mdconnelly;613521 Wrote: > There is no question that sound quality corresponds to recording quality > and attention to detail by the recording engineer and that many 44.1/16 > CDs can sound amazing (think XRCD) and that far too many totally suck > due to loudness wars and compression. I definitely agree.
mdconnelly;613521 Wrote: > Be that as it may, when you have an excellent recording, getting a 88/24 > or 96/24 version of it and playing it back on a high quality system (and > I'm including Squeezeboxen in this), can sound truly exceptional and > definitely better than just CD quality. > > I have purchased such recordings from a number of sites and I have to > say that I've been very impressed. The ones I'm most familiar with > include... > > http://www.hdtracks.com > http://www.linnrecords.com > http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk/Society_of_Sound > > Hey, it's not for everyone and you certainly won't hear a difference on > computer speakers or cheap playback equipment. And you do need a way to > play it back (which, of course, your Touch will certainly accomodate). > But given a good recording and a great playback system, there's no > going back. I mostly disagree, now. My audio system consists of a Transporter, a NuForce IA-7 amp and KEF iQ9 loudspeakers. Not something I'd consider "cheap playback equipement". Thanks to B&W's SoS, I downloaded my first 24/48 recording two years ago, a Portico Quartet album, and when I listened to it for the first time, I couldn't help thinking : "Wow, so HD files sound like that? How great!". But then, out of curiosity, I also downloaded the 16/44.1 version of the same album, listened to it very carefully, and was really surprised I honestly couldn't tell that the 24/48 version sounded better in any way than the 16/44.1 did. I since have downloaded many other albums from B&W's SoS, going from classical to world music, and each time I compared CD quality vs 24/48, I simply failed to tell that one version sounded better than the other. I also tried recently to challenge downloaded 24/96 files versus regular CD 16/44.1 rips, with no more success. In my humble opinion, people who can tell for sure they're able to distinguish 24/96 from 16/44.1 either have not compared versions of the same recording, or are fooled by their brain. -- sebp 'Last.fm' (http://www.last.fm/user/sebp) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ sebp's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11768 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=85879 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
