After years of niche positioning in the music world, high-resolution audio finally hit the mainstream thanks to a huge raft of support from streaming services (such as Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon Music) and products (from phones to most digital hi-fi components) alike.
But should you care about hi-res audio? If you want the best digital music experience possible or at least better sound quality than you’re currently used to (and why wouldn’t you?), then yes; hi-res audio is definitely worth investigating.
It can be a daunting prospect. After all, what exactly constitutes hi-res audio, what do all the different file formats and numbers mean, where can you download or stream these higher-quality files, and what devices do you need to play it?
Where, I hear you ask, do you even begin? That’s where this handy guide comes in to take you through the ins and outs of hi-res audio. By the end, you will know everything you need to know (and then some) and will be well on your way to enjoying your new and improved musiclistening lifestyle.
What is high-resolution audio?
Unlike high-definition video, there’s no single universal standard for hi-res audio. 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” .
In its simplest terms, hi-res audio tends to refer to digital music files that have a higher sampling frequency and/or bit depth than CD, which is specified at 16-bit/44.1kHz.
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. 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. Hi-res audio files usually use a sampling frequency of 96kHz or 192kHz at 24-bit, but you can also have 88.2kHz
