More > JRiver Media Center 24 for Windows

high quality music (hdtracks) is it worth it?

<< < (7/7)

dabu:
Remasters are usually worse than the original release, especially if the original was released pre-2000ish. Rarely have I encountered one that didn't have a much lower DR, and most are also mastered too hot, both for the same reason - it sounds "better" to people with unrefined taste in audio. When I'm hunting down the best quality release of an album I can find, it's unpredictable which format it will be on. DSD has had the highest hit rate for me but they are few and far between. A good quality vinyl rip is often the best release in spite of the fact that probably 80% of them have one or another issue with the sound quality. Sometimes it's SACD. Hell, sometimes the best release is a CD in spite of there being a high res release. Sometimes the Japan release will be mastered differently and sound worse than the US release. The best release of Thriller I could find was the 1999 SACD, after having heard and analysed almost a dozen different releases of it including numerous vinyls, CDs, DSD, and the WLS master tape copy. You just can't tell where a quality release will come from.

Scobie:

--- Quote ---Rarely have I encountered one that didn't have a much lower DR
--- End quote ---

This is certainly what to look out for. A remaster that over compresses the DR will not sound nearly as good.

There was a great article in the NYT recently discussing one of the reasons "classic rock" albums still sell is a bigger DR. They cited The Eagles Greatest Hits as a prime example of a great sounding (regardless of whether you actually like the music) album that continues to sell, and has a much larger DR than today's recordings that need to hit you out of the gate, lest you skip onto the next one.

RD James:

--- Quote from: dabu on April 01, 2019, 09:41:22 pm ---Remasters are usually worse than the original release, especially if the original was released pre-2000ish. Rarely have I encountered one that didn't have a much lower DR, and most are also mastered too hot, both for the same reason - it sounds "better" to people with unrefined taste in audio.
--- End quote ---
It's not about "refined taste" - louder audio naturally sounds "better" to people, and compressing the dynamic range is a way to make your album sound louder than someone else's album.
Ideally the dynamic range would not be compressed, all albums would be played back at the same loudness, and how loud your music plays is determined by your amplifier/volume setting - which is exactly what happens if you play back albums in Media Center using Volume Leveling once your library has been analyzed.
When played back at the same loudness, most people will pick the track with the higher dynamic range whether their tastes are "refined" or not. It's just that "louder" tends to win out over dynamic range.


--- Quote from: dabu on April 01, 2019, 09:41:22 pm ---When I'm hunting down the best quality release of an album I can find, it's unpredictable which format it will be on. DSD has had the highest hit rate for me but they are few and far between. A good quality vinyl rip is often the best release in spite of the fact that probably 80% of them have one or another issue with the sound quality. Sometimes it's SACD. Hell, sometimes the best release is a CD in spite of there being a high res release. Sometimes the Japan release will be mastered differently and sound worse than the US release. The best release of Thriller I could find was the 1999 SACD, after having heard and analysed almost a dozen different releases of it including numerous vinyls, CDs, DSD, and the WLS master tape copy. You just can't tell where a quality release will come from.

--- End quote ---
This is true, but it's important for people to understand that it is not the audio format which contributes to the audio quality, so long as it is delivered without lossy compression.
If the best quality release was a 32-bit 768kHz PCM track, or an 8x DSD track, it's not the best quality release because of its "high resolution" - it just happens that the best release was made available in that format. It would still sound better than all the other releases if properly converted to a 16-bit 44.1kHz track (and Media Center will do this if you use SoX resampling with TPDF dither enabled).

The dynamic range database is a good resource for people seeking out albums with the highest dynamic range - though that is not the only indicator of quality.
It's also very important to note that using the tools to measure dynamic range on vinyl rips will produce invalid results, for a variety of reasons.
These artificially inflated numbers may appear to make vinyl look like it is the best release, but that's rarely true when you actually do a listening comparison. Vinyl is not a high quality format, and is inferior to CDs.

dabu:

--- Quote from: Scobie on April 01, 2019, 11:38:41 pm ---There was a great article in the NYT recently discussing one of the reasons "classic rock" albums still sell is a bigger DR. They cited The Eagles Greatest Hits as a prime example of a great sounding (regardless of whether you actually like the music) album that continues to sell, and has a much larger DR than today's recordings that need to hit you out of the gate, lest you skip onto the next one.

--- End quote ---

That's interesting. I wonder if all these DR crippled releases even help record labels' bottom line at all? There's a cottage industry out there of people putting a huge effort into ripping vinyls as though they were NASA extracting information from an alien data crystal found on Mars, and thousands of listeners going the extra effort to find and download these bootleg copies, but somehow the record labels seem to believe it's better to throw away those connoisseurs' money because the average Joe is too lazy to turn up the volume knob on his stereo/device? It's no wonder the labels darn near went bust 10 years ago.

fathermurphy:
Why?
Why is there always one person at least tries to convince the rest of us audiophiles that 16 bit 44,100 kHz is the highest resolution we should seek and listen to in digital music?

Why?

We hear the difference, we embrace it

You need to forget the science or where it is you’re getting your information from and stop wasting your breath.   

An audio file converted to digital from the master tapes, and presented to us at anywhere from 96/24 to 192/24 is radically different if you know what you’re listening for within the music. It’s not just about the high end & the lower end…

Sampling a master audio track digitally at night 96 kilohertz, 24-bit sounds incredible…
It’s not just about how high the frequencies go and that they are above the range of human hearing, it’s about the fact that the analog master is being presented to us as being sampled at 96,000 times the second at 24.

That allows for an extraordinary amount of information in the song to come out that has never been allowed to reveal itself before. 

It’s not just about what the high frequencies can do in the low frequencies can do but it’s about the need of this song the meat of the file. 


And it’s flat out wrong to say that there’s no difference and that we can’t hear. 

You don’t know what you’re listening to somebody needs to sit down with you, with a good pair of earphones  and let you listen to the 96 kHz sample rate 24bit per second rendition Pink Floyd‘s the dark side of the moon.

You will be floored. 

If you’re not you’re being stubborn. 

So I say this… Believe me there’s a difference close your science book and put on a pair of headphones and listen.
Listen to some of the beautiful music that’s been coming out in high resolution

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page