Redbook vs. High Resolution Tests Are Clickbait

[The Computer Audiophile]

I recently read about another Redbook vs. High Resolution listening test supposedly coming up soon. It made me think, why have such a test? Ah ha, it may drive traffic. 

 

Think about it, what other reason is there for a test like this? Every DAC now plays high resolution and every album available for purchase in high resolution is also available for streaming in high resolution. 

 

Thus, nobody is saving money by finding out they can’t hear a difference between the two versions.

 

What could possibly be gained from a conclusive test result for or against high resolution? Nothing. 

 

I’m all ears and willing to change my mind if anyone wishes to provide evidence that a Redbook vs. High Resolution test has any value. 

 

Note: This has zero to do with one’s belief in or disbelief in high resolution. That doesn’t matter in the least either, especially for purposes of this post. 

[fas42]

Well, I clicked on this thread ...

[One and a half]

Maybe to trap the faux hires, still happening?!

[PeterSt]

37 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Thus, nobody is saving money by finding out they can’t hear a difference between the two versions.

 

Too difficult for my Dutch. Can't this be moved to the non-sense thread ? from there I will get it (but won't click).

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Too difficult for my Dutch. Can't this be moved to the non-sense thread ? from there I will get it (but won't click).

Back in the day I could understand people wanting to know if they could identify differences between Redbook and high resolution. They could spend less money on a DAC that didn’t support 192 or something or they could purchase the Redbook CD rather than the high res download. Now, all that stuff is included. All DACs support high res and all high res is streamable. 

[PeterSt]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

They could spend less money on a DAC that didn’t support 192 or something

 

Really ...

[psjug]

Hi-res music purchases cost more.  Hi-res streaming costs more. Am I not understanding something?

[crenca]

I admit that I have waffled a bit back and forth as to whether Hi Res has any SQ advantage over 16/44.  In the end, I think it can (if conditions are right with your playback chain) but it is very small.

 

Your question really has to do with the market, in that Hi Res is seen by some in the industry as a revenue source (even if relatively small).  In the Audiophile niche it is a matter of principle (belief) as well.

 

A conclusive test (which would really be a test of the playback conditions and equipment IMO - not the listener) would answer questions, though like you I don't see how the consumer would "save money", though they would have the satisfaction of knowing what the end goal of high fidelity would look like...

[jabbr]

A problem with the test is that an absence of a discernible difference for a set of arbitrary recordings says nothing about the potential for a discernible difference using suitable recordings. 

 

If details of processing and playback chains are captured, one might get an idea about suitable systems. There are s gazillion variables.

[lucretius]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I recently read about another Redbook vs. High Resolution listening test supposedly coming up soon. It made me think, why have such a test? Ah ha, it may drive traffic. 

 

Think about it, what other reason is there for a test like this? Every DAC now plays high resolution and every album available for purchase in high resolution is also available for streaming in high resolution. 

 

Thus, nobody is saving money by finding out they can’t hear a difference between the two versions.

 

What could possibly be gained from a conclusive test result for or against high resolution? Nothing. 

 

I’m all ears and willing to change my mind if anyone wishes to provide evidence that a Redbook vs. High Resolution test has any value. 

 

Note: This has zero to do with one’s belief in or disbelief in high resolution. That doesn’t matter in the least either, especially for purposes of this post. 

 

CDs are still cheaper.  And I can find a lot of CDs at the thrift store and in  the library -- not so for hi res.  Where is hi res other than MQA available for streaming?

[esldude]

You are not fooling anybody Chris.  You saw this other article, and thought "look at that, this dead horse still has a kick or two left in him. I'll start a meta thread about the meta-physical reasons to do another test on redbook vs all comers.  Clickbait yeah!"

 

Brilliant.  

 

BTW, if you have in mind Mark Waldrep, he did one test.  And was surprised I think that people couldn't here HiRes.  In an effort to make excellent recordings he does so in Hires.  Trying a second test to see if maybe there is something to it isn't too crazy from such a perspective. 

