New to Roon, no High Res 24/192 streaming?

Roon Software Discussion
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And I go back to the reality that it doesn’t matter to me. I’m streaming them from the same sources, essentially, and while I can’t control what the origin was, I can tell you that, for example, the 24/192 on Amazon of the same exact album, same year, same everything sounds better than the 16/44.1 version on Tidal, as put through my HEOS system. I have, a few times, accidentally grabbed the Tidal version on the HEOS app and heard that there was something “wrong” and found that it had grabbed the Tidal version. I switch to the Amazon version and the “it” is back.

It’s also entirely possible that there are some electrical hijinx going on… like for example my Tidal showing me UltraHD on the phone, but due to the reality of AAC bluetooth it is nowhere near that to the DAC. That particular problem gave me fits, because over and over I had myself completely convinced that I couldn’t hear the difference between hi-res and CD… and I was bummed that my ears weren’t up to it. As soon as I plugged the cable in, it sounded so different I had to find out why. That’s when I learned about the Bluetooth challenge with Apple.

I’m POSITIVE that it is something other than resolution at this point… because I believe physics, you guys sound smart etc… but over and over again, I land on the “hi res” version between two “identical” tracks.

Nobody likes playing this game with me in my household. I keep trying to do this blind, but my wife and daughter have limited patience for the blind testing… so I’m hoping to recruit some buddies to participate.

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Then this whole discussion is pointless. Some unidentified source, somewhere, sounds different from some other unidentified source somewhere else. That tells us absolutely nothing.

If you are sending anything over AAC then no resolution is going to matter at all.

Of course it is something other than resolution. It is mastering that matters.

In controlled experiments it has been shown that from the same data, you will not hear any difference between Redbook and higher resolution, even though you could measure some difference between them. But that only holds if the source is the same. If they aren’t, it’s pointless to make any conclusions about resolution.

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I agree with everything you posted. I’m nodding with my whole head.

What I am having a difficult time expressing, apparently, is that whatever the intangible thing is that I’m missing or getting… it’s real and audible.

I’ll give all of you guys the 100% benefit of the doubt that you can’t hear a difference in theory. Hell… even in practice.

But this isn’t theory, and the reality is that I can’t control the source encoding, mastering or how they achieved the number. What I can non-empirically say is that when I listen to the “same track”, more often than not the version encoded at 24/192 sounds better to me. I will not pretend to know why. But there is apparently something in the mastering, encoding, sampling or whatever that has yielded this result.

I will continue to lean toward the track, settings, protocol, streaming whatever that gives me the best sound to my ears. Thus far, I have been very pleased with the results of 24/192 almost across the board.

Lastly, on the subject of AAC… I’m not streaming anything Bluetooth, anymore. But when I did… way back a whole month ago… I was very frustrated that I couldn’t seem to tell the difference AT ALL between the various resolution on my new headphones where I could hear it very well on my stereo. Digging in a little, I learned that even though Tidal says 24/192, once you go Bluetooth to the Qudelix, it throws that number out the window. But, I definitely couldn’t tell the difference between the resolutions, so I went digging deeper.

That’s when I plugged it in and got true 24/192 for the first time on headphones and was completely blown away. That also got me started on this ridiculously slippery slope which has led, in only 30 days, to two more headphones, two headphone amps (plus the Qudelix), several custom cables, a Wiim Pro, a Raspberry Pi I just set up and Roon. After hearing it, I wanted more of it and bought the gear and tools to support it.

I’m not claiming to be an expert at all, or by any means. I’m actually saying there is probably something else awry that I haven’t learned about yet… but in the meantime, I will choose 24/192 until the difference in lesser resolution can’t be heard.

108

You do realise everything on Bluetooth is compressed down for transmission ? You don’t get lossless at all on any Bluetooth transmission regardless of the source. On iOS it’s all aac or it will drop back to sbc if very poor reception. This is done by the phone or iPad not the streaming service which hasn’t a clue what your connected to.

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Yes, I realize this… which is what I specifically said while telling the story about discovering that.

110

Different masters most likely do sound quite different, indeed. See if you can find some Mapleshade CDs and see how you like their sound, the ones I have are quite ecellent, even if “only” 16/44.1

Of course, AAC is a low rate lossy codec, You’ll get pretty much same thing no matter what you feed it.

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But not knowing that was wildly frustrating. The sound wasn’t what I was looking for, and I didn’t know why. It was my first time with real headphones, and I frankly thought they should sound better.

They did, but it was one more hurdle to figure out before I could overcome it. So many features are advertised without any form of disclaimer or “warning” at all. Like “Bluetooth compatible with iPhone at lower resolutions, need LDAC for anything above 512” or something… but there just isn’t. You have to know.

I actually figured it out looking at the actual resolution in the Q5K menus and realized it wasn’t 24/192. Then, another question in another forum about “why isn’t my Q5K playing full resolution from my IPhone?”

I feel like I have my system and basic understanding set up, now… but I would have preferred a cheat sheet.

