Can digital audio playback be improved by resolutions greater than 16/44.1?

Here is a recent scientific paper that gathers together many reputable high-res audio tests in a meta-analysis. The main conclusions (taken from the abstract) are:

"Results showed a small but statistically significant ability of test subjects to discriminate high resolution content, and this effect increased dramatically when test subjects received extensive training."


The link isn't working when I tried it.

A couple of things: first, the reference to the "many reputable tests" - is a surprise. I have to come across even one for hi res that does a decent job of doing level matched blind AB, leave alone a full protocol ABX, so where are these many "reputable" tests hiding? It would be useful to see one with a complete description.

Second of course is that what does discrimination mean in this case? In addition to correctly(statistically) picking out the difference, is there also an indication that a statistically adequate/significant percent of testers also expressed a preference for the hi res version? Those that did not, or those that said either version is fine with them - if these form a large part of the sample, what does that convey?
PS: never mind the link, I found another way to the summary report. And came across para 4.2 there that lays down all the issues identified with the "reputable" tests that need to be addressed for better conclusions in future! Or did I read 4.2 wrong?

I also thought I will see if Hydrogen Audio has discussed this report; and why am I not surprised at:
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,112204.0.html
I haven't read the entire thread, just enough to get a good sense of it: Shannon Nyquist applied to save resources here as well!:D

Already discussed.
Where?


The search sucks on this site. Asking where is futile.


Intermodulation distortion was identified as a potential bias in three studies that, as far as I can see, were not used in the meta-analysis. See Table 2B and the second last para of section 2.4. Studies 25, 60 and 61 do not appear in Table 2.

You are missing the point. It doesn't matter if a couple of the studies factored in IM. It matters that the meta-analysis never considers qualitative differences in favor of Hi-res music, only "differences". Therefore those that do not take IM into consideration could very well be the result of IM. But even more than that, my question was

"Do you believe digital audio, outside of mastering/production techniques, can be improved by playback resolutions greater than 16/44.1?"

Not that by the barest of margins differences can be detected when put through meta-analysis, only that it can be "improved". The study you cite, by its very conclusions, has found no improvements, only "differences". It has no bearing on this thread.

It is puzzling why so much engineering effort has been/is being poured into hi res, and endless hours spent in promoting it including even doing meta-analsyses of these promotional efforts(!!!), and then the hours spent in saying that it is pointless.

I doubt that so much has been spent by so many on so little in any other field - to tweak a Churchillian phrase!

One only needs to look at the technical summation of the Reiss meta-analysis vs the press release to see what is at work here:

Paper:
In summary, these results imply that, though the effect is perhaps small and difficult to detect, the perceived fidelity of an audio recording and playback chain "is affected" by operating beyond conventional consumer oriented levels. Furthermore, though the causes are still unknown, this perceived effect can be confirmed with a variety of statistical approaches and it can be greatly improved through training.

PR:
said Reiss. “Our study finds high-resolution audio has a small but important advantage in its quality of reproduction over standard audio content."

There is absolutely no evidence in the meta-analysis that there is an "advantage in its quality". None. Zero. "Is affected" does not equate to "advantage in its quality". Mr. Reiss is lying in his PR statement. Common sense states that his cherry picking of studies to include in the meta-analysis also suffers the same bias.

IMO the bigger question is what happens when 16/44 components and chipsets are no longer mass produced/cheap and all that is available for integration/assembly are hi res capable innards because that is all that is being made. Can Sonos integrate these into its boxes with no change in performance, backward compatibility and price - with emphasis on the first two? That to me is a more important question. My guess is yes, but that is just a guess.

And will Sonosnet cope? 32 streams (for the 32 zones) of uncompressed CD-quality data requires 45 Mbps. That should be OK on 802.11n. 24/96 music would require 150 Mbps for 32 streams. ALAC compression halves this to 75 Mbps.

One thing I'm not sure about is whether the mesh network can transmit simultaneously between distinct node pairs. Perhaps the weak link is internet speed for 32 simultaneous streams of music. 75Mbps is at the upper end of speeds now and for the near future. Mind you, anyone with 32 Sonos zones should be able to afford hi-speed internet 🙂

At an application level the mesh can simultaneously handle multiple streams (obviously) but depending on the physical layout the capacity of the shared channel would undoubtedly be an issue for high bandwidth traffic. FWIW the best that I've managed to get out of a single SonosNet hop is ~13Mbps.

As for the chipsets, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything these days which only supports 16/44. We've known since inception that a ZP's internals use 24 bits, so I'd be very surprised if the DAC wasn't already 24-bit capable.

IMO the bigger question is what happens when 16/44 components and chipsets are no longer mass produced/cheap and all that is available for integration/assembly are hi res capable innards because that is all that is being made.

That has been the case for 15-20 years. It's not been a problem so far.

Cheers,

Keith

interesting chat with sonos
http://www.whathifi.com/news/sonos-says-high-res-audio-support-not-roadmap