That has been my take on M&M and other similar tests and my own tests. If there are differences, they sure are small, difficult to find, and disappear if the tiniest thing is off. So how important can they be? The answer is obvious. The difference in SD and HDTV is not difficult to perceive. The difference in HD and normal digital audio......if there much of anything at all to it, the idea would hardly be controversial or disputed here some 30 years later. Night and day differences? Bull carp. More like the difference between 10 minutes prior to sunset and nine minutes 45 seconds before.....if that.
In the very questionable AES meta-analysis they posit that with good gear, and trained listeners and appropriate material hires is perceived 60% of the time. Even that were it true is not that big a deal. It means 3 out of 5 times if you are well trained you can pick out the better source. Now considering what chance guessing would be then how significant is that for simple musical enjoyment?
I do not fundamentally disagree. The difference in audio today is at best subtle, unlike SD vs. HD video. But, audio has improved hugely in my lifetime, successively solving most of the biggest problems one by one. So, further improvement is pretty much down to lesser problems and subtleties. Hard work once again for diminishing returns. But, many audiophiles love nothing better than to argue the subtleties.
BTW, most people cannot see a difference between HD and UHD("4K") video at normal distances, either. So, the industry is gradually adding other more subtle enhancements to the UHD package, like HDR and larger color space, plus using new better technology in monitors like OLED, micro dots, enhanced local dimming LCD, etc. Together, it will add up to an improvement, though probably not the big jump that occurred from SD to HD and DVD to BD. Although, even there, it took awhile before HD was really better in most every way. Early HD sets were often terrible, and older SD CRT sets were still preferred for awhile by video afficianados.
All I can say is hi rez cannot hurt, except to gobble up space on my 52TBs of NAS storage. Most recording engineers candidly feel it sounds closer to the mike feed, in addition to offering more dynamic headroom via lower noise in all the processing stages a recording must go through, due to greater bit depth. Many also feel that 176/192k or 352/384k is subtly superior to 88/96k or that DSD64,128,256, etc. is better than any of those.
Yes, no night/day. But, I "think" I hear consistent subtle differences, many in imaging, depth, dimensionality, etc. I believe there is decent evidence to suggest hi rez is freer of filter artifacts caused by a-d (preringing, etc.) in the recording and d-a (postringing, etc.) on playback. Audibly? Yes, I think so. OTOH, I do not think we hear the ultrasonic frequencies in hi rez as part of the musical tonality. But, I admit I am intrigued by Bob Stuart's hypothesis that there are more accurate timing cues in hi rez, a subtlety perhaps.
No matter. It happens that I embrace Mch. And, that just comes as hi rez in all the formats in which it is available. That is fine by me. And, I do not need super ultra sampling rates.
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