Is Hi-Res Audio A Scam?

[@JoshChristiane]

Thanks so much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and be my friend on X at x.com/Josh_Christiane

[@romantaylor]

Subscribed 🙂

[@JoshChristiane]

Thanks, Roman! :D!

[@gg.6967]

Hi Josh , Apple does stream @ high resolution above 48 kHz via a USB connection & airplay 2 @ 24 bit depth 48khz brick wall. I do agree with you but only for non studio playback. I’m subscribing keep up the great work 👍.

[@JoshChristiane]

@gg.6967 Agreed, thanks!

[@CERAC...]

That was a fascinating discussion to listen to. I had no idea how many brands, in this category, are taking advantage of the consumer by capitalizing on their ignorance in this field...Thank you for enlightening us!

[@JoshChristiane]

Thanks, I agree. Thank you for watching!

[@ianbrown704]

Superb explanation, very detailed but easy to follow. Thank You. Ian (UK)

[@JoshChristiane]

Thanks for watching and the appreciative comment, Ian. Have a great week!

[@Acrellux]

Came to debunk a new pair of headphones, came away with that AND valuable information regarding recording audio, which is very much appreciated for self taught music producers like me. Great video!!

[@JoshChristiane]

Thanks for the nice comment, :) I'm glad I could help people learn something about audio, definitely a passion of mine.

[@allenrachal]

Its not a scam in the sense of buying high end headphones and pairing it with a high end setup and then using that to play a loseless audio file for its higher quality as well. Its not all about what spectrum of frequencies we can hear. We just want something that sounds more clear and detailed to our ears than the norm. Is it overkill? Possibly. Does it sound better? Absolutely.

[@JoshChristiane]

Absolutely. Buying a good pair of high quality headphones, a good headphone amp, and playing back lossless files is definitely a great way to enjoy music. That aspect is definitely not a scam, I am more just talking about 44.1khz lossless vs 96khz and 192khz lossless here. You have to pay like $10 more for the higher sample rate on a lot of albums, and you gain no quality.

[@allenrachal]

@@JoshChristiane just watched the full video 😂 I have to agree there. When my dac switches between the different khz I can't tell the difference in quality.

[@JoshChristiane]

Yeah same here, nobody can tell the difference unless there are some really specific conditions. If you slowed the music down 300 or 400% then maybe differences would start to become apparent in the high-end, but at that point the audio quality would be so messed up it wouldn't matter anymore. Some converters sound better at 192khz which deceives a lot of people, but that's just the quality of the conversion itself not the frequency range difference.

[@soundahfekz321]

Yes it is. external Headphone amps/dacs are generally nonsense as well. Most mobile devices has sufficient audio processing unless the drivers specifically need amplification which most consumer grade units don't. Lossless is a subjective basket being that music production sometimes derives sounds from less than stellar sources. I.E Where was the instrument from a rompler sampled from? at what rate? Was a sample pulled from Vinyl, or an obscure, out of production album that someone uploaded to youtube? are the headphones neutral monitors, or capable of being adjusted to be so? The Audiophile experience is often placebo, namely because most audiophiles don't understand the music production process in the first place.

[@JoshChristiane]

@soundahfekz321 A lot of truth to all of that, for sure. Source will always matter the most.

[@romantaylor]

Great explanation Josh! Definitely opened my eyes to audio quality (this is new to me). I'd love to hear your take on audio in cars. What's the best way to consume music in a vehicle? I assume most people stream from Spotify or some other app. Does Aux vs Bluetooth vs USB matter?

[@JoshChristiane]

My understanding is that Bluetooth reduces quality significantly because the stream is generally in SBC, so bluetooth (might) not be the best quality, but even then it's likely unnoticeable considering most car sound systems are very poor. I imagine you couldn't hear the difference between 128kbps and lossless on even a very nice car stereo. Spotify streams at 96kbps on "normal" settings. When you choose "High Quality" in the app it switches to 160kbps. In my testing 160kbps is quite hard to tell from lossless, you may lose some harmonics but the difference is so small it doesn't practically matter on most systems. In a nutshell Spotify is definitely good enough, especially if set to high quality in the app. I wouldn't have any complaints with it at least. Audiophiles tend to obsess over that extra .01% of quality that's impossible to notice unless you have golden ears and $2000 headphones. AUX is the best quality if you're connecting your phone directly to your car sound system, I personally just stick with that and have no issues.

