Poll: Do you have access to true High Resolution Audio?
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The Road to High-Resolution Audio in Three Steps
#1
Today I received this interesting email from Real HD-Audio and it made me wonder how many of us really have access to High Resolution Audio?


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The Road to High-Resolution Audio in Three Steps

Dr. AIX

You can't experience real high-resolution audio unless you can have three things: actual high-resolution audio recordings (which are extremely rare...there are less than 1000 in the world…none on PONO), a format that is capable of delivering real world fidelity, and a playback system that can match the fidelity of the recording format. Anything short of these measures means that you haven't experienced high-resolution audio. It's really pretty simple.

Despite the "High-Resolution Audio" hype that has been happening during the past year and the continuing push by various organizations and celebrities like Neil Young, HRA is a myth...at least as far as it's promise to deliver the "soul of music" once again by bringing back the fidelity of the past. Frankly, I'm tired of the hyperbole, the interviews, the panels, and the ridiculous arguments about ultra fast sample rates and longer word lengths. The chances that you've actually experienced high-resolution audio are slim to none. Why? Because one or more of the critical three components listed above is lacking in your system.

Of course, it may not be important to your musical enjoyment. There's hundreds of thousands of albums that deliver music to a standard that most people are happy with. When I play albums by Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, or Bruce Hornsby, I'm transported to musical nirvana. The music does what it's supposed to do. Can I imagine a version of those same recordings that would be more engaging and sonically compelling? Absolutely, I can. If any one of these artists were to sit in my studio and experience my recordings of John Gorka or Jennifer Warnes, they would know instantly how limited the traditional record production process is. I'm convinced.

Let's investigate the final step in the chain I introduced above: the playback system. I get emails from readers that rave about the sound of their systems. Some advocate for a particular set of headphones or believe that electrostatic speakers are the only way to achieve ultimate fidelity. Others are convinced that super tweeters are the answer to delivering sufficient linearity at high frequencies to make high-resolution audio a reality.

I was amused this morning by a video that featured the new Synergistic Research "Atomosphere" gizmo that "puts Radio Frequencies (RF)" into your listening space in order to improve the sound of your system. And sure enough the reviewer/host (a former reviewer for one of the big audio magazines), was able to "hear" the improvement between the three settings of the $2000 basic unit: Intimate, Holographic, and Grand Canyon. He heard what the designer wanted him to hear because he is being handsomely compensated for doing the feature piece and posting it on his website. There is no electrical connection between the audio playback system and the "Atomosphere" device. This one falls into the "snake oil" category of audiophile accessories. From what I could tell the entire Synergistic Research line of products are a bunch of hocus-pocus.

The headphones or speakers that you must have in order to experience real high-resolution audio have to be able to deliver the sound that was produced by the instruments and voices that were in the studio or on the stage when the musicians were performing. That means delivering frequencies beyond our traditional range of human hearing...more than 20 kHz. It's been firmly established that instruments are capable of producing ultrasonic frequencies...meaningful amounts of ultrasonics come out of trumpets, radiate from cymbals, and strings. The JAS spec says let's be safe and make sure that the transducers can handle up to 40 kHz...I'm good with that.

They also have to be able to handle the dynamic range of music. This has proven to be more challenging. This doesn't mean louder. It means the range from the quietest sound to the loudest. In reality, that span is from about 30-40 dB SPL to over 120 dB! There aren't many amplifiers or speakers or headphones that can manage that. But there are some.

Does you system or headphones rig measure up? Probably not. Is that a bad thing? No. It simply means that you're not getting everything that can be captured and delivered with high-resolution PCM audio. Remember, just three steps to audio nirvana.
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Aurender X100L / Transrotor Crescendo TT / Denon DCD1520 / Macbook Pro >> D400 >> Martin Logan Montis
amabrok's system - Latest update (May 2015, Page 11, Post #109)

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#2
I think vinyl recordings are also high resolution audio format, so there are a lot more than 1000 out there??
Personally I am absolutely content with a 24/96kHz recording, don't hear a difference to a higher resoluted recording.
But it strongly depends on the recording, I enjoy vinyl, CD, or HD if it is well made.
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#3
I sympathise with that view but, IMO, tangible progress there is theoretical.

