Hi Josh , Apple does stream @ high resolution above 48 kHz via a USB connection & airplay 2 @ 24 bit depth 48khz brick wall. I do agree with you but only for non studio playback. I’m subscribing keep up the great work 👍.
Its not a scam in the sense of buying high end headphones and pairing it with a high end setup and then using that to play a loseless audio file for its higher quality as well. Its not all about what spectrum of frequencies we can hear. We just want something that sounds more clear and detailed to our ears than the norm. Is it overkill? Possibly. Does it sound better? Absolutely.
Absolutely. Buying a good pair of high quality headphones, a good headphone amp, and playing back lossless files is definitely a great way to enjoy music. That aspect is definitely not a scam, I am more just talking about 44.1khz lossless vs 96khz and 192khz lossless here. You have to pay like $10 more for the higher sample rate on a lot of albums, and you gain no quality.
@@JoshChristiane just watched the full video 😂 I have to agree there. When my dac switches between the different khz I can't tell the difference in quality.
Yeah same here, nobody can tell the difference unless there are some really specific conditions. If you slowed the music down 300 or 400% then maybe differences would start to become apparent in the high-end, but at that point the audio quality would be so messed up it wouldn't matter anymore. Some converters sound better at 192khz which deceives a lot of people, but that's just the quality of the conversion itself not the frequency range difference.
Yes it is. external Headphone amps/dacs are generally nonsense as well. Most mobile devices has sufficient audio processing unless the drivers specifically need amplification which most consumer grade units don't. Lossless is a subjective basket being that music production sometimes derives sounds from less than stellar sources. I.E Where was the instrument from a rompler sampled from? at what rate? Was a sample pulled from Vinyl, or an obscure, out of production album that someone uploaded to youtube? are the headphones neutral monitors, or capable of being adjusted to be so? The Audiophile experience is often placebo, namely because most audiophiles don't understand the music production process in the first place.
Terrific video on this subject. One of the very best I've seen so far. Would love to have you make a video on your thoughts on the SACD/DSD audio format.
Ya know, we kind of settled this argument back when CDs came out and we endured the CD vs vinyl wars. The specification for music CDs was actually simple and brilliant. Today I'm a huge fan of the FLAC format. A significant reduction from .wav file sizes and in my most discerning listening using IEMs, I just can't imagine I'm missing any detail. Now if we could get lossless compression for video. Movies are the storage gluttons on the server.
There are a lot bigger grounds to be made up in video for sure. If there are any audible differences between 44.1 to 192 for example, it's so small it doesn't matter. When talking about streaming video, compression types, and even just editing or refining techniques (denoising, glossing, etc) these differences matter significantly. Look at how bad 4k streaming is, but yet how far it's come in 10 years. HEVC has been a pretty big help for me storing all of my videos, but even then I feel like it has a long way to go. Thanks for watching and commenting :)
I think, it's not about Hz, but about bit in digital perspective, because CD recording is base on binnary digit. You can get same analogy in digitaly process of image. In digitaly definition of 16bit image and 32bit image, you will get much rich color in 1 squere inch of image at 32bit image. So, in 32bit sound, you can get more rich digitaly collect same Hz data to covert to digital code/definition in one package digital data sound. Sorry about my English. 🙏🏻
Oh you're absolutely correct. Nobody is debating that 192kHz is significantly higher quality than 44.1kHz. 32bit is better than 16bit, no question. The question that we must ask is if our ears can tell the difference, as well as if our speakers and AD/DA can reproduce the difference, and generally the answer to that is no. Blind tests consistently show that humans simply cannot tell the difference past the point of diminishing returns.
I don't think albums sold at higher sample rates are upsampled. They are probably recorded, mixed and mastered at 24/96 or 24/192 and then downsampled to "consumer-grade quality" 16/44.1 for CD and streaming. Does not mean it sounds worse, I'm with you with this. I can't hear any difference on streaming services that offer "lossless, better than CD quality".
Some are, some aren't. An example is Coldplay's album X&Y. I read a technical document years ago from the lead engineer, and he said it was all recorded at 44.1khz on an RME interface (which is not abnormal in studios, especially back then). But yet I see the album commonly available in 192khz. So 100% that album was just upscaled. This is only one example, and there are many more. I also personally worked on an album for a Christian band years ago where we did all of it at 44.1, and now the album is magically available in "hi-res 192khz". One could debate whether this should be considered consumer fraud or not. Another example is 4k UHD Bluray copies of movies like "Hugo", but Hugo was filmed entirely in 1080p on the Arri Alexa at the time. So obviously it's just a fake cheap upscale. The difference between lossless and lossy is a different argument entirely though, because that's less to do with resolution and bit depth and more to do with the actual casing compression for delivery format. When we are talking about a low quality lossy MP3 vs WAV or FLAC then of course there may be some audible differences, though the differences become basically negligible past 256kbps AAC or 320kbps MP3. Everybody in audio has opinions on these things, but the actual testing is pretty definitive that there is a point of diminishing returns on perceptive quality.
That was a fascinating discussion to listen to. I had no idea how many brands, in this category, are taking advantage of the consumer by capitalizing on their ignorance in this field...Thank you for enlightening us!
That's an easy one to answer: Vinyl. Vinyl is not a scam assuming that the album was recorded on real tape (like Fleetwood Mac, Lez Zepp, etc.), and then printed from that tape onto vinyl records. The quality of of a real vinyl print is vastly superior to anything digital could ever reproduce. Way higher dynamic range, lovely sounding smooth analog distortion when you exceed the red line, and true-to-life representation of what was recorded. However, with that said, vinyl offers absolutely no benefits over regular CD's if the album was not recorded on tape. Meaning that any album recorded after year 2000 is basically digital anyways, and going from digital to analog serves no benefits. So yes to vinyl, but only for old albums that were on tape originally. Most of which are better than modern music anyways.
@@JoshChristianeThat’s how I draw the line. I love all types of media: vinyl, CDs and streaming but I don’t go newer than 1985 for vinyl, I don’t see the point.
You've saved me from falling for the scam ever again. Didn't realize Hi Res is just another marketing ploy. This really helped me understand. Super informative!
Great explanation Josh! Definitely opened my eyes to audio quality (this is new to me). I'd love to hear your take on audio in cars. What's the best way to consume music in a vehicle? I assume most people stream from Spotify or some other app. Does Aux vs Bluetooth vs USB matter?
My understanding is that Bluetooth reduces quality significantly because the stream is generally in SBC, so bluetooth (might) not be the best quality, but even then it's likely unnoticeable considering most car sound systems are very poor. I imagine you couldn't hear the difference between 128kbps and lossless on even a very nice car stereo. Spotify streams at 96kbps on "normal" settings. When you choose "High Quality" in the app it switches to 160kbps. In my testing 160kbps is quite hard to tell from lossless, you may lose some harmonics but the difference is so small it doesn't practically matter on most systems. In a nutshell Spotify is definitely good enough, especially if set to high quality in the app. I wouldn't have any complaints with it at least. Audiophiles tend to obsess over that extra .01% of quality that's impossible to notice unless you have golden ears and $2000 headphones. AUX is the best quality if you're connecting your phone directly to your car sound system, I personally just stick with that and have no issues.
