qobuz 24 bit music

Some people are not understanding that digital music recording and reproduction is all about SCIENCE.

It is technology and established scientific standards that allow digital music in the first place.

What an established scientific standard is or is not, is not subject to anyone's subjective interpretations.

A "standard" is just that it is something that has been established and defined.

The stair step examples that everybody uses seems to be quite logical, except that, as you say, digital music doesn't work that way. These type of graphics are very misleading. There are no "steps", only the number of samples and the amplitude for each individual sample.

 

I disagree.
The difference is that an 8 bit "snapshot" is a much less detailed picture of the signal.
It lacks RESOLUTION.
Not just dynamic range!

So DON'T believe ME.
Here is one of dozens of articles the media has published about the subject recently based on current scientific knowledge on the subject (this one from a few days ago in "Livewire."):

In digital audio, a value called bit depth describes the resolution of the sound data that is captured and stored in an audio file.
A higher audio bit depth indicates a more detailed sound recording.
Similarly, for image and video files, bit depth is used to determine the resolution of a picture. The higher the bit depth — 24 bit versus 16 bit, for example — the better the image is.


and it continues:

If the bit depth is too low, the recording is not accurate, and a lot of quiet sounds are lost
The high-bit-depth recordings are far more accurate on playback, particularly in areas of songs that contain quiet harmonics. Using too low a bit depth can lead to lost frequencies and low-quality recordings.

And for all you guys that want to go on forever about how bit depth is ONLY about dynamic range (which is untrue) the article iscusses dynamic range HERE:

Bit depth also determines how loud a recording can be. For every 1-bit increase, the dynamic range increases by about 6 decibels.
Audio CD formats use a bit depth of 16, which equates to 96 dB of dynamic range.
If DVD or Blu-ray is used, the sound quality is higher because the bit depth is 24, which gives 144 dB of dynamic range.

And then there is THIS, from Wikipedia:
"In digital audio using pulse-code modulation (PCM), bit depth is the number of bits of information in each sample, and it directly corresponds to the resolution of each sample. Examples of bit depth include Compact Disc Digital Audio, which uses 16 bits per sample, and DVD-Audio and Blu-ray Disc which can support up to 24 bits per sample."


So.
Bit depth increases RESOLUTION and also increases signal to noise ratio and dynamic range!
And I don't CARE if you guys don't want to know this fact.
Oh.
I forgot.
You can use a thing called YOUR EARS to judge what matters.
I did.
If YOU can't hear any improvement with 24 bit then it is totally unimportant.
It sure doesn't matter to me what you want to do.
I stopped caring about THAT a long time ago.
I just like to argue a lot in case some newbie reads this stuff and is interested in the kerfuffle.
Maybe it will induce them to listen for themselves!
My two cents.

 

I'll trust my ears over 'science' every time. During dedicated listening one can feel the differences in audio quality that some claim don't exist or can't be perceived, and they add tremendous enjoyment to the listening sessions. It is foremost a matter of discernment and criterion. Would a scientist be able to distinguish between wine from an expensive bottle and some from a supermarket carton?

 

I had to laugh when an earlier "scientist" pointed out that 16 bit audio is terrific because "it has 96,000 different degrees of loudness---I bet you can't move your knob on your stereo that precisely!"

Hmmmm.

ANALOG vinyl has INFINITE different degrees of loudness.
Last time I checked infinity as a number was more like 96000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.
Or something...

I'm not impressed by digital---ha ha.
It is ---so far---more of a convenience than a high performance thrill.

And as much as I am impressed by science, it CAN be a bit like statistics.
It can be made to LIE.

 

You're thinking of resolution as the term applies to graphics and video. In those fields, greater resolution does yield greater detail.

But "resolution" in audio is not comparable to resolution to video -- it's comparable to color depth. You can have an extremely high resolution, very finely detailed image, but in monochrome, where every pixel is either white or black, with no colors or shades of gray. That would be like having digital audio with a 192 kHz sampling rate but with very low resolution. Lots of detail, but not much "depth" -- signal to noise ratio.

This article does a good job of explaining and demonstrating it:

Audio Myth - "24-bit Audio Has More Resolution Than 16-bit Audio"

The main takeaway from it is that properly dithered digital audio has infinite resolution, just like analog. You can easily prove this by feeding an analog signal through an ADC -> DAC loop, and then comparing it with the original, unaltered analog signal. The only difference will be some residual white noise, whose level is reduced by 6 dB for every 1 bit of depth you add to the digital audio.

