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192Khz Vs 96Khz3/27/2021
How much difference is there between MP3, CD and 24-bit audio.Three Guardian writers put four music formats and their ears to the test.The failures of higher-quality music formats such as Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio, and the continued absence of 24-bit audio - which should give far higher resolution to sound than the 16-bit audio used on a CD - suggests that high-resolution music faces many challenges.
The volume levels are then quantised into 16-bit quantities, which can represent 65,536 discrete values for the loudness. Hz or 192kHz; those 24 bits can represent 16.7m discrete loudness values. By contrast MP3s are compressed by an algorithm that throws away parts of the sound that long laborious testing determined could not actually be heard. Pub quiz fact: the song used as the comparator for each attempt at the algorithm was Suzanne Vegas Toms Diner.). As Linns managing director Gilad Tiefenbrun explains, theres confusion over what is and isnt hi-res music. All were played through the same high-quality system and speakers. And yes, I could, although perhaps not in the transformative way I was expecting. But for me, appreciating the difference was reliant on a degree of concentration. Listen attentively to, say, the bassline in The Whos Pinball Wizard, and its undoubtedly easier to hear where the notes roam rather than just getting the general impression. And the truth is, I find the impressionistic sound of an MP3 just as effective at providing this emotional hit as the photographic realism of a studio master recording. Moving again from low-res to a studio master recording of Overture from West Side Story, a myriad of instruments improved in clarity and depth of tone. But mostly I found the CD-quality track on Linns superb hi-fi equipment to be the overall best listen for my particular ears. Others, like The Whos Pinball Wizard, were strikingly different, sounding more real, less produced and more raw or natural, as it would be listening live. It was disappointing to hear a recording of Pavarottis Nessun Dorma sound worse in studio master, as it exposed the fact that the orchestra and the tenors tracks were recorded separately in different environments. They sounded disconnected something that is masked in the CD version. Wether Youngs Pono service will be enough to propel hi-res studio masters into the mainstream remains to be seen, but Tiefenbrun thinks its inevitable that other companies including Apple, Amazon and Spotify will offer a similar hi-res service.
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