Even better than hirez formats are recordings produced correctly. If you want to hear great stuff listen to movie soundtracks. Somehow they almost always get it right. Even old stuff from the 50s can sound incredible, yet the music business can't seem to do the same with the same music. It seems the movie industry cares enough to get great sound while the music industry (whose job it should be to get music right) just does not care in general about sound quality. Maybe this is why there are so few new audiophiles today, because music is recorded and produced so poorly and sounds so bad that most never hear any need for something better than MP3s? I believe that the music industry is responsible for there own woes.
Focus on 24/192 Misguided?.....
As I've upgraded by digital front end over the last few years, like most people I've been focused on 24/192 and related 'hi rez' digital playback and music to get the most from my system. However, I read this pretty thought provoking article on why this may be a very bad idea:
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Maybe it's best to just focus on as good a redbook solution as you can, although there seem to be some merits to SACD, if for nothing else the attention to recording quality.
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Maybe it's best to just focus on as good a redbook solution as you can, although there seem to be some merits to SACD, if for nothing else the attention to recording quality.