I downloaded a track (Something's Comming from Claire Martins Too Darn Hot album) from Linn at studio master quality and CD quality.
I then converted the studio master version to a .wav file and loaded it into Cooledit Pro where I did a frequency analysis and found that the spectrum of the studio master file went upto around 40KHz. This being the case then the "just dropping every alternate sample" method of downsampling used by the SB3(*) would introduce aliasing (distortion). When I played the studio master 24/96 flac file on my SB+, it played but was noticably distorted - could have been the aliasing or something else. Using Cooledit pro I then downsampled the studio master wav file to 24/48 using its highest quality settings, saved it and flac encoded it. I then preceeded to compare the CD (16/44) quality flac with the downsampled (24/48) flac files using an SB+ -> Naim 102/Hicap pre amp -> Naim 140 power amp and Linn KanII speakers. Could I tell the difference? Well I'm not sure, there were probably some small differences but certainly nothing black and white, I'm sure I couldn't pick out one from the other in a blind test. In fact both versions sounded fantastic, the music seems to have been extremely well recorded and they certainly aren't mastered to be as loud as possible like lots of the current CD's are. (*) Is it a definate known that the SB3 just drops every alternate sample when presented with a 96KHz stream? Opinion's all with my ears and my system YMMV. -- Stoker --ian ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stoker's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8264 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=40484 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
