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The Modern DAC killed High Resolution Music - has Stereophile proven it?

Hi Everyone,
One thing I've mentioned a lot is that over the past 10 years or so DAC's really closed the delta in how well they play CD (i.e. Redbook) vs. high resolution (96/24 or higher). I've stated for a long time that the delta closed so much that high resolution music no longer seemed to be as important.

Stereophile just released an interesting set of measurements regarding jitter performance of older players vs. today. It's not absolute proof of my thesis, but it certainly is correlated.


https://www.stereophile.com/content/2020-jitter-measurements

One thing, as I commented, you don't have to compare old DACs to the $15,000 Bartok. The Mytek Brooklyn and others in the $2,000 price range also demonstrate this, and in fact has a very similar jitter rejection profile to the Bartok. The point to me is, almost all decent DAC's have jumped leaps and bounds in jitter performance. That's for sure.  Perhaps this explains the disappearing gap in performance as well between Redbook and Hi Rez?

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mytek-hifi-brooklyn-da-processor%C2%96headphone-amplifier-measur... 

erik_squires

Showing 4 responses by mahler123

mahler123
3,076 posts
 
Agree with Mayor Adam here.  I currently own a Bryston DAC3 and formerly owned a Mytek Manhattan.  Yes, both DACs got more out of Redbook CD than I had ever thought possible, but Redbook still can’t compare with a really good high resolution downloads and with DSD.  
mahler123
3,076 posts
 
Erick

What if someone came up with a killer MP3 player that extracted every single iota of audio information from an mp3 stream.  Would the value of 16/44 then be diminished?
mahler123
3,076 posts
 
I refer to one recording that I own as both a Redbook CD and a High Rez download.  It is Andris Nelsons  conducting the Boston Symphony in Shostakovich Symphony #10.  The CD is very fine, up there in SQ with any other CD that I own.  The download is another matter.  I have attended Concerts in this Hall and the download is as close an approximation to being there as it is possible to obtain, at least in my system.  The CD is a very good CD but not for one minute do I have the illusion that At his is the real thing.
  Not only can I tell the difference, but when I demonstrated a passage for comparison to my wife, who could care less about SQ, admitted there was an obvious difference, as have many reviewers.   I can only hope that such high quality recordings continue to be issued.  If you choose not to buy them, that’s your choice, and imo, your loss 
mahler123
3,076 posts
 
“It is always hard to tell if this is due to technology or the remastering process....”

I don’t really understand this statement .  The recording that I was referring to, the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony with Nelsons  and the Boston SO, is a recent recording, issued as a CD and then a few weeks later as a download in 3 resolutions.  I would presume that it was only “mastered” once, and never “remastered”, and that the obvious superiority of the High Rez version is due to the technology itself.     .”...do you think that with a 15 year old DAC you’d feel the the same difference in sound quality...”

Again, I don’t understand the point here.  The original focus of the thread was on modern DACs , the thesis being that current DACs enhance Redbook so much that High Rez is irrelevant.  I think that you are looking at this from the wrong end.  Modern DACs bring out the best in everything, all resolutions.  IMO they do a better job of showing the distance between High Rez and Redbook.    
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