Other formats include the uncompressed WAV and AIFF formats, DSD (the format used for Super Audio CDs), and the more recent MQA (Master Quality Authenticated). They are 'lossless' as opposed to 'lossy'. They include the popular FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) formats, both of which are compressed but in a way that means that, in theory, no information is lost. That's not all: there are also several different hi-res audio file formats to choose from, all of which have their own compatibility requirements. 50 of the best hi-fi albums for audiophiles.And streaming technologies, like MQA (see below), have found a way to help tackle that. Thankfully, storage is much cheaper than it used to be, so it's easier to get higher-capacity devices. A hi-res file can typically be tens of megabytes in size, and a few tracks can quickly eat up the storage on your device or be cumbersome to stream over your wi-fi or mobile network. Hi-res audio does come with a downside, though: file size. ![]() You can also have 88.2kHz and 176.4kHz files too. Hi-res audio files usually use a sampling frequency of 96kHz or 192kHz at 24bit. The more bits there are, the more accurately the signal can be measured in the first instance, so going from 16-bit to 24-bit can deliver a noticeable leap in quality. Sampling frequency (or sample rate) refers to the number of times samples of the signal are taken per second during the analogue-to-digital conversion process. In its simplest terms, hi-res audio tends to refer to music files that have a higher sampling frequency and/or bit depth than CD, which is specified at 16-bit/44.1kHz. In 2014, the Digital Entertainment Group, Consumer Electronics Association and The Recording Academy, together with record labels, formally defined high-resolution audio as “lossless audio that is capable of reproducing the full range of sound from recordings that have been mastered from better than CD quality music sources". Unlike high-definition video, there’s no single universal standard for hi-res audio. You can download Max for free which will do bit perfect batch conversion of FLAC and pretty much every other popular audio format into Apple lossless format.Sony Walkman (Image credit: Sony) What is high-resolution audio? Or you could do what I do and use iTunes with BitPerfect or something similar to automatically switch the Midi preferences to match the track that's playing. Or check the preferences for Vox and see if it provides an option to change the output settings automatically. In the above example it just sees a 24 bit / 44.1kHz track coming down the USB cable.Ĭhanging your Midi preferences to 16 bit / 44.1kHz should leave the majority of CD quality lossless files unmolested. The extra processing means that some of the original bits might be lost, to be replaced by interpolated bits.Īpart from with the bit perfect test files, where the DAC knows what to expect to find in the track, there's no way for the DAC to tell whether a track started out as 16 bit / 44.1kHz, 24 bit / 352.8kHz or something in between. That will definitely cause a bit perfect test to fail and might even be audible when playing back music. But they're probably enough to cause a bit perfect test to fail.Ĭhanging the sample rate is a different matter. These extra bits probably won't have any audible impact on sound quality, they're just padding and all of the original bits should be retained. I'm pretty sure that UK Macs default to 24 bit / 44.1kHz which means that the Mac is actually inserting a whole bunch of zeros to a typical 16 bit / 44.1kHz CD quality lossless track before sending it on to the DAC. I don't think there's a way to program around this, at least not with recent versions of OS X. The trouble is that Macs always resample to the bit depth and sample rate set in the Midi preferences pane. ![]() If the signal from the computer doesn't match up then it fails the test. The DAC knows what bits to expect from Naim's test files. Bit perfect (as distinct from BitPerfect the product) just means that the DAC receives all of the bits in the original track unmolested.
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