 

My own opinion, if HiRes amounts to more than a tiny difference, we'd be way past arguing about it more than 25 years later.  Does it matter?  If so it is way down the list of things that matter more.  Way, way down the list.  So is an otherwise identical recording in redbook hopelessly crippled?  Don't be ridiculous the answer is no.  If the difference between CD and Hires was equal to the difference between in magnitude or perceived quality as that between 8 Track and CD, then we'd have no arguments. 

[esldude]

OK, now someone show me a commercially available recording which has an SNR of more than 75 db?  Excluding purely electronic recordings.  

 

 

[Summit]

I think that is safe to say that the recording and how it was recorded is one of the most important SQ factors. If the recording you buy is Redbook or High Resolution is not the most important factor, not by a long shot, but still matters IMO. The (real) source first principle stipulate that data what’s missing or signal that are coloured at the source can’t be 100 % fixed in gear downstream.

 

The DAC may not be a problem today but like @psjug pointed out Hi-res music purchases cost more and so does Hi-res streaming. Btw we can’t even stream Hi-res in Sweden. Even if digital storage is cheaper now than ever it’s not free and if you want to play from a SD card for example the limiting capacity may make it not suited for big Hi-res files.

 

Let’s turn it 180 degrees, why do we “test” anything at all? I believe it is to see, hear and measure the difference between different things or to try a hypothesis.    

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 hours ago, psjug said:

Hi-res music purchases cost more.  Hi-res streaming costs more. Am I not understanding something?

I believe the price is negligible compared to everything else in this hobby, but I see your point. 

 

However, would any test cause you to purchase the Redbook version, given that such test can only prove valid for the recording under examination and the exact playback chain used?

[Summit]

32 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I believe the price is negligible compared to everything else in this hobby, but I see your point. 

 

However, would any test cause you to purchase the Redbook version, given that such test can only prove valid for the recording under examination and the exact playback chain used?

 

I would not say that the price is negligible. Let say that you have 3000 Redbook records and all could be bought in Hi-res. The cost to buy all of them new again is not cheap. I would want to know for sure that the Hi-res records is a true recorded Hi-res record before I buy it. Will this test show it? I guess not, but if we would get a database with tested and confirmed Hi-res records I would buy more Hi-res records.  

[mansr]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I believe the price is negligible compared to everything else in this hobby, but I see your point. 

Depends on where you're buying from. Some labels, e.g. Blue Coast, charge 3x more for the highest resolution compared to CD quality. $20 extra on 500 albums is already $10,000. That's money that would buy, say, a rather nice pair of speakers.

 

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

However, would any test cause you to purchase the Redbook version, given that such test can only prove valid for the recording under examination and the exact playback chain used?

Wrong question. Speaking for myself, I know CD quality to be perfectly acceptable, so the question is what would compel me to buy the high-res version instead. If the price difference is small, ~15% or less, I might pick the high-res just to be sure nobody botched a down-conversion. For me to pay more, there would need to be a clear improvement. So far, I have not heard it. The few studies that suggest a difference might be discernible all have various issues and have never been replicated.

 

As for Waldrep's upcoming project, it's probably a waste of time. The outcome will almost certainly be inconclusive, and everybody will carry on believing whatever they believe today.

 

Suppose we managed to get a large group, thousands of people, to go through the rigours of a CD vs high-res test under identical conditions. We can calculate the expected outcome for the baseline of everybody just guessing, including likely deviations from this based on the specifics of the test. If the mean score were significantly higher than 50%, this would suggest that a typical person can indeed hear a difference, at least some of the time. Given the results of previous studies, this outcome is extremely unlikely. Independently, we would look for signs of some subset of test subjects having exceptional hearing and thus achieving higher scores. Maybe we'd find that 2% of the population can hear a difference 25% of the time, or something like that.

 

Even with a such a result in hand, the question of interpretation remains open. Maybe the golden ears were actually hearing anomalies triggered by the high-frequency content, and the reproduction was in fact less accurate. This question might be resolved through further testing of these subjects using a range of different reproduction systems. On the other hand, if some subset of systems were determined to render the difference audible, we still wouldn't know whether to characterise these as "slightly defective" or "highly resolving."

