What Is Hi-Fi Audio, and Should You Pay More for It?

[SEAWOLF97]

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https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-hi-fi-audio/

[HCSGuy]

Great article - I especially liked the link to the listening test to see if you can hear the difference between 128Kbps MP3, 320Kbps MP3, and Uncompressed WAV:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

I find it ironic that the (2015) article is about Jay-Z backing Hi-Rez audio streaming, yet his music was the hardest for me to hear differences among the algorithms. Frankly, any of the rock/pop choices were tough for me, but the classical was easy. Surprisingly, the Susan Vega clip from Tom's Diner fooled me as well, as I picked 320Kbps. Kudo's to the engineers:)

I did the test as most listeners would - airpods/bluetooth to my PC. I would be interested to test again with music I like an know, through a really first class pair of headphones.

Anyway, give it a shot:)

[Mr. Widget]

The writers were looking at the problem from the mass market point of view where a Sonos speaker is considered hi-fi. Like everyone else on this forum I am listening to a system that most civilians wouldn’t recognize. I mean heck the speakers are the size of small refrigerators.

For me paying for hi-Rez is a no brainer. I use a high quality streamer and DAC as a source. There are also other options when forced to listen to Lo Rez. My Harman built music streamer has Clari-Fi built in and it definitely makes low Rez sound much better than straight up Lo Rez... luckily there is Tidal and plenty of choice on that platform.


Widget