Sony's tiny high-resolution audio player might be the next big thing.

As for high-res music files of 48 kHz/24 bit or better, it's a safe bet you don't have all that many in your collection, so the good news is a great set of headphones will make standard resolution (CD quality) FLAC or Apple Lossless files sound better than ever. The better the headphone, the more detail and resolution it can retrieve from the sound of your music. Frankly, you'll be throwing your money away if you spring for the player, and pair it with just a so-so set of headphones. So before you invest in an überplayer, buy a really decent set of headphones, and they will make a bigger, more noticeable difference in sound quality than a high-res music player. The catch: you need a great set of headphones to fully appreciate what a high-res music player can do. I've tested or heard all of them, and I think they offer significant sound improvement over your smart phone. Hifiman started selling high-res portable music players 5 years ago, and then Astell & Kern, Cowon, FiiO, Sony - and just recently Pono piled on.

High-resolution music players have gotten a lot of press over the last year or two, but they aren't new. It also presents Audio-CD quality downloads from the same album, same mastering session, etc as the Hi-Res audio, so you can have an intuitive comparison between CD and high-resolution music.Audeze LCD-X headphones with the Cowon Plenue 1 music player Soundkeeperrecording provides Hi-Res audio download free in WAV format.

This site offers only 24-bit/96 kHz FLAC sample audio downloads and these files are fully original and legal. DCSĭCS offers only WAV music downloads, and you can have the recommended tracks downloaded to give your system a great workout or just purely enjoy the fabulous recorded performances. You can download sample FLAC and WAV in 24-bit/96 kHz, 24-bit/192 kHz files, 24-bit/352kHz and DSD 64, DSD 128, and DSD 256. This site is in fact a test request initiated by 2L the Nordic Sound to do the evaluation of different lossless audio formats. And it's easy to find a huge collection of 24 bit FLAC music and download the FLAC music free here. Internet Archive is a digital library that archives all kinds of digital materials and provides free public access to these files. Tips: These are not particularly music download websites, and most of them offer sample downloads only.

Hi res audio