Attention: Debussy-loving audiophiles


This may be old news to those of you who followed classical releases in 2018 more closely than I.  I just discovered the Harmonia Mundi recording of the Philharmonia Orchestra playing the two most common Debussy orchestral warhorses and the much less common Fragments Symphonique from Le Martyre de saint Sébastien. It is available on Qobuz in 24-bit/48 kHz resolution.

I'm curious how you would judge the sound quality of this recording.  I'm not as interested in critiques of the performances, but if you wish you can chime in on that. I have my own opinion of the sound quality, and wonder how others hear it.

 

 

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In a brief sampling, I found it unremarkable.  Not bad but not notable.

I will have time later to listen more extensively.

24/48 usually doesn’t cut it for me.  Btw, mentioning the name of the Conductor might have been a nice touch 

It depends on the quality of the recording more than the sample rate and how it arrived at that sample rate. The more we try different gear the more it becomes apparent that some dacs sound better at certain sample rate settings because, quite frankly, many of them mishandle the data stream and sometimes do so less severely at different settings. In short, just because a 24/48 sounds better on a particular dac than the 16/44.1 version may NOT be because of the sample rate of the recording, it may be because certain dacs dont handle it as effectively.

Frankly , sound quality depends more on the acoustics of the recording site and the talents of the recording/mixing engineers than any of that stuff.  There are outstanding recordings at 16/44.1 and grim ones at 24/192.  That said, higher resolution does have real, but marginal, advantages.  Multichannel is also significant, IMHO.