If I think of my c.600 CDs, 16/44.1, I guess about one in five are really well recorded - with a good tonal mix and good recreation of the recorded acoustic. Most have deficiencies in one area or another. To get that improved would be a big shift.

I doubt that the industry sees much prospect of a good ROC with hi-res. Bob Stuart's recent developments with Meridian, said to be profound, may illustrate that one way or the other. How many labels will be adopting that in the next year?

My bet is none at the volume market and one or two, if he is lucky, at the specialist end.
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#4
Without knowing what their definition of high definition audio is, it's rather difficult to answer!
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#5
Dr. Aix should be compulsory reading. The man fights a lonely but important battle.
                                                    Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,                                     
                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
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#6
(28-Dec-2014, 17:19)Pim van Vliet Wrote: The man fights a lonely but important battle.

Can you elaborate on this Pim?

Guillaume
Industry disclosure: UK distributor for Shunyata Research

220 PRO, totaldac d1 server with additional external power supply, totaldac d1-seven, Echole PSU for Totaldac, Wilson Audio Sasha 2, Shunyata Research cables, Shunyata Hydra Alpha A10 + DPC-6 v3, Various Entreq ground boxes and cables, Entreq Athena level 3 rack, 2 X SOtM sNH-10G with sCLK-EX + 10MHz Master Clock input + sPS-500 PSU, i5 sonicTransporter w/ 1TB SSD

UK
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#7
(28-Dec-2014, 17:22)GuillaumeB Wrote:
(28-Dec-2014, 17:19)Pim van Vliet Wrote: The man fights a lonely but important battle.

Can you elaborate on this Pim?

Guillaume

Sure. I just checked and I have 242 daily emails from Mark Weldrop (Dr. Aix) so far. He wants the world to embrace high res music but commerce gets in the way of 'real' high res. For example; in Japan they came up with a standard for high res that includes high res from recording to play system. Then the big American companies came together and came up with their version of a standard which simply embraces the use on any old analog or cd quality recoding as long as you copy it to 24/96.

For the big companies 'high res' means 'new way of selling the same old catalog all over again'

Just imagine buying a blu-ray of a movie only to find out that it was originally recorded on 8mm. It's been cleaned up a bit and they saturated the hell out of the colours (a bit like dynamic compression making things sound 'better)
You wouldn't buy it would you?

I'm all for the use of 24/96 to copy old recordings and when well done they can be very enjoyable. I'm listening to Nina Simone; Pastel Blues in 24/96 right now and it sounds great... but it includes the original tape hiss. Not a issue at all but it shouldn't be regarded as high res, just a (very enjoyable) high quality recording of an old recording of an artist who passed away before high res was invented. The best you can get.

Mark wants to educate his readers and he mostly keeps it simple enough. If someone else writes something that explains things better than he can he copies a link to the article in his emails. It was him who pointed me to MQA (the future?) Plangent processing (a way to digitally correct old tape speed whilst re-recording) and others. He does a great job, Just a shame nobody is 'listening'Angry
                                                    Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,                                     
                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
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#8
(28-Dec-2014, 17:05)Rufus McDufus Wrote: Without knowing what their definition of high definition audio is, it's rather difficult to answer!

to summarise the definition based on this email and previous emails from Real HD-Audio

