Reel To Reel vs Hrx files vs Vinyl

[amirm]

Tim,
It is something that puzzles me. The performance of analog semiconductors has improved by several orders of magnitude during the last 25 years. Computational power of processors also increased by several orders of magnitude. ADC and DAC improvements were huge. And we still say "it is extremely difficult to design system performance at frequencies greater than 20 KHz. How can we explain it?

I am not Tim but sure .

The difficulty is not due to tools and electronics but my ears! I can play a 10 Khz tone and hear it. If I play a 30 Khz tone, I can't. What would be a better response? One that rolls off the high frequencies at 30Khz vs 40 Khz? What if I have less distortion at 30 Khz but more noise and reverse is true for 40 Khz and vice versa. How easy is it to test that scenario?

Take what Lee mentioned earlier. We know from specs of DACs and how they work that distortion and noise increase when we sample at higher frequency. How do we know that is the better trade off for sure?

We lose one of our best instruments at these hpyersonic frequencies. Our ear.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I found the graph presented by hdplex very interesting. We've had discussions here about how DACs tend to have more distortion when run at 192kHz as opposed to 96kHz, both considered high-resolution sampling rates. Although the 192kHz rate may produce a bit more distortion, perhaps the superior impulse response (as shown in the graph) may account for some or much of the popular impression that 192kHz is preferable when available.

Given the exact same master, what is the opinion of the membership on whether 96kHz or 192kHz will produce superior sonic results?

This is quite intriguing, since the audio specialty labels seem a bit split on this one.

Lee

i have maybe 50-75 192/24 files with 96/24 companion files. in every case the 192/24 is a little better in the same way; lower noise, bigger soundstage, a bit more dynamic snap and better separation.....not big differences but easy to hear.

i assume all these started life as 192/24 masters.

my opinion would be that you could predict that assuming the source file was 192/24 that any dumbing down would not sound as good. maybe it might have to do with whether the DAC was optimized for one resolution or another. more math typically is a bad thing. my Playback Designs seems to like higher frequencies and more bits pretty consistently.

i've heard what happens to an analog signal run thru Bruce Browns board changeing it up and down thru the various digital resolutions. there is a clear step from 88/24-96/24 to 176/24-192-24.