CD vs hi-res

[cany89]

A lot of popular music recorded in the early 1990's was very dynamic and sounded excellent.... even "grunge" bands like Nirvana, Meat Puppets, and the like. I actually learned about the "Loudness Wars" from Nirvana Nevermind. I had the original CD and when it came out on "Hi-Res" I bought it but didn't like the sound. I started researching and learned about compression and the loudness wars. In this case the original CD has a DR of 12 and the "Hi-Res" remaster a DR of 6 which ruined the sound quality for me. I notice Qobuz is streaming the compressed Hi-res version which means most will never even hear what the album originally sounded like which is a shame.

Butch Vig is a legend! Nirvana is my least favorite band from Seattle but Nevermind is a killer album. Got the original CD as well.
I had to hunt down a lot of CDs when I learned about dr.loudness and those dynamic range stuff. (Not that low DR albums can't be good btw. But in case of remastering and compressing the hell out of the album is not the best combination)

 

[the_hamster 2]

RIP Charlie Watts.

 

[threni]

Butch Vig is a legend! Nirvana is my least favorite band from Seattle but Nevermind is a killer album. Got the original CD as well.
I had to hunt down a lot of CDs when I learned about dr.loudness and those dynamic range stuff. (Not that low DR albums can't be good btw. But in case of remastering and compressing the hell out of the album is not the best combination)

The Devonshire mix of Nevermind is loads better; much less "clean" sounding; more like a metal album than a pop one.

 

[mhardy6647]

Also strange and charmed.

Truth and beauty

Wait?
What?
They never caught on?

 

[cany89]

The Devonshire mix of Nevermind is loads better; much less "clean" sounding; more like a metal album than a pop one.

History can be a lot different if they didn’t ditched Vig and forced Wallace… But as I would prefer Sabbath over Beatles any day. So Devonshire all day any day!

 

[levimax]

History can be a lot different if they didn’t ditched Vig and forced Wallace… But as I would prefer Sabbath over Beatles any day. So Devonshire all day any day!

They have the "Devonshire mix" on Qobuz and it is pretty cool, I never heard it before. Unfortunately it is very compressed DR 6 vs DR 12 for original CD. I certainly didn't have any problem to ABX between the 2 mixes but if I turned the treble WAY down on the CD version it sounded fairly close.

 

[MarkWinston]

Good remasters on SACD is my go to. And I get to keep it forever.

 

[Saidera]

I think nobody really cares about hires hype and CDs anymore. All hires did for me is push me to purchase larger SSDs and consider upsampling, DSEE HX and so on. There should be nothing related between upsampling and anti-vax. It's merely based on assumptions about how audio chips work and subjective impressions on certain gear.

To avoid the final stage of reducing hires down to CD is a benefit. It's always nice to be able to get the original or finished master and burn a CD yourself, and try out various dithers and DSP of course. I mean, one could compress hires to AAC but still retain hires amount of data in the AAC format. So called 'compressed 24 bit format'. This would not be ideal. What is needed is to achieve hires transparency with AAC 128 like on YouTube. To deliver hires through the minimum of data rates.

 

[beren777]

 

[Frgirard]

16 bit versus 24 bit

https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.php?p=15401322&postcount=2150

 

[cany89]

They have the "Devonshire mix" on Qobuz and it is pretty cool, I never heard it before. Unfortunately it is very compressed DR 6 vs DR 12 for original CD. I certainly didn't have any problem to ABX between the 2 mixes but if I turned the treble WAY down on the CD version it sounded fairly close.

If only we could have that with 90s sound...
Unfortunately, both the original and the second mix of Pearl Jam - Ten album is also garbage (in terms of DR) At least I got the original CD but not the Redux version :/

 

[rdenney]

The 24/96 Rick "enter by the windows when the door is close" Deny. Sorry.
Fabfilter have the honesty to say: the sample rate doesn't matter.

The major thread on the subject GoldenEar against GoldenMathematics

https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/992969-88-2-96khz-vs-44-1-48khz-thread-end-them-all.html

It's not a question of needing it to satisfy golden ears or any amount of honesty--for playback it doesn't matter. Read what I wrote.

What is the downside of recording at 96 KHz, beyond the disk space it consumes? If you have that much time resolution, and want to take a detail and sample it at half speed, you'll maintain full frequency response. Granted, don't need that very often. But there's no real cost to having it.

For playback, I'm happy with music that has been downsampled to 16/44. I think I said that.

Rick "thinking humor should be reserved for those with training" Denney

 

[Frgirard]

It's not a question of needing it to satisfy golden ears or any amount of honesty--for playback it doesn't matter. Read what I wrote.

What is the downside of recording at 96 KHz, beyond the disk space it consumes? If you have that much time resolution, and want to take a detail and sample it at half speed, you'll maintain full frequency response. Granted, don't need that very often. But there's no real cost to having it.

For playback, I'm happy with music that has been downsampled to 16/44. I think I said that.

Rick "thinking humor should be reserved for those with training" Denney

Time resolution ? The sampling theorem works in the two sens.