-Actual high-resolution audio recordings: A microphone response of 40 KHz or above during recording and recording capability using the 96KHz/24bit or above.
-A format that is capable of delivering real world fidelity: A 96KHz/24bit format or above (WAV or Flac required)
-A playback system that can match the fidelity of the recording format: DSP and D/A conversion processing of 96KHz/24bit or above, amplification performance of 40KHz or above, frequency response of below 20 Hz and above 40KHz and a dynamic range of 30 db to over 120db SPL
Aurender X100L / Transrotor Crescendo TT / Denon DCD1520 / Macbook Pro >> D400 >> Martin Logan Montis
amabrok's system - Latest update (May 2015, Page 11, Post #109)

Dubai, UAE
Reply
#9
(28-Dec-2014, 17:53)Pim van Vliet Wrote:
(28-Dec-2014, 17:22)GuillaumeB Wrote:
(28-Dec-2014, 17:19)Pim van Vliet Wrote: The man fights a lonely but important battle.

Can you elaborate on this Pim?

Guillaume

Sure. I just checked and I have 242 daily emails from Mark Weldrop (Dr. Aix) so far. He wants the world to embrace high res music but commerce gets in the way of 'real' high res. For example; in Japan they came up with a standard for high res that includes high res from recording to play system. Then the big American companies came together and came up with their version of a standard which simply embraces the use on any old analog or cd quality recoding as long as you copy it to 24/96.

For the big companies 'high res' means 'new way of selling the same old catalog all over again'

Just imagine buying a blu-ray of a movie only to find out that it was originally recorded on 8mm. It's been cleaned up a bit and they saturated the hell out of the colours (a bit like dynamic compression making things sound 'better)
You wouldn't buy it would you?

I'm all for the use of 24/96 to copy old recordings and when well done they can be very enjoyable. I'm listening to Nina Simone; Pastel Blues in 24/96 right now and it sounds great... but it includes the original tape hiss. Not a issue at all but it shouldn't be regarded as high res, just a (very enjoyable) high quality recording of an old recording of an artist who passed away before high res was invented. The best you can get.

Mark wants to educate his readers and he mostly keeps it simple enough. If someone else writes something that explains things better than he can he copies a link to the article in his emails. It was him who pointed me to MQA (the future?) Plangent processing (a way to digitally correct old tape speed whilst re-recording) and others. He does a great job, Just a shame nobody is 'listening'Angry

Great, thanks for sharing this. On the few occasions where I have compared a good RBCD rip to a 24 bit of various sample rates I have struggled to tell the difference. Having said that I have some excellent 24/192 (and 24/96) recordings which I wouldn't want to get rid of. And I continue to buy so-called high-res tracks from companies like HD Tracks and Qobuz... so I suppose I'm undecided and prefer to hedge my bets with the more expensive tracks. I wonder if I'm the only one doing this? Blush

I have to say I'm very excited by MQA as I think this whole digital format thing desperately needs a shake up. I'm just not convinced that digital tracks sound as good as they could. I should add that I am a die-hard streamer and haven't played a CD in many years.


Guillaume
Industry disclosure: UK distributor for Shunyata Research

220 PRO, totaldac d1 server with additional external power supply, totaldac d1-seven, Echole PSU for Totaldac, Wilson Audio Sasha 2, Shunyata Research cables, Shunyata Hydra Alpha A10 + DPC-6 v3, Various Entreq ground boxes and cables, Entreq Athena level 3 rack, 2 X SOtM sNH-10G with sCLK-EX + 10MHz Master Clock input + sPS-500 PSU, i5 sonicTransporter w/ 1TB SSD

UK
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#10
I heard Mark Waldrep giving a seminar in June. At that time his definition was better than CD, so 48/24 qualifies. The most difficult requirement to satisfy is a dynamic range from 30dB (on a quite night i might be close) to 120dB. The playback of
120dB is almost impossible to satisfy with non PA systems and I think it is not necessay for the reproduction of unamplified=acoustic music. The peak I once measured at a Berlioz symphony was 108dB and the short term peak of a piano at 1m is similar. 120dB as a defintion for the recording chain is fine with me giving 10dB unused headroom.
I don't know how to answer that poll: Maybe or not sure
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