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[POLL] Hi-res music

Hi-res music?

  • I do pay for hi-res music files and I can discern an improvement over lower rate files

    Votes: 49 15.3%
  • I don't pay for hi-res music files and I can discern an improvement over lower rate files

    Votes: 21 6.6%
  • I do pay for hi-res music files but I can't discern an improvement over lower rate files

    Votes: 107 33.4%
  • I don't pay for hi-res music files but I can't discern an improvement over lower rate files

    Votes: 127 39.7%
  • Dont think I have ever heard a hi-res music file.

    Votes: 16 5.0%

  • Total voters
    320
D

Deleted member 30699

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Nope. I want to know what people think of what is sold as "hi res", ie the stuff with the sticker on. If you pay for a "hi res" streaming service, you're not going to be analysing the file content. And a fair few will assume it "sounds better" just because of the sticker. Ditto mqa.

Just to close the loop: There is a significant disconnect on what people think is "hi res" vs what is branded/sold as "hi res"
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/high-resolution-audio-inquery.22678/
Anyhow, both polls show that there is little interest in hi-res
 
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Jimbob54

Jimbob54

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RichT

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Hello, I've been buying hi-res music files and they are a lot of fun. I can't prove anything but the hi-res files seem fuller, bigger and rounder but only slightly comparied to a .wav or .flac file ripped from a cd. I do love music and will buy more, fun stuff, regards
 

danadam

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Bullwinkle J Moose

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That's so nice of you.



Do you "lose the coherent image" now even with integer ratios?
No, I do not

I still get better focus and imaging with integer ratios, BUT.......

Only on certain songs

On a "very few" songs, the difference is quite apparent
On many songs, the difference is barely noticable
On many others, there is no apparent difference

Even though sample rate conversion messes up both integer and non integer ratios, there is something else going on that has not been adequately explained

The difference is only apparent when the DAC is on USB

There is no apparent difference when the DAC is using Optical or Coax SPDIF port
 
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Kegemusha

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I buy some CDs per year, listen to FLACS locally from my NAS, 99% are all encoded to 16/44.1, and I have spotify premiun only.
I listened to 24/96 and I can't hear any diff vs the same 16/44.1 file, so I dont need more than that.
 

brbsnacks

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I use Amazon HD. There were a few weeks where I was very OCD and changed bitrate in windows to match the song every time. My dac goes to 192. There were times I thought I heard some improvement and sometimes I thought it sounded worse playing the higher quality stuff. I really question if some things are just upsampled on there. I dont even care anymore. I keep it on 44.1 now and I've been pretty happy. When my subscription runs out I might try a different source. Amazons exclusive mode is pretty terrible.
 
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David Harper

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I have screwed around some with listening to hi-res. I have maybe ten music blurays ( 24/96 and 24/192) and a few SACD's and a couple DVD-A discs.
The only thing I'm sure of is that the sound quality seems completely unrelated to the bit/sample rate. A couple of the audio blurays have terrible sq.
Neil Young's "Psychedelic Pill" on bluray disc has mostly awful sq except there's a short intro in acoustic guitar that sounds excellent. But then the music transitions to all electric guitar that sounds like sh!t. With acoustic instruments I can hear good sq. On electric instruments not so much.
Maybe electric instruments have no inherent sq. I have an SACD of Eric Claptons "Slowhand" which has excellent sq but I think that's a result of better mastering. You can choose either the CD layer or the 20/88.2 sacd layer but I'm not sure if they are the same master. If you try to A/B them to compare it's hard to do; by the time you've re-programmed the player to switch layers it's pretty much impossible to compare the sq. They sound very much the same. IMO hi-res is completely irrelevant in terms of musical enjoyment because it is trumped so completely by other factors like mastering/recording quality. I have Clapton "Unplugged" on vinyl and the sq is awesome. One of the best I ever heard. I'm guessing it was recorder/mastered digitally and I don't know what the bit/sample rate was. It's Reprise record 468412-1. I've looked it up and haven't been able to learn whether it was recorded on analog tape or digital. In any case I don't hear any difference in sq between CD and hi res that cannot be attributed to some factor other than bit/sample rate.
 

sq225917

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I have a few albums in hires, upto dxd, before 2l.no went stupid. I rate the mozart violin concertos they did as possibly my finest classical album, pre mqa abortion.
 

Robin L

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After voting in the poll, I went for Amazon Music's "HD Ultra" tier. My Topping E30 DAC is now set to be capable of playing back at a sampling rate of 384khz. Looking at the info at Amazon Music indicates playback with as high a resolution as 24/192. Two things worth noting. First, I don't hear any difference in the quality of sound that couldn't be explained by different mastering or mixing. Second, Amazon Music HD is a RAM hog, my cheap & cheerful Acer Aspire 5 has only 4GB of RAM, so dropouts are frequent. I'm guessing my laptop can't multitask Microsoft Explorer and Amazon Music without major irritation. I'm going to experiment, run Amazon Music HD without surfing the web at the same time. Fortunately I-Tunes works smoothly and I have plenty of Apple Lossless files. Also, it looks like it's pretty easy to upgrade the RAM with this laptop, so I might do that. Amazon Music has a deep catalog including a lot of obscure Classical music, so it's worth $10 a month to me.

