I recently had an exchange on social media talking about high resolution audio and video. One poster insisted that it doesn’t really matter and with audio people are just listening to their equipment. I take a very different view…
A live performance is IMO the closest you will get to seeing and hearing an artist perform. After that we have various degrees of data capture which will deliver a “representation” of the performance, but what you see and hear will be limited by the data capture and the medium you are using. There’s no right or wrong but of course until recently many people have never seen high resolution TV or heard high resolution audio.
With movies, I soon appreciated that Blu Ray was vastly better in terms of quality than standard DVD and standard DVD was better than VHS tape. The viewer was able to literally see more of what was originally filmed. With 4K DVD the quality is again a major jump up, BUT you only really notice this when you are watching back on a compatible TV and I would suggest 55 inches at least. In comparing Blu Ray and 4K film versions the 4K films seem more “film like” and there’s of course significantly more detail.
With audio there’s often a lot of heated debate, but before passing any comment I respectfully suggest people interested in such matters listen to some examples, so they can discuss from a point of actual knowledge! High resolution flac files, DSD and SACD recordings reveal far more of the original recording, so the listener can literally hear more of what the artist created. Of course this kind of reveal shows up the limitations of any original recording as well.
Ultimately its a matter of personal choice but I’m always interested in the best audio and visual representations which IMO create a more enjoyable and satisfying experience. I’m perfectly aware many others will disagree (many will do so without any actual experience of high resolution audio and video) and a lot of folks are perfectly happy listening to mp3 files on their phones!
