there are some excellent digital gear designers that believe roughly 4x the standard redbook rate (24/176-196 khz) is an ideal sample rate to make commonly deployed pcm digital filtering and reconstruction the easiest and most natural sounding.... all else being equal of course, which it never is...
Streaming resolution
What’s your favorite streaming resolution? I find when streaming hi-rez files the best resolution for me is 24/44.1 or 48. Anything higher like 96 or 192 sounds to sanitary. It’s almost lifeless. It doesn’t reveal more for me it’s sounds flat and to precise. At 48kHz - that is the sweet spot for me. The music is lively and revealing and this is across genres. Do you have a preference? What are your experiences ?
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@mattmiller its not that I’m not hearing the difference, but what I hear is as I said flat and too sanitary. The edge is gone. Don’t know how else to describe it. I like what I have not looking to upgrade but just found that the lower resolution sounds more appealing. Maybe it’s digital ear from CD listening and used to that sound. |
OP, in my view, resolution preference is real, but what's actually driving your experience deserves scrutiny. There's a good video on this which essentially argues: Higher sample rates expose weaknesses in a DAC's implementation and analog output stage — what sounds "sterile" at 96/192 may reflect one's chain's vulnerabilities, not resolution itself. More fundamentally, the mastering matters far more than the format. A brilliantly engineered 16/44.1 recording routinely outperforms a poorly mastered high-res file. Also worth noting: most modern delta-sigma DACs internally upsample PCM anyway, which means the format battle is often already decided inside the DAC itself. Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WSxrtGOk48&t=489s Overall, your sweet spot at 48kHz may simply be where your system is most forgiving — not where resolution peaks. |
+1 @hilde45 |
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