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Focus on 24/192 Misguided?.....

As I've upgraded by digital front end over the last few years, like most people I've been focused on 24/192 and related 'hi rez' digital playback and music to get the most from my system. However, I read this pretty thought provoking article on why this may be a very bad idea:
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Maybe it's best to just focus on as good a redbook solution as you can, although there seem to be some merits to SACD, if for nothing else the attention to recording quality.
128x128outlier
audiofreak32's avatar
audiofreak32
253 posts
 
I guess if you are happy with 16/44 then that is all that matters, but there is a whole lot more to be had.
bombaywalla's avatar
bombaywalla
1,957 posts
 
Onhwy61, yes most of the electronics today is still well below 100KHz bandwidth. Hi-end does not mean hi bandwidth; it means better sonics in the 20-20K band. It might be easier for preemie to extend to 10s of KHz above 20K but for power amps to have a power bandwidth of 100KHz will cost you very close to a 2nd mortgage. Don't believe me, do some research yourself & find out just how many power amps have a power bandwidth that even touches 50KHz. Find out what your gears' bandwidths are. Almost all audio gear was never meant to amplify ultrasonics. The Pro studio gear might be a different ball of wax. Thanx.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
3,575 posts
 
Bombaywalla, Making amplifiers cutoff frequency at 20kHz means that phase shift at this frequency will be in order of 45 degree causing bad summing of harmonics. My small Rowland 102 amp has 65kHz bandwidth with about 22deg phase shift at 20kHz. New Rowland amp model 625 ($15k) has bandwidth of 350kHz. Mr. Jeff Rowland knows what he's doing (I'd like to think). As for 50kHz - a lot of power amps have -3dB bandwidth of 50kHz:

All Atmasphere amps: >100kHz
All Rowland Amps: >65kHz
All Cambridge Audio Amps: >50kHz
All Krell Amps >95kHz
All Classe Delta Series: >100kHz
All Classe CT series: >80kHz
All Luxman Amps: >100kHz
All Parasound Halo Amps >100kHz
All Parasound NewClassic Amps >50kHz
etc.

But if you won't to spend 2nd mortgage you'll find amps like:

MBL Reference 9011: 320kHz
Goldmund Mimesis 8: 800kHz +/-1dB
Soulution 710: 1MHz
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
hi-res may not be necessary according to theory, however in practice modern D/A chips behave better with it (digital filtering), and as a result it sounds better.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audiofreak32's avatar
audiofreak32
253 posts
 
According to all the engineers and tests and specs, vinyl does not sound as good as a CD right? But so many people would prefer the sound of vinyl and/or tubes over SS amps and a CD player. So I guess all this talk about specs and cutoff freq., etc. is just a numbers thing. Will it tell you if one amp sounds better to a person than another?
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