What is hi-res audio? Everything you need to know

What is hi-res sound? Everything yous demand to know

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At that place'south plenty of confusion concerning standard- and high-resolution (or how-do-you-do-res) audio formats, but it's well worth knowing the difference. That'south considering the sound quality of the music you listen to can accept a huge impact on your listening experience, and could affect your selection of which streaming service to use.

If you lot're bothered about wearing the all-time-sounding headphones or owning a great set of hullo-fi speakers, y'all owe it to yourself to experience your favorite music in hi-res. Read on to find out why the quality of your streamed audio really matters — and what all the various terms actually mean.

Hi-res audio explained

What is high resolution in terms of sound? Just put, it'southward anything that is better than CD. For a longer definition, the Digital Entertainment Group, Consumer Electronics Association and The Recording Academy, together with record labels, describes it as "lossless sound that is capable of reproducing the full range of audio from recordings that accept been mastered from better than CD quality music sources."

CD-quality is specified at sixteen-fleck/44.1kHz and a high-resolution audio file has a greater bit depth (unremarkably upwards to 24-chip) and a higher sampling frequency (typically up to 96kHz or 192kHz). The more information (or greater resolution) in an audio file, the better the sound quality output will be when streamed through compatible hi-fi equipment.

Quality matters

Guy on sofa wearing headphones playing air guitar — (Epitome credit: Shutterstock)

With then much swell music content at our fingertips, choosing a music streaming service is ofttimes more a question of how easy an app is to utilise or how well integrated the service is with your wireless speakers or streaming component. And for some music listeners, sound quality has taken a bit of a back seat.

Plenty of music fans wonder whether listening to high-resolution audio is really worth information technology. But for those passionate about hearing their favorite tunes through the best headphones or traditional howdy-fi separates systems on full-range speakers, annihilation less than the highest-quality digital music file can seem disrespectful to the creative person(s) as well equally the art of the recording and production processes.

To audiophiles, being able to hear every nuanced element within a recording in the very all-time quality available is paramount to the overall musical feel and level of enjoyment. In the aforementioned style that watching HDR, 4K or 8K content on one of the best TVs can deliver a far more than involving and immersive viewing experience over standard definition video, listening to music in hi-res brings the listener closer to their favorite bands, and often brings most a greater feeling of connectedness to an artist and their output.

Is streaming improve than CD?

When Spotify launched its streaming service in 2006, not anybody was happy with its lower-than-CD-quality output — its information streams max out at 320kbps, which is around a quarter of that of CD specified at 1,411kbps.

While these smaller file sizes enabled music streaming to get off the footing and was less troublesome for bandwidth-express network infrastructures at the time, fans of quality audio were less than satisfied.

Spotting an opportunity and a motion away from music file downloads, lossless services from Qobuz (2007) and then Tidal (2015) arrived, offer CD-quality streams and higher to meet audiophile demand.

Today, Apple Music and Amazon Music likewise offer lossless and hi-res streaming services simply despite its longevity — and its position as 1 of the most popular music streaming providers — Spotify currently has no better audio quality option on offer.

For reasons best known to itself, Amazon refers to lossless CD-quality content every bit HD and calls annihilation better Ultra Hard disk.

Loftier-resolution specs

In terms of looking out for high-resolution streams from your music service and making sure you're getting the very best sound quality, y'all desire to pay attention to the file'due south bitrate. The more bits that are specified, the greater the level of information contained in the audio signal and the bigger quality spring you lot'll get in your music when played on compatible equipment. Also, the college the frequency, the more than times per second the audio betoken is being sampled.

Typically a 24-scrap/192kHz high-resolution sound file is transferred at a rate of nine,216kbps, which is around vi times greater than CD.

Audio file formats defined

WAV (Waveform Audio File): An uncompressed lossless file format that CDs are encoded in.
AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format): Apple's uncompressed lossless alternative to WAV.
FLAC (Gratuitous Lossless Audio Codec): Popular hi-res lossless audio format for music downloads and storage. Non supported by Apple.
ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec): Apple's own hi-res lossless sound format compatible with iOS and Apple Music.
DSD (Direct Stream Digital): The hi-res lossless format showtime used be Super-Audio CDs (SACD).
MQA (Chief Quality Authenticated): A lossless format that uses a sophisticated compression packaging process to pack and unpack large audio files to enable efficient data stream transfers. The format is used by Tidal on its hi-res Masters.

Every bit a former editor of the U.M.'s Hello-Fi Choice magazine, Lee is passionate near all kinds of audio tech and has been providing sound communication to enable consumers to make informed buying decisions since he joined Which? magazine as a product tester in the 1990s. Lee covers all things audio for Tom's Guide, including headphones, wireless speakers and soundbars and loves to connect and share the mindfulness benefits that listening to music in the very all-time quality can bring.