NAIM records using different masters for different resolutions

[peter73]

I have two Naim albums by Antonio Forcione ("Tears of Joy", *Heartplay") in both 24-bit downloads and CD. The master used for the CD is noticeably inferior to the one used for the HD Downloads. The difference has nothing to do with the difference in bit depth and sample rate - I can downsample the HD files to CD resolution myself and they still sound much better than the rips from Naim's original CDs. In fact, even mp3s made from the 24-bit files sound much better than the CDs.

 

Are they doing this in order to convince people that HiRes is so much better sounding than CD? I am not questioning this myself but maybe they do if they need to doctor the proof :-)

[firedog]

Is the DR the same on both versions? Sometimes the CD version is more volume compressed which actually makes it sonically inferior.

 

The other question is are they from the the same date? The hi-res could be a later remaster, which could easily make it sound better. This often happens. Not a conspiracy, just an improved sounding version of the album in question.

[peter73]

The dynamic range of both is exactly the same (12).

There is no indication whatsoever on the HD files that these are remasters of the initial release, which is pretty recent anyway. Furthermore - these are available in both 96 and 192 on several legit online shops while it was confirmed to me in a correspondence with Naim that the native master is 24/96, which raises the question where the 192 came from - I really doubt HDTracks or HiResAudio would have up-sampled it themselves.

 

I have no way of knowing the date of the files since these were compressed by the vendor on the date of purchase and I am definitely not buying the 16/44 download just to prove a point :-)