Apple Music boss says 98 percent of people can’t identify lossless audio

Audio Gear Talk Music Services
22

I’m impressed!
Puts to shame needing a decent system then.

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23

I don’t see how 24 bit audio could sound any different than 16 bit audio seeing as hardly any music even uses the 16 bits of dynamic range. Maybe the mastering is different or maybe it’s wishful thinking on the part of ‘audiophiles’?

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24

Well I just wanted to see if I could hear through cheap speakers . Never used headphones.

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25

I used to have an Esoteric and agree with your comments on SACD. I then bought a chord blu and DAC which was head and shoulders above the cd quality of the esoteric. So I wondered if the difference was also to do with the difference in the esoteric player.

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26

Like I said - impressed.
I’ll give it a try one day I think.

27

If you’ve gotten the vaccine, you already got the Bill Gates nano-chip upgrade!

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28

The SACD medium is seriously under-appreciated.

It’s a wonderful, glorious medium that if ‘done right’ can easily eclipse most other mediums.

DSD has the ability to eclipse PCM, if done right:

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29

I agree, it was great to listen to but in the end, for me, vinyl still sounded better on my equipment and cost about the same for albums and I wasn’t prepared to replace everything.

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30

I still listen to vinyl. A lot. It’s’ a great medium :grinning:

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31

Yup, mines also a sign of a misspent youth and a lot can’t be replaced haha.

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32

You just can’t beat spinning vinyl. It’s a beautiful medium :+1:

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33

I think Apple will push spatialised audio and Atmos, which you can easily hear the effect of, rather than hi res.

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34

Not blind. Not level matched. Not even necessarily the same mastering between layers.

[Moderated]

AJ

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35

Have you listened to, and spent time with an Esoteric SACD player?

From your ill-informed comments, I very much doubt it… :sleeping:

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36

And in a level matched, blind ABX comparison, I very much doubt that you statistically could tell the Esoteric apart from many other SACD players and DSD DACs. But we both know that you are not going to do that kind of objective listening test.

AJ

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37

And your point is…?

I used to own a lovely SACD player, the Denon DCD-A100. It sounded great. But I didn’t have to do a ‘blind A-B-X listening test’ to realise that the Esoteric K-01X sounded better than the Denon.

38

The point is that many [Moderated] who claim to hear differences among certain electronics or – as in the title of this thread – lossless and lossy audio have not done the requisite objective testing to show that they can discern those differences. [Moderated]

AJ

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39

So, what’s your stance on this? That ALL electronics sound the same, and that there’s no difference in how various streamers etc sound? That’s complete BS.

I used to own a Denon DNP-720AE streamer. Now, I know for a FACT that my Linn Klimax DS/3 streamer sounds better, or maybe ‘different’ (?) from the Denon.

The same applies to lossless/lossy steams. There is a demonstrable difference. Maybe not in your ‘flat earth’ existence. But in the ‘real world’, the difference is audible. And I’m sure there are many people on this forum who agree with me.

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40

I used to be able to recognise HDCD for some reason on an arcam CD player that decoded it. It was out of sight and every time I thought this sounds better than normal I would check when it had finished. They were often not advertised in an obvious way so I can’t believe it was coincidence.
I listen to such a diverse range now, punk and new music that I wouldn’t remember something to compare it against so I don’t worry about such matters.

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41

HDCD was an amazing advancement on RBCD. It’s just a shame that it lacked traction… :slightly_frowning_face:

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