 

Ultimately, there will always be enough wiggle room that each of us can comfortably reach whatever conclusion we desire.

[sandyk]

7 minutes ago, mansr said:

As for Waldrep's upcoming project, it's probably a waste of time. The outcome will almost certainly be inconclusive, and everybody will carry on believing whatever they believe today.

 

 

 Perhaps he is trying to arrest flagging sales figures ?

He may also be trying to demonstrate that his Hi Res recordings sound better than anything from MQA !

[accwai]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

Depends on where you're buying from. Some labels, e.g. Blue Coast, charge 3x more for the highest resolution compared to CD quality. $20 extra on 500 albums is already $10,000. That's money that would buy, say, a rather nice pair of speakers. [...]

 

$10k speakers probably aren't that impressive to somebody used to $58k speakers and $10k of poweramp in front of each. So at the end of the day, $10k extra on hires music would be quite negligible for some. On the other hand, 5,000 albums would likely be much more like it for somebody Chris' calibre, which would jack the premium up to like $100k. Ouch

[mansr]

22 minutes ago, accwai said:

$10k speakers probably aren't that impressive to somebody used to $58k speakers and $10k of poweramp in front of each.

What about $68k speakers? Or $15k amps. The point being, that extra money probably makes more of a difference if spent on hardware rather than frequencies we can't hear.

[miguelito]

15 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Think about it, what other reason is there for a test like this? Every DAC now plays high resolution and every album available for purchase in high resolution is also available for streaming in high resolution. 

Slightly off topic... I find there's little analysis of how well a DAC plays red book (16/44). I think this is actually very important, not all DACs do a great job playing red book,  even when they support massively high resolutions.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, miguelito said:

Slightly off topic... I find there's little analysis of how well a DAC plays red book (16/44). I think this is actually very important, not all DACs do a great job playing red book,  even when they support massively high resolutions.

100% true. Good filters can make all the difference in the world. 

[Sonicularity]

1 hour ago, miguelito said:

Slightly off topic... I find there's little analysis of how well a DAC plays red book (16/44). I think this is actually very important, not all DACs do a great job playing red book,  even when they support massively high resolutions.

 

The PonoPlayer's ears are burning.  

[The Computer Audiophile]

Off topic posts cleaned up. 

[Rt66indierock]

17 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I recently read about another Redbook vs. High Resolution listening test supposedly coming up soon. It made me think, why have such a test? Ah ha, it may drive traffic. 

 

Think about it, what other reason is there for a test like this? Every DAC now plays high resolution and every album available for purchase in high resolution is also available for streaming in high resolution. 

 

Thus, nobody is saving money by finding out they can’t hear a difference between the two versions.

 

What could possibly be gained from a conclusive test result for or against high resolution? Nothing. 

 

I’m all ears and willing to change my mind if anyone wishes to provide evidence that a Redbook vs. High Resolution test has any value. 

 

Note: This has zero to do with one’s belief in or disbelief in high resolution. That doesn’t matter in the least either, especially for purposes of this post. 

 

Mark Waldrep is unhappy that his readers couldn't tell the difference. He is a believer in hi-res. He is using his sabbatical this fall to figure out why people can't hear a difference. He and I talked about this at t.h.e. Show in June. 

 

If you look at John Siau's comments in Highly Resolving Redux, June 5, 2019 on Mark's site you will see the math surrounding the audibility of resolutions greater than 16 bits. 

 

I have always found the math for what is audible interesting because I refuse to listen to even a momentary peak over 102 dB. 

 

[mansr]

2 hours ago, miguelito said:

Slightly off topic... I find there's little analysis of how well a DAC plays red book (16/44). I think this is actually very important, not all DACs do a great job playing red book,  even when they support massively high resolutions.

This is especially relevant with the slow roll-off fad where the filter can easily encroach on the audible range for 44.1 kHz material.