 

[Tim]

Ok, great discussion here. From what I know, nothing in the commercial electronics that can really resolve more than 20-22 bit audio noise floor. The standard is that human hearing goes from 20-20khz, with most of us struggling to hear anything over 12khz. Now let’s assume one has a great audio system and the room it is in has been properly treated for acoustics, will you be able to hear differences? I say yes. While the noise floor/dynamic range should not reveal much difference the frequency response can be noticed. If you listen to well recorded sources, you may be able to discern between mp3, cd, and high resolution. What kind of differences? Well I hear a better soundstage, both front to back but also side to side. On some recordings, a hi-rez sources can go wider than the speakers and sound from in front of the speakers to behind them. The more compressed the file, the more these things shrink. On headphones I mostly hear a glossing over of details on mp3 files, soundstage does vary a bit. Some speculate that frequency’s higher than 20khz help location cues better hence the improved soundstage.
I remember when cd’s first came out that I complained the bass just sounded horrible and the treble was very screechy that I had to turn off the Beatles abbey Road and it took me a couple of years to finally get into cd’s. Digital has improved a lot since then, even before dsd and other hi-rez formats arrived.
As I have said before, I will take a well mastered cd over poor master hi-rez file.

 

[SIY]

Ok, great discussion here. From what I know, nothing in the commercial electronics that can really resolve more than 20-22 bit audio noise floor. The standard is that human hearing goes from 20-20khz, with most of us struggling to hear anything over 12khz. Now let’s assume one has a great audio system and the room it is in has been properly treated for acoustics, will you be able to hear differences? I say yes. While the noise floor/dynamic range should not reveal much difference the frequency response can be noticed. If you listen to well recorded sources, you may be able to discern between mp3, cd, and high resolution. What kind of differences? Well I hear a better soundstage, both front to back but also side to side. On some recordings, a hi-rez sources can go wider than the speakers and sound from in front of the speakers to behind them. The more compressed the file, the more these things shrink. On headphones I mostly hear a glossing over of details on mp3 files, soundstage does vary a bit. Some speculate that frequency’s higher than 20khz help location cues better hence the improved soundstage.
I remember when cd’s first came out that I complained the bass just sounded horrible and the treble was very screechy that I had to turn off the Beatles abbey Road and it took me a couple of years to finally get into cd’s. Digital has improved a lot since then, even before dsd and other hi-rez formats arrived.
As I have said before, I will take a well mastered cd over poor master hi-rez file.

Uh huh.

 

[Kevbaz]

I still use CD, I’ve tried hi-res through Qobuz and other services and I can’t hear the difference so stick with CD.

 

[ThatM1key]

As a young I can hear up to 16khz. In terms of 44.1khz/16bit and Hi-res, I can't tell the difference. FLAC vs MP3 (Same CD), the difference is pretty noticeable, its like going from off-brand chips to name-brand chips. If I do listen to MP3s casually, I use Sony Music Center's DSEE HX.

If you are tight on space, use OGG vorbis instead of MP3 & AAC. Convert your DSD files to WavPack DSD instead of converting down to 192/24 & below. I seen some WavPack DSD albums take up the same space as a CD.

 

[danadam]

Convert your DSD files to WavPack DSD instead of converting down to 192/24 & below. I seen some WavPack DSD albums take up the same space as a CD.

Hm... Those must be some unique albums.
"Quiet Winter Night - an acoustic jazz project" from 2L test bench:

 20M - 2L-087_06_stereo_44kHz_16b.flac
 40M - 2L-087_06_stereo_44kHz_16b.wav
160M - 2L-087_stereo-DSD_06.dff
 86M - 2L-087_stereo-DSD_06.dff.hhx6.wv

"STRING QUARTETS vol. I Haydn - Solberg - Grieg" from 2L test bench:

 20M  2L-053_04_stereo-44kHz-16b.flac
 37M  2L-053_04_stereo-44kHz-16b.wav
146M  2L-053_04_stereo-DSD64.dff
 79M  2L-053_04_stereo-DSD64.dff.hhx6.wv

"Gabor Varga Jazz Quartet - It's Getting Cooler - 4. Judith's Dream másolat" from some sampler:

 24M "4. Judith's Dream másolat.44_16.flac"
 51M "4. Judith's Dream másolat.44_16.wav"
202M "4. Judith's Dream másolat.dsd64.dsf"
100M "4. Judith's Dream másolat.dsd64.dsf.hhx6.wv"

 

[escksu]

This question has already been discussed to the death and the answer is NO.

 

[Tim]

My experience has been that there are two possibilities;
either there is no difference or
any difference there is so subtle as to render it irrelevant

perhaps with the best electrostatic headphones and the hearing ability of a 10 year old or my dog there might be a small difference. But what difference would that make?

I would argue, that other than different mastering methods, headphones may not give you enough information. Where I am going with this? Simple soundstage with speakers is where you can mostly hear differences. You will not so much hear sonic differences as you can hear differences in how the soundstage changes. Also, since many if use computers as a player, I am not sure how much that affects the reproduction but that is an argument for another day.