[@romantaylor]

@@JoshChristiane thank you for a nice breakdown!

[@dennischen8887]

I busted out my Sony discman and started buying CD's again. This is all I need.

[@JoshChristiane]

Amen. I love the Sony discmans haha. I could see myself walking around with one of those, and little kids asking what it is.

[@dennischen8887]

@@JoshChristiane if they ask, tell em it's a portable waffle warmer

[@arinehim]

Hi Josh, Really appreciate this video. It helped explain a lot of things to me. I had a couple of follow up questions for you. If I'm looking at purchasing an album on Qobuz (for this example its the Album "Tell me I'm Alive" by All time Low) it will give me the option to purchase it in both 16bit/44kHz and 24bit/48kHz. Is there a way to find out whether the original recording was recorded in 44kHz vs the 48kHz? How does the bit rate of 16bit vs 24 bits affect the sound (assuming the sampling rate stays the same)? Thanks!

[@JoshChristiane]

Great question, and therein lies a major issue in the industry. It's pretty much impossible to know what it was originally recorded in unless the creators specifically state it on its wikipedia page, or you happen to know the exact gear and settings they use some other way. SoundonSound magazine had info on the Coldplay album, so that's how I found out what it was originally recorded in, but otherwise I'd never have known outside of just using common sense. I will say this though, as an ex-producer of many albums for many artists, 90%+ of music recorded digitally is recorded 24-bit - 44.1kHz. I can only recall one single time sitting in a session where 48kHz was used, and that was a Switchfoot album (vice verses), specifically because they intended the songs to be used in movie soundtracks potentially. Final delivery of that album was 44.1kHz though, so in the end it was pointless. In terms of the difference between 44.1kHz and 48kHz, you simply cannot tell a difference unless one of them was a bad convert, so I wouldn't worry about that. Bit depth matters more, but only during recording. When you're tracking you get better headroom, lower noise-floor, and more detailed recordings by recording > 24bit, and some albums are recording at 32bit now even which helps prevent clipping issues later on. Bit depth just gives you more vertical resolution (so each snapshot/stem itself has a great range of velocity storage). But once the album is bounced down and mastered there won't be an audible difference between 16bit and 24 or 32bit, because the headroom is the same for everything (0dB) in the digital space. In a nutshell: Just buy the cheapest one you can get. Nothing will be better than 44.1kHz - 16bit with very very few exceptions.

[@arinehim]

@@JoshChristiane Hi Josh, thanks for the reply. I appreciate your honesty with how audio tracks are recorded. After watching your video it sparked my curiosity and I did further research and yes I agree with you the bit depth gives you a larger noise floor when you are at 24 bits, but as you mentioned in your video even if you had perfect ears (I certainly don't) and the top of the line equipment you wouldn't be able to hear the difference unless you blasted the sound at a high enough level that it would cause hearing damage. at this point it seems like the only value of the "hi-res" tracks are that they show up as HQ on my DAP. I have a follow up question. If CD quality is the best that you are going to be able to get. Do you recommend ripping music from a physical CD or is downloading from a site like HD tracks or Qobuz just as good? Reason I ask is I didn't know if they did any signal processing or funky things like that. I saw an article where they compared an analog signal, vs the CD, vs a newer CD, vs a download magicvinyldigital.net/2022/06/18/dire-straits-money-for-nothing-review-lp-cd-qobuz-1988-remastered-2022/ One interesting article I found last night was this NPR article where you can play a lossless .wav track against a compressed 320kbps and a compressed 128 kbps file of the same track. and you had to pick which one is the lossless file. What was interesting was that majority of the files I selected the lossless version of the track, but for the 2 of the 6 that I selected the compressed file, I selected the 128kbps track. I would have thought I would have selected the 320kbps. its an interesting experiment. www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

