High def/Low def

[magiccarpetride]

Spent better part of the weekend listening to as much high definition music as I could get my hands on (mostly 24/96 DVD-Audio rips to FLAC played through my Squeezebox Touch). Switched back to my CD rips (16/44.1 rips to AIFF) and experienced a huge shock: the CDs sound so scratchy and harsh and grainy and full of unpleasant glare!

It felt like switching from watching blu ray movies back to watching the same movies in VHS. Now, I've always thought (not really giving it much detailed study) that high definition music is just a bit marginally better than the CDs, and that the improvement is mostly detectable in the more realistic soundstage and spatial placement of the instruments/vocals. But this is an altogether different situation; this is the real difference between listening to the very realistic, soft, smooth and muscular sound and the difference of listening to a mere facsimile of that same sound. Like a harsh photocopy of an original artwork.

Is this also other people's experience? Could the increase in resolution truly affect the digital sound this much? Or was it that I was just in a special mood last night? (I'll retry this experiment later today)

[Reid Malenfant]

Alex, do the calculations

2^16 = 65,536 permutations or if you like that is as many points on a waveform 16 bit can generate.

24 bit looks a tad better to say the least:- 2^24 = 16,777,216 permutations

256 times more detailed than red book CD & that's before you take into account the wider bandwidth of 96Khz sampling.

No idea how the hell all that info is stored though In theory you'd need 20+ Gb to hold a CDs worth of information. However from what i have read about 80% of red book CD is taken up with error correction information, taking that into account then an 80 minute CD will fit on a 4.7Gb DVD. Then adding the expanded bandwidth which will slightly more than double the information (if it happened to have significant information up to 40KHz+) it'll fit on a double layer DVD.

I'm pretty sure i have a few DVD audio discs here, just no chance to listen to them as i type, from what i have heard previously they do sound very good indeed & frankly it's not surprising

[michaelhigh]

Spent better part of the weekend listening to as much high definition music as I could get my hands on (mostly 24/96 DVD-Audio rips to FLAC played through my Squeezebox Touch). Switched back to my CD rips (16/44.1 rips to AIFF) and experienced a huge shock: the CDs sound so scratchy and harsh and grainy and full of unpleasant glare!

It felt like switching from watching blu ray movies back to watching the same movies in VHS. Now, I've always thought (not really giving it much detailed study) that high definition music is just a bit marginally better than the CDs, and that the improvement is mostly detectable in the more realistic soundstage and spatial placement of the instruments/vocals. But this is an altogether different situation; this is the real difference between listening to the very realistic, soft, smooth and muscular sound and the difference of listening to a mere facsimile of that same sound. Like a harsh photocopy of an original artwork.

Is this also other people's experience? Could the increase in resolution truly affect the digital sound this much? Or was it that I was just in a special mood last night? (I'll retry this experiment later today)

I keep a regular rotation going so I don't get too inundated with the details, otherwise I'd throw away my 8-tracks! (hehe)... One day vinyl gets the prize for bit-perfect quality, then files, then there are days when anything will do. I'm easily entertained...

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Hmm, doesn't sound right to me ... I'm fairly sure my system is quite revealing, I have and listen to music up to 24/192 at 9000 odd Kbps ... I don't find the scratchy sound comes into play until I listen to music ripped from CDs in formats below 320kbps- sometimes at 320, but often that is fine, not quite a dynamic maybe... But not scratchy really! ... Flac from cd is fine ... In fact in some cases I have CDs that you would think were "high def" ... Have you ripped the CDs correctly? Flac files of CDs will only sound scratchy if the cd sounded scratchy!
You need a reference for perspective I think... Cd is perfectly capable of sounding fantastic, not scratchy at all, high Rez is usually better sounding... But that's because it has been recorded and produced with greater attention to detail due to it's target audience probably buying it for it's high rez nature.
Buy something like Nitin Sawney "broken skin" ... If that sounds scratchy then i would say the fault is in your system/method of ripping
A lot of CDs that sound scratchy sound that way because of poor attention to detail in their creation, not because of fault in the format it's self...

[DSJR]

You do need a reference - the original recording, and if the transfer is done right, even the early Sony PCM1630 is a pretty good A to D converter. certainly on Decca classical material, the CD is a good reflection of the source recording.

The whole point about hi-res is for the pro's who may need to do digital editing and other unmentionables with a margin for error, which in the early eighties wasn't there..

Once again, bad "domestic" speaker crossovers and crude tweeter implementations can magnify things out of all recognition.

[Vincent Kars]

Now, I've always thought (not really giving it much detailed study) that high definition music is just a bit marginally better than the CDs, and that the improvement is mostly detectable in the more realistic soundstage and spatial placement of the instruments/vocals.

Sounds reasonably to me.
The quality of a CD is high, any improvement should be a small refinement not a night and day difference.
16/24 is a nice example.
A bit is a bit by design (6 dB). 16 bits=6*16=96 dB dynamic range
24=6*24=144 dB dynamic range
The noise floor of your gear might be say 110 dB
Going from 16 to 24 will enable you to hear any detail between -96 dBFS and -110 dBFS.
Now -96 is already very soft…
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/Bit1624.htm

Make me wonder if something has gone wrong with the ripping.
Re-ripping a couple of CDs in secure mode might be a first step

[Clive]

I have my doubts that the difference between ripping with the likes of EAC and simply copying a CD is significant. There have been endless discussions on this with no real conclusion. Strangely when I install software (programs) from CD they install correctly and run fine on my computer - without needing EAC to read the CD. I use EAC to RIP my CDs for tagging reasons.

[MartinT]

If your CDs sound harsh and grainy then there is something wrong with your replay chain. Are you actually playing the CDs or a rip thereof?

At their best, CDs can sound spectacularly good. SACDs and DVD-As sound even better and are up there with LP for natural presentation and micro-detail. Remember that CD was a 1984 digital format - limited, but the best that technology could economically decode at that time.

[Welder]

Hi Alex.

This doesn’t sound right to me either.
I think one really needs to compare the same track/album ripped/downloaded with the same app to the same format at differing resolutions.
To my ears a well re-mastered 16/44.1 is not far short of a standard 24/88.
The extra bit depth does make an audible difference but it’s not a night and day difference.
Given most recording studios now use 24/88 as standard it shouldn’t be too hard to set up a valid comparison.
Possibly a controversial view but I don’t care much for AIFF, preferring WAV or Flac.
I understand people have had some excellent results ripping audio from DVD. It’s not something I’ve tried myself.

[AlanS]

Could the increase in resolution truly affect the digital sound this much? Or was it that I was just in a special mood last night? (I'll retry this experiment later today)

My money is on the special mood. What was the retry without the special mood like? Is it repeatable?