What is Hi-Res Audio?

What is High Resolution Audio?

High Resolution Audio (aka Hi-Res Audio or High Res Audio) is the latest develeopment in high quality sound reproduction for those looking to achieve the best music experience possible from their personal/residential sound system.

What is a High Res Audio Player? (or Source)

The main source (or media player) for Hi-Res Audio will normally be a streaming device or downloadbale files onto a hard drive to be played directly through the system from your desktop computer.

Streaming devices can include your smartphone, tablet or portable audio player, or files could be downloaded to a professional AV receiver.

What hardware do I need for Hi-Res Audio?

The Japan Audio Society has created a Hi-Res Audio standard which spells out the requirements for High Resolution Audio equipment. Approved products will bear the Hi-Res Audio logo.

The equipment - such as loudspeakers, amplification, processors and media players - needs to support a sampling frequency of 96kHz to 192kHz at 24 bit.

Will Hi-Res Audio transmit over ethernet or wifi?

With a robust, high performance network in place (Cat6 or 4G for example), streaming high res audio over ethernet or a wifi network is unlikely to experience any problems.

High Resolution Audio files can also be be 'packed' using MQA (Master Quality Authentictaed) software to provide high-quality lossless sound in a much more streamable format.

Is there a downside to Hi-Res Audio?

One issue with considering hi-res audio content is the significantly greater file sizes (though these can be overcome using MQA - see above).

A hi-res audio file can easily be in the realms of tens of megabytes in size and, therefore, just a small number of audio tracks can easily take up a lot of space on your media player or streaming device, should digital storage capacity be limited.

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