solderdude
Grand Contributor
It’s as if you disregard the message in the opening post, where @amirm concludes thus:
«As I mentioned at the outset, high resolution audio makes a difference. And a huge one at that in the way it gives us access to stereo masters prior to re-mastering for the CD. That path means the music can be free of loudness compression which will have clear benefit, putting aside any additional sonic fidelity due to use of higher bit depths and sampling. Given the fact that CD has no choice but to go away in the future, we as enthusiasts better get behind high resolution audio distribution. Nothing but goodness comes from having more choices of formats for our music».
Let's have a look at Amir's conclusion... the part below is something I don't agree with 100%.
"high resolution audio makes a difference. And a huge one at that in the way it gives us access to stereo masters prior to re-mastering for the CD"
Of all the high res offerings, what percentage would you estimate are made directly from stereo masters and have not been remastered and compressed to hell to give the illusion of a higher dynamic range than CD.
Keep in mind: A compressed recording has the differences between softer sounds and the loudest made smaller. In this case you can hear the softer sounds more clearly (as they are louder in comparison) and 'people' say... wow I can hear the softer details much better now so the dynamic range is 'higher'.
Also, I think a CD can be free of loudness compression and loudness compression stands loose from the CD format and is forced upon us by record companies that want to accommodate people playing music in the car and directly from phone or BT speakers. For that category of listeners (the biggest chunk of the music consumers) compressed to hell music is ideal.
Compression is not needed for the CD format.
It is needed for Vinyl which has a smaller dynamic range. So the notion that one needs hires to get non-loudness compressed offerings is not valid. They just need to master a CD without loudness compression.
Masters that already are compressed on individual tracks can not be un-compressed, so higher res won't give us better sound in that case.
I do agree with 'aside any additional sonic fidelity due to use of higher bit depths and sampling' as arguably a higher bit depth and perhaps a somewhat wider FR won't hurt the fidelity and is indeed 'Nothing but goodness comes from having more choices of formats for our music'.
The discussion here is whether for consumers 96/24 is already more than enough 'hi-res' and the need forhome reproduction in DXD, DSDx8 or 768/32 and whatever next will come will be giving us even better sound quality free of loudness compression.
At some point the resolution and needed bandwidth/memory is enough.
Loudness wars compression is not related to any format.
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