112

I’m hearing you, George, and I’m believing you hear a difference!

Our imaginations are what turn sound into music, and they’re all different, thank heaven! We all think we hear what we think we hear, and more power to us!

I also like the point you were making higher up in the thread. That higher-res versions are, on average, made from better masters with more care than simple Redbook versions. That if you don’t know where the original came from, you are more likely to get a better master/mastering buying the hi-res version. I don’t know if that is actually true, but it’s an interesting hypothesis. I wonder if anyone has data on that?

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113

My strategy is this…away from home I mostly listen to Tidal CD quality because I’m mostly using Verizon cellular hotspot data. At home, I mostly listen to high resolution Qobuz just in case it might sound better. I don’t worry about if it does or doesn’t.

I also don’t spend money chasing SQ. When I need to buy something, I try to buy the best I can afford, but I don’t keep replacing things I already have with new things I don’t need to hear things I can’t hear.

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114

assuming a record like “kind of blue” in 24/196 isn’t simply taking the 16/44 master and upsampling it, how do they get the hi-res version?

Do they actually go back to the 1959 master tapes and re-record it at the higher bitrate/sample rate, etc…?

And if there’s both a 96 and 192 version… do they do it twice? Or is the 96 a downsampled version of the 192?

(full disclosure, i do have the recent UHQR LP version of KoB and supposedly it was remastered by Bernie Grundman from the master tapes… just curious how those tapes can still be in decent condition… don’t they degrade?)

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I don’t know about Kind of Blue, but in principle old analog master tapes apparently do get shipped around the world for modern digitization. There is some background on this in this story:

And if less was destroyed than the NYT article claimed, it was in part precisely because they were being shipped around:

117

Though this may be apocryphal, Sony in the mid 1990s created DSD – what is now referred to as DSD64, DSD 2.8, or single rate DSD – not as a future consumer audio format but as a supposedly more analog like digital archival format. The idea was to do archival transfers of all of the CBS/Sony catalog crown jewel analog masters to DSD, then never touch the analog masters again – because the DSD transfers could be converted back to analog very simply or decimated to any number of other digital formats.

That certainly applied to “Kind of Blue,” which in the late 1990s had fresh CD and SACD releases based on the DSD archival transfer. However, Sony seems to have backtracked on never handling the analog masters again, as “Kind of Blue” has been transferred a few more times since the 1990s.

AJ

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Yes, that’s a technical thing that they would not necessarily want to tell you, because then you’d know that if you are using BT anyway, there’s not much need to buy “real” (i.e. expensive) headphones.

For that reason exactly I have been holding off upgrading mine until I could get a pair that will do BT, if ever needed (pretty good for conferencing on the phone and stuff) but can take wired input either to the built-in DAC (24/96) or straight analog…

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I actually haven’t bought anything, per se, in hi-res.

In fact, that is a question I was going to ask… where to get them.

Everything I have access to in hi res is on vinyl or Tidal/Amazon/Qobuz streaming.

Where are these hi res files being sourced?

I’m feeling less and less draw to rip my several-hundred deep CD collection to “just” end up with CD quality, the lowest level that I stream currently.

I have a few rarities I will likely rip that aren’t on the streams, but almost everything is well covered.

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Qobuz Sublime

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121

Bandcamp, HD tracks, Qobuz as others have mentioned. Qobuz Sublime actually is cost effective is you buy a few of the hi-res albums over the course of a year.

To the original question, yes they can be heard, and what you’re getting is a lot of the micro detail dynamics, room information presented to you if… your system is good enough to make the most of the increased information due to the increased bit rate and as has been mentioned already and you’re good at listening.

There are many 16/44 CD that are phenomenal in the way they’ve been recorded and mastered. There are many albums recorded in the 50s and 60s where there are great master tapes and those can offer a substantial amount of additional information, again if you and your system are both capable of processing rendering and consuming it. :slight_smile: There are a lot some pretty crappy recordings of great albums and IMO no point in chasing hi-res versions of those as they’ll only disappoint.

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No strong correlation either way.

For a contemporary release that has a high res version, the CD quality version almost certainly is a downconversion of the high res version. In other words, same mastering.

For a back catalog release that has a high res version, it often is a modernized mastering with diminished dynamic range. In such case, an older CD quality version likely is a different mastering that may be better or at least more authentic.

AJ

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Please explain. I understand that lots of modern music is compressed to the gills, but everything I have read has shown that the hi res encoding has been (mostly) spared this indignity, as the compression is specifically intended for playback over mobile audio, Bluetooth, ear buds and phone speakers. It is understood that the hi res versions are not intended for this purpose, and not compressed as such.

Nobody would look for hi res to stream from iTunes on AirPods.

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Sorry, that is a naive belief. High resolution is not an indication of dynamic range. Among both new and back catalog albums, many high resolution releases feature the same dynamically compressed masterings as the CD or lower resolution versions.

https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/1/dr/asc?album=96

AJ

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