EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HIGH RESOLUTION
High Definition Audio is the choice of the most dedicated digital music fans. What is it, where to get it, and what does it take to hear it?
If you’re a bit interested in digital music (whether it’s listening to CDs or streaming from Spotify on your smartphone), you’ve probably come across the term “high definition audio” or “high resolution audio.”
In recent years, the popularity of Hi-Res Audio is slowly but surely gaining momentum, fueled by the emergence of new components, streaming services, and even smartphones that support this standard. Until recently, it was a niche segment for a narrow circle of insiders, but today everyone wants to join it.
If you want to get the best possible music listening experience, or at least better sound quality, you need to familiarize yourself with the concept of Hi-Res Audio.
This perspective is a bit overwhelming as it involves many factors. What is Hi-Res Audio? What do all these formats and numbers mean? Where can I get high-quality files and on what devices should I play them? Finally, where do you start?
Our guide to the world of Hi-Res Audio will help you understand the matter in depth. After reading this material to the end, you will be armed with all the necessary knowledge and take the first step on the way to the magical world of the best sound.
What is Hi-Res Audio?
Unlike HD video, there is still no universal standard for high definition audio. Digital Entertainment Group, Consumer Electronics Association and The Recording Academy, as well as record companies define it as follows: “An audio file in a lossless format that contains a soundtrack across the entire frequency range in which it was mastered with higher quality equipment than CD ”.
In simple terms, this term generally refers to recordings with a higher sample rate and / or bit depth than CDs (i.e. 16-bit / 44.1 kHz).
The sample rate indicates how many times per second the signal is sampled during its conversion from analog to digital. The higher the bit depth, the more accurate the signal measurement will be at the sampling point, so the transition from 16-bit to 24-bit can significantly improve quality.
High-resolution audio formats typically have a sample rate of 96 or 192 kHz at 24 bits. Also, there are files with 88.2 and 176.4 kHz.
However, Hi-Res Audio has one major drawback: the size of the files. They are typically tens of megabytes in size, and a few songs can easily take up all of your device’s memory. Fortunately, memory is much cheaper today than it was a few years ago, and devices with large disks are not hard to find. However, the large file size makes it difficult to transfer these files over Wi-Fi and mobile networks.
And that’s not all: each of the Hi-Res Audio file formats has certain compatibility limitations. Examples include FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec); both, in theory, provide lossless transmission of musical information. In addition, there are uncompressed formats: WAV and AIFF, DSD (the format used in Super Audio CD) and the recently developed MQA (Master Quality Authenticated).
The relative advantages of each format can be discussed, but the first thing to consider is their compatibility with audio components and software solutions.
Main audio file formats, their advantages and disadvantages:
-MP3 (not a high resolution audio format): popular compression and lossy format with small file size and low quality. It is suitable for storage on smartphones and iPods, but does not apply to high-resolution formats.
-AAC (not a high resolution audio format): alternative to MP3, also compressed and lossy, but sounds better. Used by iTunes and Apple Music (256 kbps), as well as YouTube streams.
-WAV (Hi-Res): standard digital format in which all CDs are recorded. Excellent quality but large file size due to lack of compression. Weak support for metadata (versions, song titles and artists).
-AIFF (Hi-Res): Apple’s alternative to WAV with more complete metadata. Not very popular format without compression and loss with large files.