Bottom line: while Hi-Rez files sound good, they don't sound better to these ears than standard Redbook, which is higher rez than LPs. Note that I also have around 60 discs of various Hi-Rez formats, SACDs, DVD-A, Blu-Ray. While some sound very different, it's clearly on account of remastering/remixing. The Grateful Dead "Workingman's Dead" DVD-A uses different 'takes' for its remix than the standard CD. There's some obvious performance differences.
 
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sq225917

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Hires is a commercial marketing term, sometimes applied to devices only cable of 16 bit lossless devices. It's not 100% indicative of higher sample rates.
 

pablolie

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I do buy "HD" music here and there. It is merely for archiving purposes - I have never ever once heard any difference at all between RedBook and >20bits/>48kHz with the "same master". To top that off, I find it hard and unpleasant to try to detect a difference between a great ~256k VBR lossy encoding and the 16/44 original - which I *can* do reliably with tracks that are (1) pristinely recorded (2) have certain sonic patterns (percussion and castanets help a lot) and (3) I am very familiar with. But I hate the exercise for that, so I could not care less about the supposed sonic differences between 16/44 and higher uncompressed bit rates.
 

Blew

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I find it's easier to notice the difference between hi-res and 16/44 Redbook when playing on a poor quality DAC that doesn't have a great filter. I dare suspect that most members here are using pretty decent DACs with good filters and oversampling when comparing differences in hi-res audio.

Also, if the resampling of the audio is not done well then aliasing and other artifacts can be quite obvious.
 

Blew

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I use Amazon HD. There were a few weeks where I was very OCD and changed bitrate in windows to match the song every time. My dac goes to 192. There were times I thought I heard some improvement and sometimes I thought it sounded worse playing the higher quality stuff. I really question if some things are just upsampled on there. I dont even care anymore. I keep it on 44.1 now and I've been pretty happy. When my subscription runs out I might try a different source. Amazons exclusive mode is pretty terrible.
If you're not using WASAPI exclusive mode (or ASIO) then Windows resamples and mixes the audio regardless of the sample rate. If this is what you mean by Amazon's exclusive mode then it should sound better, not worse!
 

Hexspa

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I took an informal test and 160-256kbps is about where I lose the ability to discern from lossless. When I saw the poll, I initially voted “I pay and can tell” but then saw the criteria was 16/44 or better so then, no, I can’t tell and don’t pay.

Sure, saying that music quality depends on the content is true but that’s not the point here. If you bitcrush and sample rate reduce anything enough, you won’t listen to it given a higher fidelity choice. That’s besides other compression artifacts like the “under water” effect of low-bitrate mp3s.

For those of you listening for differences, compare a 128kbps mp3 to lossless. Listen to Classical and for the reverbs and spaciousness in particular. Cymbals also can be telling.

Regarding high bit depth and sample rate, these are mostly useless for distribution but do make a difference during production. The most obvious example is when using heavy distortion or software synthesizers - these are two areas where high sample rates help.
 

dave999z

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I just did a blind listening test for the first time. I won't say the setup was perfect, but it was pretty good. Had four recordings cued up on my iMac, on both Apple Music and on Idagio. The Apple Music versions were hi-res lossless either 24/96 or 24/192. On Idagio, same exact releases, but everything there is 16/44 lossless. These were fairly recent releases (thus I assume actually recorded, mixed, and mastered in hi-res, not pointlessly upsampled later). Tried for a variety (within classical)... a Mahler symphony, Chopin piano sonata, Strauss song, and Tchaikovsky string serenade. iMac is connected to a Metric Halo ULN-2 interface (96kHz max sample rate), which is connected via digital AES to a pair of Genelec 8330A monitors (sadly no sub, yet). Treated room (it's my project recording studio space). I'm 50 years old, with tinnitus. Had my wife play six different passages (I did not spend time listening to them prior) of about 20-30 seconds, and she kept track of which version she played first and which she played second (Apple or Idagio). On five of the passages, I thought I could hear a difference (although with two of them it was bordering on a guess). I got those five correct. On the sixth one I had no idea so didn't bother guessing (don't want to get one right by guessing). Not bad! I will of course never sit for a blind listening test again and brag about this the rest of my life. :) Anyway, this was for fun. I know this wasn't perfectly controlled or statistically significant or anything like that. Out of six, I should get three correct automatically. It's actually quite hard to administer a test like this in a useful way. You really need passages that make for a good sample. They need to be a relatively coherent, short phrase. You need very brief silence, then the second one to play quickly, because if you wait too long you just cannot recall/compare. I voted for #2 in the poll because, although I do technically pay for hi-res, it's just included with Apple Music, so I don't pay extra for it.
 
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PortaStudio

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I prefer to listen to the highest resolution audio I can get/play.

I once worked on a test project (within a DAW) that was strictly VST instruments (not sample based) and was not satisfied with the sound I was getting.

Later I was changing the sampling rate from 96khz to 192khz and shut down the system without thinking about it. When I returned to the project I was suprised how good it sounded. I couldn't explain it. When I went through the settings I saw that it was running at 192khz. Changing it back to 96khz, I was reminded why I wasnt happy with the sound in the first place.

It's not so much about the higher frequencies but the more differentiated sound.
 
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