New Order albums in Hi-Res

Are these burnable to CDr? Or do you have to link your PC to your Hi Fi?

So how do we know these are from high quality original tapes and not just someone upsampling their CDs? You can take from CD source and just convert to 24-bit 96k and they will still have the lower quality of 16bit 44k ---

Thanks. Would it be rude of me to ask what equipment you've listened to them on? I think I read that some phone apps now come with the ability to play High Res stuff... And do you think if you took a "pepsi challenge" on these Vs the 2008 remasters, would you be able to spot the difference?

NotAMod wrote: Indeed. But then, how do we know any Hi-Res files available anywhere aren't upsampled? Warners have done Hi-Res files with The Smiths back catalogue and numerous other very famous bands on their roster. I don't think these are fake but happy to concede that if evidence to the contrary was found.

Yes: all recent-ish NIN releases, some of which were issued as 24/96 (Ghosts in a limited fashion, Hesitation Marks) some at 24/48 (How To Destroy Angels - Welcome Oblivion), are not upsampled, they were released in HD from day one, and you can determine this quite easily using software to plot a spectrogram and see the audio information outside of the 16/44.1 space.

I say "easily" because IMHO telling the difference by actually listening to them is nigh-on impossible.

With remasters, there's some argument that it's worthwhile to issue hi res files, if the remaster was done in a higher domain, and/or if the sources were analogue, and/or if the new mixing/mastering was done on an analogue mixing desk...

In this case, without having heard them yet, I'd be 99.9% sure that these are upsamples of the remasters and there's no audio content outside of the 16/44.1 (or at best, 24/48) space.

Debaser wrote: And do you think if you took a "pepsi challenge" on these Vs the 2008 remasters, would you be able to spot the difference?

I'm certain I couldn't, at least.

For anyone who actually wants to, you *must* do so in a controlled environment and using an (at least) double-blind experiment, ideally using an XXY test. The "squishyball" software can be used to help with this for what it's worth, on Linux hosts at least (no idea if/how it is built for Windows). Description of the XXY test (from the squishyball manual):

"X/X/Y testing is a form of A/B/X testing in which the order of all samples is randomized and the position of the 'X' sample is not known ahead of time to be in the third position. In each trial, the user selects which of sample 1, 2 or 3 is believed to be the sample that is different from the other two. This test is useful for determining if any differences are audible between two samples and to what confidence level. It is a stronger version of the A/B/X test that eliminates sample order bias."

JD Hi-Res

Someone on here did a comprehensive review of these 2015 hi-res reissues last year, I know because I bought Republic from Qobuz on the strength of it.

Jake A wrote: Someone on here did a comprehensive review of these 2015 hi-res reissues last year, I know because I bought Republic from Qobuz on the strength of it.

Yes. Note that we're talking apples and oranges here; there are clearly audible differences between the original and the 2015 remasters, at the same frequency and bit-depth (16/44.1); the source audio is different. Whereas here we're talking about whether the hi-res files on qobuz (24/96 I think?) are distinguishable from the CD-quality remasters available elsewhere, the source audio is the same.