My suggestion would be to just skip Neil Young's Pono and take the money and buy two or three Sansa Clip Zip Players and a pair of Vsonic GR07 BE In-ear headphones, as could be read about at Head-Fi Forums at the following link:
[www.head-fi.org]

Then I would test my hearing by going to any one of several spots on the internet offering diferent quality streams of the same music clip at 128, 192, 256, 320 kbps, etc., so that you can determine what sound quality level you can discern the difernece between, and stop wasting your money, time, and the space on your player's drive.

As a side note the headphones are super important in the line-up and the Vsonic GR07 are hard to beat at any price.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-04-04 17:39 by Chacho.

The "brushed metal" style finish looks MUCH better than the yellow one. I wonder if it (the metal finish) will be made available in a regular edition without all of the signatures.

* [www.shakeypictures.com] *



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-04-04 17:46 by Winning Ugly VXII.

Quote
Chacho
My suggestion would be to just skip Neil Young's Pono and take the money and buy two or three Sansa Clip Zip Players and a pair of Vsonic GR07 BE In-ear headphones, as could be read about at Head-Fi Forums at the following link:
[www.head-fi.org]

Then I would test my hearing by going to any one of several spots on the internet offering diferent quality streams of the same music clip at 128, 192, 256, 320 kbps, etc., so that you can determine what sound quality level you can discern the difernece between, and stop wasting your money, time, and the space on your player's drive.

As a side note the headphones are super important in the line-up and the Vsonic GR07 are hard to beat at any price.

People get too focused on certain specifications.

I would be completely shocked if a $ 30 child's toy such as the Sansa Clip Zip can match the sound quality of the Pono or Fiio players much less the Astell & Kern AK240.

Even if it can,the Clip Zip is too small and flimsy for some people. Something a little bit more substantial is easier to navigate in certain situations .... i.e. in the car.

Wasting space ???? It is just not an issue any more. Maybe it was an issue ten years ago but,now you can get hard drives by the TB for cheap , even USB flash drive storage is readily available in 64 GB and 128 GB on sale for around $ 20 dollars. Digital music players offer increased internal storage capacity and many offer extra space by expansion with a micro SD card slot.

Also,if somehow space on your portable music player becomes an issue you can take your lossless files and compress them yourself with free software. That way you still could have lossless uncompressed "master" files stored in your home.

Wasting time ???? Using lossless audio takes no more time than using compressed audio. I can't think of a situation where lossless files costed me any time. Maybe downloading time is longer if you have poor internet bandwidth ?? Usually when I start a download,I just leave and then when I return,it is finished so .... no big deal for me.

Wasting money ???? This depends on where you purchase from. The Stones Archive albums were $ 7 in mp3 and $ 9 in F.L.A.C. if I recall correctly. $ 2 difference spread over 20 or so tracks = roughly 20 cents price premium per track if I am not mistaken.

You forgot to comment on checking your hearing.

I would bet that half the population cannot tell the diference between this bitrate and that, and one "child's toy" from another, including Neil Young, especially, who no doubt has hearing damage beyond that of the average person.

As I already stated, excellent earphones or speakers, are more important than the source device or bitrate (in most cases).



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2014-04-04 19:38 by Chacho.

Quote
Chacho
You forgot to comment on checking your hearing.

I would bet that half the population cannot tell the diference between this bitrate and that, and one "child's toy" from another, including Neil Young, especially, who no doubt has hearing damage beyond that of the average person.

As I already stated, excellent earphones or speakers, are more important than the source device or bitrate (in most cases).

But you can always teach the people to tell the difference. It took me years to understand that listening to my favorites albums from mp3 encoded files was not a good thing to do if I really want to enjoy them.

Quote
Chacho
You forgot to comment on checking your hearing.

I would bet that half the population cannot tell the diference between this bitrate and that, and one "child's toy" from another, including Neil Young, especially, who no doubt has hearing damage beyond that of the average person.

