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
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.  
@erik_squires 
But why do we assume this has to do with the resolution of the files instead of the performance of the DAC?
I'm not sure I get your reasoning here. R U suggesting that a DAC is selective (so to speak) in what it will play well?
Generally, the higher resolution file "sounds" better than a lower resolution file because contains more info about the same thing—no?
And we appreciate the presence of more musical info in that our brain doesn't need to compensate for what is not there & correct for the rest...

+1, mahler123.
Mr. Frugal seems to be stuck inside a box....he has been trying for so long to convince us that high resolution music no longer seemed to be as important.
R U suggesting that a DAC is selective (so to speak) in what it will play well?


Not selective. I don't think that DAC's choose to perform better, but what if jitter was worse with Redbook?

What if the side-effect of better clocks and better DAC chips has been that Redbook is finally as good as the scientists and mathematicians have been telling us?

@mahler
Yes, both DACs got more out of Redbook CD than I had ever thought possible,


That's pretty much all I am saying. If that is true, then the bonus value of high resolution must have diminshed no?

It's marching onwards and upwards... : )

If that is true, then the bonus value of high resolution must have [diminished] no?