Roon already lets us decide how MQA content is treated for quality classification — whether it counts as hi-res, as a lower tier, or not at all. I would like the same control for 24-bit/44.1kHz (and 24/48) content.
The problem. A large and growing share of releases marketed as hi-res at 24/44.1 are simply 16-bit masters padded to 24 bits. Not upsampled — just zero-padded in the low byte, with no additional information in the file. Spectrograms confirm this in most of the cases I have been able to check. Since Roon classifies anything above 16/44.1 as Hi-Res, this material floods the Hi-Res filter and undermines its actual purpose: finding releases that genuinely carry more resolution than CD. Searching for a real hi-res version of an album means wading through results that offer nothing over the CD layer.
What I am asking for.
A setting, mirroring the existing MQA options, controlling how 24/44.1 and 24/48 content is classified: as Hi-Res, as a separate intermediate tier, or as Lossless / CD quality.
Focus should honour that setting, so the Hi-Res filter can exclude this material.
An optional but stronger version. For local files Roon already performs audio analysis, so it could determine effective bit depth — checking whether the eight least significant bits are zero throughout the file. That is a deterministic test, not a heuristic, and it would let Roon identify padded releases automatically rather than relying on declared metadata. For streaming content, where only catalogue metadata is available ahead of playback, the setting in point 1 would still apply.
Yes, well, those are different cases, in most of which they’ve at least made an effort to upsample, but 44/24 is, in my opinion, a real plague in searches on Qobuz, etc.
If they wanted to implement a system like “Loseless Audio Checker” or similar, not to mention more advanced systems with spectrograms, etc., then they’d also be able to understand the individual cases, and perhaps… but here I’m really digressing and asking too much, the ability to rate individual albums as “Fake Hi-Res,” but there’s really no need to go that far. I think the ability to handle 44/24 like MQA would already be enough and would cover the vast majority of fakes.
Not much of an effort; it just takes a format conversion tool in both cases.
I’m not sure about that. People reported 192 tracks that looked like up-sampled MP3s. Besides, I believe many people think 44.1/24 or 48/x are not hi-res enough and don’t bother with them.
ok, but in any case the issue with 44-24 is that it is a format where genuine files are effectively the minority, this is because it is the minimum format necessary to obtain the hi-res audio stamp, given that it is the first step above CD quality, the other versions would still need verification while as regards 44-24 even if they were treated exactly like 44-16 I see only advantages.
Spectrograms don’t highlight differences between 44.1/16 and 44.1/24 recordings since both are frequency limited to the same 22.05kHz upper limit.
The difference between 44.1/16 and 44.1/24 renditions (assuming the later is a genuine 24 bit rendition and not just a padded 16 bit rendition) will be observable in the extended dynamic range or, effectively, the noise floor - neither of which are easy to observe with a spectrogram unless using test signals.
A true 24 bit recording will have a lower noise floor being limited, primarily, by the quality of the recording equipment whereas, with 16 bit rendition, the noise floor is probably limited either by the quantisation noise associated with the 16bit samples or the dithering used to mask that quantisation noise.
The quantisation noise with 24bit samples is so low that it is likely to be masked by larger analogue noise sources in the recording equipment. So much so that dithering ceases to be necessary.
Having said that, the increase in sample bit depth from 16bit to 24bit does actually have the potential to lower the absolute noise floor whereas in increase in sampling frequency from say 44.1kS/s to 88.2kS/s does nothing except make it possible to represent signal frequencies above 22.05kHz (which are inaudible anyway). Consequently, the increase to 24bit sample depth is more ‘high definition’ than any increase in the sampling rate to 88.2kS/s and beyond.
Of course, whether or not you can hear any difference in normal listening conditions is a completely separate argument.
You’re right, forgive the approximation. For “spectrograms” on local files, I usually use MusicScope, which also provides dynamic range and several other parameters. I used the term “spectrogram” incorrectly and didn’t show the MusicScope screenshots because I wanted to provide examples that took a local file (in this case taken from the CD) and its 44/24 counterpart taken directly from the Qobuz stream via a client that allows real-time visual analysis. As you can see from the screenshots, the dynamic range is the same.
In any case, I believe the problem remains, but beyond that, I remain convinced that an option to process 44/24 at will, and therefore, if necessary, in the same way as 44/16, could be extremely useful and bring only benefits.
You’d probably quickly loose interest in the hi-res obsession, once you’d subject yourself to a proper ABX comparison of readily available test tracks, very likely making it obvious that you’d just be guessing all the time.
As long as you compare apples to apples. There’s no guarantee that the red book tracks for sale are pure down-samples of the hi-res ones, without additional types of dynamic compression. It’s been said that hi-res tracks are better mastered; if that’s true - and it may very well be - that’s on my list of deceptive sales tactics. As far as I’m concerned, I always buy the red book versions. Whatever mastering was done on them, I assume it was with the artist’s permission, and as long as I get what the artist wants to sell, it’s ok with me.
So far, there hasn’t been a single answer to the question, such as why the feature can’t be as convenient as the one already available for MQA.
Not to mention the completely out-of-context comments, as if I’d ever made any sort of praise for other Hi-Res formats, which need to be contextualized (and then possibly understood and judged) depending on various factors, first and foremost the source from which the digitization originated. But this is certainly not the place to discuss that.
I don’t think they’re out of context. You do seem to value hi-res enough to request this feature, and believe that it carries something that is genuinely useful:
If that sounds like special praise to you, I really don’t know what else to say. And you still haven’t told me why the feature would be less useful for MQA than the current one. I can’t fathom what kind of annoyance it would create if left by default.
Giving importance to something doesn’t necessarily mean being obsessed with it or giving it excessive importance.
Honestly, I thought it could be useful, but I don’t see any room for discussion here.
But here it seems to me you’re giving excessive importance to a feature that’s incredibly simple to implement, and I think you could easily ignore it even if ever inplemented.
For the record, my previous post wasn’t directed at you; it came after yours because my posts still require approval, so they have a delay that, if anything, creates further confusion, on top of that of the translator.
