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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
ejr1953
895 posts
 
Erik,

I think you are "spot on".

Someone in my audio club who knows more about the "nuts and bolts" of DAC design than I'll ever know once said that the reason why hi-res files sounded better several years ago was that the DACs of the day had "quantization errors" and by processing a hi-res file, those errors were typically way beyond the upper limit of our hearing, so filtering them on the back end didn't have much of a negative side effect.  He said that today's DACs have pretty much "solved" the "quantization error" problem.

I must say that, when I'm streaming music (from Qobuz), I usually select the hi-res file, not because it's hi-res, but I do suspect that they are newer masters and sometimes do sound more "musical" compared to the 44.1/16 files, but not always.

Your point is well taken, that the newer generation of DACs are so much better than one's from several years ago, that "regular" CD quality does successfully rival the sound quality of those hi-res files.
erik_squires OP
15,824 posts
 
Mr. Frugal

Put that on my tombstone.


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.

@lalitk 

The last two words are key to my point. Not "as important." that doesn't mean you don't like them or won't buy them. I mean that it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference and this is having an influence in the market.

Best,
E
erik_squires OP
15,824 posts
 
once said that the reason why hi-res files sounded better several years ago was that the DACs of the day had "quantization errors" and by processing a hi-res file, those errors were typically way beyond the upper limit of our hearing,

@ejr1953 
This seems perfectly plausible hypothesis to me. Remember how much money Wadia commanded for their upsampling DACs?

david_ten
5,480 posts
 
Be wrong in the moment OR be wrong all along. Your choice, Erik.

I mean that it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference and this is having an influence in the market.



lalitk's avatar
lalitk
5,091 posts
 
“Remember how much money Wadia commanded for their upsampling DACs?.”

Wadia is long gone and so is the need for oversampling DAC’s. Today’s high resolution files (above 16bit/44.1kHz) are so darn good that you no longer feel the need of oversampling. IMHO, oversampling adds distortion that’s not only unpleasant but sounds pretty unnatural.  Oversampling is nothing but a cheap gimmick!
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