Jump to content
IGNORED

Hi-Res - Does it matter? Blind Test by Mark Waldrep


Ajax

Recommended Posts

3 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

It's interesting to me that sometimes the argument is "I don't believe you hear that" and sometimes it's "I don't believe you don't hear that"

 

I'd just like to point out the operative word in both cases is "believe".  😎

Interesting. 
 

When I talked to Archimago at Axpona he mentioned the possibility that people with certain types of hearing damage may be prone to hearing high resolution files. This was only based on his very very very limited sample, but it’s kind of interesting. 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

Link to comment
38 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Sandy is the only member here to receive multiple behind the scenes warnings because of his belligerence and rage at others. I don’t always call him out. 

Chris

 Part of the problem here is due to provocation caused by frequent removal of my posts by Ralf11 in particular. without a reasonable excuse .

The post quoted by Kumakuma, like so many others, was removed. When the thread needed cleaning up by the OP , this post should also have been removed.

 However only my posts are usually removed in the needed tidying up of the threads.

 Yes, I agree that you have better things to do.

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/56979-who-has-tried-out-different-usb-cables/page/7/#comments


kumakuma  
Senior Member
kumakuma 
4590 posts

Report post
 
  #163 
Posted Saturday at 12:00 PM 
   On ‎11‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 11:47 AM, sandyk said:

Just remember that Admin will be able to view all of your deleted posts to decide whether the deletions were warranted or not.

 

I'm sure Chris has better things to do with his time.

 

 

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

Link to comment
19 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Interesting. 
 

When I talked to Archimago at Axpona he mentioned the possibility that people with certain types of hearing damage may be prone to hearing high resolution files. This was only based on his very very very limited sample, but it’s kind of interesting. 

 

 John Dyson also mentioned this recently after 2 courses of antibiotics were needed to rectify a Eustachian tube blockage.

 He noticed certain types of distortion hat he had previously missed as his hearing recovered over a period of about a week..

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

Link to comment
21 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

When I talked to Archimago at Axpona he mentioned the possibility that people with certain types of hearing damage may be prone to hearing high resolution files. This was only based on his very very very limited sample, but it’s kind of interesting. 

While I don't know anything about that, but  j.j. (James D. Johnston) wrote that people with certain types of hearing damage may hear differences in MP3 files, because they don't hear some of the more important frequencies.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

 

It appears you're still not following, George - I take a 'low res' recording, say CD or MP3. and upsample to some Hi-Res format - not one iota, one shred of extra, meaningful information has been added to the track - yet, it sounds better than the original file I started with ... I have organised the audio data so that it's now in a form which better suits the playback chain - the DAC area is the key link where this change in audible behaviour is occurring.

yes, of course, I do the same thing. I have a fine up-sampler that will take standard resolution audio and up-convert it to 24/96 on the fly. It is a permanent part of my playback system. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with my assertion; to whit:   A DAC will not optimize a system for high-resolution playback. The DAC will play what it’s given. If the Hi-Res version of a particular recording sounds better than the Redbook version of that same recording, then it will sound the better of the two. But if the Redbook sounds better than the Hi-Res version of the same performance, the DAC won’t (and can’t) change that. It is what it is.

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

So, if I'm into Hi-Res I will carefully pick a playback chain which makes the most of this format; if I have a huge collection of CDs, I will acquire a CD player which has had all the effort put into optimising the electronics in it for recovering 16 bit sound - I pick the right 'vehicle' for making the journey, 🙂.

And I say there’s no such thing. Almost any 24-bit DAC will do a better job of resolving a 16-bit/44.1 KHz CD than will any 16-bit only DAC. 

George

Link to comment

It would be more helpful to the present situation if  Rexp , Kumakuma and Ralf11 deleted their replies.

