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

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.

Love specific, personal experiences, @mahler123, thank you.

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.

It is always hard to tell if this is due to technology or the re-mastering process, but do you think that with a 15 year old DAC you’d feel the difference in sound quality between the CD and Hi Rez recording would have been the same??

I believe the mathematicians got CD right but there was a lag in playback quality.  I quickly decided the inflated prices of hi-rez downloads wasn't worth it.  But I'm now going 100% streaming, so hi-res Qobuz was the obvious choice at their current discounted rates because they live or die by sound quality.  Not saying I can tell the difference, or know how much is marketing, but overkill is fine with me in the streaming world.

Not a scientific response to your post but perhaps relevant - I own both the Redbook and SACD versions of Keith Jarrett's Sunbear concerts and the difference between them through the same DAC, system etc is easily apparent. Also, downsampling 24/96 downloaded flacs to Redbook and burning them to cd gives again a readily apparent difference when compared to the commercially bought Redbook version, again on the same system etc. 

Perhaps if I had a newer/better/more expensive DAC in my signal chain the differences may not be as striking?

Also, downsampling 24/96 downloaded flacs to Redbook and burning them to cd gives again a readily apparent difference when compared to the commercially bought Redbook version, again on the same system etc.

And this to me tells me that the 24/96 is mastered differently. That’s’ been happening since CD’s, and it is a maddening confound!! :)

First gen CD’s were often more compressed and with less channel separation than LPs, then SACDs came out, and they had clearly different spectrum profiles, showing that the mastering engineers had made significant changes.

The only way to really tell today whether or not your DAC is performing better or differently with High Rez is to do exactly what you did. Take a high rez source, down sample it and compare the two.

“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.