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high quality music (hdtracks) is it worth it?
TheShoe:
--- Quote from: perry59 on March 21, 2019, 10:18:36 am ---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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hdtracks have gotten better at listing the source specs. some will indicate now when it is upsampled.
there are just too many variables, including our own ears. i have CD redbook audio that sounds beautiful, 192/24 flac that doesn’t sound special, sacd rips that are amazing while others are so-so, and everything in between
for me the greatest difference was:
a great multi channel dac (exasound e38)
great speakers
those two alone everyone in the family agreed made a significant difference.
everything else was just too subjective
i do often buy sacd from analogue productions or steven wilson mixes et al because there you have people taking the time and care with the source material. even when they mix and master to 44.1/16 it can sound stunning.
so i would consider the source material and production methods used to be more relevant than the resulting bit depth an sample rate. with hdtracks it is hard to discern that information, but it is getting better.
dabu:
HDTracks is very hit and miss.
As to the question of high res: people who claim that, because we can't hear tones above 20khz, sample rates above 44.1khz are pointless don't know what they're talking about and are just regurgitating outdated arguments they've read on the internet. Numerous recent studies have shown that even though we can't hear tones above 20khz the ear still utilises information in much higher sampling rate sound (up to 500khz), particularly for localisation. But, there's a big but: it's still very much in the air whether this makes any difference for the type of music recording and reproduction which is standard today. If, in the future, music reproduction improves so that recordings include directional information which is then, when played back, reproduced in a way specific to the HRTF of the listener, it would matter. IMO the difference it makes for standard current day recording/playback is miniscule - far smaller than room effects and smaller than speaker incoherence issues.
RD James:
--- Quote from: dabu on March 25, 2019, 01:01:08 am ---HDTracks is very hit and miss.
As to the question of high res: people who claim that, because we can't hear tones above 20khz, sample rates above 44.1khz are pointless don't know what they're talking about and are just regurgitating outdated arguments they've read on the internet. Numerous recent studies have shown that even though we can't hear tones above 20khz the ear still utilises information in much higher sampling rate sound (up to 500khz), particularly for localisation. But, there's a big but: it's still very much in the air whether this makes any difference for the type of music recording and reproduction which is standard today. If, in the future, music reproduction improves so that recordings include directional information which is then, when played back, reproduced in a way specific to the HRTF of the listener, it would matter. IMO the difference it makes for standard current day recording/playback is miniscule - far smaller than room effects and smaller than speaker incoherence issues.
--- End quote ---
So how do you explain that virtually no-one complains when an album has things like a continuous tone at ~15.7kHz, let alone the junk in the 30kHz range and up?
If you pitch it down so that it is audible, there's nothing musical there.
BillT:
--- Quote from: dabu on March 25, 2019, 01:01:08 am ---Numerous recent studies have shown that even though we can't hear tones above 20khz the ear still utilises information in much higher sampling rate sound (up to 500khz), particularly for localisation.
--- End quote ---
Cite please.
perry59:
On this page http://www.hdtracks.com/quality
HDtracks makes their claim to being hi-res and not just upsampled
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