I have to agree with the 16/44 vs 24/96 (and beyond) sounding the same. I've resampled hi-res using SoX on Foobar2000 to 16/44 and also cannot hear the difference. I've had this debate (argument?) with folks over at AVForums who insist that redbook 16/44 is lo-fi rubbish with terrible audio artifacts introduced by the brick wall filter applied at >20KHz. What I can't get them to understand that all this digital noise exists at least -96dB or beyond with dither. To hear this you'd have to be playing at a room level of around 120dB to be above the ambient room level - crazy. Then they argue that you cut off above 20Khz but I can't hear above 17KHz and I don't know of many people that can but apparently they can hear that something is missing!
The best DACs and/or amplifiers may acheive a s/n approaching 110dB - way short of the 144dB offered by 24bit recordings but again you'd have to be playing at rock stadium levels to notice the increased s/n. If you did you'd soon be deaf anyway! IMO 16/44 are as good as we'll ever need. The founders of CD back in the 80's got the specs just about right IMO - quite an achievemnt at the time. I do buy hi-res but only if I'm absolutely sure that it is of better quality - not because of the extra bits and samples. My two pennies worth! 2 x Duet, 2 x Radio, Touch & Receiver with iPeng 7 & SqueezePlayer served by HP N36 running FreeNAS/SlimNAS/LMS 7.8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HeadBanger's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=38024 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=100892 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