As I already stated, excellent earphones or speakers, are more important than the source device or bitrate (in most cases).

I don't have much time here right now but,I think that it needs to be pointed out that :

***** The best headphones are ACCURATE headphones . = They will accurately and precisely reveal the details of the source.

So,by definition .......... The source is quite important.

If you enjoy buying your audio gear at the pharmacy checkout register and listening to 192 kbps mp3's , that's great but,I HAVE heard the differences in compressed music ..... CYHMK studio version , Doors CD , Marshall Tucker Band .... all compressed by some of my friends (or they downloaded it compressed) - very noticeably for the worse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-04-04 21:05 by Winning Ugly VXII.

I just decided to do a little sound test. (after reading the above posts equating the Sansa Players to "child's toys" that are purchased at "drug store checkout lines")

First I listened to Brown Sugar with my "drug store checkout line purchased", "child's toy", Sansa Clip Zip Player using Vsonic GR07 earphones.

Then I connected the same Vsonic GR07 earphones to my Audioengine D1 DAC plugged into my Alienware M17Xr3 Laptop running Winamp Player setup with Maiko WASAPI and listened to Brown Sugar on that.

My conclusion was that the Sansa Clip Zip without a doubt sounded better.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-04-05 18:49 by Chacho.

Quote
Chacho
I just decided to do a little sound test. (after reading the above posts equating the Sansa Players to "child's toys" that are purchased at "drug store checkout lines")

First I listened to Brown Sugar with my "drug store checkout line purchased", "child's toy", Sansa Clip Zip Player using Vsonic GR07 earphones.

Then I connected the same Vsonic GR07 earphones to my Audioengine D1 DAC plugged into my Alienware M17Xr3 Laptop running Winamp Player setup with Maiko WASAPI and listened to Brown Sugar on that.

My conclusion was that the Sansa Clip Zip without a doubt sounded better.

Had you picked up, and were you on any drugs, from the drugstore checkout line when you purchased your Sansa?

When Neil Young launches Pono Music, there is a rumor that iTunes will launch Hi-res music too: [robertmusic.blogspot.no] .

See also the Macrumors article "Apple considering iTunes overhaul".

Quote
Irix
When Neil Young launches Pono Music, there is a rumor that iTunes will launch Hi-res music too: [robertmusic.blogspot.no] .

See also the Macrumors article "Apple considering iTunes overhaul".

I'd be very curious to know what iTunes consider as "hi-res", considering the fact that iPods can't read anything above 48kHz (are even capable of decoding 24 bit ?)...
That's why it seems very unlikey to me.

Maybe iTunes will use the 96kHz/24bit or 192kHz/24bit sources from the 'Mastered for iTunes' process. Since the sales of the iPod have declined (because of Smartphones/Tablets), I could imagine well that Apple might bring a new "HD-iPod" similar to the pono Player, the Astell&Kern Player, the FIIO X3/X5 Player or the Sony HD-Walkman NWZ-ZX1.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2014-04-19 10:30 by Irix.

Quote
Irix
Maybe iTunes will use the 96kHz/24bit or 192kHz/24bit sources from the 'Mastered for iTunes' process. Since the sales of the iPod have declined (because of Smartphones/Tablets) I could imagine well that Apple might bring a new "HD-iPod", similar to the pono Player, the Astell&Kern Player or the FIIO X3/X5 Player.

But would iTunes customers be ready for big files that come with hi-res downloads ?

I think so, because there are also HD Movies on iTunes .....

Quote
Irix
When Neil Young launches Pono Music, there is a rumor that iTunes will launch Hi-res music too: [robertmusic.blogspot.no] .

See also the Macrumors article "Apple considering iTunes overhaul".

Too bad that Apple didn't think of the resolution of the files years ago.

They AT LEAST could have kept things at CD quality without lowering the bar the way they did.

Quite a bit of damage has been done.

By the way,without knowing the technical details, the phrase " Mastered for iTunes " scares me. It does not sound very promising.

