Never since the advent of CD has there been more BS spouted about music playback, than with High Res audio.
Firsty the vast majority of music touted as High res simply isn't. It's upconverted from analogue tapes or CD masters.
If I took a picture with a 1mega pixel camera, I could scale the image to 1000000 mega pixels in photo shop, but the resultant image would not have more detail than the original. You cant put in what wasn't there originally.
Lets assume the companies selling High res actually got hold of the original studio masters and that these hadn't degraded over time and were still 100 %, these masters still have to be played back on old tape machines and as there are only a few people alive with the knowledge and skill to set these machines up, its doubtful that the studios would have gotten 100%fidelity off the tapes. Nothing that some modern post production cant fix though. But this then makes it a remaster with changes so its not the same as the original.
Thirdly, lets assume that its a new recording, done in a sparkly new studio with lots of new digital gear and recorded at 24 bits and 384 kHz. BUT the final mixing engineer has added dynamic compression to the final mix. This is of course so that the song sounds good on a bedside radio. While the track may be in a 24 bit folder, in reality due to dynamic compression it probably only has 1 to 12 db Dynamic range. The reality here is that you the audiophile are not getting the dynamics you want.
Fourth, can your system actually play the full dynamic potential of High res audio. If for example your amp has a dynamic range of 100 db, it cant actually deliver the full dynamic range potential of 24 bit audio.
I could go on and on but what I will say is that 24/96 or higher is more important in the studio as it gives engineers some more leeway as far as set up goes. IE if a musician sings or shouts louder than expected, the recording system has far more headroom before clipping.
By far more important than the number of bits in an audio bucket, is how well the recording was captured in the first place.
I would far rather listen to well recorded and good music in MP3 than poorly recorded garbage in any of the High Res formats.
Go ahead flame away I can take it
Firsty the vast majority of music touted as High res simply isn't. It's upconverted from analogue tapes or CD masters.
If I took a picture with a 1mega pixel camera, I could scale the image to 1000000 mega pixels in photo shop, but the resultant image would not have more detail than the original. You cant put in what wasn't there originally.
Lets assume the companies selling High res actually got hold of the original studio masters and that these hadn't degraded over time and were still 100 %, these masters still have to be played back on old tape machines and as there are only a few people alive with the knowledge and skill to set these machines up, its doubtful that the studios would have gotten 100%fidelity off the tapes. Nothing that some modern post production cant fix though. But this then makes it a remaster with changes so its not the same as the original.
Thirdly, lets assume that its a new recording, done in a sparkly new studio with lots of new digital gear and recorded at 24 bits and 384 kHz. BUT the final mixing engineer has added dynamic compression to the final mix. This is of course so that the song sounds good on a bedside radio. While the track may be in a 24 bit folder, in reality due to dynamic compression it probably only has 1 to 12 db Dynamic range. The reality here is that you the audiophile are not getting the dynamics you want.
Fourth, can your system actually play the full dynamic potential of High res audio. If for example your amp has a dynamic range of 100 db, it cant actually deliver the full dynamic range potential of 24 bit audio.
I could go on and on but what I will say is that 24/96 or higher is more important in the studio as it gives engineers some more leeway as far as set up goes. IE if a musician sings or shouts louder than expected, the recording system has far more headroom before clipping.
By far more important than the number of bits in an audio bucket, is how well the recording was captured in the first place.
I would far rather listen to well recorded and good music in MP3 than poorly recorded garbage in any of the High Res formats.
Go ahead flame away I can take it
