44.1kHz/24bit how good ?

[TALON1973]

was lookign on hdtracks.com and they have u2 Achtung Baby 44.1kHz/24bit ... my question is is that a good improvement over cd ? i own some 96/24 albums off teh site ... dont want to waste my cash if its not much better than cd .

opinions ?

 

[Anonymous]

If there is any benefit to be gained by HiRes it is through the higher sampling rate making life easier for the analogue circuits after the DAC. 16 bits is more dynamic range than you can hear, and with modern compressed music (of which I would guess U2 is guilty) 12 bits is probably more than enough.

So all other things being equal, 24/44.1 is a waste of money.

One caveat - if they took a little more care in mastering the 24/44.1 than they did the 16/44.1 it might be worth buying, but not for the extra 8 bits, just for the better master.

 

[Anonymous]

Whatever bit rate is used the music will only be as good as the original care taken in recording and mastering. Hi Res downloads are not guaranteed to be audiophile if the original recording is rubbish.

 

[krazy_olie]

If it was an hdcd originally it could be post decoded?

 

[Anonymous]

For the record, I found this online database and links to software for testing and publishing the dynamic range of many albums.

http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?sort=dr&order=desc

 

[MajorFubar]

Looking at the very best analogue studio masters, which from a technical viewpoint would probably be those recorded at 15ips or 30ips using Dolby SR on twin-track tape, I wonder what kind of bitrate and bitdepth you'd have to sample the tape at to really say you've captured everything the tape can give.

 

[Anonymous]

It is disappointing that this re-release is not available in a higher res than 24/44.1 especially given that according to my web research, the original sessions were recorded in the analogue domain (Otari MTR100 analogue 24-track with Dolby SR, Soundcraft 6000 44-input desk). The problem I am guessing may be that no analogue master tape will have ever been made, just a digital one which will be fairly low res by todays standards.

As for the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/44.1, the 24/44.1 will probably have been dithered to produce the 16bit version so you would need very good ears to distinguish the two.