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NOT

Sorry. This is wishful thinking that reflects the inadequacies of tests, commercial bias, and/or lack of familiarity with high resolution digital.

Mastering engineers who specialize in classical music know better, as does anyone who has played around with high quality recordings in resolutions at least 88.2 kHz and 24 bits. These can be downsampled to 44.1 kHz using the best pro-sample rate converters, and the results will not be as good as the original, as will be readily apparent to most listeners in a non-blind test. One explanation for this is poor playback capability at 44.1/16, but this can be countered by using the same SRC to convert the 44/16 back to its original format and played through the identical playback chain. The difference will be clear and can only be attributed to the sample rate conversions, not the playback gear.

With many recordings the differences are subtle, but it is a sad situation to have made a hi-res recording and listen to it degrade when it is shrunk into the obsolete 44/16 format.

It is true that these modern converters can produce better CDs and when 44/16 recordings are made with loving care they can sound good, better than previously. But you are fooling yourself if you believe they sound as good as they could have had they been released in a higher resolution format. IMO the problem is primarily with the 44 and not with the 16, at least not when the best dither techniques are used. Fitting hi-res into 44/16 is a two step process, e.g. 88/24 to 44/24 and then 44/24 to 44/16. The separate degradations at each stage can be observed.

I agree with your other comments about SACD. It deserves to go out of existence, if only because of its copy protection.

Tony Lauck

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

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