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


As I've upgraded by digital front end over the last few years, like most people I've been focused on 24/192 and related 'hi rez' digital playback and music to get the most from my system. However, I read this pretty thought provoking article on why this may be a very bad idea:
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Maybe it's best to just focus on as good a redbook solution as you can, although there seem to be some merits to SACD, if for nothing else the attention to recording quality.
outlier
if you're not sold on hi-res.....fine. just don't tell me what i hear isn't for real and i'm "wrong".
Levy03
if you are sold on hi-rez, fine. I don't know what you are listening to - true hi-rez (which would mean the analog masters sampled at 96KHz or 192KHz & made available for purchase) OR bogus hi-rez (whcih would mean taking the 16-b CD data, resampling it at 96K or 192K & providing it for sale to the unsuspecting public).
There have been sooooooo many scams re. hi-rez (recently read something about HDTracks were the offenders. Here is the link:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Metallica-Black-Album-HDTracks-Download)
that it's really very difficult to tell what the manuf has provided for sale.
You are probably listening to some digital filter thinking it's hi-rez & you are in 7th Heaven.
Maybe we should let you be - ignorance would be a bliss for you.....
As for filters - look at typical response of 2and 8 pole 20kHz Bessel filter in dB:

2pole 8pole
20kHz -3 -3
22kHz -3.63 -3.67
40kHz -9.82 -13.68
80kHz -20.32 -51.81

Kijanki, you provided us w/ the freq resp of ANALOG Bessel filters. I agree with you & I did write this in my prev post - analog filters cannot creat a sharp cutoff like what the author has shown - large attenuation between 20K-24K.
But, how about digital FIR filters? Can they create such a sharp roll-off?
Yeah, sure they can! Did you bother to read any of the links I referenced in my post? The paper from Dan Lavry shows 1 example & then there is that AES paper by Julian Dunn that also shows 4 filters that have 100dB atten & only a modest # of taps. All FIRs have flat group delay in-band.
If you have not heard a properly setup DAC with hi-res files, you owe it to yourself to do so... before you spend any money on a CD player... you will be happy that you did. Not to mention the benefit seeing your entire music collection on an iPad and being able to make playlists, etc. Why would anyone want to search through a bunch of CDs, put it into a device that could only add noise and jitter and eventually will fail (drive, optics), and hear a few songs that you may like by one artist on that CD. Instead, if you like Chris Issak for example, have every song he every recorded in AT LEAST the same quality, and most times better quality sound than the std. CD, all at your finger tips. How can you beat that?
OK guys.... here is a link to this study, no wait.... here is a link to this paper, no, i mean, her a link to this test a dude did a while back that says you are wrong... etc. etc.....

SO WHAT!!!!!!!! How is all this arguing about studies and technical data and technical specs going to tell you how ANOTHER PERSON will interpret how a certain CD player playing a std. redbook CD sounds vs. a DAC playing a digital file !!!!!!!!!!!
The article seems right, as far as the author goes. He admits to the problem of brick wall filters on Redbook CD, but he forgets to mention timing errors. This is why a cirrectly clocked computer regenerated waveform seems to improve on the CD, thru the same DAC. I would propose a much reduced timing error as part of the improvement of the higher res sampling frequenies. There is also a lot of talk on WAV beng better than FLAC (even though "bits are bits").
Stretching, I would hypothesize that the regeneration of the waveform by the additional complication of the FLAC decompression "bothers" our sensibilities in some way. IF so, then I would also propose that the decompression of MLP on a DVD-A might be similar.
My hypothetical ranking of sound which seems to agree with what I hear is:
CD<=FLAC<=WAV (for 16/44.1)<=24/96MLP<=24/96PCM<=24/192MLP (for DVD/A <= DSD, and just for fun <= LP. At some points the minor improvements may not be worth the additional storage requirements.
Remember, just speculating!