Quote
Winning Ugly VXII

By the way,without knowing the technical details, the phrase " Mastered for iTunes " scares me. It does not sound very promising.

It means iTunes lossy files are made from high res lossless files... If that makes sense to anyone... I mean why not selling directly the hi-res lossless files?

couple points have been presented:

Music is a car generally sounds better (All the musicians who speak praises heard it in Neil's car and I'm sure there were good speakers)

If the musicians though so highly, why didn't just a few of them just invest instead of crowd funding?

Quote
trainarollin
couple points have been presented:

Music is a car generally sounds better (All the musicians who speak praises heard it in Neil's car and I'm sure there were good speakers)

If the musicians though so highly, why didn't just a few of them just invest instead of crowd funding?

I'd imagine that the crowd funding approach is part of the marketing plan as well, and the opportunity to have a wider audience get a piece of the action.

Quote
trainarollin
couple points have been presented:

Music is a car generally sounds better (All the musicians who speak praises heard it in Neil's car and I'm sure there were good speakers)

If the musicians though so highly, why didn't just a few of them just invest instead of crowd funding?

To get music to sound good in a car,not only do you need good speakers ( as well as an amplifier ) , the car needs acoustic treatment ( insulation ) : [www.dynamat.com] .

Road noise and engine noise are obstacles .... if the car is running.

I looked into this issue a little bit further. The Pono Players are made by (and will continue to be made by) AYRE ACOUSTICS .


* [ayre.com] *


I apologize if this has been posted before.

Ayre Acoustics is a BEAST in the hi-fi audio industry.

They are known for their " Zero - feedback " circuit design.

They sell top-grade USB digital to analog converters , some of the best home audio CD players , as well as mono-block amplifiers (discrete amplification for each individual channel of sound) .


* [ayre.com] *

[www.audiostream.com]

Pono Kickstarter Campaign Results: $6.2M
By Michael Lavorgna

How do we gauge success? The Kickstarter goal for the Pono campaign was set at $800,000 which was the minimum amount required for the project to get funded. Exceeding that goal by more then 7 times must qualify as an unqualified success. Perhaps the more interesting and informative number is this goal was generated from 18,220 backers who are also potentially future PonoMusic customers. Compared to iTunes 600+ million users that's, well, not very many but let's also keep in mind that Pono was one of the most-funded campaigns in Kickstarter history. But is that the appropriate metric to gauge Pono's success? I don't think so.

What the Pono campaign has done, and its something I've only seen people in hi-fi dream about, is directly connect musicians to the notion of better sound quality. Pono is, after all is said and done, a message about better sound quality, of getting closer to music, and this message was delivered by Neil Young. While this is also the message of hi-fi, it is one that has been difficult to have flower outside of the audiophile walled garden. All too often, when hi-fi is the subject in a non-hi-fi publication, the focus is on exorbitantly priced stuff sprinkled with ridicule. Not to mention the audiophile image which is so stilted, there's no lifestyle attached to it as exemplified by the utter lack of advertisers from outside audiophilia interested in placing ads in audiophile publications. It's sad really since music obviously does not suffer this same lifestyle drought.

With Pono, we see musicians and kids laughing, overjoyed by how good music sounds. What a simple and novel marketing idea (and one that pissed some audiophiles off, what doesn't?). There were limited edition Pono players from people like Elton John, ZZ Top, Grateful Dead, The Eagles, Neil Young With Crazy Horse, Tegan and Sara, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Crosby Stills & Nash, Foo Fighters, Willie Nelson, Metallica, Patti Smith, Arcade Fire, Beck, Dave Matthews, Herbie Hancock, Buffalo Springfield, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, Pearl Jam, My Morning Jacket, and James Taylor. Many of which sold out. My guess is come October when the first players are delivered, eBay will be abuzz with a second and more expensive chance to get one.

