Quality of downloads-Hi Res audio?

I am hoping someone can answer a few questions I have about Hi-Res audio. There are several sites where you can download albums in Hi Res quality. How do you know what you’re actually paying for? In the 1980’s, record companies realized that extra money could be made by digitally remastering and getting buyers to rebuy albums on CD. I could be wrong, but I am assuming, they remastered for the best quality at the time, which was probably as 16/44.1, CD quality resolution.

Since the mid 90’s, though, many classic albums have been remastered again in higher resolution and re-released again. Did they remaster from the original analog 1st generation masters to create 24/9k masters and then downgraded it for the CD, or did they use the existing 80’s 16/44.1 masters and just beef up it up so that it was more dynamically compressed? I guess it depends per album or per record company, but what are you actually paying more for on a site like HD tracks? Are they truly HD audio recordings, newly remastered in 24/96 from original analog masters, or just 16/44 masters? If your source is 16/44.1, you can’t improve it by remastering for 24/96. Also, everytime they remaster from the original analog master, aren’t they degrading the tape by playing it again and again? I am sure some 1st gen masters are probably deteriorating by now. How can we as consumers know for sure that we are getting the most for our money on these HD audio sites?

 

I am not a hi end digital user......I d/l a couple albums from one of the hires sites. I have Yes~Fragile and Rush~PW both are FLAC 24bit. I like them but was not in awe of the sound. Both of these are older albums recorded as true analog (tape) albums back in the day, so I wanted to hear what you question, how was it handled? I think the downstream processing is key, especially what DA/AD gear is being used and of course is it simply from a redbook file, remastered and saved as a 24bit file.
I suspect DSD files are better but you have to have the gear to play that.

I suppose my big problem with all this digital stuff is unless you get a dedicated music player, you are connecting your laptop to your system and using a program like Foobar that can play 24bit files....
I use my laptop for creating Excel spreadsheets, writing letters on Word, sending emails and checking sports scores on ESPN and posting on SH site .....that's just me though

I think you will get many comments here and hopefully they will help better understand your question/concern.

 

I have downloaded many hi-res files. Most are clearly superior to CD. Of course mastering needs to be taken into consideration. I believe that the same file is better at hi-res than it is cd quality.

 

IMO this is really a murky subject. Far more of what one hears depends on recording and mastering techniques than on resolution. I have about 300 hi-res albums in my library, about 10%-15% of the total. The overlap in quality between CD and even 96/24 is enormous. The best CDs sound far better than mediocre 96/24.

A lot depends on the quality of the DAC and how well it does on various resolutions. But also, Anthony Cordesman of TAS has written several times that he finds gains from resolution above 96/24 to be dubious. That's been my experience.

As to what you are getting from HR downloads of old material, that is the murkiest of all. Most vendors do not say. Sometimes it's a new mastering, sometimes not, sometimes it's been re-EQd to make it better or just shriller or more compressed than the original. I believe that most of the difference between a good 44.1/16 remaster and one at 192/24 is due to EQ and care in the remastering, not the resolution. Sometimes, the lower mids are thinned out in a remaster, which makes it sound "cleaner" and more "transparent," but maybe less musical.

For those who like classical music, I recommend eClassical for downloads. Everything they sell is available at the originally recorded resolution. Very occasionally, a few tracks will be upsampled when they make an anthology -- and they tell you up front. They are owned by, and sell among others, the BIS label, whose recording techniques are some of the best of any commercial label. And best of all, eClassical has a money-back guarantee and will refund you if it turns out you don't like the music or sound.

P.S. Of the few classic jazz albums I've downloaded from HDTracks, I have found that maybe 1 in 4 represents a musically significant improvement in sound to my ears. Stevie Wonder sounded better in their version than the CD version I had. Things like Coltrane and Miles, not so much.

 

As always it all comes down to Mastering. Mostly the Hi Res market has been a cynical cash grab. I've only found one album on HDTracks to be clearly superier to other versions.

Do your research before laying out your cash. More often than not you'll find a better Mastered CD in a bargain bin that you can rip to flac yourself.

 

An interesting article, from a fascinating site :

A New Low For HDTracks

 

I will admit that this is what got me back into caring about my sound system and a lot of good has come out of my fascination with Hi-Res digital. I bought a couple of DAC/Amp combos for both home and on the go and about a dozen of my Hi-Res files are commercial downloads. In every case, I read the fine print at a site like this ahead of time. If I found no info, I didn't buy it. In the end, I can't bring myself to download digital files at a premium price anymore, but I am grateful to have bulked up my system and rediscovered my audiophile passions. All my digital files have benefited from the upgrades. I needledrop my own stuff now and appreciate that my vinyl has always been more or less Hi-Res - again depending on the mastering.

When I bought a German CD of Etta James, Tell Mama - The Complete Muscle Shoals Recordings and realized it sounded as good as any of my commercial Hi-Res stuff, it brought the point about mastering home.

 

I have some hi res stuff that really sounds great. You tend to notice the benefits of it on recordings that feature lots of acoustic stringed instruments. Allison Krause's Paper Airplane is stunning for example.

