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Everything you need to know about high resolution

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Everything you need to know about high resolution

Hi-Res Audio

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?

HI RES AUDIO

If you’re a bit interested in digital music (whether it’s listening to CDs or streaming Spotify on your smartphone), you’ve probably come across the term “Hi-Res Audio” or “Hi-Res 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 should 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 can 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 the largest recording companies define it as follows: “An audio file in a lossless format that carries a soundtrack across the entire frequency range in which it was mastered using 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 a 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 16-bit to 24-bit transition 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 44.1, 88.2 and 176.4 kHz.

A little loss

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. Because of this, they are difficult to transfer over mobile networks and Wi-Fi.

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 theoretically 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).

You can discuss the relative advantages of each format, but first of all, you will have to consider their compatibility with audio system components and software solutions.

WHAT ARE GOOD HIGH-RESOLUTION AUDIO FORMATS?

The main advantage of high definition formats over tablets is the higher sound quality. Downloadable sites like Amazon and iTunes and streaming services like Spotify offer relatively low-bitrate compression formats like 256kbps AAC from Apple Music and Spotify’s 320kbps Ogg Vorbis.

During the compression encoding process, some information is lost; in other words, the signal resolution is reduced for convenience and file size reduction. This affects the sound quality: in these formats, your favorite songs will not be able to be fully revealed.

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Why isn’t “high resolution audio” worth promising higher quality than CD?

In recent years, Neil Young has been the most outspoken advocate of “high resolution audio” or HRA. These are huge audio files that in theory sound much better than any other digital file. To put this sound in everyone’s hands and ears, he created the PonoPlayer, a portable device that promises the highest fidelity.

He is not alone. Last week at CES, Sony announced a series of new products with high-resolution audio. The main one: an absurdly expensive $ 1,200 Walkman, with hardware that supposedly optimizes the playback of songs recorded on it.

PonoPlayer

At the most basic level, the desire for high-resolution audio is based on reality. We sacrifice audio quality for convenience by adopting digital formats like MP3 and lossy encoding from streaming services like Spotify. A music lover should be concerned with improving audio quality using better files.

This is fair! But from there, the arguments for high-resolution audio crumble.

There are no scientific bases

Although the term “high-resolution audio” is freely used, it generally refers to music that has been digitally encoded at a high sampling rate and bit depth. Specifically, we are talking about higher rates than the CD-quality digital standard, adopted for decades.

Below is a Pono chart that describes various levels of audio quality. At the bottom, we have lower quality files for streaming; in between, we have the CD-quality 44.1 kHz / 16-bit standard; And on top, we have absurdly high resolution files that are 192 kHz / 24 bit encoded.

High Resolution Audio

The logic behind HRA is that by maximizing the sample rate and bit depth, you also maximize the sound detail and dynamic range of the music you are listening to. This sounds great in theory, but in practice it is an absolute fantasy.

The CD quality standard, which is insufficient for the Young and HRA defenders, has not been adopted at random. It is not a number taken from the air. It is based on sampling theory and the real limits of human hearing. For the human ear, audio above 44.1 kHz / 16 bit does not show an audible difference.

Still, this does not prevent people from claiming that they can hear the difference in the highest quality audio. The “proof” that PonoPlayer is superior begins with a testimonial video, posted on Pono’s Kickstarter page. Young used his connections to the music industry to fill the PonoPlayer with high definition audio tracks and bring it to famous musicians. They, of course, say they got goosebumps and say that Pono is the best they have ever heard.

This proves nothing. I am not calling Norah Jones and Dave Grohl liars, but I am saying that they are succumbing to confirmation bias, that natural urge to see what you want to see, or hear what you want to hear. If Neil Young pushes a device into his hands and says, “Listen to this, man, you won’t believe it,” you will probably hear exactly what Neil Young wants you to hear.

There is a scientific way to overcome confirmation bias, called a double-blind test, in which two alternatives are presented at random, so you have no idea which is which. There are some issues with the double-blind test, but it’s generally accepted as a good practice, especially when it comes to evaluating something as elusive as the audio quality.

Young and Pono do not cite studies of this type on the benefits of high audio rates or their music player. But there were those who investigated this problem: in a study published in 2007 in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Brad Meyer and David Moran did a double-blind test with a large sample of “serious” listeners. In it, the 44.1 kHz audio was compared to “the best high-resolution discs we could find.” The goal was not to show which one was better, but to find out if you could tell the difference.

