here my test and my doubts:
I compared the same album in two different mode:
1-played on my CD player Linn mimik (original CD, the quality is 16/44KHZ)
2-played on raspberry(volumio of course)+hifiberry the same album but ripeed in HD quality (24/88.1KHZ). I used Spenk tool to confirm this is not a fake HD album (ex normal 16/44kkhz ripped ad higher bitrate)
[b]
The strange thing is that the CD version is very very better (ok othe cd player is a good piece) but the difference is huge.[/b]
I do another similar test using another original CD and HD track at 24/192khz
Same result!
so I do a verification: I ripped one CD on flac file at 16/44. Compared FLAC and CD. Result: no big differences
So now, where is the problem ?
HIFIBERRY is not so good at high bitrate ?
Raspberry board is too slow and the interpolation FAST setting cause this lack of quality ?
other ?
I have a Raspberry Pi with an HifiBerry DAC (both the older one for the B and the newer one for the B+) and I am very happy. I bought the first one a couple of months ago to explore what difference HD audio and a better DAC would/could make.
I have bought a couple of test albums from HD Tracks, some samplers, and some actual albums like Eagles’ “Hotel California” [96/24] and Pink Floyd’s “The Division Bell” [96/24] and they all sound great.
But plain, uncompressed 41.1/16 from CD does sound very well too, as does some compressed music streamed over AirPlay (but a little less so). A well-recorded, well-engineered album with great music will sound great if encoded correctly in most formats. Needless to say, the rest of your system counts as well.
Direct comparisons of the same track are very hard to do well, there are many discussion about this on the internet, no need to repeat them here.
On the other hand, your ears don’t lie: if you come across something that sounds bad, then there must be some problem somewhere.
How exactly did you get the HD track ? You said you ripped it, how ? How does it sound bad ?