However, I agree that the quality of the recording and mastering is what makes the difference. There are a lot of recordings being sold hi res that sound mediocre no matter what the resolution.

That says you have to be careful what you buy.

 

Indeed it's really about the mastering... Beck's Morning Phase was a rather poor example:
FOLLOW-UP: Anomalies in Beck's "Morning Phase" (HDTracks 24/96).

But then occasionally you run into good (re)masterings that are a surprise:
MEASUREMENTS: Stealth Releases of Good Remastering in Hi-Res Audio... (Alanis Morissette!)

More likely than not though, IMO, the hi-res releases are not worth a significant expense. The vast majority of pop / rock recordings are too noisy to need 24-bits (heck, most don't need 16-bit)... As for samplerate, I don't mind paying a little more for 96kHz if there truly is some content up there - rare; but have never found 192kHz meaningful for rock/pop.

These are the technical bits of course. The bottom line is that the CD-16/44 format is more than enough for the vast majority of what we care to listen to.

 

I normally limit my hires download purchases to one of two cases:

1. A superior mastering that is not readily available on physical media. By readily available I mean "I can order it on Amazon right now".

2. As above, but when the download costs considerably less than the available physical media.

For music that may be appealing to me but the mastering is less than stellar, I just buy the CD, as hires will not make a difference to my ears.

 

The Alanis Morissette release was the one exception i was thinking of in my post above!! It's a marvellous remaster and blows the original release out of the water.

 

Are you sure Power Windows was recorded on analogue tape? I believe Moving Pictures, which Rush recorded many years prior to PW, was one of the earlier digital recordings. And given the band's embrace of new technologies during the second half of their career it seems unlikely they'd have returned to recording via analog equipment.

 

Agreed about eclassical, I buy from them a lot, although I very rarely notice any major difference between cd quality and hires files.
Still, eclassical has amazing customer service, excellent selection and some great sales. BIS rules!

 

There are to me, 3 areas that high resolution downloads may be superior.

1: bit depth, 24 bits has theoretically lower than 16 bit. This may be of value if your system can resolve the difference, but many will not really utilize all of this extra. In mastering and mixing there is a big advantage to this gain. I have not read the actual measurement in recent DACs, but a few years ago, most DACs could at best truly resolve only 20 bit depth.

2: sample rate, 48 kHz is minimal over 44k, 88 and 96 can allow for a roll off filter to be much more gradual and allow for 40 KHz signal, again most people do not hear much of anything higher than 20 kHz, but it is one of those things you know it is there or missing.

3: is actually an extension of #2, the space between samples gets smaller as the sample rate increases. What this means is less fill in the dac has to guess to connect two samples with each other. Think of 480 tv vs 1080, more pixels to fill in the detail. In the audio case it may be thought of a smaller up sample between each pulse (or in Dsd case more 1 and 0 to space closer to the analog signal)

So out of these 3 reasons, to me the third one is actually more important to me. It means less fill in by the dac to connect samples to an analog signal, and to me that means better clarity.

All of this is meaningless if they simply upsample an existing red book to high resolution, or if poor mastering techniques and a poorer master tape ( i.e. a third or fourth generation copy of the original master).

I would take a decently mastered red book cd over a poorly mastered high resolution, be it a physical disc or a download.

 

My position from another similar thread:

 

I have many wonderful and not so wonderful (but pretty damn good just the same) titles on SACD, DVDA and even audiophile redbook CDs, to say nothing of my vinyl. But I also have too many other titles which are badly (to varying degrees) in need of a better mix, master or both, in WHATEVER resolution from redbook on up. All other things being equal, downloads SHOULD sound superior to any digital disc which reads the bits through one pass in real time, as a downloaded file will play ALL of the bits without error. BUT that's ONLY if those bits are then sent through a quality DAC and audiophile level circuitry all the way downstream to quality speakers (or cans). NOT through the cheap laptop onboard DAC, through generic Walkman level circuitry, out through a headphone jack into cheap computer speakers or earbuds (something that denizens of the "bits are bits" crowd never seem to understand about discs and hardware). Moreover, the source, mix and mastering are just as important for downloads as they are for discs playing the bits through one pass in real time. In many cases, I can rip bits from a high quality redbook CD or even DVDA (also possible with DSD?) with a KNOWN stellar mix and/or mastering that I already own, rather than pay through the nose for goodness knows what.

Thus, what annoys me more than anything is that, with very few exceptions, the downloads I've seen listed at various sites provide ZERO information about what is used for a) the source, b) the mix (not EVEN whether it's mono or stereo, fer crissakes!), c) the mastering date and engineer, and other variables that ALWAYS would be of prime concern to buyers in the very market that is being targeted. One would think it obvious to any vendor that an expensive hi-res download will be of no interest to anybody in the cheapo earbuds crowd, just audiophiles. Even Acoustic Sounds, which should know their market better than anybody does, provides NO info at all. None. The only notable exceptions I've seen involve Steve Wilson remixes and the like. Other than that, diddly. And it's not like I can easily find the info I need even on this forum, most of it jumbled together on a dozen threads of about 200-300 pages each involving every title under the sun (though at least no shipping reports, as downloads don't ship).

