Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
While you're correct, it's still a waste of space for 99.9% of people, because only the ones with the very best hearing and most expensive equipment in a specially designed listening room will be able to use the extra sound and dynamics. The CD is already better than what most equipment can play, and it's better than what most people can hear; so a FLAC at 16-bit/44.1 kHz is good enough for me.
And *THAT* is what the article is actually about: that higher resolutions don't provide the improvements people are looking for. Good mastering is what provides the improvement. If I buy older music, I always buy the oldest CD I can find, because back then (before 1995), CD's were mastered to not exceed the 89 dB max, and they were not squashed. Some of my newest CD's have brick wall mastering, and go up to 100 dB...
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I agree that 24/192 is overkill. 24/96 is not. The real use of 24/96 is to get the best sound from the recording (depending on how it was originally recorded). 16/44.1 is going to be good enough for the victims of the loudness wars. I've heard some recordings that are just awful and would not benefit from being hi-res. But I have heard some hi-res recordings that sound very good. For example, Tom Petty's recordings. He had a hand in the mastering for hi-res release and they sound quite good and not flat at all. When recording an P to the computer, 24/96 is going to get more of the sound than 16/44.1. I'm not say 16/44.1 is lousy. It's perfect for audiobooks & loudness wars victims.
What I don't get is why ruin good recordings by remastering them to be flat?