Does HiRez really sound better?

I read through the whole article. Complete waste of time. (Not you, Nonoise. I'm faulting the article itself). You read all that and then you get to the last sentence which sums it up.

"Of course, there many audio enthusiasts and professionals dispute these contentions, but we know of no scientific evidence that supports their views."

Of course not. Its just another silly paper that's put together by people that for some reason or another, just don't like high end audio. There's dozens of papers just like this one that's made using no fresh research of their own. The references they site are old, not very relevant, and are chosen to steer the reader in the direction the author wants. If you read through the paper, there's a clear bias to come up with the conclusion that they did, and its no surprise that the results are what they are. Can someone point out if any issue the author of this article presented, took any part in doing any type of research or tests themselves? I can't. It reads like one of those term papers in high school, that you had a whole year to complete, and you were sitting there copying from the encyclopedia the night before it was due. And, yes, I admit that I've done it myself, so no one needs to call me out on it. I was a screw up in High School. To my credit, though, I cleaned up my act once I got into college. I paid to have an honor student to write my papers, just like the rest of you.

I don't know if that is the reason (not liking high end audio) as Goldmund is pretty much all high end and if there were money to be made with the format, they'd be on it like white on rice.

I say this not to be contentious but there is another article over at digital audio review (John Darko's site) where he uses a software to determine how different 3 different downloads of the same song are (MP3, CD and 96Hz) and the HiRez measures marginally better, if that. He questions whether it's worth the extra cost.

All the best,
Nonoise

CD quality can sound almost as good as hi-res, and nearly identical on some systems, provided that:

The DAC used has minimal or no digital filtering for 44.1.

With typical low-frequency brick-wall digital filters used on most DACs, the DSD or even 24/96, 24/192 will be better.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I believe the question should be “Can it sound better?” I believe it can, however it often doesn’t. For me it is not worth the cost as I can purchase several CDs for the cost of a Hirez download.

I recently did a comparison with a few experienced and knowledgeable audiophiles. I have three versions of a couple titles on my hard drive; redbook CD, 24/192 and DSD. Using my Baetis Revolution II Music server we started listening over the USB connection to the EMM Labs DAC 2x. We started with the Redbook and worked our way up to the DSD with both titles. Interestingly, we all preferred the 24/192 to the Redbook or the DSD!
Next test was to switch playback to the BNC-RCA SPDIF on the Baetis connected with Jonny Wilson's superb Boomslang digital cable to the EMM Labs DAC 2X and use JRiver to convert the DSD file on the fly to PCM. Again, we began with Redbook versions and moved up to the DSD. Again, the 24/192 won, but the BIGGEST surprise was we all chose the SPDIF connection as being superior sounding to the USB connection! As I have written on other threads, DSD can sound fantastic, but old CDs merely converted don't always benefit from the transfer. All analog CDs converted to DSD and new recordings using DSD sound best. However, converting DSD to PCM sounds superb in most cases and the rush to buy a DSD DAC may not be needed. The proof of this is Berkeley Audio whose Reference doesn't offer DSD capability and it is considered by many to be among the most sonically pleasing of any DAC available. There is no standard on DSD files and this could be an issue. For those of you that have a good DSD DAC and a good cable, try this experiment too and see what you think.