From Wikipedia: The Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA), in cooperation with the Consumer Electronics Association, DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group, and The Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing, formulated the following definition of high-resolution audio in June 2014: "lossless audio capable of reproducing the full spectrum of sound from recordings which have been mastered from better than CD quality (48 kHz/20-bit or higher) music sources which represent what the artists, producers and engineers originally intended."[3] Previously, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) in March 2014 and the Japan Audio Society (JAS) in June 2014 published definitions, requiring at least 96 kHz/24-bit with the inclusion that a “Listening evaluation process is required by each applicant.”People can debate endlessly about whether a resolution is "high" or not. (Is 4K high? Or does it have to be 8k to be high?)
CDs were designed by audio engineers to be "high resolution."
There will always be some difference between digital and analog things (think a beautifully shot Kubrick film versus a "high resolution" digitally recorded movie today). Likewise, there *is* a difference between CDs and vinyl, at least to a significant number of people's ears.
BUT, the compact disc format was designed to be high resolution, taking over 44,000 individual snapshots of an audio signal *each second* and recording them. Do you think your ear can resolve and process more than 44,000 sounds per second ? (it cannot). The "problem" with CD sound is not its resolution (sampling frequency). It's just something inherent in the digital vs audio world that won't be solved by taking 100,000 or 1,000,000 samples each second. The digital reproduction will always sound different than an analog audio (which is how our ears here). And likewise an analog recording is always going to sound different than audio you hear live, unrecorded.
Calling something "high" resolution or not is a bit arbitrary. But CDs were designed by audio engineers to be high resolution, and there is a reason 16-bit audio is the standard. With all the computing advancements, it would be very easy to have 32-bit audio as a standard, and wouldn't cost much more today. But it isn't done (despite such devices existing for niche purchasers). Why? Because there is no need to sample more frequently than the 44,000 / sec which engineers already defined as sufficient to reproduce sounds digitally based on the Nyquist theorem.
Or to quote the following:
High bitrate audio is overkill: CD quality is still great
Eager to shell out a bunch of cash for hi-res audio? Save your cash, says Chris. The sample rate and bit depth of CD quality audio can outresolve the limits of your hearing.www.soundguys.com
So calling a CD low resolution doesn't really make sense. And "raising" its resolution isn't going to do anything meaningful to the audio.
TL;DR CD quality is the digital standard. If you want something better try vinyl or go to a live concert
I was referring to high resolution using these industry definitions, which specifically state that for something to be labeled high resolution, it must be “better than CD quality.” I certainly agree that CDs sound fantastic and the existence of hi-res doesn’t make CDs obsolete or unnecessary.