Another issue is simply that most hifi speakers cannot do 20hz to 20Khz. Most of the recordings out there especially early digital, were capped at 20Khz. Even much of the SACD catalogues were actually recorded from material including DAT tape, and contained no information above 20Khz. Another interesting audiophile concept is that treble beyond human hearing actually improves transients in percussion and bass. Personally not many hifi speakers even at £80'000 are doing decent transients, percusion, or bass anyway. Regardless, I love old DAC's and see no point these days in getting some of the higher end ones any more, most audiophile gear has coloured output stages to create a feeling of difference, a house sound, so people pick items they like, when in reality DAC's from Topping and SMSL as expamples are more accurate than most of the audiophile dacs, and having a neutral sound is not that appeasing. I mean there are nice DAC's, I like the Mola Mola Tambaqui and if I had the disposable income I would buy it, but the reality is it is not 10x better than a Topping D90 discreet, and none of them are significantly better than many of the late 90's audiophile dacs, which is why some manufacturers have been revisiting those chips.
You are absolutely right on! I'm glad you understand it because it seems like not a lot of audiophile people get that. Marketing is a powerful tool at getting people to spend more money on stuff they don't need. A good pair of HiFi speakers is totally worth it for me, but there is definitely a point of diminishing returns, like with anything else I suppose. I'll stick to my Focal Twin6 Be's.
Came to debunk a new pair of headphones, came away with that AND valuable information regarding recording audio, which is very much appreciated for self taught music producers like me. Great video!!
Hi Josh, Really appreciate this video. It helped explain a lot of things to me. I had a couple of follow up questions for you. If I'm looking at purchasing an album on Qobuz (for this example its the Album "Tell me I'm Alive" by All time Low) it will give me the option to purchase it in both 16bit/44kHz and 24bit/48kHz. Is there a way to find out whether the original recording was recorded in 44kHz vs the 48kHz? How does the bit rate of 16bit vs 24 bits affect the sound (assuming the sampling rate stays the same)? Thanks!
Great question, and therein lies a major issue in the industry. It's pretty much impossible to know what it was originally recorded in unless the creators specifically state it on its wikipedia page, or you happen to know the exact gear and settings they use some other way. SoundonSound magazine had info on the Coldplay album, so that's how I found out what it was originally recorded in, but otherwise I'd never have known outside of just using common sense. I will say this though, as an ex-producer of many albums for many artists, 90%+ of music recorded digitally is recorded 24-bit - 44.1kHz. I can only recall one single time sitting in a session where 48kHz was used, and that was a Switchfoot album (vice verses), specifically because they intended the songs to be used in movie soundtracks potentially. Final delivery of that album was 44.1kHz though, so in the end it was pointless. In terms of the difference between 44.1kHz and 48kHz, you simply cannot tell a difference unless one of them was a bad convert, so I wouldn't worry about that. Bit depth matters more, but only during recording. When you're tracking you get better headroom, lower noise-floor, and more detailed recordings by recording > 24bit, and some albums are recording at 32bit now even which helps prevent clipping issues later on. Bit depth just gives you more vertical resolution (so each snapshot/stem itself has a great range of velocity storage). But once the album is bounced down and mastered there won't be an audible difference between 16bit and 24 or 32bit, because the headroom is the same for everything (0dB) in the digital space. In a nutshell: Just buy the cheapest one you can get. Nothing will be better than 44.1kHz - 16bit with very very few exceptions.
@@JoshChristiane Hi Josh, thanks for the reply. I appreciate your honesty with how audio tracks are recorded. After watching your video it sparked my curiosity and I did further research and yes I agree with you the bit depth gives you a larger noise floor when you are at 24 bits, but as you mentioned in your video even if you had perfect ears (I certainly don't) and the top of the line equipment you wouldn't be able to hear the difference unless you blasted the sound at a high enough level that it would cause hearing damage. at this point it seems like the only value of the "hi-res" tracks are that they show up as HQ on my DAP. I have a follow up question. If CD quality is the best that you are going to be able to get. Do you recommend ripping music from a physical CD or is downloading from a site like HD tracks or Qobuz just as good? Reason I ask is I didn't know if they did any signal processing or funky things like that. I saw an article where they compared an analog signal, vs the CD, vs a newer CD, vs a download magicvinyldigital.net/2022/06/18/dire-straits-money-for-nothing-review-lp-cd-qobuz-1988-remastered-2022/ One interesting article I found last night was this NPR article where you can play a lossless .wav track against a compressed 320kbps and a compressed 128 kbps file of the same track. and you had to pick which one is the lossless file. What was interesting was that majority of the files I selected the lossless version of the track, but for the 2 of the 6 that I selected the compressed file, I selected the 128kbps track. I would have thought I would have selected the 320kbps. its an interesting experiment. www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
Totally agree with you on all that. In terms of CD quality (digital) vs CD RIP, there shouldn't be any difference assuming you have a good quality ripper. All things being equal they should basically be the same. I personally just buy digitally on 7Digital, Qobuz, and very often on iTunes (for their mastered for iTunes albums). iTunes is VBR 256 minimum in the highly efficient AAC Codec (which is better than MP3), the lowest part of any song is 256kbps due to the VBR, but in more complex parts of the song it can exceed 400kbps. In my opinion iTunes rips are actually very good. They're not a good archival format in case you needed to convert later multiple times, but for straight listening 256kbps (VBR) AAC is way more than good enough. I stop being able to hear the difference at a constant bit rate around 200kbps, often much lower. For a good VBR I could do with an even lower minimum closer to 160. So don't be afraid of iTunes in case you're on the Mac ecosystem and were wondering if they're any good or not, their mastered for iTunes albums are second to none. Outside of iTunes I really like 7Digital because their selection is fairly wide, prices are good, and they offer 320kbps AAC with the base purchase (usually $9 for an album). Qobuz is great as well, top notch quality, but prices are a little bit high. I've done those experiments on NPR as well as many others online, and it's amazing how minor the differences are. The site I recommend to test your hearing and knowledge is: abx.digitalfeed.net/ It takes a minute to understand how it works, start with the lowest quality shootout first (96kbps) to help gauge things. And tell me what you come up with as I'm curious! Sometimes lower bitrates actually sound better, which is a bit of a weird phenom.
I was choosing between an iPod Classic 7th gen, and a FiiO M6. Chose the last one because the price was insanely more convenient (€50) which I bought obviously used. I now read some things about Hi Res audio… If I paired tha iPod with some Audio Technica headphones, would I get the same quality than on the FiiO?
With something like an iPod or any other small listening device the weak point won't be file format. You will almost certainly hear no difference between the formats and resolutions the devices use, the big difference will come from the discrete headphone amp built into the devices. Some units have really high quality headphone amps and sound amazing as a result, and others sound awful. I can't comment on the FiiO because I've never used one, but iPods were known for having decent quality for their size, especially with low Ohm headphones. My advice would be headphones that are low Ohm (resistance) enough not to stress the amp on such a small music player though.
My understanding is that the quality of the recording itself trumps other factors. I like wide soundstage and good bass response among other things... to me it seems that IF it was not in the original recording it is not going to be in my system regardless of any other factors. I have hearing loss and tinnitus on top of it, but I am grateful for still being able to play my guitar and listen to wonderful music. I have to admit I am always searching for the next best thing... but right now I do have some decent equipment to play through and hear through. What I really need is a brain upgrade. ;-)
Totally agreed. Recording quality is by far the most important factor, it's a real shame that modern mastering ruins so many wonderful mixes. But since we can't do much to fix the loudness wars of today the next best thing is to try to appreciate older music with better gear, haha :). Thanks for watching and your nice comment, happy listening!
@@JoshChristiane My pleasure Josh. I am looking forward to more content from you and I really enjoyed your presentation and demeanor. God bless you and all you love.
