Why? If it’s just for the few, minor visual changes, there’s apps you can install to change them back (or even just registry hacks).

I’m using both Windows 11 and Apple Music preview, and I have zero issues with either. The original version of AM was incredibly buggy, but it’s become a lot better recently.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of widely available information on what digital resolution albums are recorded/mastered in. There’s plenty of hi-res stuff on Apple Music, but whether it was originally recorded that way, who can tell?

Personally, I think it’s a waste of time anyway. It’s clearly not an important factor even to those who pride themselves on audio quality to keep records of this, and there are very few convincing arguments as to why it even makes an audible difference for consumers.

Anyway, from what I can tell, Coldplay - X&Y and some of their later albums were recorded in hi-res quality and available as such. I can confirm it for Apple Music at least.

It’s not that I refuse to believe stuff like this, it’s that every time someone claims there’s a huge difference, it’s never backed up by anything other than extremely flawed, entirely subjective evidence. I don’t doubt your wife, she may even have the elusive “golden ears” so few of us are blessed with, but if she so easily hears such a massive difference immediately, it should be extremely easy to verify those results scientifically. A test signal should be possible to compare before and after to see if it has improved, or even changed at all. Frequency response graphs should show clear differences in key frequencies. And so on.

Yet this never happens. Actual, reproducible evidence never materializes. Either the person goes silent, or they start attacking blind testing as “flawed methodology” somehow, but never does actual, reliable, scientific data get presented to clearly and irrefutably prove the claim as at least valid, if not objectively true.

This is why, when I hear claims like yours, I instantly dismiss them. I just have no reason to believe it. I’m not calling you a liar, you may both genuinely have experienced what you say, but I have absolutely no reason to take that seriously, more seriously than any claim of anything ever on the internet.