“None of these variables showed a correlation with the results, and there was no difference between the responses and the results of tossing a coin,” they write in the conclusion. I mean, people couldn’t figure out what the high-resolution audio was and what the CD-quality audio was.

In general, expensive hardware is unnecessary for music to sound good, especially if it promises a quality that human ears cannot perceive.

Neil Young even upholds a commendable principle: We should be listening to higher quality music, but high-resolution audio promises more than it has to offer.

HIGH RESOLUTION AUDIO: HOW TO LISTEN TO MUSIC WITH THE HIGHEST QUALITY

Many of our clients, simple music fans or professionals in the sector, constantly seek perfection. Some are willing to spend even thousands of euros to assemble a high-quality hi-fi system. Many come to us for advice, and we are happy to accommodate them. First, however, it is good to gain some (really few) insights into the world of music and the media through which we generally hear it.

Sony High-Resolution Audio

We will start from the beginning.

Digital music is distributed in many formats. Some are compressed, others are not compressed. However, all files are nothing more than a sequence of bits whose value can be 1 or 0. These bits are grouped into bytes, that is, words of 8 bits each. A series of bytes forms a file or an audio track that we can listen to.

High resolution audio: recording and playback

Once recorded, to be played by us, this digital music file is sent to an analog-to-digital converter (DAC), converted to an analog signal, and finally sent to an output circuit, either a preamplifier or analog output

The quality of the file to be reproduced is given by two factors: resolution and sampling frequency.
Resolution is expressed in bits, while the sampling value is expressed in kilohertz (kHz).

Word length (bit)
= resolution Dynamic range Reproducible tones
12 bit 72 dB 4,096
16 bit (CD) 96 dB 65,536
24-bit (DVD) 144 dB 16,777,216
32 bit 192 dB 4,294,967,296

In simple terms, all this means that the denser the digital information, the closer the “digital” version of the signal gets closer to the original analog signal.

“The highest possible quality is the closest to the original as it was produced.”

For example, if you have digital music on CD in 16 bit / 44.1 kHz, this corresponds to a dynamic range of 96 dB with 65,536 gradations. However, music is rarely written to CD under these conditions, because the recording was originally made in only 16 bits (other recording defects may further reduce the signal).

Today, however, recordings are made at 24-bit / 192 kHz (in part also at 32-bit / 384 kHz), which means that the length of the information is significantly longer (and therefore has a greater dynamic range) and a higher sampling rate thus increasing the bandwidth.

The higher the resolution of the audio file, the higher the sample rate and the better the final audio signal.

Please note that the increase in “information content” resulting from higher resolution / sampling is exponential: consequently, the qualitative difference between a 16-bit audio file and 24-bit recordings could be so subtle that only be perceived by a trained ear and obviously well equipped.

HIGH DEFINITION: COMPRESSED AUDIO FORMATS AND UNCOMPRESSED AUDIO FORMATS

Audio files can be compressed (with or without loss of quality) and uncompressed (without loss of quality).

Some examples:

Uncompressed audio formats

WAV – Waveform Audio File Format (.wav)
AIFF – Audio Interchange File Form (.aiff, .aif or .aifc)

Compressed audio formats (no quality loss)

ALAC: Apple Lossless Audio Codec (.mp4 or .m4a)
FLAC: Lossless Audio Codec (.flac)

Compressed audio formats (with loss of quality)

MP3: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III (.mp3)
AAC: Advanced Audio Coding (.aac, .mp4, or .m4a)

To make a “visual” example and clarify the concept, let’s take a photograph: on the left, the original version, in good resolution; On the right, the same photo, saved in compressed format, which reduces its quality:

high rsolution audio

music in high definition, example of maximum quality

In summary: CDs (compact discs) offered good quality (not maximum) and a certain “portability”, but their capacity was limited.
Mp3 files certainly helped share music over the network, at the price of a substantial loss in terms of playback quality.

HIGH DEFINITION SOUND: A SMALL GLOSSARY TO BETTER UNDERSTAND

Bit rate

The bit rate is the amount of data per second required for a transfer from A to B. The bit rate is always expressed in kilobits (Kbps) or megabits (Mbps) per second. For example, an mp3 plays an audio track from 96 to 320 kbps; a FLAC file can exceed 5000 kbps.

Bit depth (resolution)

This value describes the number of bits recorded in a single audio sample. Therefore, it is equivalent to termination. An example: the quality of a CD (compact disc) supports up to 16 bits; An audio DVD supports up to 24 bits.