Originally Posted by
AJSki2fly
I have read many papers and articles on this subject over the last ten years, mainly because I was concerned with the lack of quality I perceived(that word again) when listening to so called hi-res MP3's and some CD's (I would emphasis this process was done on a system known to me and stable for several years, which we can call my testbed).
This all came about when a friend sent me some mp3 files of world music from the far east, the type of which I had not heard before and some instruments I would not have heard before. I put it on with excitement as he often found interesting stuff. What a shock it just sounded awful and weird, so I downloaded the same, and still the same. So I contacted my friend and asked if he was having a joke, a firm no came and he sent me a direct copy CD, on it went and hey ho it sounded quite different and was now listenable. This prompted me into doing some investigation of my own as I had actually digitised all met CD's to mp3 or equivalent, foolishly as I discovered.
I selected a well known piece of music to me that I had not listened to for some time, Led Zeppelin I and played it using MP3 I had and it sounded quite dull and lifeless really not at all how I remembered it. Then on with the CD and presto the life was back into it, but not quite as I remember it on vinyl, so then I listened on Vinyl and yes it was how I recalled it in my minds EAR. Intrigued I did some more investigation and the master for the mp3 and CD were the same the vinyl was different being from the original master. So I then found a 24/96 version and downloaded, this did actually sound different and after some investigation I resolved it was a remix of the original master, hence why timbre had change, nothing to do with the bit depth or the frequency.
So I then went off to find Vinyl, MP3, CD and SACD and 24/96 or 24/192 of the same music. One of my favourite albums of all time is Supertramp - Crime of the Century, and I had Vinyl, standard CD and and MFSL copies from the original master tapes, so I then purchased MP3 and 24/192 of the same. What I wanted to obviously ascertain was could I actually hear any difference and if so what.
So I have repeated the listening to these many times myself and an audiophile friend, it involves putting on at least 3 of Vinyl, MP3, CD and MFSL or 24/192 at any one time and them cueing each track simultaneously and the other person in the room randomly switching between them and each time it changes writing down what the listener thinks it is and the switcher writing down what it actually is. The results were as so, MP3 was relatively easily identifiable and hardly ever missed, pure 16/44.1 CD was identified at least 50% of the time. When CD quality was not identified for what it was, what actually was playing was the MFSL CD or the 24/192 Flac. Conversly the same was true with the MFSL CD or the 24/192 FLAC, this is to say that at about 50% of the time these were thought to be the CD playing. Finally vinyl was identified from digital most of the time at least 95%. We repeated the tests many times to try and get a good result.
So my point is that in my experience and that of my friend if all the formats are derived from the same master then differentiating aurally between CD 16/44.1 and any higher quality digital is virtually impossible, in fact it is down to guess work.
Based on the above and various articles I would have to say that from an aural resolution perspective anything beyond 16/44.1 makes no difference aurally to us mere human beings, and as I understand it that is why it was chosen by engineers originally for CD's to sound the same as the original recording.
On the same point I and my friend recently both identified a rather expensive SACD as sounding odd when compared to an earlier CD and the Vinyl version, in fact it had been produced from a inferior quality master.
So it is all not clear cut and is I am afraid a can of listening worms, if it sounds odd or poor then it probably is and comes from some inferior re-master irrespective of the resolution CD or above.