[@JoshChristiane]

Totally agree with you on all that. In terms of CD quality (digital) vs CD RIP, there shouldn't be any difference assuming you have a good quality ripper. All things being equal they should basically be the same. I personally just buy digitally on 7Digital, Qobuz, and very often on iTunes (for their mastered for iTunes albums). iTunes is VBR 256 minimum in the highly efficient AAC Codec (which is better than MP3), the lowest part of any song is 256kbps due to the VBR, but in more complex parts of the song it can exceed 400kbps. In my opinion iTunes rips are actually very good. They're not a good archival format in case you needed to convert later multiple times, but for straight listening 256kbps (VBR) AAC is way more than good enough. I stop being able to hear the difference at a constant bit rate around 200kbps, often much lower. For a good VBR I could do with an even lower minimum closer to 160. So don't be afraid of iTunes in case you're on the Mac ecosystem and were wondering if they're any good or not, their mastered for iTunes albums are second to none. Outside of iTunes I really like 7Digital because their selection is fairly wide, prices are good, and they offer 320kbps AAC with the base purchase (usually $9 for an album). Qobuz is great as well, top notch quality, but prices are a little bit high. I've done those experiments on NPR as well as many others online, and it's amazing how minor the differences are. The site I recommend to test your hearing and knowledge is: abx.digitalfeed.net/ It takes a minute to understand how it works, start with the lowest quality shootout first (96kbps) to help gauge things. And tell me what you come up with as I'm curious! Sometimes lower bitrates actually sound better, which is a bit of a weird phenom.

[@VintageStereoCollectorChannel]

Thank you Josh, very informative presentation! I rip all of my CDs to FLAC onto an SSD connected to my ROON Core/Mac Mini M1 and Holo Audio Cyan 2 DAC. So when I play the FLAC files via ROON it plays/upsamples them at 192kHz. Thoughts!

[@JoshChristiane]

Thanks for the compliment! :) Sounds like a great setup! I love Roon and its music management service, super high-quality. I can't speak for their hardware they sell since I don't use it. As a general rule upsampling is less degenerative than downsampling. If it's also scaling the bit depth then going upwards is less of an issue because dithering isn't required. It's more of an issue when you're downsampling or scaling down bit depths. With that said though you're not gaining any quality either, obviously, it's just unused data being added. This is a situation where your DAC is going to matter way more than arbitrary rates, and the Holo Cyan is a phenomenal converter. You have the perfect setup, no need to change anything as long as your music is easy to access. For my listening setup I use a Burl converter into Adam A77X's, I also have a stereo Cinema Marantz in my theater room that runs into some nice tower JBL's. I LOVE audio and good speakers, but the room you're listening in will matter even more than the speakers in a lot of cases. Treating a room properly is undeniably complex, but that's definitely the next step if you haven't already. I'm sure you're using really good speakers already since you clearly have a passion for music and audio.

[@rubi-w-]

I was choosing between an iPod Classic 7th gen, and a FiiO M6. Chose the last one because the price was insanely more convenient (€50) which I bought obviously used. I now read some things about Hi Res audio… If I paired tha iPod with some Audio Technica headphones, would I get the same quality than on the FiiO?

[@JoshChristiane]

With something like an iPod or any other small listening device the weak point won't be file format. You will almost certainly hear no difference between the formats and resolutions the devices use, the big difference will come from the discrete headphone amp built into the devices. Some units have really high quality headphone amps and sound amazing as a result, and others sound awful. I can't comment on the FiiO because I've never used one, but iPods were known for having decent quality for their size, especially with low Ohm headphones. My advice would be headphones that are low Ohm (resistance) enough not to stress the amp on such a small music player though.

[@waltersolt8248]

Apple music does support hi res lossless but I do agree hi res isn't worth it cd quality is the best standard and that should be the standard.

