Boston Audio Society on High Resolution not being superior to CD

[TheOctopus]

Claims both published and anecdotal are regularly made for audibly superior sound quality for two-channel audio encoded with longer word lengths and/or at higher sampling rates than the 16-bit/44.1-kHz CD standard. The authors report on a series of double-blind tests comparing the analog output of high-resolution players playing high-resolution recordings with the same signal passed through a 16-bit/44.1-kHz “bottleneck.”

The tests were conducted for over a year using different systems and a variety of subjects. The systems included expensive professional monitors and one high-end system with electrostatic loudspeakers and expensive components and cables. The subjects included professional recording engineers, students in a university recording program, and dedicated audiophiles.

The test results show that the CD-quality A/D/A loop was undetectable at normal-to-loud listening levels, by any of the subjects, on any of the playback systems. The noise of the CD-quality loop was audible only at very elevated levels.


Full article. http://drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

 

[Kingsrule]

Ugh...who cares??

 

[bart]

Ugh...who cares??

I do.
It remains an interesting topic.
I want to understand my hobby as well as possible, so I like to read about different points of view.

 

[Speedskater]

Long after that paper was published, it was noted that many of the highly acclaimed (by golden ears) audiophile high definition recording were in fact not high definition.

 

[Kingsrule]

This group is myopic and highly opinionated.....

 

[a.wayne]

We did similar testing about 3 or so yrs ago and with 10 out of 10 consistency hiDef was less noisy than 44/16 at any level. The difference in noise is very evident , also obvious was a softing and dulling of CD Rips vs CDP playback ...


Regards

 

[TheOctopus]

Though our tests failed to substantiate the claimed advantages of high-resolution encoding for two-channel audio, one trend became obvious very quickly and held up throughout our testing: virtually all of the SACD and DVD-A recordings sounded better than most CDs— sometimes much better. Had we not “degraded” the sound to CD quality and blind-tested for audible differences, we would have been tempted to ascribe this sonic superiority to the recording processes used to make them. Plausible reasons for the remarkable sound quality of these recordings emerged in discussions with some of the engineers currently working on such projects. This portion of the business is a niche market in which the end users are preselected, both for their aural acuity and for their willingness to buy expensive equipment, set it up correctly, and listen carefully in a low-noise environment. Partly because these recordings have not captured a large portion of the consumer market for music, engineers and producers are being given the freedom to produce recordings that sound as good as they can make them, without having to compress or equalize the signal to suit lesser systems and casual listening conditions. These recordings seem to have been made with great care and manifest affection, by engineers trying to please themselves and their peers. They sound like it, label after label. High-resolution audio discs do not have the overwhelming majority of the program material crammed into the top 20 (or even 10) dB of the available dynamic range, as so many CDs today do.