Question Hi Res Audio - Is it really better?

Rob Sinden

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I asked a question last year on the Forum and that no one could give me an answer to. I haven’t heard a Hi-Res stereo recording that I think sounds better than a regular CD but the hifi industry is busy selling the benefits of these “improved” recordings.

Here are a great video from Mark Waldrep, a recording engineer and audiophile that explains why most of these recordings simply cannot be hi res.

They are well worth watching.

Video: High-Resolution Demystified – Newport Beach 2015 | Music and Audio Guide

Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2013 | Music and Audio Guide

Here is a little of what he said:-

The vast majority of Hi Res 96/24 recordings aren’t better than CD because the master that they are taken from is 16 bit 44.1.

You may prefer the new recording because of how its mixed or EQ’d but it’s not Hi RES.

Vinyl is not High Res and is restricted to mono bass – often from 250Hz!

96/24 done properly is Hi Rs and has no hiss…

192kHz is nonsense – there is nothing about 25k and most mics cant capture above 40k

HIGH RES IS A GREAT WAY FOR HIFI COMPANIES TO SELL PEOPLE NEW DACS
 
As a simple generalization, music is ideally played at whatever the original production sample rate was. If it was recorded, mixed and mastered at 96K - then that is the ideal listening sample rate; any sample rate conversion between what was produced and what you eventually get to hear does introduce artifacts, but they may not be audible on your equipment. There is another issue - when down converting from 24bit sample rates to 16bit, then dithering is applied combine with noise shaping. This can also leave a sonic signature which some of us who have worked in audio production daily used to notice (algorithms have improved a lot more recently, so rarely an note worthy issue now).

That to my mind this the main justification for hi-res - hearing the music in its original mastered format free of any conversion artifacts. These days conversion algorithms are much better than 10-20 years ago, so introduced artifacts may not even be audible.

With this in mind, then the kind of differences I may notice are smoother high end, and lack of any noticeable upper mid range harshness on vocals when the volume is cranked. It may not be that you actually hear harshness directly when cranked a bit, it may simply be you find you want to turn it back down again quickly for some tracks and not for others - ie it quickly gets fatiguing, but there can be other production related causes of this too that having nothing to do with sample rates etc and TBH I think this is more often the case than not.

I have heard excellent sound from well produced music as 320k mp3 and I have heard a lot of poor production hi-res. Production quality IMHO will nearly always trump anything else.

These are my observations based upon many years of working in digital audio production on and off, but all the time algorithms are improving, the industry as a whole (music and TV/film) has learned from the mistakes of the loudness wars era and these days we are finding better quality production again from major studios, but in a world of very samey production styles, there are still marketing people looking the some cheap and cheesy edge or other often to the detriment of the listening experience of those (few?) of us who actually seem to care.
 
Great to get feedback from a real expert.

I think one of the main bugbears of Mark is that the majority of discs being released as "hi res" are over 20 years old and so although you get a 96/24 recording, its quality will be limited to 44/16.
 
I think one of the main bugbears of Mark is that the majority of discs being released as "hi res" are over 20 years old and so although you get a 96/24 recording, its quality will be limited to 44/16.

Not necessarily. There isn't an easy answer to this - its entirely down to production methods used for the original recordings and the production methods used for a more recent re-release.

The original stems may indeed have been 16 bit, but a modern re-master might be applying modern hi-res processing which can make all the difference. Many sample libraries are still 44.1/16 bit, and yet because of the processing applied to those samples, it fully makes sense to be processing them at much higher resolution with modern tool if possible/practical.
It would seem reasonable to me that given a bit of 44.1k/16bit stems I might produce a new 88.2 or even 176.4k @ 24 bit (or even 32bit) master just because of vastly improved modern production tools and vastly improved modern computational power.
 
Funnily enough, this rings true with digital image files. A high quality picture will stand being enlarged, even though it is no longer an ideal resolution. Whereas a poor quality original won't look better, even at the correct resolution.

Rubbish in, rubbish as they used to say.

Quality of the original is the most important thing. Increasing resolution is only of benefit when you start with the highest quality.
 
Hi Khazul

I thought Mark said 192kHz is nonsense – as there is nothing about 25k and most mics cant capture above 40k.

What would be the reason you might master at 176.4k?
 
Hi Khazul

I thought Mark said 192kHz is nonsense – as there is nothing about 25k and most mics cant capture above 40k.

What would be the reason you might master at 176.4k?

In production I have used higher sample rates simply because some plugins sounded better at higher sample rates - high end edginess just not present (not fatiguing) when running a plugin at 96k instead of 44.1k. This is less of an issue these days with modern higher quality algorithms in plugins and increased use of internal over-sampling in a lot of processing.

Also I have also often come across situations where a sample that sounded perfectly good when plainly played back can sound awful and basically unusable when heavily processed (as is common in a lot of pop and dance music production).

