Sounds of science: Japan leads push for high-res audio

Too late. There are already Flac files that do not use compression. It might have worked in the days when people used stereos with two large high quality speakers, but now most people have many low quality speakers surrounding them. Also, many people use a computer or tablet with and HDMI connector as their source, so why buy a Sony player, too?

Too late. There are already Flac files that do not use compression.

People are ripping FLAC files from CDs, remember. The source is still sampled - this new format is higher resolution than what is normally currently available.

Does anybody still care to what Sony do or say?

Does anybody still care to what Sony do or say?

I do!!! All of my headphones, mp3 players, cameras are Sony.

Much like HD television, my guess is the difference between current and hidef will be almost unnoticeable.

-"Does anybody still care to what Sony do or say?"

Me too, have a 20 Years old Sony Stereo., I have had sennheiser and phillips headphones and in the end I stayed with Sony MDR-V6 headphone. BTW I had like 5 Ipods and they sound harsh. Even my Galaxy sounds like garbage.

xandIrules, maybe you don't, but for the millions of PS4, Xperia phones and Sony cam owners, they care.

I have the Xperia Z1 and iphone 5s and I have to say I enjoy the Z1 than any smart phone I've ever had. I was planning to buy the iphone 6 plus but I am going for the Z3 which has "High Resolution Audio".

The hd audio headphones I have is Audio Technica's . It'll make a good combo with the Z3. HD audio is just a better experience IMO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=JjRAQ6AlmII&app=desktop

Hi-def = Bose

Similar discussion was over on the Vinyl vs CD vs Download poll.

Don't know how useful it is if most people can't hear the difference. A truly valid comparison would have blind listening tests on a setup where the tool chain (HW and SW) are as identical as possible until the point they need to differ. I guess that would be after decoding by the code. For vinyl, maybe that would be before or after the preamp. That is, all HW/SW would be identical after the point where the sound is extracted. Otherwise you're comparing the quality of the sound equipment rather than the quality of the format (CD audio, hi-res, or vinyl).

How useful is hi-res audio when most people can't hear tones at CD audio limit of 22 KHz? Any idea?

You can pretty much track how old a person is by how high they can go on the Mosquito Ringtone chart (based on my unofficial tests with one each of pre-teen, teen, 20-something, 40-something, and 50-something). The cutoff was exactly as predicted for each of these persons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_analog_and_digital_recording#Higher_sampling_rates

CD quality audio is sampled at 44.1 kHz (Nyquist frequency = 22.05 kHz) and at 16 bits. Sampling the waveform at higher frequencies and allowing for a greater number of bits per sample allows noise and distortion to be reduced further. DAT can sample audio at up to 48 kHz, while DVD-Audio can be 96 or 192 kHz and up to 24 bits resolution. With any of these sampling rates, signal information is captured above what is generally considered to be the human hearing range.

Work done in 1980 by Muraoka et al. (J.Audio Eng. Soc., Vol 29, pp2–9) showed that music signals with frequency components above 20 kHz were only distinguished from those without by a few of the 176 test subjects (Kaoru & Shogo 2001). ...

http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/

Frequency / Age Range

8khz Everyone, 10khz 60 & Younger, 12khz 50 & Younger, 14khz 49 & Younger, 15khz 39 & Younger, 16khz 30 & younger, 17khz 24 & Younger, 17.4khz 24 & Younger, 18khz 24 & Younger, 19khz 24 & Younger, 20khz 18 & Younger, 21khz 18 & Younger, 22khz 18 & Younger

A quarter of a century after the Walkman made music portable and turned Sony into a household name around the world, the company is hoping to set the agenda again with “high-res” audio.

A QUARTER of a century ago?? You're off by a decade, AFP. The Walkman came out in 1979... 35 years ago.

Fadamor: A QUARTER of a century ago?? You're off by a decade, AFP. The Walkman came out in 1979... 35 years ago.

Would you rather they type 7/20 of a century ago?

Wish them luck! I like high quality music and am almost audiophile but there are much more important things in the whole picture than the HiRes!

For example using it on the go will introduce the outside noise - you need to be in quite place even with well insulated headphones to really delve into the details that HiRes might offer as an extra. Thus for most 192kbps and up MP3 music is enough.

CD quality to HiRes on a good HiFi system also depends not solely on the resolution itself but even on the curtains and (YES) on the cables if you want!

First thing is the HiRes files they ask premium money for should be originally mastered in higher quality!

Seems about time. We've had DVD's for a while now, yet nobody took interest in upping the sampling frequency to take advantage of DVD's 4GB rather than CD's 700MB. Betcha 10 years from now, people will talk about Super Hi-Res music that's just a sampling frequency upping again to take advantage of BluRay's 32GB...

No point in buying this stuff. Nobody hears the difference anyway: http://drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf Only for recording engineers this matters when working in the studio. Once you master it for release as either a CD or higher quality next to nobody (tests say probably nobody) is going to hear the difference between CD-quality and Hires.

Reinaert Albrecht http://drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

Yes! Double-blind testing of listeners of hi-res vs standard CD audio gives same results as chance!