High res music
- Thread starter Curtis
- Start date
Del monaco
Del Monaco
Exactly. Not worth the faff.
geetee1972
pfm Member
My understanding is that Tidal only offers up to 16bit/44.1khz whereas Qobuz will offer some albums up to 24bit/192khz.
I’ve downloaded a few High Res albums (I.e. 24bit) and compared them to the bit perfect rips from red book CD, in particular Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Stevie Wonder’s Musiquarium and both sound noticeably better than the 16 bit version. Whether this is the recording or something to do with how I originally ripped the red book CD I couldn’t say but my experience of the high res. Versions is that they are better. And yes I am aware that the information on these high res files lies outside the audible spectrum, but that doesn’t mean that that information doesn’t change how you hear the audible spectrum, which we know it does.
I have tried all three. Tidal uses MQA which is a contentious way of compressing high res but not losslessly, and may degrade cd res stuff, and for which you would need an MQA DAC to retrieve some of what the MQA compression loses. So I was not a fan. Not very friendly to classical music and jazz. But Tidal Connect is clever. Amazon HD has no way of guaranteeing HD or any resolution under Windows as it doesn’t take exclusive control of Windows Audio, and they reserve the right to reduce the quality transmitted when it suits them. So I was not a fan. Which leaves Qobuz. Genuine HI Res and CD quality, a vast catalogue, a decent app, local storage for offline use, even better when you partner it with Roon. Amazingly cheap - 41p a day. People worry about “not supporting the artists” but many seem to be doing multimillion pound deals for their back catalogue and have many other sources of income like concerts which you will have more money to go to when this plague is over.
boneman
pfm Member
That's cool! Thanks for the link.
boneman
pfm Member
Sorry if this may sound a stupid question but are the hi-res versions upsampled? Or do they go back to the tapes and build it to hi-res? I ask because I thought redbook was the ceiling for older music.
uncl_nigel
pfm Member
I have had two free prolonged access periods to Tidal (people forgetting their codes in my equipment - both times terminated with a software update to said kit) with a Moon Mind180 and a dCS Rossini. I found the sound was often a little harsh (everything is relative) compared to my own files and am unconvinced by MQA.
I have not tried streaming from Qobuz but have bought quite a few albums from their periodic "promotional" offers.
I also buy a lot from Bandcamp.
Personally, all others things being equal (mastering etc), I appreciate the difference between 16 and 24 bit PCM (more than between 96 and 192kHz) and love the DSD rips of my SACDs.
But good music in CD res is always better than mediocre music in ultra-high res... Remember the Not the nine o'clock news parody music video - "nice video, shame about the song"?
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I have not tried streaming from Qobuz but have bought quite a few albums from their periodic "promotional" offers.
I also buy a lot from Bandcamp.
Personally, all others things being equal (mastering etc), I appreciate the difference between 16 and 24 bit PCM (more than between 96 and 192kHz) and love the DSD rips of my SACDs.
But good music in CD res is always better than mediocre music in ultra-high res... Remember the Not the nine o'clock news parody music video - "nice video, shame about the song"?
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Most definitely - the Rossini sound quality has sky-rocketed since it got the Nordost QX4, QBase8 and Frey-2 mains treatment
geetee1972
pfm Member
Honestly no idea.
Pedro83
pfm Member
I've heard these and yes they're good (not sure there are any bad sounding versions), but they don't hold up to Rumours 45 RPM, or Japanese pressing of Musiquarium.
This HiRes malarky is more often than not a con, just like MQA. Mix/Master will always be superior: I'd take a 320 AAC of a well mastered credited album than any unknown HiRes in the sense it isn't clear who is responsible for x y and z.
I cannot hear any benefit going higher than 16/44, maybe I'm too old.
andrews
pfm Member
In general Tidal is/was better for pop and Qobuz for classical (with alot of overlap).