Of course we also had the same high resolution naysayers poopooing the Pono party. The lovers of good enough, those passionate souls interested in defining for themselves and everyone else what is smart and what is silly. Lovers of codecs, of psychoacoustically modeled compression, virtual space savers, and amateur audiologists for whom bit depth and sample rate are funnels we have to squeeze music through in order to fit their misbegotten theories including my favorite which suggests that most people listen to music in noisy places through crappy earbuds so they don't need better quality music (never mind the nascent multi-billion dollar headphone market).

What I take away from the Pono Kickstarter campaign, and something I hope we'll see continue, is the notion that the marriage of music and sound quality is simply a smile-inducing life-affirming goal, and not some joyless science experiment.

From an insider (producer Michael Beinhorn) the consequences of sh!tty musicla formats.... Scary!

"Music is now assimilated mainly as data and, as a product, is barely viable anymore in/ as a medium which can be held or touched. Perhaps it is fitting that music ultimately becomes data, since it is initially born as data in the mind of it’s creator.

When music is acquired digitally (generally, from the internet), it is often compressed to a smaller file size in order to be assimilated expediently. Since expediency and convenience have become essential components in the consumption of music (as in every aspect of contemporary existence), audio files are commonly reduced to their smallest possible size for acquisition. In this way, a listener can download multiple music files and gradually build a large music library.

When an audio file is compressed, the audio file loses a good deal of it’s original sonic quality. In downloading large quantities of music, the sonic quality of the audio files being acquired is generally sacrificed in order to do so. Conveniently and expediently.

Compression is a component of various file formats into which digital music gets encoded for convenient/ expedient assimilation. These formats (MP3, MP4 and WMA, etc) tend to introduce other forms of sonic degradation, such as digital artifacts, aliasing noise, etc. The effect on an audio file (from being converted into one of these formats) is occasionally so extreme that the tonality of a familiar piece of music can become virtually unrecognizable to someone who has heard it many times.

Because a majority of people listen to music, either through tiny iPod headphones or through tinny speakers in their computers (and encoded into one of these compressed formats), it has been suggested by music business professionals (some of whom actually have the authority to enact these decisions) that making recordings sound good is no longer a necessity. Their argument is that no one will ever again hear all the details in any recording (due to the present modus operandi of how the majority of people choose to listen to music). With this in mind, it has become pointless (as well as illogical) to waste time and money on making recordings sound good. Besides, (these authorities continue) consumers don’t care about what they’re listening to- they just want more music files on their computers.

I have heard music industry professionals state this perspective repeatedly. They become quite emphatic about it- so much so, that one would think they had reinvented the wheel or discovered a cure for cancer. They consider a point of view such as this to be a futuristic (as well as practical) means by which the recording industry will be rescued from it’s impending doom.

It is interesting to note that up until the last 10-15 years, the point of recording was to actually make the subject of the recording sound as good as possible. (It is also interesting to consider that the art of recording has developed over more than a hundred years, through the refinement of recording techniques and new technology- only to end up in such a convoluted, de-evolved state.)"

Read the rest here :
[mjbphd.wordpress.com]

Quote
Winning Ugly VXII

Ayre Acoustics is a BEAST in the hi-fi audio industry.

That's not true and you'll never make us believe HD files sound better than good old mp3's! <sarc>
[yep "sarc" stands for "sarcasm"]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-04-17 17:40 by dcba.

Quote
dcba

Quote
Winning Ugly VXII

Ayre Acoustics is a BEAST in the hi-fi audio industry.

That's not true and you'll never make us believe HD files sound better than good old mp3's! <sarc>

What ?? Does <sarc> stand for sarcasm ??

Anyway,to clarify,I was not referring to sales numbers. I was talking about the products which Ayre Acoustics puts on the market ..... which are of a high level of quality and very well regarded.

I would even dare to say that their products probably edge out products by Naxa and iCraig in terms of quality. <sarc>

Sony Goes All-Out with High-Resolution Audio

On Thursday April 24, Sony announced a new round of reasonably priced products, all of which are capable of high-resolution audio playback.
The products, which include receivers and 5.1 array loudspeakers, may be aimed at mass-market consumers, but the sounds they produced at an exclusive press preview at Sony's Southern California headquarters demonstrated that even the least expensive is capable of convincingly conveying the sonic differences between MP3, Red Book CD, and hi-resolution content.

