Soon after the previous entry in this blog—Everything Matters—was posted, I heard from a friend who recently purchased a 24-bit, 192 kHz, high-resolution download of a classic album. Like many of us, he sought an even better “view” of the recording than is offered by the CD version he already owns. To his surprise, he prefers listening to the CD version, and finds the high res download as sounding “a bit bright.”
The authors of some recent tech website articles denigrating high resolution might see my friend’s comments as vindication. In my view, this says more about the authors than it does about the audible reality. Why these websites didn’t choose authors more experienced with systems for music playback, and more interested in sound quality, remains a mystery. (Vide John Atkinson’s very well considered Access Journalism vs Accountability Journalism.)
In order to determine whether high resolution is the source of the problem (any problem), it must be compared with its standard resolution equivalent. This means for a valid comparison of delivery formats the only difference must be the delivery format. Both versions must be created at the same mastering session, by the same engineer, using the same channel (signal path). There, as the man once said, is the rub. In most cases the two items being compared were created at different mastering sessions, often by different engineers, in completely different mastering studios. Right away any sort of equivalence is out the window.
Different mastering engineers have different ears, different sensibilities, different approaches, different talents, and different weaknesses. Even the same engineer might take a diverging tack when remastering something they’ve mastered in the past. When the two versions are done by different engineers the likelihood of variance in their methods is pretty much a sure thing. This is expectable since they don’t share a common set of ears, and no two engineers I know of will do things the same way. With regard to new masterings, in Everything Matters I said, “Sometimes the results are improved sonics, with newly revealed nuances from the original recording that were lost in the original mastering. Other times, and sadly all too often, the remastering is simply a louder, brighter rendering.”
There is also a very good to excellent chance the signal path for the two versions differed. Even in the same studio, things tend to change and evolve over time. For an album like the one my friend purchased, which was originally recorded on analog tape, the A-D converter used in mastering can have a profound effect on the results. This is particularly true at higher resolutions, where I have found many converters are stretched beyond their capabilities. To wit, a lot of converters specified for 24/192 actually perform worse at this rate than they do at lower rates. This I attribute to the significantly increased demands on clocking accuracy and on analog stage performance at the wider bandwidths. It would seem to be easy to put 24/192 on a spec sheet but not so easy to design a device that can perform to the potential of the format. And the converter is just one of several components comprising the signal path, each of which will have its own sonic consequences.
All of the above assumes the same source tape was used for the different versions. This is a big assumption, even when “original” is claimed. I’ve experienced a number of instances where, having handled the tapes myself, I knew the subsequent claims from some quarters of “original” were at best mistaken. Whether original or not, if different source tapes were used, the outcome could be acutely altered.
The bottom line here should not be surprising: A carefully made CD (or CD resolution file) will easily outperform a not-so-carefully made 24/192 file. This has to do with how effectively the capabilities of each delivery format are realized—or not realized, as this case illustrates.
I concluded Everything Matters by saying “Everything after the microphones (i.e., mic cables, AC mains power, AC mains cables, mic preamps, recording format, recording device , mix, if any, mastering, playback format, playback device, interconnecting cables, amplification, speaker cables, speakers, speaker positioning, vibration isolation, room acoustics, etc., etc.) merely determines how much of what was captured the listener gets to hear.” In my experience, when everything in the production of an album is the same except for the delivery format, a 24/192 file should reveal so much more of the source as to make the 16/44 (CD) version sound coarse, ill-defined, airless, and broken by comparison. So either my friend’s 24/192 file was created from an inferior source, or the mastering was just not up to that achieved for the CD.
To my ears, properly done digital audio at 24/192 fulfills the promise digital made back in 1982 when the sonically hamstrung CD format made its first appearance. I have said elsewhere that 24/192 is the first format I’ve ever heard where I have not yet been able to distinguish the output from the input—the first format I know of that is capable of giving us a virtually perfect rendition of the source. In view of this, I must admit to being somewhat astonished at the negativity from some quarters of the tech web and tech press. Nevertheless, if music lovers are to receive the benefits of this wonderful fruit of technological progress, the folks creating it must tend their crop more carefully.
The Soundkeeper 