To my ears CD resolution Qobuz sounds better than Tidal
Qobuz has many albums that are HiRes (> CD), which are great, although I sometimes get droputs on such big files .
My Understanding is that Tidal has some tricks with Roon (MQA) - which many seem to prefer
I think many people subscribe to both
JensenHealey
pfm Member
You are right on the nerve there. HiFi News has printed lots of reviews of so called hires releases which are nothing of the sort - they are simply 16/44 recordings resampled to a higher bit depth and have no extra frequency range.
A lot of stuff is re-released that has been re-mixed from so-called masters - but no-one tells you what quality the masters were. New digital masters may well be 24 bit. But older ones are not, and old analogue tape are getting very old now, and also unlikely to have content that can be revealed with more resolution. So half the time you just listening to another engineers mix or mastering.
I use Quboz as a streaming service via Roon. I have 'tried' to compare different versions of the same stuff (Quboz make different versions selectable) and darned if I can tell the difference. Anyway, ultimately, it is the music that is more important - not the shiny wax coating. And there are good mathematical reasons for 16/44 being perfectly adequate for normal human beings.
John Phillips
pfm Member
It certainly comes down to what you value from the hobby. For me too I find that once the container (the coding, the resolution, etc.) becomes large enough and of good enough quality, what then matters most to me is the quality of what it contains (the performance, the recording, the mastering).
And experience suggests that some of the more prized audiophile qualities in sound are perhaps more to do with recording and mastering techniques than the size of the container in which the music is delivered.
boneman
pfm Member
This was an interesting article on the subject:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-pc-audio,3733-18.html
It's a few years old though. I'm interested in the Chord philosiphy of using the long filters with the m-scaler upsampling to smooth out the waves from stepped to what would look more like a continuous analogue wave. Expensive kit though so I'll likely not be trying it anytime soon!
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-pc-audio,3733-18.html
It's a few years old though. I'm interested in the Chord philosiphy of using the long filters with the m-scaler upsampling to smooth out the waves from stepped to what would look more like a continuous analogue wave. Expensive kit though so I'll likely not be trying it anytime soon!
I listen mostly to classical music, and Qobuz gives me the option of many new releases in high res, and I always choose hires. A perfect copy of the master; what more could you want. But for historical stuff, “hi res” is a minefield, and can only really give you high resolution tape hiss, wow, flutter and oxide loss from a quite possibly a copy master of dubious provenance. DSD is pointless IMO. There are almost no recordings that are DSD all the way through. Many originate on tape. SACD was a transient way of distributing what were in many cases 24/96 masters (cf, Linn Records). Now you can download or stream the master itself, there’s no point.
sq225917
Bit of this, bit of that
@boneman, there is no step in digital files to smooth out, that is simply an incorrect way of looking at the values stored for each sample. The reconstructed music signal traces a perfectly smooth curved path between samples values, increasing the number of samples by interpolating additional values between each sample does nothing to improve this. All it does is allow the filtering to take place outside the audioband so there's no fold back into the audible range.
tuga
Legal Alien
Unless one is using a NOS DAC, in which case this happens:
Audio Note DAC 2.1x Signature, waveform of 1kHz sinewave (1ms time window).
https://www.stereophile.com/content...t-dac-21x-signature-da-processor-measurements
nostromo
pfm Member
Red Book is best in my experience too, especially if the recording/editing/mastering or whatever hasn't flattened the dynamics out of it (loudness wars). Streaming Hi-Res from Qobuz sometimes causes dropouts and ruins the moment. With Red Book (local files) I find the pace and rhythm is better (faster), with Hi-Res of the same recording, they somehow sounds less punchy. A few years ago whenever I heard a track that really wowed me, I used to chase the Hi-Res version, expecting even more wow-factor. In every case I can remember, finding the Hi-Res was a disappointment. The Red Book was the best all along. The Rumours album has been mentioned above, the Hi-Res to my ears lacks the pace and attack of the Red Book. It could of course be my equipment or ears.