Sony's unequivocal embrace of high-resolution audio—the acronym HRA seems to have become the mutually accepted, industry-wide term—was the main order of business.
Defining HRA as everything greater than Red Book CD (16/44.1) Jeff Hiatt, the company's Director of Home Audio (above), began by stating, "We have sacrificed quality in order to get convenience.
MP3 has been degrading the quality of music, and was a quantum leap backwards. The young generation doesn't even realize that they're not listening to music as the artist intended it be heard."

[...]

Inevitably, talk of Pono emerged. Acknowledging that, influenced by Pono, Sony is looking at how to best address the HRA portability experience in everything from audio-only playback devices to phones, Hiatt noted that Neil Young's declaration that it's all about the music is good for everyone.

Complete article here : [www.stereophile.com]

" The products, which include receivers and 5.1 array loudspeakers .... "

This is good news,I suppose,for people looking for affordable solutions.

It should be pointed out,however,to avoid confusion,that you do not need special
speakers to listen to high resolution audio. Any speakers will work,just as they will
with CD grade audio. Obviously,the better speakers you have,the better off you will be.

Just match the OHM impedance of the speakers with your receiver / amplifier.
Also,some speakers pair better with some receivers / amps than others do and vice versa.
( An example is that Monitor Audio speakers pair well with Pioneer Elite receivers. )
Getting into too much fine detail about that would be going off of the topic of this thread,however.

Kowalski and I are single (or double) - handedly keeping this thread going.

Report on Macrumors: Apple Preparing HD Audio Playback for iOS 8

"Apple is said to be introducing high definition audio playback in iOS 8 alongside new versions of its In-Ear Headphones and Lightning connector, according to a report from Mac Otakara (Google Translate).

Building off of a report last month which claimed that Apple will announce high-fidelity iTunes music downloads at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the post notes that Apple will enable high-quality audio files to be played on iOS 8 compatible devices.

Currently, iOS 7's stock Music app cannot play high quality 24-bit audio files that contain a sampling frequency beyond 48 kHz. Additionally, while third-party apps such as Onkyo's HF Player and FLAC Player are able to play said audio files, users are still limited to onboard playback at a 16-bit rate. Apple is also said to be preparing an upgraded Lightning cable to accommodate high-definition playback on Made For iPh*ne (MFi) audio accessories, although it isn't clear when the company would introduce the updated wire. Finally, the report notes that Apple is working on a new version of its In-Ear Headphones to accommodate high-quality audio playback. The premium in-ear headphones have not been updated since 2008, however the product is still officially sold by Apple at its retail locations and in its Online Store for $79.

Apple is expected to introduce iOS 8 at WWDC 2014, which will kick off on June 2. In addition to potentially enabling high-definition audio playback, the new mobile operating system is expected to include major improvements to Siri and Maps along with a rumored "Healthbook" app that displays various fitness and health-related information.

Apple will also likely debut OS X 10.10 at the event, and may introduce Beats Electronics co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre as new senior advisers following a likely forthcoming announcement regarding its acquisition of the audio company."


It would be surprising if Apple won't compete with the pono Player, the Astell&Kern Player, the FiiO X3/X5 Player or the Sony HD-Walkman NWZ-ZX1 .....

"The Audio Salon Pono Event Wrap-up" : [www.computeraudiophile.com]

Neil Young on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last night:

[neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org]

Quote
Irix
Report on Macrumors: Apple Preparing HD Audio Playback for iOS 8

"Apple is said to be introducing high definition audio playback in iOS 8 alongside new versions of its In-Ear Headphones and Lightning connector, according to a report from Mac Otakara (Google Translate).

