The emperor’s new bitrate.

To bludgeon the point home about anything over CD quality being superfluous, we have, from 2008, Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted Into High-Resolution Audio Playback — a study in which professional “golden ears” were subjected to random A/B/X testing of SACD audio which was randomly switched to 16/44.1, and this was consistently undetectable by the trained listeners.

The difference in commercial 96kHz recordings is that they have usually been mastered better, with no loudness wars. But the bitrate is literally useless for the end listener. And if you insist it isn’t, I’ve got some over-the-phone system tweaking to sell you.

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