24/96 Format

With respect to Carl's comment regarding vinyl, I have heard from many audiophiles about the superior sound quality of vinyl. While I almost believe it, the problem I have is that I primarily listen to recently released classical music recordings, which do not appear to be available on records. Some of the these recordings only sell at most 2000 copies worldwide. Klemperer or Toscanni is not a problem. Could ypu further clarify your statement that "CD's that were made from downsampled 24 bit, 96, or 192 kHz digital recordings." I will get my hands on a copy of "The Complete Guide to Highend Audio." If I buy a sony 24 bit cd do I still hear 16 bit when I play it?

The CD format is still only a 16 bit/44.1 kHz sampling frequency, format. That said, it is always tough to get the very most out of the format. Certainly, the better the resolution of the master tape, the better the resolution of the CD, its own format-limited resolution notwithstanding. DACS that take an upsampled CD's audio (from a "digital to digital" sample rate converter), and convert this digital audio to analog at 24 bits/192 kHz, are THE CURRENT STATE OF THE ART in CD playback. And in my own opinion, if you only listen to recently recorded classical music, you're missing out on the very best classical recordings of all time! These are from the Golden Age of two channel, before all the multi-miked mixing that is prevalent nowadays. ALL of Classic Records' reissues from Mercury Living Presence, and RCA Living Stereo, are HIGHEND RECORDINGS THAT PROVIDE THE MOST EXTREME MUSICAL FULFILLMENT YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE. And the 45 rpm 12 inch versions are even better still. The original 3 channel recordings are downmixed to two channel, and are the very best clasical recordings available, from a "hi preformance audio re-creation's" perspective. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy CD's as well, but am certainly glad I'm not missing out on all these great new vinyl reissues! AS FOR SACD AND DAD, many of these recordings are taken from older analog master tapes, so they don't sound much different than their vinyl reissue counterparts. There are almost no recordings that make full use of the higher resolution formats, and almost no DACS or analog circuits that could take full advantage of these. Boulder has a new DAC/preamp that intrigues me very much, but I've not heard it in person. It claims 144dB of dynamic range.

I listen to baroque and early music which until the middle part of this decade was not performed in the manner for which it was composed. The problem with older classical recordings is that the conducters would always take a sweepingly large and romantic approach which was not always appropriate and true to the music, regardless of whether the composer would have approved. Thank you Carl for your last response as I believe I understand it now. I am going to investigate purchasing the "digital to digital" sample rate converter you mentioned. Perhaps, this could be another topic of discussion.

Well, if you're going to be that agnostic about the Golden Age recordings, I doubt there's much in this hobby for you. Good luck getting what you need out of it, though, really.

Carl, thanks for all the information you've provided on this thread as well as many others. However, it is not really for you to speculate on whether this hobby is for me or not. Please be more tolerant of other people's opinions that differ from your own.