Curt962 wrote:In reference to recordings...Kai is 100% On Point!!
Far too much mis-information in Audio. "BS Über Alles"
Not here on this Forum!
Oh Man! I have data that suggests much of what is disguised as "High Res" is nothing more than an upsampled copy of a 44/16 Master. My Son ripped a few apart, and showed me the absolute NON difference.
It's been a common and valid practice to transfer old recordings into a succeeding format.
E.g.:
• When Vinyl Disc came out old Shellac Disks were transferred to it.
• When the CD came out old recordings of all kind were released on the new format, sometimes marked as "AAD", sometimes without further notice.
• Today High Res is en vogue, so the recording industry supplies to this demand.
I've heard a lot of High Res recordings from "Tidal Master" lately, and it's a two sided sword:
The good:
Some are recordings, produced in Hi Res from start to end.
Some are remastered without the "Loudness War" squashed dynamics of earlier releases.
Some are well made re-transfers of the original analog or digital master tapes.
The bad:
Remasters in the opposite direction, pushing up the level even more, losing every dynamics.
The ugly:
Well-intended but failed new transfers of the original analog tapes, which at this time are deteriorated and have lost the original quality.
Obviously the audio engineer had no other chance, or did not notice it, things like wandering stereo balance due to playback head contamination, or obvious dropouts from dirt, and split and re-splices tape cuts.
The whatever:
The huge number of upsampled (content-wise) 1:1 copies of the original releases, without any change in sound quality.
These are easily detectable, if you look at their spectrogram there is no content above the original releases' Nylquist frequency, besides some low level noise and artifacs.
Efforts have been taken to "reconstruct" the missing frequency part, replacing it with artificial signals.
If this makes sense I can't decide.
In theory this could work, practically I would call it distortions - in the inaudible part of the spectrum.
Because of all that mentioned above, it's really hard to tell if Hi Res really is an advantage, any comparison usually is invalid, is apples to pie.
Finally it's just another flavor I guess.