Usually the reason is simply because it is asked for, they are willing to pay, end of conversation :)

Another good technical reason is that a hi-res master may be destined for video (48K) and streaming music (44.1k) use and the higher the relative sample rate, the more cleanly it will convert down, though again, this is something that has improved a lot recently with newer algorithms.

It has never been about capturing beyond our normal audio range, it has been about placing a bigger buffer between band limiting artifacts (and avoiding the need for highly aggressive filters) and our audible range. Probably most of the above can be attributed to some derived consequence of that.
 
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Thanks for explaining. This isn't an area I know a lot about I just know I cant hear a difference between a regular CD and 96/24 versions.
 
For me, up to a point hi-res works.

However as I have said before in other threads like this, hi-res is not always about getting every last "bit" of sound on there. If it means we get simply a better mastered sound, with more though or attention spent on good bass, mids, more dynamic range, then count me in.

Also, when Tidal released their MQA albums. I cannot remember the album, but someone posted a like to the two versions and the MQA sounded like it was a re-recorded album; for better or worse in the albums case, it showed a remastered hi-res album can be dramatically different, whatever you think about hi-res music.
 
but someone posted a like to the two versions and the MQA sounded like it was a re-recorded album

With re-masters this isn't surprising if all they kept from the original was the originally recorded stems and then mixed from the ground up with modern plugins.
 
I've always fond the whole higher res thing very confusing. What I loved about this video is that its by a real expert who isn’t trying to sell hifi kit and who points out that much of what is being said is outright dishonest.

The fact that mics don’t pick up anything above 40k means even in the studio, anything above 80k is pointless. In the home it is simply snake oil.

If most of the hi res that’s being sold is old recordings that are no better than 16/44 the only possible point of putting them in a 24/96 wrapper is to sell suckers the same stuff again and the new DAC’s etc. to go with them.

The new versions may be EQ’d and mixed a bit better but essentially the same quality is the same.
 
Mark Waldrep is a top bloke - I had an issue with one of his discs a number of years ago and he was went above and beyond to help. I would not hesitate to believe what he says about this subject. My own limited experience is that rock music recorded in the 70's sounds no different in hi res than normal flac files. I have purchased a few of these, Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, and cannot tell the difference. However, I have also bought discs from Mark and Linn records and I would say if the recording is new then these discs/downloads can sound better than cd's.
 
Part of my uni degree each year had a "Studio Systems" module where we sat through hours of purgatory about harmonics, overtones red book, blue book and the like.

What I do remember is that particularly detailed / complex wave forms are caused by higher frequency harmonics (waves within waves) that "round off" what might be a rather basic soundwave.

Therefore, sound systems need to be able to reproduce these high-end frequencies to replicate complex detailed sound.

However, there's no denying we're getting older and our ears reach a point where we start losing that very ability to even hear these parts of the soundwaves.

I recall seeing something on YouTube about why even the most experienced and famous recording engineers tend to hide their age because folk might question if they can hear those high frequencies themselves because of their ageing ears.

I concur, at a certain age (I'm 50), there has to be a ceiling when music simply can not sound any better.
 
I agree for the most part with this. Down-sampling from high res to 16/44 produces an audibly identical copy, but comparing the high res master to the original CD master there is often a sizable improvement with high res. It's not the medium, it's the mastering, and it's a slight of hand that's being used to sell hardware. Given the option on Qobuz I'll generally buy the high res download in case the mastering is better than the CD quality download. It might not be, but at least I know I'm getting the best quality digital copy for my money.
 
I concur, at a certain age (I'm 50), there has to be a ceiling when music simply can not sound any better.

I kind of thought that (I am ex recording/mixing/mastering engineer among other things) until I realised that I still pick out a lot more detail in music and sound in general than many people seem to be aware of - including at the higher end where I know beyond any doubt that my hearing is diminished these days (I'm 52).

The reason for me isn't good raw hearing, it good interpretation of what I hear though hours of critical listening to mixes etc. You start to become very attuned to the slightest audible cue - often relying on secondary cues (that you cant directly hear) or even just sensations or feelings because the actual problem is not directly instantly audible. Over time you get to recognise what usually causes those sensations. I have also learned to recognise a lot about a space from its sound (the reflected sound specifically) due to time spent carefully setting up mic and learning from issues in recordings done in non-ideal spaces etc.

I think this is far more important for mix work than having good raw hearing. The reason I don't do it any more is over time even when you are careful, working with audio production does eventually damage your hearing to some degree or it just gets fatiguing (on your ears) quickly and you find yourself craving the silence during breaks a lot more. This is far more so than listening for hours at home because the monitors I used to work with and my proximity to them tended to result in very strong dynamics that you just don't hear by the time something has been mastered and you are listening to it on a typical home sound system.
 

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