Almost a year ago to date, I jumped on the hi-res audio train. 

As it is common with such things, it started with equipment failure.

My beloved vintage amp died. It wasn't beyond repair but getting it back to life turned out to cost pretty much the same as a new one, so I decided to move on. I got a new amp and as with big changes to one's setup, with it eventualy came new speakers, new sub, and ... my first-ever DAC.

And with the DAC came Qobuz, Audirvana and before I knew it, I was all in hi-res. 

And I love it. 

I so appreciate what a higher resolution audio brings to the table: the livelier, fuller, more defined and realistic sound, clarity, contrast, and more. And I've been building my lossless library since.

Many of my favorite albums sound considerably more engaging in hi-res.

Megadeth's Rust in Peace has that ferocious depth. Metheny's Bright Size Life or Watercolors got an incredible clarity. The Dead's Anthem of the Sun benefits from a much greater soundstage. And Dexter Gordon's Go has never sounded warmer than on the HDTT tape transfer in hi-res.

But I do not subscribe to the ongoing conversation about hi-res. In fact, I think it's pure nonsense. 

It's a conversation that goes pretty much like this:  

Someone decides to compare whether they can hear difference between hi-res and CD-quality file, and declares they can't.

Someone else insists the difference is obvious. According to someone else, you can hear the difference but only if you have good enough equipment. Otherwise, all your efforts to hear it are in vain. 

And finally, another person concludes that hi-res audio is little more than a marketing gimmick, since, in fact, us humans can't hear the frequencies it's supposed to include anyway.

The debate goes around in circles for a few days with no resolution of any kind. Eventually everyone moves on until the next time it appears.

The thing is, I think both sides are usually arguing about the wrong thing.

For one, the discussion almost always starts with a question that sounds almost reasonable:

Can you hear the difference between lossless and hi-res audio?

But the thing is, I don't think think that this is the most useful question to ask.

You see, there is  a much bigger factor shaping what we actually hear between those two formats, and it has very little to do with the actual format at all.

In other words, that lovely yellow/hold hi-res badge has become the centre of the conversation.

But it shouldn't be.

I think the biggest part of the confusion around the "whether I can hear the difference between hi-res or not" discussion comes from what we expect hi-res audio to do in the first place.

When someone puts on a hi-res edition of an album, they usually expect that something dramatic to happen.

Like the music will suddenly open up. Or they'll hear some new details, sounds never before heard on this recording: A new instrument line will step forward, and their minds will be blown away by the completely new sonic experience. 

And if none of that happens, the conclusion is often clear: "I can't hear any difference ergo there is none!" 

And that, in turn, pretty much always leads to the inevitable conclusion: 

"hi-res is a scam!"

But such expectation is setting the format up to fail. 

Let's face it; a hi-res edition is the same recording as the CD. The same session, same musicians, same compositions, same notes, same takes... 

There is absolutely no difference. 

If the recoding captured crap songs, they remain so. If the guitar was slightly out of tune, it will not magically appear sounding right (unless someone decided to fix it in the post-production, of course, and I'll come back to this shortly.)

The hi-res version is not secretly hiding another trumpet part that was missing from the CD. It isn't going to reveal a forgotten cymbal hit. Or suddenly, some new lyrics not present on the first vinyl pressing, will magically pour out from the speakers.  

Nope!

Hi-res editions have nothing new to bring up. No hidden tracks or instrument parts and no earth-shattering sonic elements to deliver.

The recording remains the recording.

Which is why I find it helpful to think about hi-res audio in a slightly different way

And I like to use this analogy to illustrate it...

Imagine viewing the same photograph on two different phones.

One has a basic screen. The other has a far better display with greater colour accuracy, smoother gradients, and the ability to show finer detail.

Remember, it's the same photograph. The mountain in the background (or whatever else the image features) is still the same mountain. The sky is still the same sky, and the people standing in the foreground are still the same people.

So, the better phone might present that scene more accurately. The colours might be sharper, and edges less blurred. But it doesn't suddenly add a castle on the horizon that wasn't there before. 

It shows the same scene. Just maybe a little more precisely. 

Hi-res audio works in much the same way.

The recording itself does not change simply because it is stored in a higher-resolution format.

The performance does not change either. The musicians do not play different notes. The recording does not suddenly acquire new details that never existed in the source.

What changes is the container carrying that information and the amount of information that container is capable of preserving and presenting.

I think the misconception around it is what causes so many listeners feeling disappointed by their first encounter with hi-res audio.

And it is all because they are listening for the wrong thing. 

What hi-res can potentially offer is not something earth-shattering or new. It's more a refined presentation of what is already there.

And yes, sometimes that refinement is meaningful. But equally often, it is subtle. And sometimes it is practically impossible to notice.

And this is where the discussion usually takes a wrong turn.

Because when people compare MP3 or CD-quality edition with a hi-res edition, they often assume they are comparing file formats.

In reality, however, they are comparing entirely different editions of the same recording.

See the difference? 

When comparing the same album in hi-res, MP3, and CD quality, you are not comparing two or three file formats. 

