1. Home
  2. digital
  3. 153998-20253

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
ejr1953
940 posts
 
For those who have posted:

“Remember how much money Wadia commanded for their upsampling DACs?.”

I have a PS Audio DirectStream DAC, which upsamples as well.  Maybe that's one of the pieces of the puzzle, why so many 44.1/16 sources sound just as good as hi-res.  I'm guessing that after the stream is "upsampled", when the DAC filters at the back end, any "unintended consequences" are well beyond the hearing range.

Interesting postings, thank you everyone for your input!
erik_squires OP
17,552 posts
 
I refer to one recording that I own as both a Redbook CD and a High Rez download. It is Andris Nelsons conducting the Boston Symphony in Shostakovich Symphony #10.



Love specific, personal experiences, @mahler123, thank you.

Not only can I tell the difference, but when I demonstrated a passage for comparison to my wife, who could care less about SQ, admitted there was an obvious difference, as have many reviewers.

It is always hard to tell if this is due to technology or the re-mastering process, but do you think that with a 15 year old DAC you’d feel the difference in sound quality between the CD and Hi Rez recording would have been the same??

electroslacker
375 posts
 
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.
ethiessen1's avatar
ethiessen1
61 posts
 
Not a scientific response to your post but perhaps relevant - I own both the Redbook and SACD versions of Keith Jarrett's Sunbear concerts and the difference between them through the same DAC, system etc is easily apparent. Also, downsampling 24/96 downloaded flacs to Redbook and burning them to cd gives again a readily apparent difference when compared to the commercially bought Redbook version, again on the same system etc. 

Perhaps if I had a newer/better/more expensive DAC in my signal chain the differences may not be as striking?
erik_squires OP
17,552 posts
 
Also, downsampling 24/96 downloaded flacs to Redbook and burning them to cd gives again a readily apparent difference when compared to the commercially bought Redbook version, again on the same system etc.


And this to me tells me that the 24/96 is mastered differently. That’s’ been happening since CD’s, and it is a maddening confound!! :)

First gen CD’s were often more compressed and with less channel separation than LPs, then SACDs came out, and they had clearly different spectrum profiles, showing that the mastering engineers had made significant changes.

The only way to really tell today whether or not your DAC is performing better or differently with High Rez is to do exactly what you did. Take a high rez source, down sample it and compare the two.

More to discover