality over standard res, it's still a no-brainer argument that it is bad for music.

To see what I mean, take a step back and look at this from a market ecology standpoint.

First, it's a given that media resolutions of over 16/48 have, at best, diminishing returns over 16/48 in terms of fidelity. Even a spokesperson for a company in the business of making high-res DAPs can admit to that much.

Secondly, there is a whole class of audio processing techniques that can be applied to music in their final published form, in preparation for playing back through headphones OR loudspeakers. Room correction processing for loudspeakers, HRTF and corrective EQ processing for headphones, among other things. These effects are never subtle, you never need an ABX test to detect their presence in the playback chain, unlike hi-res formats. Hi-Fi customers for the most part have a "thing" against these effects; I don't know why. Perhaps not enough research has been put into these technologies to make them sound good more often than bad. Perhaps it's because the most visible of these effects is the ubiquitous 10-band EQ, which end users can tweak every which way they like with no feedback anywhere on how well they're doing in customizing the sound for their needs (hence results are more often than not atrocious). Or perhaps the endless pursuit for playback systems to push more "bits" through in "perfect" fashion has led the whole market into an intuitive distrust of anything that "messes" with those bits.

Whatever the cause, I consider this most unfortunate, as I've proved to select audiences many times that properly done, such processing can be very powerful indeed in improving sound quality.

Anyway, in this day and age of exponentially increasing computing power, the ability to do these improvement processes seems to be slipping further and further away from our hands. Why? Because the size and load of music formats are expanding in double-exponent fashion! 16/48, 24/96, 24/192, 32/384, DSD64, DSD128, DSD256, DSD512... for the newest of these formats, not only are you looking at a 32-fold increase in bitrate, you're also looking at a format that is violently uncooperative towards post-processing and proud of it!

Not only do state-of-the-art octa-core CPUs sputter and falter in trying to perform any real-time post-processing tasks on these hi-res formats, customers the world over show NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in having them post-processed in any way--because they're not "meant" to be processed! God forbid it should the player have to convert it to PCM in order to make it sound better!

In the home theatre market, Audyssey is being pushed out of the market in favor of that stupid "Pure Audio" button--a receiver's inability to do anything to improve the sound is becoming a "feature, not a bug!"

And if you think portable DAPs have it hard trying to process hi-res music, imagine the nightmare that music producers face--you have to record in DSD-wide or something to keep up with the Joneses now--now imagine trying to mix a multitrack recording where every track is DSD-wide!

Oh and the "feature not bug" of not being able to do any processing for the sheer size of everything has bit the recording industry too. "Good!" Says the audiophile. Those pesky EQs and stuff never had any business in an audiophile recording. Right? WRONG! Room correction is just as important in recording as in playback. I don't want to spend days treating my room, tuning my receiver to tame all those room modes, only to hear a 200Hz room mode baked into every "acoustic instrument" recorded in a boxy studio!

What about the astronomical costs of a DSD-wide mixing system? In a day and age where good standard-res mixing and recording systems can be had for peanuts, independent music producers still get no respect because their gear still gets no respect--for no good reason!

IMNSHO, it is blindingly obvious that for the reasons given above, even if we take the mostly wildly optimistic estimates of the benefits of hi-res over 16/44.1, our ears would still have been better off today, if music formats had never progressed beyond CD quality, or even mp3-quality.

Hi-res is here today, and we're going to support it, of course, in the sense that FiiO players will play them to the best of their ability. They're the best formats out there by the specs, and in the world we're living in, you would want to play 64bit 384kHz wavs to get the best (specwise) out of our players. Our players also incorporate proper low-pass filters, so IMD from ultrasonic rubbish won't contaminate the frequencies we actually hear (which hi-res can conceivably better reproduce). But that doesn't mean I can't personally wish they'd never existed

Ouch! I feel your pain. There are a lot of naive "purists" out there.

 

[RRod]

What's funny is that people will go through the pains of buying headphones for a specific genre, which is pretty much a form of EQ, but heaven forbid someone just do it in software. I actually just took the plunge and used my HD800 measurements to guide an EQ to tame down the treble. Looks pretty good and sounds good too:

 

[sonitus mirus]

  What's funny is that people will go through the pains of buying headphones for a specific genre, which is pretty much a form of EQ, but heaven forbid someone just do it in software. I actually just took the plunge and used my HD800 measurements to guide an EQ to tame down the treble. Looks pretty good and sounds good too:

 
Wait, I thought the best option was to shop around for the right amp and DAC combo to get in the ballpark, and then go through a dozen or more cables to polish the sound?  My bad.

