If you can read or translate it you Will be amazed.
I bought for 100 euros of Stones files but was unable to hear ANY difference between 16/44 files and 178/24. Same files in fact and fake high rez !

My ears do not mislead me. I was amazed not to hear differences between regular 16/44 and pretended Masters : true for Metallica black album too and others.
Strange that Hd tracks presents Nevermind Nirvana in 96/24 for the 20 year but not with Butch Vig mix... why since they are supposed to get the Master file ?

[www.bhmag.fr]

"we know it's a bit late but we hope you don't mind if we stay"

Well, if this is true then it would sure explain why people measured high-frequency content in Ruby Tuesday even though it could hardly have come from another source than the 1986 ABKCO 16/44.1 version. It would also be a fine example of the "The Emperor's New Clothes" effect, with all the people claiming these downloads sound much better than the Red Book CDs...

this one is interesting too

[itrax.com]

"we know it's a bit late but we hope you don't mind if we stay"

I haven't listen to all HD Stones available on HD Tracks but some of them are clearly upgrades like Big Hits 1&2.

Merci! Nice article! So they take standard music files and they upscale them to disguise them as HD files...

Crooks are crooks BUT hd audio still far above cd quality. Ask Neil Young



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-10-03 16:34 by dcba.

I will probably have to read theses articles again after a good night, but I'm not sure I understand everything properly.

I understand that if I am using older files that were converted from original analog master tapes using 16/44, then upsample them to 24/96 and sell them as HD files, then I am cheating.

But if I am re-converting from original analog master tapes, using newer and better 24/96 converters - obviously the results will be closer to the original than if I used 16/44 converters. And that even if the bandwidth of the original tape is limited.

RE [www.itrax.com]

"back in 2000, Paul Miller published an article exposing many of the early DVD-Audio productions as lacking substantial improvements over CDs. The SACD and DVD-Audio formats were specially designed to, "demonstrate the audible superiority of 96 kHz/192 kHz recordings over CD's 44.1/16-bit format [but, in fact] actually sounded worse."

It stands to reason that you cannot squeeze that much extra frequency out of something that was never recorded beyond it's original stated bandwidth.

Recalls the discussion thread from several months ago...IF you could even get this at HD quality (which for the old recordings, you apparently cannot), where can you listen to this to get the full quality version?

Can't burn it to CD, because the fidelity gets cropped...you essentially have to listen through your computer, so the HD part of this is not 'portable', unless perhaps if you can access through an external drive to your stereo?

I've been going to LOUD rock concerts and listening to LOUD stereos in home and car for over forty years. At this point investing in yet another miniscule, at best, upgrade of decades old recordings is entirely moot point. I have my SACDs and MFSL vinyl. These HD Tracks can't be any better.

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R
I've been going to LOUD rock concerts and listening to LOUD stereos in home and car for over forty years. At this point investing in yet another miniscule, at best, upgrade of decades old recordings is entirely moot point. I have my SACDs and MFSL vinyl. These HD Tracks can't be any better.

Don't worry at that point your hearing is banged up!

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treaclefingers
It stands to reason that you cannot squeeze that much extra frequency out of something that was never recorded beyond it's original stated bandwidth.

Yes, but it's not about extra frequency, it's about the D/A processing, right ? In other terms, how to translate soundwaves into 0s and 1s. 16bits is obviously too limited, as is 44.1 sample rate, to properly recreate the soundwaves you get straight from tape.

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treaclefingers
Can't burn it to CD, because the fidelity gets cropped...you essentially have to listen through your computer, so the HD part of this is not 'portable', unless perhaps if you can access through an external drive to your stereo?

That was my point some time ago. D/A converters in consumer soundcards are worse than those in hifi CD players.

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gwen
16bits is obviously too limited, as is 44.1 sample rate, to properly recreate the soundwaves you get straight from tape.

Obviously? You can argue your point, you might even be right about it, but it's not in any way obvious. Theory says it should be enough and most people can't hear the difference.

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dcba

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R
I've been going to LOUD rock concerts and listening to LOUD stereos in home and car for over forty years. At this point investing in yet another miniscule, at best, upgrade of decades old recordings is entirely moot point. I have my SACDs and MFSL vinyl. These HD Tracks can't be any better.

Don't worry at that point your hearing is banged up!

Precisely my point.

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FreeBird
Obviously? You can argue your point, you might even be right about it, but it's not in any way obvious. Theory says it should be enough and most people can't hear the difference.

Obviously you missed the irony here. Nevermind.

Back to my original question - why would a 24/192 conversion from original analogue tape be not any better than a 16/44.1 ?

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gwen
Obviously you missed the irony here. Nevermind.

I didn't see any irony in that particular post, although I suppose you could say that I should've read it in context with your earlier post, in which the irony was (indeed) clear to see.

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FreeBird
I didn't see any irony in that particular post, although I suppose you could say that I should've read it in context with your earlier post, in which the irony was (indeed) clear to see.

No worry. But now, am i missing something about tape to digital transfer?

Very interesting discussion.
I was wondering about that with for instance the live ep 'got live ...'. Does anybody know how that was recorded?
Whether it was overdubbed?
And whether HDtracks could actually be right here, that their stuff comes closer to the original source, whatever that may be..

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gwen

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FreeBird
I didn't see any irony in that particular post, although I suppose you could say that I should've read it in context with your earlier post, in which the irony was (indeed) clear to see.

No worry. But now, am i missing something about tape to digital transfer?

Maybe, maybe not. I think the main point is that it's defensible to sell a high-res transfer of an analog tape as better than a CD-quality one. It may not actually be better, but people can choose for themselves if they want to believe in the concept or not. When you're selling an upsampled file as high-res you can't legitimately claim it's an improvement.

Think of it as a trial. When you're upsampling files, you're guilty of deception. When you're doing high-res transfers of analog tapes, some may view it as deception and some may not. In that case you're not guilty, because there's (at least) reasonable doubt. For simplicity's sake, I'm ignoring the distinction between telling people these files are upsampled and not telling them.

My personal opinion is that their debut album is so poorly recorded that it's never going to sound better than it does on CD, but some of their later albums are a different story. I'm not convinced a real difference exists, but I'm not sure of the contrary either.