Building off of a report last month which claimed that Apple will announce high-fidelity iTunes music downloads at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the post notes that Apple will enable high-quality audio files to be played on iOS 8 compatible devices.

Currently, iOS 7's stock Music app cannot play high quality 24-bit audio files that contain a sampling frequency beyond 48 kHz. Additionally, while third-party apps such as Onkyo's HF Player and FLAC Player are able to play said audio files, users are still limited to onboard playback at a 16-bit rate. Apple is also said to be preparing an upgraded Lightning cable to accommodate high-definition playback on Made For iPh*ne (MFi) audio accessories, although it isn't clear when the company would introduce the updated wire. Finally, the report notes that Apple is working on a new version of its In-Ear Headphones to accommodate high-quality audio playback. The premium in-ear headphones have not been updated since 2008, however the product is still officially sold by Apple at its retail locations and in its Online Store for $79.

Apple is expected to introduce iOS 8 at WWDC 2014, which will kick off on June 2. In addition to potentially enabling high-definition audio playback, the new mobile operating system is expected to include major improvements to Siri and Maps along with a rumored "Healthbook" app that displays various fitness and health-related information.

Apple will also likely debut OS X 10.10 at the event, and may introduce Beats Electronics co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre as new senior advisers following a likely forthcoming announcement regarding its acquisition of the audio company."


It would be surprising if Apple won't compete with the pono Player, the Astell&Kern Player, the FiiO X3/X5 Player or the Sony HD-Walkman NWZ-ZX1 .....

This is kind of strange, Apple going Hi-Res audio and on the same time buying the company that makes some of the worst sounding, way overpriced headphones. Those headsphones sell only because of a current hype which will be over soon. And I bet Jimmy Iovine knows that and thats why he sells the company.

I just saw this on the A.V.S. page :

* [www.avsforum.com] *

"" Argument For the Proposition

Aside from Mark Henninger's piece about whether or not high-end audio is obsolete, the article that inspired me to write this post is "24/192 Music Downloads...and why they make no sense" by Monty Montgomery on xiph.org. Among the arguments in this article is the assertion that all transducers and amplifiers exhibit some amount of distortion, which increases at the lowest and highest frequencies. In particular, reproducing ultrasonic frequencies leads to intermodulation distortion that can extend into the audible range. Thus, it's better not to encode ultrasonics to avoid any possibility of intermodulation distortion.



Montgomery also points out that, while an analog anti-aliasing filter works better if its slope is gradual as explained earlier, a digital anti-aliasing filter has no such limitation. If you sample at a high sampling frequency—say, 96 or 192 kHz—you can apply a digital lowpass filter that simply discards the ultrasonic components, and you're left with a 44.1 kHz dataset that has no aliasing artifacts.



Regarding the use of 24 bits instead of 16, the article argues that the threshold of hearing increases with age and hearing damage, and the threshold of pain decreases, reducing the dynamic range of human hearing as we get older. Also, a technique called dithering, which adds a bit of noise to the signal to mask quantization noise, allows amplitudes of less than one bit to be encoded and reproduced.



Finally, Montgomery points out that if the loudest possible undistorted sound is defined as 0 dB, the quantization-noise floor is -96 dB with a bit depth of 16 bits. But this is the RMS noise floor of the entire broadband signal, and each hair cell in the inner ear is sensitive to a narrow fraction of the total bandwidth, which means the noise floor of each hair cell is much lower than -96 dB. With the use of dither, the article claims that the practical dynamic range of a 16-bit digital audio signal is actually more like 120 dB.



The article does acknowledge that using more than 16 bits is important during recording, mixing, and mastering to avoid clipping and allow digital signal processing without raising the noise floor to objectionable levels. But once the music is ready to be distributed, there is no reason to use more than 16 bits.



After all this theory, Montgomery cites some empirical tests performed by the Boston Audio Society (BAS) in which listeners were played high-resolution DVD-Audio and SACD content and the same content downsampled to 16/44.1 on the spot (no dithering), and they were asked to identify which was which. The tests were said to be conducted using high-end equipment in noise-isolated environments with both amateur and trained professional listeners. In over 500 trials, listeners chose correctly 49.8% of the time, which is no better than random chance.