Hello Brian ... Something to keep in mind. The "soundstage" and all the attributes of openness and detail that we all love are actually burned into the recordings at the studio by Panning, Phasing and Delay techniques. It does not come from our home equipment. That said... while our stereos cannot create or enhance "Soundstage"... poor speaker placement or room modes can and do tend to sabotage it.
@@Douglas_Blake_579 Hi Douglas and thanks for that great insight! I think sometimes that I am guilty of trying to get something out of the music that was never in there in the first place! Even the best live performances are not always perfect but they sure are fun!
@@BrianVallotton There's no such thing as a perfect recording. What varies the most is their distance from perfection... some get close, most don't. That search for "something extra" is this hobby's Achiles heel. As a service tech I saw plenty of really bizarre stuff... everything from $5,000 power cords to interconnects so heavy they broke the connectors on the back of some truly expensive gear... all in the name of better sound.
For most people this is true. However, as an audiophile with a very highly resolving system, I would have to disagree. While this may be true for most listeners who are using their iPhones with a pair of Beats or Airpods headphones, for those of us that have good gear, resolution matters. Having said that, the mix and master quality of a track matter far more. High res can’t fix a bad master mix. On my system I use HQ Player with Roon to upsample from either 44.1, 96, or 192 to 768K PCM before streaming to my DAC. For DSD, I upsample from DSD64 to DSD 1024 prior to streaming to my DAC. What this does is it improves the overall smoothness of the sound, and makes the soundstage/instrument placement and separation in the sound-field more defined. The differences are audible both in speakers and headphones. On my system, bad mixes and masters really stand out. And while we can’t hear past 20k, the ultrasonic frequency range does affect the soundstage alot and filters down to the audible frequencies. That’s why on Delta-Sigma DACs, the noise shaping filter which filters out the ultrasonic noise matters as much as the hardware of the DAC. Essentially that noise shaping filter is the sound of the DAC. And that’s also why upsampling with HQ Player helps with highly resolving R2R Ladder DACs. This also is genre specific, as some music typed lend themselves more to upsampling while others don’t. For most electronic and pop music, it either doesn’t help or makes everything sound worse, because it highlights the separation of instruments in a track, when the genre sounds better when everything is sort of mashed together. For things like orchestral music, or any live instrument type recording where you hear the sound of the room with live instruments and vocals is where upsampling really shines. It makes everything sound much more spacious and defined in the sound-field.
While I don't entirely agree with all of this from a purely technical perspective, I am also an obsessed audiophile so I completely understand the desire for the best gear and process possible. To strive for excellence is never a bad thing in any field or hobby, and I think it's really cool that you're researching the best gear, and using really high-quality tools to pursue your passion. At the end of the day if you think it sounds better then that's what matters, not anybody's opinion, not scientific studies, nothing at all. What matters is *your* ears, and I can't fault anybody for that. Years ago I thought the same exact way, but over the several year process of working on Ogg Vorbis, as well as being the lead designer on VAF conversion, it really changed and shaped my view and understanding of what I was hearing. The truth is that in a blind test there is no human in the world that could hear the difference between 44.1 and 192khz assuming that both were done with equally correct conversion on print in stereo. The issue is that they can't be done equally. So yes, theoretically one can hear differences, and that's likely what you're hearing. The way converters work at 44.1 and 192 is simply not the same, so it's impossible to look at this or do unbiased tests. The source on both samples would have to be recorded at different resolute rates, also requiring different word clocking among a dozen other compatibility issues. Then both have to be served (played back) by the client at different rates through different DAC's using different settings. But it's important to understand that none of these differences are the "sample rate" itself, but rather everything else that's reliant on recording and playing back that sample rate. This is why gear matters the most and I can't argue against somebody bouncing down to 192khz or recording in a higher quality format/resolution. A good converter will sound vastly better at 44.1 than a bad converter at 192, because the resolution itself is almost irrelevant. I say this as somebody with several hundred thousand dollars invested into multiple Hi-Fi systems. It's an amazing hobby, and I love it and the study of it. These arguments are useful to pushing the industry forward, but it's also important for us to be honest with ourselves about where to improve. The truth is that good speakers, a good amp, good cables, good DSP options, and great converters will always matter more than resolution or format. But trying to A/B 44 vs 192 is basically impossible in a fair manner. It'd be like if I took a 12 megapixel picture. Upscaling that to 48 megapixels can't actually add any authentic detail. Though it could improve processing effects such as denoising, smoothening, etc. So then is it worth it? Is it actually adding any real detail? Does it make the image look better? The answer purely depends on how you define better. From a purists standpoint you've added no real original data, and therefore you can only make the image worse. But from a more dispassionate view you could argue you made it look better, using sharpening and denoising you produced a more attractive higher resolution photo that looks smoother on the eyes. Same exact thing with audio. If the source material was recorded in 44.1 (as many digital albums are), you cannot add information by bouncing down to a higher sample resolution. But perhaps as you stated with several complex DSP effects one could smoothen out harsh edges, and even add to the binaural experience. But to *me* that's not better, it's just different. When I worked as a producer and engineer in Hollywood almost every band I worked with in studios recorded their albums at 44.1 or 48khz. It was unusual for an artist or label to request a higher sample resolution (though it happened once for an indie-movie soundtrack). And many music stores don't even accept higher resolution rates, capping out at 44.1kHz. If you're an artist you should record in the format you'll be delivering in, and since physical CD's and many digital platforms cap you at 44.1 (including many streaming services), I think that's the most logical application.
@ It doesn’t add any information to the recording but it does change the way we hear the soundstage, which is audible. Things like the width, depth, layering and focus/sharpness/placement of each instrument in the soundstage are affected by the sampling rate. And that’s why a 44.1 track upsampled to 768k sounds better than the straight 44.1 track in most cases. Some genres like say hard rock, EDM, and a couple others don’t improve or sound worse. And I can hear the difference between 44.1 and 192 on tracks I am already familiar with. However it has to be on a highly resolving system. And I bet you can too once you know what to listen for. (It’s not frequency information but the soundstage and smoothness that is noticeable).
@ Can you hear the difference between lossy and lossless codecs? (Like for example a track encoded in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis vs. say FLAC?) That’s even more apparent than the differences between 44.1 and say 48, 96, or 192. Or how about can you hear the differences between two different DACs? Because no two DACs sound the same and some sound far better than others. The differences between say two DACs is similar to the differences between 44.1 and 192k PCM. It’s subtle but it’s still apparent.
@ By the way in your video you use the analogy of beat quantization in a DAW and that’s an excellent analogy. If you take say a Van Halen track and import it into your DAW and do a strict beat quantization on the song, it sounds wrong. All the pitches and frequencies are still there and its technically the same song, but its lost its natural feel. That’s essentially the same difference between 44.1 and high res. All the pitch information is there, but it sounds off because its lacking the space around the instruments in the soundstage, the decay on things like cymbal hits sounds too artificial and harsh. Stuff like that. It’s subtle but noticeable once you hear it. And that’s why some genres sound subjectively worse in high res or upsampled, because you can more easily highlight every individual element in a track as well as the space in between elements, and for some genres that need that ‘glued together’ or harsh digital sound it sort of pulls it apart so that you can easily discern each of the elements separately and smooths things over. And that’s why pointing at a frequency chart and saying all the frequencies between 20hertz and 20 khz are there, therefore there is no discernible difference between 44.1 and higher res is a misleading argument. That would be like saying, all the frequencies are still there in that quantized Van Halen track, so therefore there is no difference, but there is a difference. The argument against needing 24bits or higher or DSD are really two separate component arguments - you have dynamic range, which is the bit depth, and you have the sampling rate, which is essentially the same as quantization in a DAW I.e. the lower the quantization level the more artificial it sounds. The differences are small though, We are talking a 5% sonic difference at most. 90-95% is the mix and master quality. And as I said before, high res can’t fix a bad mix or master, it can only highlight it more. Where we do agree is that technically we don’t NEED more than 16bit/44.1, and that’s basically true.