 

96000 is also wrong.

 

Analog vinyl is equivalent to 12 bits digital in dynamic range.And that's no lie..16bit has signal-to-noise and bandwidth superior to vinyl .About 96db compared to vinyl's 65-70db.

 

And if CDs are so bad, why did they need to put this disclaimer on them? If the limitations of the CD's digital audio format exceeded that of the limitations of the analog source tape it was made from, there would be no need for such a disclaimer.

 

Lifewire is not a scientific journal and isnt what I would trust for any technical information. I for one taught digital audio theory to engineers at a major university. Simply put you dont understand how pcm digital audio works despite numerous people telling you as much. Literally, you can open a daw and subtract a 24 bit file from an 8 bit file and youll be left with nothing but noise. bits do not determine resolution. They determine the noise floor. Now, using 8 bits would lead to such a high noise floor as to swamp some of the quieter details, is true. However, you cant hear sounds at -96dB which is the basic level of noise for 16 bit recordings. More samples also changes nothing when considering a band limited signal (below the nyquist sample value) where the only change you might hear is due to the operational qualities of the DAC, for which there are actually differences in sound. This actually is science and any thoughts to think differently should go hang with flat earthers, anti vaxxers and other people who think they know how this works more than the people who actually designed and studied it.

 

Thanks for the "science" lessons, guys.
It's NOT like I haven't heard this all before in my long career selling recording and playback gear to professionals that get paid for results.
You guys can go on and on about what looks good on some scholarly test bench.
I will SELL you whatever you argue is adequate for the task.
But over at MY house I'll just believe my own ears and spend accordingly for the best gear I need to enjoy better quality playback.
And I'm still waiting for one of you to explain WHY top studios use 32 bit floating point.
If the higher bit depth of 32 bit doesn't capture---and PLAY BACK low level detail better on quiet passages when they mix---why do they BOTHER?
Perhaps you guys should go over to the recording industry blogs and educate the professionals.
They can throw around "science" good enough to argue all day with youse guys.
Me?
I am only "pawn in their game of life."
Now excuse me while I go thrill to some stunning analog on my old out of date phonograph player...
And by the way I really like Qobuz---especially the 24/192 files!
As my non-audiophile wife puts it: "there are more STRINGS on those violins on Qobuz!"
Sorry to ruffle your feathers.
Let's continue this conversation when you have all calmed down, ha ha.

 

As previously stated, studios use the tools that they have, because they are studios and have a reason to use them.

Higher bit rate recording in a studio will result in a lower inherent noise floor and a greater signal + noise to noise ratio.

Studios will typically mic each instrument individually with some instruments like a piano having sometimes more than one mic.

Drum kits will have many, depending on the number of drums, cymbals, cowbells and whatever in the kit.

The characteristics of individual instruments mean that different instruments will have different dynamic ranges.

Having a greater bit depth means that the engineer has an easier time capturing the full dynamic range of that instrument.

A cymbal is going to have a vastly greater dynamic range than a rhythm guitar.

Once all of the instruments have have been captured, then limiting and compression can be applied separately to each instrument/channel, in order that the engineer can mix it down to a natural blended sound.

At the end of the day, the multiple channels get mixed down to two stereo channels with 96-dB. (16-bits) of dynamic range for distribution on a CD.

 

Dropouts all day with qobuz. Not so with Spotify. Connected via wifi.

 

I'm listening to 24/96 classical as we speak (on Qobuz).
It sounds more better than 16 bit CD I can tell you THAT.
Must be the "greater dynamic range."
The 24 bit probably didn't need as much compression as 16 bit CD does may be part of the explanation...
As YOU just noted 24 bit DOES offer much greater dynamic range.
And engineers HAVE to squash 24 bit to make it fit 16 bit CDs.
Now if we could just get digital to play as harmonically rich as record albums do.
Maybe SOMEDAY.
And meanwhile it's nice to hear a less squashed presentation for a change.
Go Qobuz!
My two cents.

 

I run WiFi Qobuz 24/192.
I even run 1080p video (10 times more data than music!) on the other side of the house using wifi.
Neither drop out.
If they ever give me trouble I will replace them with Cat5.
I use Cat5 everywhere else (downstairs and in my control room) but so far if it ain't broke I ain't gonna fix it.
So your problem is NOT mine, thank goodness.
Some homes you just GOT to use cat5 EVERYWHERE...
Sorry to hear about your troubles.

