Tony, this comes up frequently and you should be able to find plenty of opinion in posts within the last two years. Some instruments show compression artifacts more than others. You need good equipment, a good listening environment and good ears to hear the differences. If you are producing commercial recordings, the audiophile version makes a difference.

The 'regular' version uses .WMA files. I don't know the specs but they seem to me to be comparable to a 198 MP3. The compression is about 11 to 1. The audiophile version uses files of 44.1, 16-bit, or in other words CD quality.

Regardless of audiophile or not, the farther you stray from recommended tempo and the Elastique algorithm works harder, the more you risk hearing artifacts. Also, try unchecking some of the speed-up options in Preferences, RealTracks. I have a fast i7 and I even turn some off to get the best quality I can.

BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.