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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... 

erik_squires
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mayoradamwest
429 posts
 
How do you know the DACs you’ve heard just aren’t very good at high resolution? I owned the Brooklyn DAC+ for quite a while and I heard the difference. Also, I’ll reiterate, that your system just might not be resolving enough or your room is not allowing maximum acoustics. 
I can see the difference between 4K and HD but not everyone can. Does that mean that maybe HD is just as good and we just haven’t seen the best upscaler yet? No, because that’s ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as your point. 
ddude003
161 posts
 
Three things come to mind...  First, many DACs do upscaling/upsampling internally...  Second, often the provenance of a music file is unknown...  Is it just upsampled Redbook or a Studio Master that was really recorded at a higher resolution... Lastly, MQA and DSD are broken...  Therefore, it is often obscured as to what you are really listening to...  Apples are not equal to bananas...
erik_squires OP
15,662 posts
 
How do you know the DACs you’ve heard just aren’t very good at high resolution?

That would be a lot of DACs. .



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mayoradamwest
429 posts
 
Might be a time to check down stream. Preamp, amp, speakers, or most probably, your ears. 
mahler123
3,031 posts
 
Agree with Mayor Adam here.  I currently own a Bryston DAC3 and formerly owned a Mytek Manhattan.  Yes, both DACs got more out of Redbook CD than I had ever thought possible, but Redbook still can’t compare with a really good high resolution downloads and with DSD.  
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