 

[RRod]

   
Wait, I thought the best option was to shop around for the right amp and DAC combo to get in the ballpark, and then go through a dozen or more cables to polish the sound?  My bad.

 
You gotta roll some tubes too, brah, then let it all sous-vide for about 1 month.

 

[reginalb]

Joe, great to hear this from someone in your position, to be honest. I've always liked Fiio, you guys seem to try to bring a good product at a fair price. I auditioned an X5, but I need something that runs Android, as I use Google Play Music. A lot of people in some other sections of the forum will think I'm nuts, but I love my ZX1 largely because of the processing. The Clear Audio checkbox works beautifully, I don't know enough to make it happen myself, so the fact that I can check a box, and I find that it truly improves the output? That sold me immediately. 
 
If you ever put Android on a device, with some good sound enhancements baked in, I'll be in line for it.
 

  What's funny is that people will go through the pains of buying headphones for a specific genre, which is pretty much a form of EQ, but heaven forbid someone just do it in software. I actually just took the plunge and used my HD800 measurements to guide an EQ to tame down the treble. Looks pretty good and sounds good too:

 

 
Yeah, but then half of the people that feel that way, will then go use a Hifiman that rolls the treble. 

 

[castleofargh]

I'm a pure DSD hater too, I find the idea stupid and dishonest. they all soon enough went using a few bits in most devices, because the 1bit lol was too much of a problem for noise. and all in all the resulting resolution after the massive noise shaping, was around high res PCM. so yes it was just another attempt at locking up a format instead of some audio progress and it only made everybody's life more difficult.
I see no reason to give up on PCM, it works brilliantly, and it's not like we can't increase PCM resolution if it's all that matters to some people.
but most of all, I want to press hard on the balls of anybody who's responsible for the new masters coming out only on DSD. it's marketing LVL "person".  we could all benefit from CD versions of it, they're sure to know better in some marketing departments of whoever, but they miss a lot of my money because I'm not going DSD ever. while I most certainly would buy some of the remasters if in 16/44 at reasonable price. if for the price of a CD they can pay the artist for all his job,  all the marketing, + the CD cost, I really don't see why I should ever pay more than that for one guy remastering an album in highres. if anything that should cost less than a new CD.
 
 
and about EQ, well I was all for it from as far as I can remember, analog EQ was a great help IMO, and digital EQ is just amazing. I started really abusing EQ after I first found electriQ+foobar. then some years later, Joe's EQ tuto for mimicking another signature really made my life hard(it's a lot of work) and my music nice ^_^. listening to those test tones is really not fun at all but we do end up with cool results.
then I participated in the "put up or shut up " tour started from a gentleman's argument between Joe and James444, and was really impressed by the sound of that little crap IEM+convolver.  didn't change my mind on EQ but it did on how much experience I needed to build up before I could expect to do by ear something like Joe could do. also trying the same on a lot of IEMs, it made me realize the imperative need to first find an IEM that would rather have to much of something than not enough of something. so starting with anything with a good FR extension is not a bad idea for sure, and I tend to go for stuff with too much bass so that I can just EQ whatever I like by removing some and not making a distortion massacre. also not all shapes are easy to EQ, so I feel like I'm getting used to looking at online measurements and thinking "hey that could be nice to EQ". overall, a real eye opener to try that EQed IEM.
 
and now I went one step further, with some pro EQ and a cheap measurement system, I couldn't be happier(well sure I could but that involves money and power not sound^_^). in fact the more I get into EQ the cheaper I am when it comes to audio gears.I started knowing nothing with jh13+portable amp and idiotic silver cables, now I'm going out with 50$ etymotics+EQ . I've taken a very non audiophile direction, so obviously highres formats are something very very far from my audio wishlist.

