Sony hi res audio recorder mac portable#
With storage space at a premium, there was no way to include hi-res music files on these portable music players. Overnight, any growing momentum toward hi-res music was decimated by Apple’s promise of “a thousand songs in your pocket,” and music fans gobbled up iPods at a dizzying pace. By the time they were becoming more widely available - around 2001 - Apple turned the music-listening world upside down when it released the first iPod. Unfortunately for those first hi-res formats, they were born at exactly the wrong time. At the time, the audio industry tended to use terms like HD Audio and High-Resolution Audio interchangeably to describe these formats, which inevitably caused confusion among consumers. They used proprietary digital files that could only be played back by a limited (and fairly pricey) number of disc-playing devices, and neither developed much of a following outside of die-hard audiophile circles. They both launched within months of each other in the year 2000. The first widely available hi-res formats were Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio. “Hi-res audio” is generally used to describe any digital audio file or format that exceeds the quality of an audio CD. Since its introduction, the audio CD has been a benchmark for digital audio quality. Here’s everything you need to get up to speed on hi-res audio, in plain English so that you can really wrap your head around higher-quality audio formats. But does hi-res audio really sound better?īut what exactly is hi-res audio? What equipment do you need to listen to it? Where can you download or stream it? And does it actually sound better? These are the burning questions for those just hearing about hi-res audio, and we’re here to answer them for you.How can I get music in hi-res audio formats?.Do I need special equipment to listen to hi-res audio?.Which file types are used for hi-res audio?.What does the term “hi-res audio” mean?.