[@JoshChristiane]

It only does if you're using their streaming service, but if you buy an album on iTunes then it's VBR 256kbps AAC.

[@binh.pham277]

You spoke the truth

[@annives]

You've saved me from falling for the scam ever again. Didn't realize Hi Res is just another marketing ploy. This really helped me understand. Super informative!

[@JoshChristiane]

Glad I could help! Thank you!

[@BrianVallotton]

My understanding is that the quality of the recording itself trumps other factors. I like wide soundstage and good bass response among other things... to me it seems that IF it was not in the original recording it is not going to be in my system regardless of any other factors. I have hearing loss and tinnitus on top of it, but I am grateful for still being able to play my guitar and listen to wonderful music. I have to admit I am always searching for the next best thing... but right now I do have some decent equipment to play through and hear through. What I really need is a brain upgrade. ;-)

[@JoshChristiane]

Totally agreed. Recording quality is by far the most important factor, it's a real shame that modern mastering ruins so many wonderful mixes. But since we can't do much to fix the loudness wars of today the next best thing is to try to appreciate older music with better gear, haha :). Thanks for watching and your nice comment, happy listening!

[@BrianVallotton]

@@JoshChristiane My pleasure Josh. I am looking forward to more content from you and I really enjoyed your presentation and demeanor. God bless you and all you love.

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

Hello Brian ... Something to keep in mind. The "soundstage" and all the attributes of openness and detail that we all love are actually burned into the recordings at the studio by Panning, Phasing and Delay techniques. It does not come from our home equipment. That said... while our stereos cannot create or enhance "Soundstage"... poor speaker placement or room modes can and do tend to sabotage it.

[@BrianVallotton]

@@Douglas_Blake_579 Hi Douglas and thanks for that great insight! I think sometimes that I am guilty of trying to get something out of the music that was never in there in the first place! Even the best live performances are not always perfect but they sure are fun!

[@Douglas_Blake_579]

@@BrianVallotton There's no such thing as a perfect recording. What varies the most is their distance from perfection... some get close, most don't. That search for "something extra" is this hobby's Achiles heel. As a service tech I saw plenty of really bizarre stuff... everything from $5,000 power cords to interconnects so heavy they broke the connectors on the back of some truly expensive gear... all in the name of better sound.

[@fuelformind]

An important rare video

[@JoshChristiane]

Thank you, :))

[@sohamray8775]

I wholly understood aspect of the KHz but what about the bit rate

[@JoshChristiane]

So we talked about those "snapshots" which are the captures of velocity that map out a waveform to represent audio. How fast those snapshots happen is the sample rate, but how many bits are used to capture each individual snapshot is the bit depth. The more bits you have, the greater the resolute range of data on that vertical axis. Basically think about it as the sample rate being the horizontal resolution, and the bit depth being the vertical resolution. Hopefully that makes sense, thanks for the great question!

[@fizixx]

Excellent info!

[@JoshChristiane]

Thanks, Fizixx. Much appreciated :)

[@fizixx]

@@JoshChristiane 👍

[@stiven_ph8656]

You mean dac high res audio is a waste of money i have a plan to buy ifi zen

[@JoshChristiane]

The format itself yes, but the units no. The Ifi Zen is a good headphone amp, and the discrete amp within it will affect quality far more than just a file format. High quality headphone amps are definitely not a scam.

[@stiven_ph8656]

@JoshChristiane im talking ifi zen air blue is it worth it?

[@JoshChristiane]

Yes, it's worth it. Bluetooth traditionally drops your quality in the stream transmission, and that device effectively just keeps the quality of the stream at whatever its source is. So basically that device just prevents the regular bluetooth transmission degradation. If you're heavily reliant on bluetooth and use it often then it's absolutely worth it to keep your stream quality at the source material.

[@alfredbrown7608]

Wow people need to wake up and listen to this I brought a Everso master edition now I need better speakers and Receiver glad I've seen this I'm sending the eversolo back I will never be fooled again thanks for this Awesome video 😀

[@rodneyreeves9434]

Best thing to do is find a good graphic equalizer