Audiophile newbie Part 2

"What is your optimal bit-rate when playing a digital file?"

Mumbo Jumbo numbers are not the rewarding path to the promised land. There are certain hard facts out there:

(1) No matter what else you select MP3 versus an uncompressed PCM digital format is like comparing a mule to a thoroughbred ... 'nuff said.

(2) The vast, VAST, majority of digital recordings are CD quality 44/16. XRCDs make a huge improvement difference (assuming that you have the kit that will make use of the resolution step-up). It is essentially "proper" CD quality recording with the compression and other related crap removed (usually introduced for airplay)

(3) A high-end QUALITY DAC playing at that "44/16 will generally smoke a cheap(er) unit that claims to upsample to a higher level and get better results

(4)Using a cheap PC and a cheap cable as your source is OK BUT a hi-end digital player matched to the DAC (e.g inter alia BRYSTON / LINN / NAIM)is not an insignificant improvement either.

(5) There are some good articles out there, for example:

Why some high resolution music isn’t worth the extra dough

ttp://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/when-high-resolution-audio-isnt-hd/#ixzz2xw839C7s

Akg, I agree with most of what you say. Red Book 44/16 is the minimum of what I want to listen to.
HOWEVER, I will argue the point about a high end player vs a pc. A group of friends and I just compared 2 units playing and identical cd (did this with several albums). Ripped a Patricia Barber Cd onto my pc. From there it went to a nice USB cable to a MF VLink to a Shiit Bifrost. This sounded amazing.
Then we played the same cd on a Heavily Modded Music Hall (by parts connection) just as the transport with an nice MIT toslink into the bifrost. There was virtually no difference.
Yes, if I had a $10k transport and a $5k DAC we may have noticed something but not at this level. We are all quite surprised at what lossless on an average pc could do as a digital source.

16-bit 44.1kHz (CD-quality)

jwilsco, please look into the pc audio section in this forum. Including a recent thread were we went into this. Use the search engine, and you can look for my user-id. Computers can take you a long way. You can start super simple (laptop and asynch usb DAc), and tweak/complicate it as much as you deem worth it.

Take a look into computeraudiophile.com too. Check out what people are saying about using windows server 2012 and AudioPhil's Optimizer. I am doing this and I'm amazed at the sound improvement.

Wow so many questions!!