About to dabble in hi-res audio

Hi all,

I'm intrigued by the idea of hi-res audio - specifically, downloads in wav format - and could do with some advice, please.

I'm thinking of storing the wavs on my computer, rather than burning them to CD, so I'll be outputting through a suitable soundcard.

My DAC can handle 24/96 through its AES\EBU input, but the sound cards I've seen with AES\EBU all output through a D-sub. I take it you can buy a cable that's D-sub at one end and XLR at the other?

Also, if anyone's got any experience of hi-res downloads, I'd be interested to hear what you think of the sound quality.

Finally, if anyone knows of any good web links along the lines of "computer audio for beginners", that would be very handy.

 

No nonsense computer audio site here:

http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/

By all means experiment with hi-res and wav format.

Hold two questions in your mind:

1. Is it worth the effort?

2. Can I hear the difference?

16bit/48 or 44.1 recordings are already more capable that your ears.

The quality of the musicianship and the skill of the recording engineer will have a greater bearing on what you hear than big number resolution.

You don't say what your taste in music is.

This page will allow you to sample the same recording in many resolutions and formats

http://www.gimell.com/recording-Allegri-Miserere-Palestrina-Missa-Papae-Marcelli.aspx

 

Which soundcards are you thinking of? I have a Lynx AES16 which outputs though a D-sub and they provide cables to split out to XLR.

If you only want to connect to a single DAC I think it is a waste getting a card like that though, since it has 16 stereo outputs and inputs and costs about £700.

If I wanted to simply have a stereo digital output I'd probably get a SoundBlaster Recon3D or X-Fi Xtreme both of which have optical outputs and cost less than £40 on eBay.

 

Thanks for the advice and info, chaps. Much food for thought there.

 

Well, I just dabbled. First impressions - fabulous (24/96 FLAC). Clearer and cleaner than CD, great body and heft to the music, much better imaging. That was test track 1. Test tracks 2 and 3 - thin, lifeless, bleugh.

So.... it looks like great production on track 1, duff production on tracks 2 and 3. More investigation is required.

 

The best way to compare is to take a high-res track and then down-sample it to 16/44 and compare.

 

There is a lot of good information on www.computeraudiophile.com - particularly with regard to optimising mac/pc settings for playback and getting the best from JRiver and amarra/Pure