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high quality music (hdtracks) is it worth it?

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perry59:
A while back I was having problems getting some .dsf files to play. With the help of some patient folks here, finally got them working. In the process though I was utilizing the "white bear" analyzer and looking at the results (screenshots attached) of that gave me the impression can't produce much better regular CD quality (44khz). If that is the case, seems a waste of money to pay double for high end flac files, it would be cheaper just to buy the CD and rip it.
Comments?

Awesome Donkey:
To be honest, a lot of the files on HDtracks are sourced from the same masters the CDs are pressed from. Meaning they're not actually 'hi-res' files and just up-sampled files, as evidenced by looking at the spectrals and seeing where the cutoff is. There are exceptions that are sold there from time-to-time (look up the Steve Hoffman forums, they have active discussions on new HDtracks releases where they check the spectrals to see if they are what they claim to be).

So yeah, it's cheaper to buy the CDs and rip those, in my opinion.

RD James:
Human hearing ranges from ~20Hz to 20kHz, and high frequencies are lost with age.
Digital sampling requires the sample rate to be double that of any frequency you want to sample. So 44.1kHz can sample frequencies up to 22.05kHz without aliasing.
Even "CD quality" is above the threshold for human hearing. The extra headroom is there to roll-off the high frequencies before aliasing.
 
DSD is a little different, as it's a 1-bit format rather than a multi-bit format. There, higher sample rates reduce noise/distortion even within the audible range.
DSD 1x's 2.8MHz sample rate might sound like a lot, but it only has good noise characteristics up to about 24-30kHz. Beyond that it's all junk noise that has to be filtered out.
The problem is that being a 1-bit format, the signal cannot be fully dithered and thus encoding to DSD is always going to add distortion. That's why we're seeing a push for higher DSD sample rates - to reduce distortion.
 
The real solution is to use a multi-bit audio format (say… 16-bit 44.1kHz) which allows the audio to be fully dithered and thus distortion-free.
If you want something which is technically superior to 1x DSD in all metrics you have to go to around 24-bit 88.2kHz, but that only matters on paper - not to our ears.
 
If you are using digital volume control, your playback devices should be 24-bit, but the music you're playing does not have to be anything higher than 16-bit.
Undithered audio has ~6.01dB of dynamic range per bit, so 16-bit audio has a dynamic range of ~96dB. Dithered, that's well in excess of 100dB dynamic range.
No music uses anything close to this - because it would cause hearing loss in no time at all.
 
There are uses for high bit-depths and sample rates in music production, but it is not required at all as a distribution/playback format.
In extremely rare cases, there may be some tracks which are higher quality up to 24-bit 48kHz, because 24-bit may sound better than 16-bit if they didn't dither the conversion, but it means someone screwed up in production if that happens - and even then it's extremely unlikely that it would be audible. But you could probably construct a test for it where people would be able to tell the differences by intentionally doing everything wrong, which is why I won't say it's impossible for there to be an improvement with 24-bit audio.
 
Most "high resolution" audio is either silent above ~30kHz, is just filled with noise, may contain spurious tones, or may actually be full of aliasing.
It's actually proof that people cannot hear these frequencies, because it would sound objectively worse if we could.
But what may happen is that sending high frequency signals to your speakers/headphones will cause them to distort in the audible range because you are making greater demands of the hardware, beyond what it may have been designed for.

tunetyme:
You raise a really good question. One that I have been wrestling with over 20 years, These are my observations:

1. The first false assumption is that you get better quality with digital over analog. They use similar tech to press records, CD's, DVD's, etc.  The quality of your source material depends on how many CD's have been pressed with each master. First pressing are close to error-less and with each pressing the quality deteriorates.
Early on Plextor CD drives had "Plextools" that could measure the quality of a CD when you ripped it. When I was buying 10 - 20 CD's monthly, I would end up demanding my money back on 10 to 15% of my purchases. Most remasters, you will find, have just increased the amplitude (volume) usually at the loss of range and quality. They learned that people listen to louder music more frequently. Ripping analog records require the best DACS available and software to clean up the snap crackle and pop noises. Good mastering software is very expensive.  Do you have that kind of time? It does help to have a golden ear for this task.

2. With APE or FLAC, you have a lossless product but it reflects exactly the quality of the source CD, SACD or record.

3. JRiver does the best job to manage your collection and provide the highest quality software. Excellent database and good tools. I have over 120,000 tracks of music (over 2TB) and I add about 5,000 per year. however that is slowing down as I have collected most of what I have been looking for and just filling in the blanks. I would still like to see a dual playing deck like DJ software to continue developing play lists and mix my own. That is a request that has been out there for at least 10 years. Unfortunately, video seems to be the driving development force these days.   

4. The next issue becomes your stereo system. How well can it reproduce the sound quality? If you are an audiophile investing $30,000 to $50,000 for equipment and have a listening room designed for excellent acoustics you will hear quality differences. With cheap speakers and stereo system MP3's are fine. On good speakers you will hear the difference immediately.

5. Finally, the listener. Do you have a golden ear? IMO, they tend to only pick out the flaws and miss the music, so I stopped trying to pursue that goal. For me, I need to hear the difference with my stereo, in my home without outside distractions to make evaluations. Equipment wise, spend the big bucks on your speakers to last a lifetime and upgrade your electronics over time. The biggest quality improvement that I have had to date is not the electronics but the cables between my amp and the speakers. I bought a $300 pair of cables over 20 years ago that created an incredible increase in the quality of the speaker output. I have since upgraded my electronics several times over the years and I cannot say that I have heard a significant improvement only increased connectivity. I am not ready to drop the big bucks on audiophile electronics power amps, preamps, nor take the next big step up in speakers.

The bottom line is I listen for pleasure and desire the best quality for my ears. Why pay more for equipment if there is no real audible benefit? Most of the affordable equipment available today is designed for home theater.  Dedicated music equipment requires a big step up in electronics or a step back into tubes. I am looking forward to the WIFI or Bluetooth connectivity between my amp and speakers or even my PC and speakers. That could be the next real quality improvement.       
 

perry59:
Ok, so it sounds like it would make more sense to just buy the CD and rip it to flac (44/16) with dbPoweramp.
if it's true that that hdtracks is simply upsampling CD's, then I far as I'm concerned they are liars and thieves!
I have seen them claim that their sources are the original analog master tapes.

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