The white album in high resolution

Daniel Cooper
Editor-in-chief

For all my airs and graces, there are a number of topics for which I am a philistine and proud. Take high-end audio. For my ears without culture, there is little difference between your expensive cans and the Bluetooth buttons on my phone. This often happens at trade shows, where people slam a pair of headphones over your skull and turn up the volume so loudly that you are almost deaf.

I was once in a very private demonstration for a company that was selling hi-fi systems worth several hundred thousand dollars. Representatives showed their latest speakers, worth $ 20,000, who could easily beat the speakers of his closest rival, also worth $ 20,000. We spent hours sitting listening to the same songs performed by President A and then by President B.

Sitting there for hours, I was stunned by the wise old audio magazines, nodding their heads in agreement. Did I live on another planet, become deaf or did the two units have exactly the same sound? As much as I wanted, I resisted the urge to point out that the emperor was not wearing clothes and was away at the first opportunity.

Recently, my friend Alan insisted that I listen to the freshly remastered version of The Beatles. White album. And that I had to listen to it in high resolution. Insist that I try it on the Fiio M9 lossless audio player and its FH5 in-ear monitors. And, madly enough, I came to a revelation, because the two together are really great.

Nobody needs me to talk about quality the White album (yes, I know it's the Beatles The Beatles) is, especially in 2019. The stereo remixes of Giles (son of George) Martin are beautiful and clear, with a wonderful depth. If there is a surprise, it is that the music is not more subtle, it remains as agitated as the mono version.

I've done a lot of A / B testing between the 2018 version of FLAC on the M9 and the 30th anniversary edition I already had. And there is really a significant difference: the bass is deeper, the voice is clearer, the whole thing is much more immersive. With this particular material, and in this format, the difference between regular resolution audio and high-end sound is obvious.

The white album is still a sort of Rorschach test of his musical tastes; you can feel the creative tension in the band in the music. This stings and attracts you at the same time as the album advance, difficult and easy. And it is also the moment when it is clear that George Harrison can no longer be considered the third most talented member of the group.

I loved my time with the M9 so much that I started searching to see if there was any other high resolution music hidden in my system. I had (somehow) tore the Tron the inheritance FLAC soundtrack, and had Rob Dougan 22nd Sunday of ordinary time in ALAC. And so I started comparing against each other to see if I could tell the difference.

There were times when I could choose sounds that I had never heard before on those songs, and it was breathtaking. You can hear hammers hitting ropes that were never available before and wind players take a breath. It's stunning.

One of the reasons I was skeptical about high end audio was because I had thought that digital audio was digital and therefore lossless. Companies that sell expensive Ethernet solutions to gold-plated Ethernet leaders for expensive music systems are benefiting from the ignorance of digital audio. For the same reason, I never needed a good DAC (digital to analog) converter.

I had also thought that the price of high-end music equipment was designed to take advantage of people whose children had left home. Not to mention that, as research shows that the pleasure of people drinking wine is based on the price they paid, that's part of the problem. But the Fiio M9 costs only $ 300, and the earphones $ 260, which makes it cheaper than the cheaper DAP of Astell and Kern.