The Köln Concert deserves its every accolade.

Best selling jazz album of all time. Named one of Time magazine’s records of the year. Grammy Hall of Fame (2011.) Selected for the US National Recording Registry in 2025...

What it does not deserve, however, is the atrocious sonic treatment it received with every hi-res edition.

I've jumped on the hi-res train about a year ago. It started with some inkling about it and a desire to try it out. Now I am a disciple.

I do appreciate what a higer 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, and dedicated audio setup since.

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

Megadeth's Rust in Peace has that ferocious depth in hi-res. 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.

(I also just bought the recent Yes' Tales from the Topographic Oceans edition in hi-res, and I am blown away by the clarity. Compared to the murky CD I have, the difference is night and day.)

It's all incredible.

Unfortunately, The Köln Concert, one of the very few records that have always sounded perfect - warm, spacious, and so natural - has been nothing but butchered in high resolution audio.

And more than once at that!

In total, there are 3 lossless editions , including two hi-res:

The standard CD edition (ECM)

Oddly enough, this is by far the warmest sounding edition. It's also the quietest and has the biggest dynamic range, and overall, this is by far the most intimate sounding edition.

The sound focuses on the middle register (which is exactly what Jarrett focused on while playing,) without highs pushed so much. So, you get a relatively realistic representation of what the music sounded like in the hall.

The music is not right in your face either. While listening, you do not feel like as if you were sitting in the front row. As a result, you don't hear that many artifacts.

You still hear the hall, you hear the pedals (they were slightly defunct, so their sound is audible) but you don't hear them as much as on the hi-res editions.

In short, this editioni makes you feel like being there, at that concert, but not without having all the details pushed in your face.

(Which is a surprise given that this is a standard lossless edition, the one that's supposed to be duller sounding than the hi-res...)

The interesting thing about The Köln Concert is that nothing that's important was ever hidden or buried in the mix.

Unlike Yes' Tales... I mentioned earlier, where the new mix, and the hi-res format, allowed for certain elements or lines to come out, Koln had it all out there. The hall. The intimacy. The warmth of the piano (Jarrett played mostly in mid-range, after all).

What was buried, if we could even call it like that, were the artifacts that didn't need to be prominent anyway - the sound of the piano pedals, Jarrett's humming, etc.

The two hi-res editions of the album seem to attempt to improve on that original sound. Both do it using similar mastering choices - pushing the highs, increasing the volume, widening the soundstage, bringing up details, etc.

What's even worse, each one seems to be trying to outdo the other....

The 24/96 FLAC edition (ECM)

The FLAC edition adds a noticeably brighter presentation, and increases the volume. The soundstage seems slightly bigger too but all this comes at a cost. Compared to the lossless, this edition lacks some of the intimacy and warmth that make this performance what it is.

It's not cringe-bad but if you know how Köln has always sounded like, the difference strikes you right away.

The supposedly superior DSD 64 (ECM)

Whoever was responsible for this edition clearly decided to give brightness and volume all they got.

I'm sure professional audio circles would call it a very immersive edition. All the sonic adjustments - brightness, volume, increased details - are probably to make us feel like we are really there, right beside Jarrett as he creates this music.

And funnily enough, it sounds great... at first.

But just at first.

The overly bright tone gets tiring fast. Fast transients and increased detail begin to tire too. And those artifacts that seemed so impressive initially quickly begin to steal the show. Not in a good way, I'm afraid.

Perhaps that was the idea behind this remaster, I can't tell. But if so, I don't think it was the right one.

As the music unfolds, all this sterility and clarity starts taking away from the performance little by little. By the time the album ends, you feel you never want to go through that again.

And here's the irony: hi-res should have been the perfect format for The Köln Concert and it's precisely because it didn't need fixing.

It just needed a touch of higher resolution so we could hear a little deeper into the same recording. That's all this album ever asked for.

And so, despite having all three editions sitting on my server, I still listen to the original CD. It's the only edition I have that presents what made The Köln Concert sound so magical in the first place.

And given what we can do with albums in hi-res, it's absolutely bonkers!