 

I get a drop on Qobuz at one time or another during almost every listening session. I'm in a fairly new home with fiber optic wiring and an excellent 300mb U-Verse connection working great for all other streaming such as Netflix, HBOgo, Amazon Prime, etc.

On a side note, does anybody know if the Qobuz player is bit perfect? I'm thinking probably not, but was curious if anybody knows for sure?

 

That "someday" was 40 years ago, with the Telarc 1812 Overture LP. It was recorded in 1979 in 16-bit digital, and had at least 15 dB more dynamic range than most analog symphonic recordings, including cannon blasts loud enough to damage your speakers:

Recording of October 1979: The Telarc 1812 Overture

 

Some of you guys have the basics of digital recording wrong.
Perhaps you may benefit from an in-depth explanation about the basics of digital audio.
I refer you all to the following article by Presonus, a leading digital recording company responsible for mastering equipment etc etc.
They are NOT an on-line amateur web-zine.
They design and invent a lot of the tools used in studio recording of digital.

PreSonus points out that the bit depth of the "snapshot" taken of the waveform contains BOTH dynamic range parameters AND sonic quality parameters---specifically that DETAILS get better at higher bit depth!
To directly quote Presonus: "the higher the bit depth, the more data will be captured to more accurately re-create the sound."

I am sure you guys will STILL disagree after reading the article.
Some of you know a lot more than the people that design our best equipment.
And you like to tell the rest of us what you know.
Unfortunately what you know---is wrong.

Here's the basics for those that have it all wrong---

Digital Audio Basics: Sample Rate and Bit Depth | PreSonus

Sorry to be so arguementative---but I really really WANT better sounding digital because digital holds promise as a medium.
I want 24/.192 to be the new digital standard so entire albums can be produced with better harmonic detail.
I also want 4K and HDR to be the new standard for video.
I have been using and selling audio and video gear for 50 years and I really really LIKE this stuff to work better.
But to move FORWARD folks will simply have to get with the program...
My two cents.

 

That damn cannon burst blew out the woofers in my studio monitors.
I will never forget it.
Or the stupid digital recording James Taylor made on Martha's Vinyard using the Yamaha O2R digital consoles I used to sell.
"Taylor's "Gaia" will ALSO blow drivers as it is WAY too loud in the mix.
These in my opinion were very poorly mastered recordings as thety exceeded the comfort range of hearing for no other purpose than to impress idiots.
So what? if you can stand close enough to a cannon to blow your ears off...?
Stupid.
And it had NOTHING to do with the harmonic DETAIL loss of low bit rate recordings!
Some of you guys have FINALLY realized how important mastering is to the finished product.
Now if you can just help the move to richer harmonic structure so we can hear THAT, then my work here will NOT have been in vain.
Oh the troubles I've seen....
La de dah, dah doo doo doo.
And so it goes...

 

Interesting that you quote the PerSonus web page that I have already quoted on the previous page.

"The most important practical effect of bit depth is that it determines the dynamic range of the signal. In theory, 24-bit digital audio has a maximum dynamic range of 144 dB, compared to 96 dB for 16-bit but today’s digital audio converter technology cannot come close to that upper limit."

"If the sampling frequency is too low, aliasing distortion can result. Aliasing is a major concern when using analog-to-digital conversion. Improper sampling of the analog signal will cause high-frequency components of the signal to be aliased with genuine lower-frequency components. If this happens, the digital-to-analog conversion will create an incorrectly reconstructed signal.

In addition, higher sampling rates enable you to record very high frequencies above the normal range of human hearing. While inaudible by themselves, these ultrasonic frequencies can interact, creating intermodulation distortion (such as beating) that results in audible frequency content that many engineers believe to impart subtle psychoacoustic effects.

For a variety of reasons, then, many recording engineers rely on sampling rates of 88.2, 96, and even 192 kHz to ensure extremely accurate recordings that capture every detail."

So, not in support of they dynamic range that can be presented on a CD, you state...

So the 96-dB. range of a CD is more than necessary to exceed "the comfort range of hearing"?

Recording studios have used compression ever since there were recording studios.

On one hand you state that 96-dB. was too loud and exceeded the comfort range and now you are saying that 144-dB's. are somehow better.

Being that 144-dB. is another 48-dB. louder than 96-dB.

On playback, assuming a ambient background sound level of 30-dB., you will need to turn up the volume so that the lowest level sound on the recording is more than 30-dB. or it will get lost in the noise floor of the background SPL.

If you take 96-dB. on top of that 30-dB. you would be listening at a maximum level of level of 126-dB.

To be within safe hearing standards, you can listen to a sound level of 97-dB. for only 30-minutes safely.

