Forking from the cables thread to a discussion of whether hi-res is audible.....

Speaking only on PCM:

44.1kHz perfectly captures everything <21kHz

16-Bit undithered puts the noise down past -95dBFS, down past around -105dB or better with noise shaped dither (meaning a 24Bit master must exist).

No one whose a teenager or older can hear >19kHz. And no, that paper about hypersonics by Akira’s composer has never been validated. And unless using an MQA DAC with only 1 filter, almost no good DACs have issue with Nyquist filters. Here’s the filter performance of the ~$900 Outlaw RR2160 integrated amp; and here’s the performance of the $100 AudioQuest DragonFly Black DAC.

Keeping in mind that while human hearing does have a range better than ~96dB, you listen in a room, whose noise floor is very high relative to 16Bit, most residential living rooms only allow for about 12Bit.

@mrqmike 
 
An example of what we can’t measure?

@ahofer

I’m more concerned about the things we can’t hear, but convince ourselves we can.

In I believe Stereophile’s review of the BorderPatrol DAC, the reviewer tested it against the Benchmark DAC3, and said on one track the Benchmark got rid of the sound of the church walls in the recording, whereas the BP DAC preserved it.
😑 🤦🏼‍♂️