A lot of interesting information there, thanks for sharing your opinions and experience! I really appreciate it even if I can't respond to everything, and I do read everything people write :)
FYI In respect of pixels on a camera phone they just double up and multiply the resolution as you realistically are probably getting half meg on a so called typical 40 meg camera. It's impossible to obtain these resolutions from a small lense regardless of the sensor, it's just marketing hype as usual 🙃 As for the Hires yes and no. The main reason for up sampling is to add more ingredients in the music designed to then be digitally enhanced in the detailing specific to the quality of the speaker or headphones etc. I do agree though in normal daily hearing frequencies 16 bit is ample. Thanks 👍
Thanks for the comment! Totally right on about cameras though, adding more pixels absolutely does not give you more "real resolution" unless the lens can actually resolve that information. But for example on a lot of small smartphones with cheap glass that's not even possible, so definitely some heavy marketing at play there.
So we talked about those "snapshots" which are the captures of velocity that map out a waveform to represent audio. How fast those snapshots happen is the sample rate, but how many bits are used to capture each individual snapshot is the bit depth. The more bits you have, the greater the resolute range of data on that vertical axis. Basically think about it as the sample rate being the horizontal resolution, and the bit depth being the vertical resolution. Hopefully that makes sense, thanks for the great question!
@@JoshChristiane Right, but even if the frequenzy does not benefit from being beyond 44khz, surely a higher bit depth will more accurately reproduce the true analog waveform?
Yes, more accurately. But again we run into the same situation where we have to ask "how much is enough"? Can a human ear tell the difference between 16bit and 32bit depth? The answer of course is no, outside of extremely unusual circumstances. Higher bit depths should be used for recording because it allows effectively more dynamic range in post production, but after mixing and mastering the dynamic range is so decremented that difference is completely negligible. CD quality is still the best the human ear can hear, 16 bit 44.1kHz. While it can easily get better than that, we simply cannot hear the difference.
yeah but i still have noise wenn i rip a cd to alac or wav. I looked at spectrograms of my alacs and they all had noise. i didnt convert anything i just converted it from one format to another. i converted one cd to flac. still noise in the spectrogram
That's often from the CD press itself. I used to make my own CD's (from actual bounced prints) and depending on how you do it, it can cause noise. Dithering adds noise intentionally to help reduce bit error noise when going from 24bit to 16bit for CD standards, so it's possible that's also what you're hearing. This is why I buy digitally (7Digitial, iTunes, Qobuz) then download 44.1 16 bit CD quality FLAC or ALAC for storage. Nothing wrong with physical CD's though, which ripper are you using? I just use Foobar2000 and have had good results from it.
"Hi-Res" is mostly Scam... What ? As a speaker builder, musician, mixing and mastering artist i can say. That most modern music is only 12 Bit, after the mastering stage... Cause 1Bit is 6dB in dynamics... So 16 Bit is 96 of Dynamics. The lowest ( level ) tone in a song is around -35 dBFS and fades are down to -60 / -70 dBFS... The highest ( level ) tones are going up to -5 dBFS... So you have a dynamic range of 12 Bits = 72 dB... Classic music, real classic music without compression on.. so with the brutal original dynamics... can benefit from High Resolution Media... Okay kHz... 44,1 vs 192... My experiences are... the higher the kHz, the more unnatural the sound is... it gets more and more clinical sterile... So 16/44 is good enough for me... WHEN the mastering was a good one... AND THAT is the biggest problem today... over 80 to 90% of music out there... today... is sonic garbage ! I know, when i hear a modern produced song, what went wrong in point of physics, psychological and technical points... beside the stupid loudness of today... Cause of this mess... Vinyl is at moment, although it is the worse format... the better choice over Hi-Res... Why ? Cause the cutting engineer need tracks which are less loud than the CD / Streaming versions... Cause of that... dynamics came back and more of the original mix sound... Cause for CD and Streaming, the life is squeezed out of the mix, to BE THE LOUDEST ON THE STREET !!! A complete stupid mind set in the biz... Why ? Cause near everywhere audio is normalized... Even on CD... cause you are the normalization algorithm with you hands... Cause you dial the Volume knob of your amp... 16/44 on CD, when the Mastering was a good one, is fine and can sound warm like Vinyl... without the technical restrictions of Vinyl... I hope this helps a bit :-)
Totally agreed with most of this. This was a good analysis with some excellent overall points made. I know it's a nuanced topic, and many confuse converter quality with format quality, so that alone can be deceptive. But in the end quality can only get so good before something sounds real, of course there will be a diminish of returns.
FLAC and ALAC (Apple's version of it) are both compressed lossless codecs. A codec means "compression-decompression". So both are file formats that compress and then decompress the audio on the fly. The reason they're popular is because you can keep the lossless quality of WAV or AIFF, but in a smaller file format with files that are often half the size. FLAC (and ALAC) are fantastic, but they have nothing to do with the quality of the audio itself, they just store the audio. Think about FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, and any other lossless format as all containers that hold the thing itself, but the qualities of that thing are not necessarily entirely determined by the container. MP3, AAC, and OGG are lossy formats so they will reduce the quality of the sound they store. FLAC supports 16bit, 24bit, and 32bit audio (for bit depth), and it supports 44.1khz all the way up to 600,000khz+, so the range of what it can store is basically infinite. I'm actually surprised the format doesn't get used more often than it does, as it's my favorite. Assuming you're building a music catalogue or collection, I highly recommend storing all of your files in 44.1khz 16-bit, FLAC or ALAC with full compression (8) enabled.
The format itself yes, but the units no. The Ifi Zen is a good headphone amp, and the discrete amp within it will affect quality far more than just a file format. High quality headphone amps are definitely not a scam.
Yes, it's worth it. Bluetooth traditionally drops your quality in the stream transmission, and that device effectively just keeps the quality of the stream at whatever its source is. So basically that device just prevents the regular bluetooth transmission degradation. If you're heavily reliant on bluetooth and use it often then it's absolutely worth it to keep your stream quality at the source material.
Wow people need to wake up and listen to this I brought a Everso master edition now I need better speakers and Receiver glad I've seen this I'm sending the eversolo back I will never be fooled again thanks for this Awesome video 😀
Thank you Josh, very informative presentation! I rip all of my CDs to FLAC onto an SSD connected to my ROON Core/Mac Mini M1 and Holo Audio Cyan 2 DAC. So when I play the FLAC files via ROON it plays/upsamples them at 192kHz. Thoughts!
Thanks for the compliment! :) Sounds like a great setup! I love Roon and its music management service, super high-quality. I can't speak for their hardware they sell since I don't use it. As a general rule upsampling is less degenerative than downsampling. If it's also scaling the bit depth then going upwards is less of an issue because dithering isn't required. It's more of an issue when you're downsampling or scaling down bit depths. With that said though you're not gaining any quality either, obviously, it's just unused data being added. This is a situation where your DAC is going to matter way more than arbitrary rates, and the Holo Cyan is a phenomenal converter. You have the perfect setup, no need to change anything as long as your music is easy to access. For my listening setup I use a Burl converter into Adam A77X's, I also have a stereo Cinema Marantz in my theater room that runs into some nice tower JBL's. I LOVE audio and good speakers, but the room you're listening in will matter even more than the speakers in a lot of cases. Treating a room properly is undeniably complex, but that's definitely the next step if you haven't already. I'm sure you're using really good speakers already since you clearly have a passion for music and audio.