A SPL limit of 100-dB would be 15-minutes and for each 3-dB. increase, cut the safe listening time by half.

If you are saying that 96-dB. can not represent the dynamic range of normal program material and you need 24-Bits or a dynamic range of 144-dB. to represent this range, then you are mistaken and all of this time, we have been listening to CD's which (not being brickwalled) are not representative of the actual dynamic range of the music that they contain.

The additional bit depth gives you only more "detail" because it can give you a dynamic range above 96-Db.

Which is totally unnecessary.

 

Since this is a streaming thread, and Qobuz's model is to exclude MQA, I wanted to point out that this description of aliasing is something many people have complained about with MQA. That MQA uses leaky filters that cause aliasing, distortion of extra high frequency energy that is out of time from the correct sample rate then rolled off sooner to try to attenuate the problem it created.

Some people may like this sound. It can be enticing, but it is distortion, and time shifting (group delay), that should not be present in the playback.
Just saying.

 

I have never tried MQA, so I cannot comment on it, other than to say that from the reading that AI have done, including your comments, it is not something that I am interested in.

Qobuz's model does look interesting and I would be interested in hearing it, once I get my audio room back together again.

I had been out of audio for more than 20-years, prior to 2011. Records were gone having been replaced by cassettes and then by CD's.

Everybody raved about CD quality, but most of them never had experienced good audio form a records. I left audio because of CD's back in the late 80's. I would listen, all the "detail" was there, but I found that I couldn't connect with the music any more.

The funny thing was, that I didn't place the blame on CD's. I figured that now that I was in my mid to late 30's, music just did not have as much connection as it did in my younger days.

In the 90's, I did put together a nice Dolby Pro-Logic based HT with large Klipsch towers (KG 5.5's), a Klipsch center channel and Klipsch sub. It was back then I got into watching, learning about and collecting movies. Before selling of my library of used Blockbuster (mostly) PVT's, I had 3,800 VHS tapes in my collection.

Everyone it seemed had these dreaded iPods where the object was to cram as much music as one could into their little portable devices. Not only did I find the music that they were listening to to be gawd awful, but the sound quality was something that would literally make me cringe.

I had a positive hatred for digital music.

Oddly enough, I made my way back into audio, accidently because of digital music.

I was listening to some things on YouTube through my laptop and I remembered that I had a pair of earbuds, that I got when I bought a $25 kit for my cell phone that had a case and a car charger.

It was using these and then listening to some music on YouTube, that I rediscovered music and audio again. I got back into it by buying a set of Monster Turbines and a MP3 player.

Since I had no particular love for CD's, reading about the new uncompressed high resolution music was something that was a substantial motivating influence in getting back into music again, this time in the digital ream, which had come a long way since the earlier days.

Coming from days where people listened to some really bad quality analog and digital music, I have no issues with better quality recording and playback formats. If something is of higher quality I have no issues with it.

In expending a great deal of time, effort and expense directed in rebuilding my audio systems from the ground up over the past eight years, I have come to the conclusion that the original recording and mastering has more to do with good sound than just more detail.

If you like, I put together a tour of my former audio room directly below my equipment profile. I invite you to look it over.

 

i think qobuz hi-res sounds better then vinyl to me.even with the great dacs now my cds were sounding just as good.of course that is just my opinion.i do miss my vpi scout turntable but with the technology now its not i really need one anymore.i use to be a analog die hard and couldnt stand the sound of cds.but im coming to the conclusion it wasnt the cds themselves but the terrible dacs in them at the time.and now listening to these hires albums one after the other on the fly is such a treat cause back in the day it would be buying everything over again(a player then sacd or dvd audio and even blu-ray audio discs)

 

i was a analog die hard then i found out what getting a real dac does and never looked back.even my cds sound fantasic and now hires digital is my life now.but that is just my opinion.i do have a tube amp which im sure helps with that analog sound.

 

I have a HT / stereo which is SS. I also have a complete tube system in the same room. Both systems are fed by a Peachtree integrated, which serves as my central point of control, being my system source selector, DACV and class "A" SS preamp.

Some digital sources sound better than analog and some digital sources sound better than analog, so I have both.

On a good system, contrary to what one might believe, compressed streaming audio like Pandora can sound excellent as well.

You would think that moving up the food chain equipment wise, would expose the faults in lower resolution music, surprisingly, it does not. If the original source is well engineered and mastered in the first place

 

Nice avatar, i just sold 10 Triumphs from 1956-66.