magiccarpetride;585012 Wrote: > I've spent the weekend listening to various high definition digital > sources (24-bit/96 kHz, delivered via my Logitech Squeezebox Touch > player). After a while, I've switched back to listening to some of my > low definition sources (the CDs I've ripped to AIFF; basically, > 16-bit/44.1 kHz). > > What shocked me at that moment is how staggeringly different CDs sound! > The thing that hit me immediately is in-your-face graininess. The moment > I've switched from the high definition material back to the low > definition CDs, I've noticed a very pronounced harshness and > scratchiness of the overall sound. Next, I've noticed the lack of > resolution (everything became quite two dimensional in the sound > stage), as well as lack of finer details (I've lost the ability to > follow the prolonged dying out of the cymbals sounding in the > background, something that I got quite used to while listening to the > DVD-Audio masters). > > The question on my mind now is: am I merely detecting certain > differences and interpreting them as better/worse based on my > conditioning, or is it really the case that high definition digital > music always sounds this superior? I must confess that now I hugely > prefer the high definition music, but am at the same time extremely > concerned because many/most of the music I really love is not available > in the high definition format.
I propose an experiment. Can you provide a sample from one of the hi-res tracks that you feel exhibits this oh-so-obvious difference? Ideally it would be only 10 seconds long or so - I think you could post/email/upload something that short without violating copyright, and that also keeps the file size reasonable. The sample should not contain any very quiet sections. Then, some kind person can volunteer to take that sample, downgrade it to 16/44.1 or 16/48 (with proper dithering), and then upsample it to 24/whatever again. The resulting uncompressed file should be the same size as the original. Now let's say you're provided with 10 versions of this sample, some of which are original and some of which are the down/upsampled version, and your job is to determine which are which. If the difference is obvious, you should be able to get all of them correct easily just by listening. The one flaw in this test is that a computer savvy person can determine which is which from looking at the files themselves, but I trust that you're honestly trying to decide whether this makes a difference and won't do that. It's also potentially possible to distinguish on a very quiet passage from the noise floor, so the sample ideally wouldn't have any such very silent sections. What do you say? Is it worth trying? -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82870 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