You compare different mastering, particularly between CD and hi-res. It's even entirely possible that you compare mastering done using a different source, and that difference matters, too. 

Finally, you also compare the decisions the people involved (usually, mastering engineers but also, the artists themselves,) have made about how the particular edition of the album should sound. 

This matters because all these factors don't only affect the sound. They also affect how you perceive the sound, and might or might not make a particular edition sound better or worse to you.

This is another reason why discussions about hi-res audio can become so confusing.

Someone listens to a hi-res release and says it sounds dramatically better than the CD. Someone else compares another hi-res release and hears no difference at all. Another person actually prefers the CD.

And you know what, all three may be correct!

I mean it. 

The format itself is often only one small part of the story. The larger difference may come from the mastering. 

The hi-res edition may have been created from the analog source and then, got heavily processed, compressed, whatever. 

The CD may be a direct transfer of an older mastering with almost no additional tweaks applied.

So you think you are comparing 16/44 against 24/96. But what you are often hearing is the result of entirely different decisions made long before the file was ever exported.

And that's also why some hi-res releases can sound worse than their CD counterparts

Shocking, I know but true. 

But think about it; hi-res audio can only work with the information that already exists in the source.

If a recording is limited, rough, noisy, poorly preserved, or simply not very well recorded in the first place, a higher-resolution format cannot magically fix those problems. 

Sometimes it can make them even more obvious.

Similarly, if the source used for that particular edition isn't great, the result will not be either. 

Going back to the screen analogy, imagine taking an old, blurry photograph and displaying it on an expensive modern display. 

The better screen will show the photograph more accurately. But it won't make the photograph sharper. If anything, it may reveal the flaws more clearly.

The same thing can happen with recordings.

A higher-resolution release may expose tape noise more clearly. It may reveal limitations in the original recording. It may highlight rough edges that were previously smoothed over.

And if the mastering decisions are poor, the result can be even less enjoyable.

Take Art Blakey's First Flight to Tokyo, for example. 

It's a fascinating historical release, the document (supposedly buried somewhere in vaults for years) of the quintets first visit to Japan. 

In the Wayne Shorter documentary I once saw, the artist remembered it as a surreal experience. The quintet was treated like mega stars. In fact, there's an entertaining scene in the documentary,k where Shorter remembers seeing "Wayne Shorter jackets" being sold in stores. Jackets modeled after his favourite outfit. 

Crazy, right? So, naturally, a long-lost sonic document of that visit is one hell of a recording.

But ... this was never an audiophile recording. Sonically, it's poor. It's not mono but the narrow soundstage makes it sound almost as if it were. And that's just one of the clear limitations of the source tape.

And so, when I compare the CD and hi-res editions, I actually find the CD easier to enjoy. The hi-res edition not only doesn't bring out any hidden magic in the recording, it just makes the flaws more obvious.

But that's not a failure of hi-res audio. It's simply a reminder that format alone cannot create qualities that were never present in the source to begin with.

The same can be true for two different hi-res editions. 

Take the recording of Debussy's String Quartet in G Minor by the wonderful Quartetto Italiano. 

My DSD128 copy from HighDefinitionTapeTransfers (HDTT), a small independent label specializing in careful transfers from analog tapes, sounds far more superior than the Warner Classics edition, one published by the giant label, supposedly with unlimited resources to make such releases sound perfect!

And yet, it is the HDTT edition that sounds breathtaking. It is a new transfer of a high-quality original analog tape, done with care such a recording deserves. 

The Warners sounds as if the mastered from a copy of a copy of a copy of an old cassette tape. It's full of tape hiss, the sound is distant, and lacks any character at all. 

Let's look at another example, the most known and revered jazz record of all time, Kind of Blue...

The DSD128 of Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" from HDTT sounds better than 24/96 by the same label, because their tape transfer master was done in DSD. So, naturally, any lower format editions have been downgraded. 

Similarly, the DSD64 edition of Art Blakey's "Moanin'" from BlueNote sounds a million times better than the same bit depth and frequency edition by HDTT.

This time, it's the exact the same format, but the source isn't. 

BlueNote is based off the original master whereas HDTT is a tape transfer. Unfortunately, the tape used for that transfer has clearly seen better days, and you can hear it. 

And finally, Michal Bryla's "Telemann: 12 Fantasies for Viola Solo" sounds better in 24/384 FLAC than in lower quality purely because it was recorded in that high quality. So, again, any lower editions had to be downgraded sonically. These differences are subtle but they are there. 

That's exactly why reducing the discussion to "CD versus hi-res" misses the bigger picture.

The right question to ask

I already discussed that asking "Can I hear the difference between 16/44 and 24/96?" is not a good approach to evaluate two editions of the same album. 

So what is? Well, I'd suggest you turn this question completely on its head, and simply ask:

"Do I actually enjoy how this edition sounds?"

Because, let's face it; the goal for putting a record on is not to hear a file format. It is to enjoy the music. And if it sounds better in a particular file format then that is the edition you should enjoy.