So where does that leave me? Not much of anywhere. I would not be interested in re-acquiring my entire collection in downloads when I can download the many of the same right from my collection for free (should I even want to be bothered with that). However, I WOULD like to acquire hi-res downloads of titles that have not been well rendered to date on discs that remain available, but have an improved mastering for the download. But how to know?

What about Jeff Beck "Truth" and "Beck-Ola", or George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass", for which NO decent digital version exists on disc? All are available at Acoustic Sounds. But if I would just be getting the same crapola mix/mastering available previously, albeit in higher res (which in some cases might only make things even worse), then I would pass. But how to know what I would be getting? If I must assume anything, I must assume that the downloaded file might contain a mastering I already have, for better or for worse.

Bottom line is that if they want to sell a download to me, I want to know what I am buying. And DON'T just lazily say "remastered". Because so many of my discs are already remastered. Give me WHAT source, WHAT mix (including mono or stereo for anything before 1969), WHO mastered it and WHEN. Tell me WHY I should get the download. Otherwise, expect my download purchases to be extremely limited. Especially when I cannot easily find that information even on this forum.

 

Many of my classical downloads were originally recorded at either 24/96 or 24/192, so the download should theoretically be a clone.

 

Other than being a cash grab and people getting their bits and bytes in a tizzy, the whole point of 96k may be pointless anyway. The frequency response of CD's was devised to be 2x the range of normal human hearing. Take this test to see how well you hear higher frequencies:

Hearing Test - Can You Hear This?

I can understand more bits as it means more samples per second and a more acurate picture of the analog waveform, so theoretically, 24 bits should sound better than 16, but who knows?

 

That is almost 3 years old and much has changed since then.

 

Generalities, generalities, generalities. What I NEED before deciding to pull the trigger on a specific hi-res download of a specific title is specific information about that title, whether it is on Acoustic Sounds, Pono Store, or whatever. THAT is what is missing, not only on the vendor sites but even also on this forum, at least in easily accessible form (rather than lumped together with all other titles on a dozen or so massive threads) by someone who has actually HEARD it, as opposed to knee-jerk generalities.

I sure wouldn't mind seeing some threads started about specific titles, comparing the hi-res download to previously available CDs, SACDs or DVDAs, both good and bad. Just like we now have (at least sometimes) with newer masterings of particular titles on disc and/or LP. If I search a particular title name along with "CD", "LP", SACD", "MFSL", etc., I can frequently return a thread that has some useful information, even I must sometimes wade through shipping reports, threadcraps and knee jerks.

But try that with downloads. Just about doodly. And with zero information on the vendor sites, that means playing total blind man's bluff with my wallet. I did stumble on a couple of stray reviews of hi-res downloads for "Deja Vu" and "One of these Nights" buried in general threads. So I MAY try those. And I did pick up "Ladies of the Canyon" and Buffalo Springfield "Again" knowing at least that the extant redbook only masterings are pretty decent. But I really need more before I start taking it any deeper.

Otherwise, I will limit my purchase to the few instances where I can justify a surmise that if the download is not a better master, it is at least a higher resolution version of a decent or better previous mastering (without horrendous remasterings also "out there" to muddy the waters), but hitherto released on redbook CD only. Small universe, that.

There is no GOOD reason why that information cannot be provided by the vendors, other than just getting me to buy what I already have. Which is NOT a good reason. This is not my first rodeo and I refuse to keep playing THAT game.

 

Just listening to the difference between the two channel SACD layer and the downsampled two channel redbook layer on a well mastered SACD, on the same gear in the same room, tells me all I need to know on that score. The observation about "2x the range of normal hearing" addresses only what one hears, not what is missing, including the warmth and fatter sound of the original analog master. It's not just the music you can hear, but also the music you can FEEL. It is a physical presence coming out into the room, and that's not just stuck to the speakers like a poster on the wall. There is more to it than just frequency range. Otherwise MP3s covering the same frequency range should also sound just as good, and we all know that they don't.

I will definitely agree about cash grab though. That is precisely my beef. Get me to buy what I already have, not something that is better. For THAT I need information about each title. And if I can't get it, I will pass in most cases.

 

I don't understand why most Hi-Res music are old songs from old tapes that have degraded over the years. Why don't they make new music today and record it in hi-resolution?

 

Of course they do ? I'd say at least 50% of what comes out today can easily be found in Hi-res.

 

I do not disagree with your premise but CDs have a FR of about half their sampling rate (44.1kHz) and that turns out to be about 22kHz, just a bit more than the upper limit of a healthy young human. Not twice.

 

I would think newer artist would look at the cash cow aspect of older recordings being "remastered" and apply it to there own releases. Back in the 90's, many new titles from just a few years earlier were "remastered" and rereleased.
The one reason you find so many older titles remastered is the baby boomer generation still has massive buying power in the hi end market. So when you see Santana's Abraxas remastered, there are more people to buy it (both older and younger generations as many younger audiophiles also have heard it and like it). If you take the latest Kanye West release, fewer people are there to buy a remastered version as it may not appeal as much to the older audiophiles than the younger ones. Just a theory on all this.