Argument Against the Proposition

One of the staunchest and longest-active advocates for high-resolution audio is Dr. Mark Waldrep, founder and chief engineer for AIX Records. Waldrep responds to part of the xiph.org article on his website, realhd-audio.com, in a post entitled "24-Bits Makes Sense!" Waldrep acknowledges that most pop/rock recordings and some classical and jazz recordings are subjected to dynamic-range compression, and that most commercial music does not exceed a dynamic range of 96 dB even without compression. But he has, in fact, recorded pieces that do exceed this dynamic range and thus benefit from 24-bit resolution.



In this graph, you can see the dynamic range of human hearing, a typical room, music, and an analog-audio signal. (Courtesy RealHD-Audio.com)



When I asked Waldrep about the xiph.org article, he said, "I agree with Monty that we do not derive any sonic benefit from sample rates higher than 96 kHz. But he's incorrect about the 24-bits claim. His statement that 16-bit CDs can deliver more than 96 dB requires some fancy dithering, which no one is actually doing in practice. CDs have the potential to achieve greater than 90 dB of dynamic range, but why not just shift to 24 bits, since the hardware and software are already there?"



Waldrep maintains that the CD, which has been around since 1982, is really hard to beat when it comes to convenience and fidelity. The format has the potential to eclipse analog tape and vinyl LPs, but only if the entire production chain is up to the task and the engineering/production team are focused on audio fidelity.



He goes on to say that moving to high-resolution PCM audio offers additional fidelity thanks to its increased specifications. In fact, 24/96 PCM provides an additional octave of frequency response and brings the dynamic range to the capability of human hearing. The fact that the ultrasonics included in high-resolution audio might be impossible to hear doesn't deter him.



"It's all about fidelity," he says. "if Wallace Roney is playing his trumpet with a Harmon mute that's outputting partials well above 20 kHz, and I have microphones and a complete signal path that can capture and reproduce those frequencies, shouldn't I include them? I'm giving back everything that was being performed. I'm not willing to arbitrarily roll off the ultrasonics because we haven't proven that humans can't hear them." This might be an intellectual argument, but there is some evidence that recording at higher than 44.1 or 48 kHz is perceptible in some way. The jury is still out on that, he says.



I asked Waldrep about the BAS study, and he dismissed it as being completely botched. According to him, "the examples that were evaluated came primarily from the major labels with a few audiophile recordings as well. The recordings were either DVD-Audio or SACD discs from the private collections of BAS members. This is where the issue of provenance becomes important." The term was first applied to the production history of audio recordings by Waldrep in 2007. "If the original sessions were recorded on analog tape, mixed to a stereo analog tape, and then mastered to yet another copy, the dynamic range would span about 10-12 bits! How were the listeners in the BAS study supposed to hear the difference between high-resolution audio and a downconverted CD version when both had the same dynamic range?



"And the same can be said for the frequency response. Even the new recordings from the Chesky label that were released on SACD had no frequencies above 20 kHz. The DSD 2.8224 MHz 1-bit format forces all of the 'in-band' noise above the upper range of human hearing in a process known as 'noise shaping.' This is the reason that DSD at higher rates have appeared—to push the noise out even further."



The BAS study was so seriously flawed, according to Waldrep, that its conclusions are completely invalid. "If the listeners were attempting to discern a difference between two things that were essentially identical, of course the results would be the same as random choice! There weren't any real high-resolution audio titles among those that were auditioned."



So there you have it—high-resolution audio recordings are moving into the mainstream, thanks in large part to advances in recording and playback technology that make it relatively inexpensive to create, distribute, and reproduce. But does it offer any real, tangible benefit over CD? It's time for you to weigh in with your thoughts, opinions, and experiences. I look forward to following the discussion. ""