 

[sonitus mirus]

The Grateful Dead The Complete Studio Albums Collection is not even available in any physical media.  (at least a quick search revealed no options) You can get it in 24/96 or 24/192 at $200 and $250 USD and the MP3 or AAC versions are $95-$100 depending on the online store.  I'm fairly certain the music would sound audibly identical to the HD versions if they made it available on CD box set, but Rhino Entertainment (another Warner Music Group child company) decided that it would be challenging to convince fans to repurchase the same music again in the exact same format.  It's a shame there are no CDs for this music, as it really does sound excellent.  They did a great job remastering these albums.  
 
I do know that to my ears, I was unable to ABX the 24/96 FLAC version with the file converted to Lame vbr -0 MP3, and I was unable to hear a difference between the FLAC version and the Google Music streaming file.  Though, I only tested 2 of my favorite songs so I can't say for certain they all sound identical to me.  I'd certainly be suspicious of anyone claiming the differences were "night and day" or otherwise obvious, but it seems that those folks don't know how to conduct a proper ABX test, refuse to even attempt an ABX as the differences are far too obvious to justify it, or they simply believe that the ABX methodology is flawed and useless.  I can't prove to anyone else that they sound identical, but someone could prove to everyone that they hear a difference. (that's for Keith 

)

 

[reginalb]

..Secondly, there is a whole class of audio processing techniques that can be applied to music in their final published form, in preparation for playing back through headphones OR loudspeakers. Room correction processing for loudspeakers, HRTF and corrective EQ processing for headphones, among other things. These effects are never subtle, you never need an ABX test to detect their presence in the playback chain, unlike hi-res formats...

 
Out of curiosity, what kind of processing might be available with the X7?

 

[castleofargh]

 

..Secondly, there is a whole class of audio processing techniques that can be applied to music in their final published form, in preparation for playing back through headphones OR loudspeakers. Room correction processing for loudspeakers, HRTF and corrective EQ processing for headphones, among other things. These effects are never subtle, you never need an ABX test to detect their presence in the playback chain, unlike hi-res formats...

 
Out of curiosity, what kind of processing might be available with the X7?

 

(Below please find: my personal opinion. The following commentary is in no way associated with FiiO.)

 

[reginalb]

   

 
Certainly his opinion is not the stated opinion of Fiio, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't add DSP options. Audiophiles with more discerning ears than I can just ignore those settings. Much like they might do in Sony's Android powered MP3 players, but the settings are still there for us plebeians. 

 

[Joe Bloggs]

The X7's built in player will come with your standard 10-band EQ for now (I haven't been told what formats it can apply to. Maybe all?) while any 3rd party music app you can install on the X7 will of course come with any DSP they themselves carry. Neutron now comes with a 10-band parametric EQ that can do pretty much anything I want headphone-tuning-wise provided I plan out and preview all the adjustment points beforehand on trusty Electri-Q on my computer As a third party app, it resamples down to 48kHz, but that may be the only thing that saves it from grinding to a stuttering halt on hi-res :rolleyes:

 

[castleofargh]

I go with graphs and as much objective data I can get, and when I'm done and got a resulting signature, I mess it up by ear to my preference(sometimes by a lot)^_^. I really find the 2 complimentary and not at all mutually exclusive. it's like one is knowledge, and the other taste and personal hearing(because we clearly do not all get the same sound at our eardrums).
sometimes a measure will show me something I had missed, or as strange as it might seem, give me new ideas. then of course until I can get the body of a god and the HRTF to go with it, and measured perfectly, I still very much need my own ears to tell how I really hear stuff.

 
 
 
eit: oops I posted right when the room service was doing the room

 

[Luckbad]

How did this post not set the forums on fire?

 

[Lunatique]

Count me in. I can't stand this recent mindless trend of going after higher and higher bitrate and resolution and selling ridiculously priced "high-end" DAPs and lossless music files. It's especially troubling that many of the people who spend their hard-earned money on them readily admit that they can't really hear significant improvements (if you have to really focus to hear the subtle differences by doing A/B tests, then it's not "significant" and you're just fooling yourself), yet they do it because they "just want to be sure." Be sure of WHAT? Differences you can't really hear but have to pay extra money for, just so you can feel "special" about your purchasing choices? You might as well spend that extra money on therapy so you can address your hidden feelings of insecurity more directly. In today's society, filling holes in your soul with mindless spending on silly diminishing returns is one of the most common symptoms of a mass delusion.