Both Tidal and Qobuz often offer a recording in several different formats, such as CD quality (44.1kHz/16bit) and high resolution (96kHz/24bit) or any of the various high resolution / MQA combinations offered. Not to mention the mp3 and AAC versions also available for streaming.
As I asked in the post title - when different formats of a recording are available are they all from the same master, hopefully the highest resolution one, and down sampled by Tidal/Qobuz before sending out the files for streaming?
Good idea? Will we get more honesty in the answer or marketing “I am better”?
I’ve been streaming since the turn of the millennium (MusicMatch). If I found an album with flaws, it was also with the successor Yahoo Music, Rhapsody, Zune Music, Xbox Music, Groove, Nokia Music, Simfy, Rdio, Beats, Napster, Deezer, Wimp, Tidal, Spotify, Apple…not better. The same white spots and errors in the recording, but not the same encoding.
Malicious tongues claim, some was only lossy recoded and then offered as Flac lossless new. But I lack the technical background to support this argument.
While I won’t get just opinions by asking Tidal/Qobuz directly, I will most likely get a whole lot of marketing nonsense, which may or may not be true.So some independent research on the issue is what I was looking for. I was hoping that someone with the proper skills would be able to test the various versions and compare them. For example an upsampled CD quality recording would look different on a frequency spectrum than a true high resolution recording.
As I said, I would hope that the highest resolution master is used as the source for all the other resolutions being offered.
Based on the fact that the simplest solutions normally win out — both in terms of expediency to implement and the lack of financial benefits in doing anything more complex. I’d imagine that one master file is delivered and subsequent version are created from it.
To do anything else would require a lot more work and a lot more marshalling/maintenance, with little financial gain for either the streaming platforms or those supplying the music to them.
You can do that with your own ripped and downloaded material using the free program music scope - it’ll tell you all you need in graphs and even has documentation explaining what you see in understandable words for any layman.
Things look different when streaming.
At least I’ve not got access to, and don’t want to invest into the equipment needed to properly scrutinize that material…
And what’s found out about the different publishing formats for one album does not tell you anything about some other random album.
So as long as you don’t name specific albums of interest, you may at best get a trend of how things are usually handled, but there will be all kinds of outliers.
I think your question is too unspecific to gain any real knowledge from the replies.
And yes, I do have to admit that the streaming providers probably just give you vague statements - but try them as you did try the community!
