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RE: So only "hi rez" recordings are worthy when reviewing equipment?

When evaluating source equipment one has to use recordings in appropriate formats (obviously). When evaluating downstream equipment one should use the highest available quality sources and recordings. If one uses lower quality sources or low quality recordings, one will not be able to notice subtractive distortions (if what would have been subtracted was missing in the input of the device under test). One will also not be able to notice additive distortions if the source has noise, distortion, or other artifacts that mask additive distortions in the device under test.

If one is evaluating amplifiers and speakers the best possible source would be a live microphone feed. Unfortunately, audiophiles who only work with playback equipment don't get to experience the highest quality sources, although a high quality reel to reel deck with wide tape and high speed or very high resolution digital are almost transparent to live microphone feeds, especially DSD128 or DXD (352/32) recordings.

If one has a computer based system that sounds excellent with high resolution digital recordings, it will have no problem playing lower resolution digital recordings as best as they can be played. One simply upsamples the low resolution CD format to a high resolution format before playback. In the process one can select among a portfolio of filter options. To some extent these allow a choice between various of the inevitable CD limitations, but most of the original resolution was already lost during the recording when the original high resolution digital conversion is converted to 44/16 and the extra information was necessarily discarded to fit the available bits.

The world is moving away from spinning coasters that travel through meat space on trucks and airplanes. A high res download is perhaps four times larger than a CD quality download. This means that it costs four times as much to ship this over the Internet and four times as much to store it on disk. Each of these costs goes from about $0.05 to about $0.20 at current pricing for Internet hosting service and disk drives. There is no significant economic benefit to be had for continuing to use obsolete technology.



Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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  • RE: So only "hi rez" recordings are worthy when reviewing equipment? - Tony Lauck 09/7/1212:26:00 09/7/12 (0)

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