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

Link to comment
3 hours ago, gmgraves said:

yes, of course, I do the same thing. I have a fine up-sampler that will take standard resolution audio and up-convert it to 24/96 on the fly. It is a permanent part of my playback system. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with my assertion; to whit:   A DAC will not optimize a system for high-resolution playback. The DAC will play what it’s given. If the Hi-Res version of a particular recording sounds better than the Redbook version of that same recording, then it will sound the better of the two. But if the Redbook sounds better than the Hi-Res version of the same performance, the DAC won’t (and can’t) change that. It is what it is.

And I say there’s no such thing. Almost any 24-bit DAC will do a better job of resolving a 16-bit/44.1 KHz CD than will any 16-bit only DAC. 

 

"On the fly" doesn't count. If circuitry is working to do the upsampling while you listen, all bets are off - because, the bits of circuitry doing that particular processing are part of the playback chain - as you say. I don't distinguish digital 'parts' from analogue, as a special case, if I'm concerned with some type of interference effect. So, upsampling, etc, is a totally offline activity - I have two tracks set up on some media, ready to play, of each format

 

The DAC is a hybrid circuit - how it behaves can vary depending upon, well, everything. If the designer of the circuitry made sure that the SQ was better for a particular type of input - then that's what at least some people should hear.

 

Technically, the 24 bit may be 'better' than the 16 bit - soundwise, the converse could be true.

Link to comment
4 hours ago, sandyk said:

 Frank

 This is even more obvious when very low bit rate .aac encoding as used by YouTube and elsewhere is converted to LPCM. 

I have previously posted examples of this.

 The interesting thing though, is that if you convert low bit rate .aac to a much higher bit rate .aac it doesn't improve it much, if at all.

 

Alex

 

Makes sense that changing the .aac rate won't help matters ... the 'better' sample still has to be decoded, on the fly, and if that is the underlying issue, that is, the processing required is the root cause of the SQ lacking - then there won't be an improvement.

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Makes sense that changing the .aac rate won't help matters ... the 'better' sample still has to be decoded, on the fly, and if that is the underlying issue, that is, the processing required is the root cause of the SQ lacking - then there won't be an improvement.

 If the YouTube player did a conversion of the low bit rate audio to LPCM right at the time of loading the file for playback, which often takes several seconds, then everybody would be able to hear them better, perhaps resulting in increased sales of the recordings without increasing the bandwidth needed.

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

Link to comment
1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

"On the fly" doesn't count. If circuitry is working to do the upsampling while you listen, all bets are off - because, the bits of circuitry doing that particular processing are part of the playback chain - as you say. I don't distinguish digital 'parts' from analogue, as a special case, if I'm concerned with some type of interference effect. So, upsampling, etc, is a totally offline activity - I have two tracks set up on some media, ready to play, of each format

 

The DAC is a hybrid circuit - how it behaves can vary depending upon, well, everything. If the designer of the circuitry made sure that the SQ was better for a particular type of input - then that's what at least some people should hear.

 

Technically, the 24 bit may be 'better' than the 16 bit - soundwise, the converse could be true.

None of that alters the fact that your assertion that a DAC can “optimize” a system for hi-res is both wrong and more than a little absurd, Frank. In this case, you simply don’t know what you are talking about.

George

Link to comment
1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

None of that alters the fact that your assertion that a DAC can “optimize” a system for hi-res is both wrong and more than a little absurd, Frank. In this case, you simply don’t know what you are talking about.

 

Dear me, 😲 ... going back to my original statement,

 

Quote

I did listening tests 30 years ago, which ably demonstrated that 16 bits is way good enough - if 24 bits sounds better, then it's because the particular playback chain has been 'tuned' to work better with that format - and no other reason.

 

Now, the particular owner may check out the reviews, and find that a certain CDP works brilliantly with CDs. Or that a media server and particular associated DAC does excellently with Hi-Res material. And buy one or the other, accordingly - in my book, that's a form of "optimising" ... was talking just a day or so ago about how to play true 4 channel LPs, and using a Parabolic stylus was recommended, for better sound - should I consider it "absurd" that vinyl replay could be made better, by altering the hardware being used?

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...