Exactly. I'd also add that for me, the difference I hear with high res audio isn't confined to the high-end of the frequency range, where I assumed it would be, or even the midrange, but in vastly more natural-sounding bass. I always use "Home Again" on the high-res edition of Carole King's Tapestry as demo material now, because when the drums finally kick in on that cut the effect is jaw-dropping. On a decent stereo it sounds like they're in the room with you. Steely Dan engineer Roger Nichols thought it had to do with quantization error in the bass with 16-bit audio, although I've seen others dismiss that. His thought was the "stair steps" were too big for bass frequencies with 16-bit audio, leading to unnatural encoding. 24-bit solved that. He also noted that the big difference he heard with high res audio didn't come from increased sample rates but from the increased bit depth, and it was concentrated in far more natural bass response.
Another great 'demo' album is The Band. You can play this as loud as you want and it still sounds terrific.
I have said before that I am keeping Apple Music for convenience and that hasn't changed. Regardless of whether I keep Qobuz or not, I will continue to pay for Apple Music and it will be my main source in the car, Echo Dots, and Homepod. That being said, when I am sitting at home listening on better systems, I want the best quality from the music service I pay for. It doesn't mean I can't enjoy Apple Music or even that Mona Lisa replica. I have been listening to compressed music from these services since I first subscribed to Rhapsody when they were the only player in the market. I think they only offered 128k at the time. However, Apple should not be giving us only lossy, lower quality audio when they built a brand over a lifetime on the concept of quality. If Amazon, Qobuz, Deezer, and Tidal can do it, it simply makes no sense for Apple to not be in this market. As a side note, these type of statistical tests are only setup to say whether people can conclusively hear a difference. As far as I know, there isn't a way to test whether they hear a difference on some songs and not on others or whether they are hearing something different some of the time. I haven't looked into it in a while, but based on my memory, it seems like you had to have~97 percent accuracy to conclusively say there is a difference. If you don't reach that percentage, I don't think the test is meant to jump to the conclusion that there is no difference. For me, the main issue is that companies are offering lossless. I think, at least, Apple should too based on their branding. Whether I can hear a difference or not is really not the point. It is like 4k. They offer it now. A lot of people won't be able to tell a difference...that doesn't mean they shouldn't make it available.
My Android app was updated yesterday and ever since, everything is louder. Before, the highest I'd have my volume (LG V20) was 58 or so. Now it's 38. Everything still sounds good, just louder. Anyone else had the same thing?
I had something bizarre happen on the iPhone yesterday - it sounded like the sample rate was being toyed with. The audio literally sped up and then slowed down, like a tape was jamming. For a second I thought I was having a stroke! Is this some weird attempt to prevent gaps in playback by adjusting the playback speed when the stream is interrupted? Because that's the only way I could imagine something like this happening. I don't see how it could possibly be unintentional, but I'm not sure how heavy the drugs are at Amazon for anyone to think that slowing the playback down to compensate for a stalled stream is a good idea - it's truly awful, and far more annoying than a few moments of silence.
Is there any news on this? Any way to get the application to run in exclusive mode? I have it running in shared mode right now (I think), which forces output to 24/96, but I'm guessing that results in manipulation of the source at some stage of the proceedings.
Far as I know status unchanged - no windows or ios device can do 24/96 exclusive mode. Only way to get it is with a heos, bluesound, or marantz device.
I can't help but suspect that Amazon's fire devices may also be able to output native resolutions to a DAC.
Not if the file is 24/96. The Echo Studio can playback 24/96 but has no digital output. So, yes, it can play it but you have to listen to it on the echo studio amplified speaker system.
Heos series 2 devices and Marantz appliances (at least those with Heos support) definitely are able to output high res PCM from their digital outputs.
Are you certain about this? I haven't tried this, but it seems to me like if a fire stick which were connected to an HDMI deembedder very likely could output high res PCM to a DAC. And I also can't help but wonder if a fire tablet which is connected to an external DAC might possibly have this ability as well...
Fire stick will do 24/48. I'm not a smartphone/tablet guy so I'm not 100% sure on those. I'm also not an hdmi de-embedder guy. I've been trying like craze to find a way to do the bit perfect 24/192 since amazon started this. The infomation I'm giving is from viewding lots of forums specific to this problem, from amazon themselves, from bluesound support, and heos/denon/nad support. I'd love to be corrected! Cause I can't swing 300 bucks or more for a device that's only purpose is to get bit perfect UHD
You can find used Series 2 Heos links for significantly less than that if you are patient. But to be perfectly honest, I do not think that even the digital outputs from the links qualifies as being truly audiophile quality, whether the signal be high res or not.
Yes, I am now in that "patient mode" while scrimping and saving for a bluesound node 2i. The older node n100 will do it and is a bit easier to find - some places still have them, though they have been discontinued.
As I understand it this would leave all processing to the phone's DAC and the analog audio would be output via the phone's headphone jack. Am I understanding this correctly?
FWIW I just cancelled the service, primarily due to its terrible integration with the Bluesound desktop (Mac) app and clunkiness of the iPhone app. Qobuz price change was also a contributing factor. Now I just need to decide on whether to keep both Tidal and Qobuz. I prefer Tidal's interface for both Bluesound and iPhone a bit more. This is all in addition to my family subscription to Apple Music.
I'm curious, what is the benefit to using UAPP with Qobuz instead of just using the Qobuz app? Thanks