A bit unbalanced and dogmatic this video. There are studies by Oohashi and colleagues that so called inaudible sounds/hypersonic effect can create brain responses. The Sanken CO-100K is the first 100kHz microphone in the world designed for actual professional recording. Audiophiles are not just interested in instruments that can generate frequencies/harmonics above 20KHz (gamelan, trumpet, violin, oboe, cymbals) but also accuracy in the time domain (detectyable pitch variations are in the tens of milliseconds range). These harmonics in turn modulate other frequencies in the "audible" range. There are numerous audiophile recording studio's that record in DXD (384Khz) and DSD 256 formats (Eudora, Yarlung, Channel Classics, 2L, Reference Recordings, Impex) If you listen to multitracked electronic music there is indeed little point in listening to Hi Resolution formats. They make most sense for recordings by humans in a room space with real instruments: fingering a bass or manipulating a bow on a cello or cymbal crash in air.)
All interesting information, thanks for sharing that! This is obviously a very complex topic with many things to consider, and research is constantly being done as to what can influence the things (harmonics especially) that we hear. For audiophiles like us it's an interesting pursuit to see what can be done for high-end reproduction, but for the average listener streaming music at 128kbps on Spotify running through $15 earphones it's all kind of a moot point anyways, lol. The real question is simply if people can tell an audible difference, and on that front the answer of course is no. In mass blind tests people can't even tell the difference between lossless and 256 AAC lossy file formats, and the people who can tell the difference often end up preferring the lower quality file format (complex reasons for this). There is definitely a point of diminishing returns. 384kHz is objectively better quality than 44.1kHz, but that doesn't mean that a normal person under normal listening conditions with a normal DAC through normal speakers can tell a difference. And even using the most expensive DAC, amp, and headphones made on the market, the great majority of people still cannot tell a difference, so we are picking at straws about pointless differences in the real world. I've seen (and done) many blind tests, and nobody I've ever tested has been able to tell a difference (including myself). A test on this very subject was done with Ted Jensen, arguably the man with the most sensitive and well-trained ears in the world, and he simply could not tell a difference. If the world's best and most lucrative mastering engineer, with the absolute perfect studio, speakers, and setup cannot tell a difference, then it simply does not matter.
“Our ears cannot hear better than CD quality”. I beg to disagree. With suitable hi-fi equipment, the difference between, for example, 16bit 24kHz (CD quality) and 24bit 96kHz hi-res recordings is easy to hear. The higher res you go I agree it is almost if not fully impossible for most people to appreciate.
You got a few things wrong here. You said CD quality is 16bit 24kHz, but CD quality is NOT 24kHz, it's 44.1kHz. This may have been a typo on your part, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant 44.1kHz. The theoretical frequency reproduction limit of a 44.1kHz recording is a little over 20kHz. No known human in any testing in audiological history has ever had the capacity to hear above 20kHz. It simply does not exist, and never has. So I'm not sure why you think you can hear a difference. ANY difference you hear in blind testing will be due to dithering, or AD/DA quality differing at specific rates. This is not the format difference though, that would simply be converter quality. And I do not doubt that some converters operate better at higher rate, but that's a converter issue, NOT a resolution issue. Bit depth is for dynamic range, and obviously it matters as well to a degree, but there is a point of diminishing returns there. I personally have never met an individual who could actually hear the difference between 44.1khz, and 192khz, and if they could tell a difference it would be from dithering or the operational AD/DA simply being a higher quality converter at a higher sample rate. But all things considered equal there should be absolutely no discernable difference because our ears simply cannot hear beyond 20khz, outside of extreme anomalies. I do appreciate your comment and hearing your opinion though, so thanks for sharing it!
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks so much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and be my friend on X at x.com/Josh_Christiane
Subscribed 🙂
Thanks, Roman! :D!
Hi Josh , Apple does stream @ high resolution above 48 kHz via a USB connection & airplay 2 @ 24 bit depth 48khz brick wall. I do agree with you but only for non studio playback. I’m subscribing keep up the great work 👍.
@gg.6967 Agreed, thanks!
Its not a scam in the sense of buying high end headphones and pairing it with a high end setup and then using that to play a loseless audio file for its higher quality as well. Its not all about what spectrum of frequencies we can hear. We just want something that sounds more clear and detailed to our ears than the norm.
Is it overkill? Possibly.
Does it sound better? Absolutely.
Absolutely. Buying a good pair of high quality headphones, a good headphone amp, and playing back lossless files is definitely a great way to enjoy music. That aspect is definitely not a scam, I am more just talking about 44.1khz lossless vs 96khz and 192khz lossless here. You have to pay like $10 more for the higher sample rate on a lot of albums, and you gain no quality.
@@JoshChristiane just watched the full video 😂 I have to agree there. When my dac switches between the different khz I can't tell the difference in quality.
Yeah same here, nobody can tell the difference unless there are some really specific conditions. If you slowed the music down 300 or 400% then maybe differences would start to become apparent in the high-end, but at that point the audio quality would be so messed up it wouldn't matter anymore. Some converters sound better at 192khz which deceives a lot of people, but that's just the quality of the conversion itself not the frequency range difference.
Yes it is. external Headphone amps/dacs are generally nonsense as well. Most mobile devices has sufficient audio processing unless the drivers specifically need amplification which most consumer grade units don't. Lossless is a subjective basket being that music production sometimes derives sounds from less than stellar sources. I.E Where was the instrument from a rompler sampled from? at what rate? Was a sample pulled from Vinyl, or an obscure, out of production album that someone uploaded to youtube? are the headphones neutral monitors, or capable of being adjusted to be so? The Audiophile experience is often placebo, namely because most audiophiles don't understand the music production process in the first place.
@soundahfekz321 A lot of truth to all of that, for sure. Source will always matter the most.
Terrific video on this subject. One of the very best I've seen so far. Would love to have you make a video on your thoughts on the SACD/DSD audio format.
Ya know, we kind of settled this argument back when CDs came out and we endured the CD vs vinyl wars. The specification for music CDs was actually simple and brilliant. Today I'm a huge fan of the FLAC format. A significant reduction from .wav file sizes and in my most discerning listening using IEMs, I just can't imagine I'm missing any detail. Now if we could get lossless compression for video. Movies are the storage gluttons on the server.
There are a lot bigger grounds to be made up in video for sure. If there are any audible differences between 44.1 to 192 for example, it's so small it doesn't matter. When talking about streaming video, compression types, and even just editing or refining techniques (denoising, glossing, etc) these differences matter significantly. Look at how bad 4k streaming is, but yet how far it's come in 10 years. HEVC has been a pretty big help for me storing all of my videos, but even then I feel like it has a long way to go. Thanks for watching and commenting :)
I think, it's not about Hz, but about bit in digital perspective, because CD recording is base on binnary digit. You can get same analogy in digitaly process of image. In digitaly definition of 16bit image and 32bit image, you will get much rich color in 1 squere inch of image at 32bit image. So, in 32bit sound, you can get more rich digitaly collect same Hz data to covert to digital code/definition in one package digital data sound. Sorry about my English. 🙏🏻
Oh you're absolutely correct. Nobody is debating that 192kHz is significantly higher quality than 44.1kHz. 32bit is better than 16bit, no question. The question that we must ask is if our ears can tell the difference, as well as if our speakers and AD/DA can reproduce the difference, and generally the answer to that is no. Blind tests consistently show that humans simply cannot tell the difference past the point of diminishing returns.
