1. “High Resolution Audio” is meaningless and misleading

It is widely accepted that the more bits you have in a digital system, from 16 to 24 for example, the additional levels give finer resolution and more accurate reproduction. However according to Benchmark's John Siau, if the system is properly dithered the discrete levels don't really exist. Even at the lowest levels a piano decay will sound just like the original but with added noise. All the increased bit depth buys you is increased signal to noise or dynamic range. “I like to do an 8 bit demonstration where I play a 3 kHz tone that is 30 dB lower than the dither noise of -45 dB.. An FFT analysis shows that the tone is distortion-free..”

—Stereophile Oct 2018

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