I believe the mathematicians got CD right but there was a lag in playback quality. I quickly decided the inflated prices of hi-rez downloads wasn't worth it. But I'm now going 100% streaming, so hi-res Qobuz was the obvious choice at their current discounted rates because they live or die by sound quality. Not saying I can tell the difference, or know how much is marketing, but overkill is fine with me in the streaming world.
The Modern DAC killed High Resolution Music - has Stereophile proven it?
Hi Everyone,
One thing I've mentioned a lot is that over the past 10 years or so DAC's really closed the delta in how well they play CD (i.e. Redbook) vs. high resolution (96/24 or higher). I've stated for a long time that the delta closed so much that high resolution music no longer seemed to be as important.
Stereophile just released an interesting set of measurements regarding jitter performance of older players vs. today. It's not absolute proof of my thesis, but it certainly is correlated.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/2020-jitter-measurements
One thing, as I commented, you don't have to compare old DACs to the $15,000 Bartok. The Mytek Brooklyn and others in the $2,000 price range also demonstrate this, and in fact has a very similar jitter rejection profile to the Bartok. The point to me is, almost all decent DAC's have jumped leaps and bounds in jitter performance. That's for sure. Perhaps this explains the disappearing gap in performance as well between Redbook and Hi Rez?
https://www.stereophile.com/content/mytek-hifi-brooklyn-da-processor%C2%96headphone-amplifier-measur...
One thing I've mentioned a lot is that over the past 10 years or so DAC's really closed the delta in how well they play CD (i.e. Redbook) vs. high resolution (96/24 or higher). I've stated for a long time that the delta closed so much that high resolution music no longer seemed to be as important.
Stereophile just released an interesting set of measurements regarding jitter performance of older players vs. today. It's not absolute proof of my thesis, but it certainly is correlated.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/2020-jitter-measurements
One thing, as I commented, you don't have to compare old DACs to the $15,000 Bartok. The Mytek Brooklyn and others in the $2,000 price range also demonstrate this, and in fact has a very similar jitter rejection profile to the Bartok. The point to me is, almost all decent DAC's have jumped leaps and bounds in jitter performance. That's for sure. Perhaps this explains the disappearing gap in performance as well between Redbook and Hi Rez?
https://www.stereophile.com/content/mytek-hifi-brooklyn-da-processor%C2%96headphone-amplifier-measur...