Focus on 24/192 Misguided?.....

Well written, interesting, provacitive. This coincides with my recent experience with forays into SACD & DVD-A. The overriding contribution to good sound (IMHO)is what I would call the production values( the care and equipment used in recordng & mastering). I have some dual sided DAD(24/96 PCM) and DVD-A (24/192 MLP) discs. I hear no advantage to the 192 sides. I consider the DADs proposed by Halverson & Classic Records to have been an ideal solution to improving the 16/44.1 standard, but of course it was never supported by the big players because it did not afford copy protection. I also find it very difficult to identify before purchasing "true" high def material actually encoded with 24/96 PCM, DSD, or even high speed analog tape with digital remastering. It seems to me these "high def" discs do offer improved sound, but only with the proviso cited in this article that the production values are also high def.

I don't own any high res files, because none of the music I listen to is available in 24/96, but I am considering the purchase of several classical titles in 24/96 since I bought a DAC that can process the signal. The true answer to something like this is an A/B test between the same track at 16/44.1 and 24/96, and I plan to do this if I can. In the meantime, I can say that the 192kHz setting on my PS Audio DL III helps remove some high frequency noise and reduces listener fatigue. I am currently battling this HF noise in my DAC-direct-to-amp setup. But this has nothing to do with 24/96 files, all my stuff is Redbook...now I'm wondering if the 24/96 USB/SPDIF converter is inserting "audible intermodulation of the ultrasonics!"

I can only comment that I'd much rather listen to good 16/44 vs mediocre or poor hi res regardless of frequency, bit and sample rate... Although really good recordings on high res are wonderful...Recording quality is a higher factor. Than resolution once you get up to 16/44. I've posted a hi res quesion on the computer forum, like any feedback that I can get.

Even better than hirez formats are recordings produced correctly. If you want to hear great stuff listen to movie soundtracks. Somehow they almost always get it right. Even old stuff from the 50s can sound incredible, yet the music business can't seem to do the same with the same music. It seems the movie industry cares enough to get great sound while the music industry (whose job it should be to get music right) just does not care in general about sound quality. Maybe this is why there are so few new audiophiles today, because music is recorded and produced so poorly and sounds so bad that most never hear any need for something better than MP3s? I believe that the music industry is responsible for there own woes.

The benefit over 24/96 is usually subtle, but can be interesting in complex classical or female vocals. I have some 2L classical that is 24/192 and very nice indeed. The 192 titles are so sparse that its not really a requirement, only a nice to have in my book.

Some DACs however will sound a lot better due to the digital filtering automatically being pushed out beyond audibility with 192. I manually control this on my DAC, so I can do it even with 44.1, and I do. Sounds a lot better than a brick-wall filter at 20kHz.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio