high-resolution audio - technical definition

Digital audio formats that have better sound quality because of higher sampling rates taken of the original sound waves. SACD and DVD-Audio are two high-resolution audio formats that were designed for better sound than CDs, but never took off (see SACD and DVD-Audio).

Convenience Over Quality
Instead of embracing sound quality superior to CDs, users chose the convenience of MP3 players that deliver inferior quality because the digital audio data are so highly compressed. Just how inferior depends on the quality of the stereo system and the user's sensitivity to sound.

However, there is a choice in audio resolution when ripping CDs to MP3 and other digital audio formats. The user can choose how much compression should be applied to the original data by adjusting the bit rate. The higher the bit rate, the more data are transferred per second of audio, and the better the quality. The down side is that the greater the bit rate, the larger the resulting file. See sampling, DVD-Audio, SACD, FLAC and Apple Lossless.