I don't think albums sold at higher sample rates are upsampled. They are probably recorded, mixed and mastered at 24/96 or 24/192 and then downsampled to "consumer-grade quality" 16/44.1 for CD and streaming. Does not mean it sounds worse, I'm with you with this. I can't hear any difference on streaming services that offer "lossless, better than CD quality".
Some are, some aren't. An example is Coldplay's album X&Y. I read a technical document years ago from the lead engineer, and he said it was all recorded at 44.1khz on an RME interface (which is not abnormal in studios, especially back then). But yet I see the album commonly available in 192khz. So 100% that album was just upscaled. This is only one example, and there are many more. I also personally worked on an album for a Christian band years ago where we did all of it at 44.1, and now the album is magically available in "hi-res 192khz". One could debate whether this should be considered consumer fraud or not. Another example is 4k UHD Bluray copies of movies like "Hugo", but Hugo was filmed entirely in 1080p on the Arri Alexa at the time. So obviously it's just a fake cheap upscale.
The difference between lossless and lossy is a different argument entirely though, because that's less to do with resolution and bit depth and more to do with the actual casing compression for delivery format. When we are talking about a low quality lossy MP3 vs WAV or FLAC then of course there may be some audible differences, though the differences become basically negligible past 256kbps AAC or 320kbps MP3. Everybody in audio has opinions on these things, but the actual testing is pretty definitive that there is a point of diminishing returns on perceptive quality.
That was a fascinating discussion to listen to. I had no idea how many brands, in this category, are taking advantage of the consumer by capitalizing on their ignorance in this field...Thank you for enlightening us!
Thanks, I agree. Thank you for watching!
(NO SHOUTING) *THANK YOU JOSH TO TELL THE TRUTH. NOW WHAT ABOUT VINYL VS. CD? WHAT IS THE BETTER HARDWARE FORMAT?*
That's an easy one to answer: Vinyl. Vinyl is not a scam assuming that the album was recorded on real tape (like Fleetwood Mac, Lez Zepp, etc.), and then printed from that tape onto vinyl records. The quality of of a real vinyl print is vastly superior to anything digital could ever reproduce. Way higher dynamic range, lovely sounding smooth analog distortion when you exceed the red line, and true-to-life representation of what was recorded. However, with that said, vinyl offers absolutely no benefits over regular CD's if the album was not recorded on tape. Meaning that any album recorded after year 2000 is basically digital anyways, and going from digital to analog serves no benefits.
So yes to vinyl, but only for old albums that were on tape originally. Most of which are better than modern music anyways.
@@JoshChristianeThat’s how I draw the line. I love all types of media: vinyl, CDs and streaming but I don’t go newer than 1985 for vinyl, I don’t see the point.
You've saved me from falling for the scam ever again. Didn't realize Hi Res is just another marketing ploy. This really helped me understand. Super informative!
Glad I could help! Thank you!
Great explanation Josh! Definitely opened my eyes to audio quality (this is new to me). I'd love to hear your take on audio in cars. What's the best way to consume music in a vehicle? I assume most people stream from Spotify or some other app. Does Aux vs Bluetooth vs USB matter?
My understanding is that Bluetooth reduces quality significantly because the stream is generally in SBC, so bluetooth (might) not be the best quality, but even then it's likely unnoticeable considering most car sound systems are very poor. I imagine you couldn't hear the difference between 128kbps and lossless on even a very nice car stereo. Spotify streams at 96kbps on "normal" settings. When you choose "High Quality" in the app it switches to 160kbps. In my testing 160kbps is quite hard to tell from lossless, you may lose some harmonics but the difference is so small it doesn't practically matter on most systems. In a nutshell Spotify is definitely good enough, especially if set to high quality in the app. I wouldn't have any complaints with it at least. Audiophiles tend to obsess over that extra .01% of quality that's impossible to notice unless you have golden ears and $2000 headphones. AUX is the best quality if you're connecting your phone directly to your car sound system, I personally just stick with that and have no issues.
@@JoshChristiane thank you for a nice breakdown!
Another issue is simply that most hifi speakers cannot do 20hz to 20Khz.
Most of the recordings out there especially early digital, were capped at 20Khz. Even much of the SACD catalogues were actually recorded from material including DAT tape, and contained no information above 20Khz.
Another interesting audiophile concept is that treble beyond human hearing actually improves transients in percussion and bass. Personally not many hifi speakers even at £80'000 are doing decent transients, percusion, or bass anyway.
Regardless, I love old DAC's and see no point these days in getting some of the higher end ones any more, most audiophile gear has coloured output stages to create a feeling of difference, a house sound, so people pick items they like, when in reality DAC's from Topping and SMSL as expamples are more accurate than most of the audiophile dacs, and having a neutral sound is not that appeasing. I mean there are nice DAC's, I like the Mola Mola Tambaqui and if I had the disposable income I would buy it, but the reality is it is not 10x better than a Topping D90 discreet, and none of them are significantly better than many of the late 90's audiophile dacs, which is why some manufacturers have been revisiting those chips.
You are absolutely right on! I'm glad you understand it because it seems like not a lot of audiophile people get that. Marketing is a powerful tool at getting people to spend more money on stuff they don't need. A good pair of HiFi speakers is totally worth it for me, but there is definitely a point of diminishing returns, like with anything else I suppose. I'll stick to my Focal Twin6 Be's.
Superb explanation, very detailed but easy to follow. Thank You. Ian (UK)
Thanks for watching and the appreciative comment, Ian. Have a great week!
Came to debunk a new pair of headphones, came away with that AND valuable information regarding recording audio, which is very much appreciated for self taught music producers like me. Great video!!
Thanks for the nice comment, :) I'm glad I could help people learn something about audio, definitely a passion of mine.
Hi Josh, Really appreciate this video. It helped explain a lot of things to me. I had a couple of follow up questions for you. If I'm looking at purchasing an album on Qobuz (for this example its the Album "Tell me I'm Alive" by All time Low) it will give me the option to purchase it in both 16bit/44kHz and 24bit/48kHz. Is there a way to find out whether the original recording was recorded in 44kHz vs the 48kHz? How does the bit rate of 16bit vs 24 bits affect the sound (assuming the sampling rate stays the same)? Thanks!
Great question, and therein lies a major issue in the industry. It's pretty much impossible to know what it was originally recorded in unless the creators specifically state it on its wikipedia page, or you happen to know the exact gear and settings they use some other way. SoundonSound magazine had info on the Coldplay album, so that's how I found out what it was originally recorded in, but otherwise I'd never have known outside of just using common sense.
I will say this though, as an ex-producer of many albums for many artists, 90%+ of music recorded digitally is recorded 24-bit - 44.1kHz. I can only recall one single time sitting in a session where 48kHz was used, and that was a Switchfoot album (vice verses), specifically because they intended the songs to be used in movie soundtracks potentially. Final delivery of that album was 44.1kHz though, so in the end it was pointless.
In terms of the difference between 44.1kHz and 48kHz, you simply cannot tell a difference unless one of them was a bad convert, so I wouldn't worry about that. Bit depth matters more, but only during recording. When you're tracking you get better headroom, lower noise-floor, and more detailed recordings by recording > 24bit, and some albums are recording at 32bit now even which helps prevent clipping issues later on. Bit depth just gives you more vertical resolution (so each snapshot/stem itself has a great range of velocity storage).
