| ▲ | PrismCrystal 7 months ago | ||||||||||||||||
"Hi Res audio is snake oil designed to sell the same thing multiple times, period." The "period" is unwarranted, because there are too important caveats. Firstly, it has been extremely common for albums to be sold with very compressed dynamic range, assuming the average consumer will be listening in noisy environments etc. However, the mastering supplied to Hi Res shops sometimes lacks that compression, so that is where you can hear the album with room to breathe. Secondly, the SACD format allowed adding a layer for 5.1 surround sound. In classical music, this is especially important for works where the performers are spread out around the hall, not just all on stage in front of the listeners. So, with Hi Res the higher frequencies and 24 bit depth are snake oil, but the ancillary benefits are audible to anyone with a good listening environment. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | kalleboo 7 months ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
> Firstly, it has been extremely common for albums to be sold with very compressed dynamic range, assuming the average consumer will be listening in noisy environments etc. However, the mastering supplied to Hi Res shops sometimes lacks that compression, so that is where you can hear the album with room to breathe I had a friend who was extolling the virtues of Hi Res for the pop music he was buying so I asked him to send me a track, and it had the same brick compression as the standard iTunes version and sounded just as flat (I was hoping that even if it was compressed the same, the extra resolution meant that you could recover the detail, but there wasn't an audible improvement). If that's what they want to sell, they need to create an actual term for that, like the audio version of "Director's Cut", not just sneak it into some random Hi Res releases and hope you find "the good ones" while the rest are snake oil. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | BoingBoomTschak 7 months ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||
> However, the mastering supplied to Hi Res shops sometimes lacks that compression, so that is where you can hear the album with room to breathe. I've almost never heard of Hi Res with a totally new master that wouldn't have been previously available as CD, to be honest. This isn't common, right? > the SACD format allowed adding a layer for 5.1 surround sound Well, yeah. Too bad I don't have a PS3 to rip the SACD layer =) | |||||||||||||||||
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