But once the album is bounced down and mastered there won't be an audible difference between 16bit and 24 or 32bit, because the headroom is the same for everything (0dB) in the digital space.
In a nutshell: Just buy the cheapest one you can get. Nothing will be better than 44.1kHz - 16bit with very very few exceptions.
@@JoshChristiane Hi Josh, thanks for the reply. I appreciate your honesty with how audio tracks are recorded. After watching your video it sparked my curiosity and I did further research and yes I agree with you the bit depth gives you a larger noise floor when you are at 24 bits, but as you mentioned in your video even if you had perfect ears (I certainly don't) and the top of the line equipment you wouldn't be able to hear the difference unless you blasted the sound at a high enough level that it would cause hearing damage. at this point it seems like the only value of the "hi-res" tracks are that they show up as HQ on my DAP.
I have a follow up question. If CD quality is the best that you are going to be able to get. Do you recommend ripping music from a physical CD or is downloading from a site like HD tracks or Qobuz just as good? Reason I ask is I didn't know if they did any signal processing or funky things like that. I saw an article where they compared an analog signal, vs the CD, vs a newer CD, vs a download
magicvinyldigital.net/2022/06/18/dire-straits-money-for-nothing-review-lp-cd-qobuz-1988-remastered-2022/
One interesting article I found last night was this NPR article where you can play a lossless .wav track against a compressed 320kbps and a compressed 128 kbps file of the same track. and you had to pick which one is the lossless file. What was interesting was that majority of the files I selected the lossless version of the track, but for the 2 of the 6 that I selected the compressed file, I selected the 128kbps track. I would have thought I would have selected the 320kbps. its an interesting experiment.
www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
Totally agree with you on all that.
In terms of CD quality (digital) vs CD RIP, there shouldn't be any difference assuming you have a good quality ripper. All things being equal they should basically be the same. I personally just buy digitally on 7Digital, Qobuz, and very often on iTunes (for their mastered for iTunes albums). iTunes is VBR 256 minimum in the highly efficient AAC Codec (which is better than MP3), the lowest part of any song is 256kbps due to the VBR, but in more complex parts of the song it can exceed 400kbps. In my opinion iTunes rips are actually very good. They're not a good archival format in case you needed to convert later multiple times, but for straight listening 256kbps (VBR) AAC is way more than good enough. I stop being able to hear the difference at a constant bit rate around 200kbps, often much lower. For a good VBR I could do with an even lower minimum closer to 160. So don't be afraid of iTunes in case you're on the Mac ecosystem and were wondering if they're any good or not, their mastered for iTunes albums are second to none. Outside of iTunes I really like 7Digital because their selection is fairly wide, prices are good, and they offer 320kbps AAC with the base purchase (usually $9 for an album). Qobuz is great as well, top notch quality, but prices are a little bit high.
I've done those experiments on NPR as well as many others online, and it's amazing how minor the differences are. The site I recommend to test your hearing and knowledge is: abx.digitalfeed.net/
It takes a minute to understand how it works, start with the lowest quality shootout first (96kbps) to help gauge things. And tell me what you come up with as I'm curious!
Sometimes lower bitrates actually sound better, which is a bit of a weird phenom.
I was choosing between an iPod Classic 7th gen, and a FiiO M6. Chose the last one because the price was insanely more convenient (€50) which I bought obviously used. I now read some things about Hi Res audio…
If I paired tha iPod with some Audio Technica headphones, would I get the same quality than on the FiiO?
With something like an iPod or any other small listening device the weak point won't be file format. You will almost certainly hear no difference between the formats and resolutions the devices use, the big difference will come from the discrete headphone amp built into the devices. Some units have really high quality headphone amps and sound amazing as a result, and others sound awful. I can't comment on the FiiO because I've never used one, but iPods were known for having decent quality for their size, especially with low Ohm headphones. My advice would be headphones that are low Ohm (resistance) enough not to stress the amp on such a small music player though.
My understanding is that the quality of the recording itself trumps other factors. I like wide soundstage and good bass response among other things... to me it seems that IF it was not in the original recording it is not going to be in my system regardless of any other factors. I have hearing loss and tinnitus on top of it, but I am grateful for still being able to play my guitar and listen to wonderful music. I have to admit I am always searching for the next best thing... but right now I do have some decent equipment to play through and hear through. What I really need is a brain upgrade. ;-)
Totally agreed. Recording quality is by far the most important factor, it's a real shame that modern mastering ruins so many wonderful mixes. But since we can't do much to fix the loudness wars of today the next best thing is to try to appreciate older music with better gear, haha :). Thanks for watching and your nice comment, happy listening!
@@JoshChristiane My pleasure Josh. I am looking forward to more content from you and I really enjoyed your presentation and demeanor. God bless you and all you love.
Hello Brian ... Something to keep in mind. The "soundstage" and all the attributes of openness and detail that we all love are actually burned into the recordings at the studio by Panning, Phasing and Delay techniques. It does not come from our home equipment.
That said... while our stereos cannot create or enhance "Soundstage"... poor speaker placement or room modes can and do tend to sabotage it.
@@Douglas_Blake_579 Hi Douglas and thanks for that great insight! I think sometimes that I am guilty of trying to get something out of the music that was never in there in the first place! Even the best live performances are not always perfect but they sure are fun!
@@BrianVallotton
There's no such thing as a perfect recording. What varies the most is their distance from perfection... some get close, most don't.
That search for "something extra" is this hobby's Achiles heel. As a service tech I saw plenty of really bizarre stuff... everything from $5,000 power cords to interconnects so heavy they broke the connectors on the back of some truly expensive gear... all in the name of better sound.
Apple music does support hi res lossless but I do agree hi res isn't worth it cd quality is the best standard and that should be the standard.
It only does if you're using their streaming service, but if you buy an album on iTunes then it's VBR 256kbps AAC.
For most people this is true. However, as an audiophile with a very highly resolving system, I would have to disagree. While this may be true for most listeners who are using their iPhones with a pair of Beats or Airpods headphones, for those of us that have good gear, resolution matters. Having said that, the mix and master quality of a track matter far more. High res can’t fix a bad master mix. On my system I use HQ Player with Roon to upsample from either 44.1, 96, or 192 to 768K PCM before streaming to my DAC. For DSD, I upsample from DSD64 to DSD 1024 prior to streaming to my DAC. What this does is it improves the overall smoothness of the sound, and makes the soundstage/instrument placement and separation in the sound-field more defined. The differences are audible both in speakers and headphones. On my system, bad mixes and masters really stand out. And while we can’t hear past 20k, the ultrasonic frequency range does affect the soundstage alot and filters down to the audible frequencies. That’s why on Delta-Sigma DACs, the noise shaping filter which filters out the ultrasonic noise matters as much as the hardware of the DAC. Essentially that noise shaping filter is the sound of the DAC. And that’s also why upsampling with HQ Player helps with highly resolving R2R Ladder DACs. This also is genre specific, as some music typed lend themselves more to upsampling while others don’t. For most electronic and pop music, it either doesn’t help or makes everything sound worse, because it highlights the separation of instruments in a track, when the genre sounds better when everything is sort of mashed together. For things like orchestral music, or any live instrument type recording where you hear the sound of the room with live instruments and vocals is where upsampling really shines. It makes everything sound much more spacious and defined in the sound-field.
While I don't entirely agree with all of this from a purely technical perspective, I am also an obsessed audiophile so I completely understand the desire for the best gear and process possible. To strive for excellence is never a bad thing in any field or hobby, and I think it's really cool that you're researching the best gear, and using really high-quality tools to pursue your passion. At the end of the day if you think it sounds better then that's what matters, not anybody's opinion, not scientific studies, nothing at all. What matters is *your* ears, and I can't fault anybody for that. Years ago I thought the same exact way, but over the several year process of working on Ogg Vorbis, as well as being the lead designer on VAF conversion, it really changed and shaped my view and understanding of what I was hearing.
The truth is that in a blind test there is no human in the world that could hear the difference between 44.1 and 192khz assuming that both were done with equally correct conversion on print in stereo. The issue is that they can't be done equally. So yes, theoretically one can hear differences, and that's likely what you're hearing. The way converters work at 44.1 and 192 is simply not the same, so it's impossible to look at this or do unbiased tests. The source on both samples would have to be recorded at different resolute rates, also requiring different word clocking among a dozen other compatibility issues. Then both have to be served (played back) by the client at different rates through different DAC's using different settings. But it's important to understand that none of these differences are the "sample rate" itself, but rather everything else that's reliant on recording and playing back that sample rate.
This is why gear matters the most and I can't argue against somebody bouncing down to 192khz or recording in a higher quality format/resolution. A good converter will sound vastly better at 44.1 than a bad converter at 192, because the resolution itself is almost irrelevant.
I say this as somebody with several hundred thousand dollars invested into multiple Hi-Fi systems. It's an amazing hobby, and I love it and the study of it. These arguments are useful to pushing the industry forward, but it's also important for us to be honest with ourselves about where to improve.
The truth is that good speakers, a good amp, good cables, good DSP options, and great converters will always matter more than resolution or format. But trying to A/B 44 vs 192 is basically impossible in a fair manner.
It'd be like if I took a 12 megapixel picture. Upscaling that to 48 megapixels can't actually add any authentic detail. Though it could improve processing effects such as denoising, smoothening, etc. So then is it worth it? Is it actually adding any real detail? Does it make the image look better? The answer purely depends on how you define better. From a purists standpoint you've added no real original data, and therefore you can only make the image worse. But from a more dispassionate view you could argue you made it look better, using sharpening and denoising you produced a more attractive higher resolution photo that looks smoother on the eyes. Same exact thing with audio.
If the source material was recorded in 44.1 (as many digital albums are), you cannot add information by bouncing down to a higher sample resolution. But perhaps as you stated with several complex DSP effects one could smoothen out harsh edges, and even add to the binaural experience. But to *me* that's not better, it's just different.
When I worked as a producer and engineer in Hollywood almost every band I worked with in studios recorded their albums at 44.1 or 48khz. It was unusual for an artist or label to request a higher sample resolution (though it happened once for an indie-movie soundtrack). And many music stores don't even accept higher resolution rates, capping out at 44.1kHz. If you're an artist you should record in the format you'll be delivering in, and since physical CD's and many digital platforms cap you at 44.1 (including many streaming services), I think that's the most logical application.
@ It doesn’t add any information to the recording but it does change the way we hear the soundstage, which is audible. Things like the width, depth, layering and focus/sharpness/placement of each instrument in the soundstage are affected by the sampling rate. And that’s why a 44.1 track upsampled to 768k sounds better than the straight 44.1 track in most cases. Some genres like say hard rock, EDM, and a couple others don’t improve or sound worse. And I can hear the difference between 44.1 and 192 on tracks I am already familiar with. However it has to be on a highly resolving system. And I bet you can too once you know what to listen for. (It’s not frequency information but the soundstage and smoothness that is noticeable).
@ Can you hear the difference between lossy and lossless codecs? (Like for example a track encoded in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis vs. say FLAC?) That’s even more apparent than the differences between 44.1 and say 48, 96, or 192. Or how about can you hear the differences between two different DACs? Because no two DACs sound the same and some sound far better than others. The differences between say two DACs is similar to the differences between 44.1 and 192k PCM. It’s subtle but it’s still apparent.
@ By the way in your video you use the analogy of beat quantization in a DAW and that’s an excellent analogy. If you take say a Van Halen track and import it into your DAW and do a strict beat quantization on the song, it sounds wrong. All the pitches and frequencies are still there and its technically the same song, but its lost its natural feel. That’s essentially the same difference between 44.1 and high res. All the pitch information is there, but it sounds off because its lacking the space around the instruments in the soundstage, the decay on things like cymbal hits sounds too artificial and harsh. Stuff like that. It’s subtle but noticeable once you hear it. And that’s why some genres sound subjectively worse in high res or upsampled, because you can more easily highlight every individual element in a track as well as the space in between elements, and for some genres that need that ‘glued together’ or harsh digital sound it sort of pulls it apart so that you can easily discern each of the elements separately and smooths things over. And that’s why pointing at a frequency chart and saying all the frequencies between 20hertz and 20 khz are there, therefore there is no discernible difference between 44.1 and higher res is a misleading argument. That would be like saying, all the frequencies are still there in that quantized Van Halen track, so therefore there is no difference, but there is a difference. The argument against needing 24bits or higher or DSD are really two separate component arguments - you have dynamic range, which is the bit depth, and you have the sampling rate, which is essentially the same as quantization in a DAW I.e. the lower the quantization level the more artificial it sounds. The differences are small though, We are talking a 5% sonic difference at most. 90-95% is the mix and master quality. And as I said before, high res can’t fix a bad mix or master, it can only highlight it more. Where we do agree is that technically we don’t NEED more than 16bit/44.1, and that’s basically true.
A lot of interesting information there, thanks for sharing your opinions and experience! I really appreciate it even if I can't respond to everything, and I do read everything people write :)
FYI In respect of pixels on a camera phone they just double up and multiply the resolution as you realistically are probably getting half meg on a so called typical 40 meg camera. It's impossible to obtain these resolutions from a small lense regardless of the sensor, it's just marketing hype as usual 🙃
As for the Hires yes and no. The main reason for up sampling is to add more ingredients in the music designed to then be digitally enhanced in the detailing specific to the quality of the speaker or headphones etc. I do agree though in normal daily hearing frequencies 16 bit is ample. Thanks 👍
Thanks for the comment! Totally right on about cameras though, adding more pixels absolutely does not give you more "real resolution" unless the lens can actually resolve that information. But for example on a lot of small smartphones with cheap glass that's not even possible, so definitely some heavy marketing at play there.
I wholly understood aspect of the KHz but what about the bit rate
So we talked about those "snapshots" which are the captures of velocity that map out a waveform to represent audio. How fast those snapshots happen is the sample rate, but how many bits are used to capture each individual snapshot is the bit depth. The more bits you have, the greater the resolute range of data on that vertical axis. Basically think about it as the sample rate being the horizontal resolution, and the bit depth being the vertical resolution. Hopefully that makes sense, thanks for the great question!
@@JoshChristiane Right, but even if the frequenzy does not benefit from being beyond 44khz, surely a higher bit depth will more accurately reproduce the true analog waveform?
Yes, more accurately. But again we run into the same situation where we have to ask "how much is enough"? Can a human ear tell the difference between 16bit and 32bit depth? The answer of course is no, outside of extremely unusual circumstances. Higher bit depths should be used for recording because it allows effectively more dynamic range in post production, but after mixing and mastering the dynamic range is so decremented that difference is completely negligible. CD quality is still the best the human ear can hear, 16 bit 44.1kHz. While it can easily get better than that, we simply cannot hear the difference.
I busted out my Sony discman and started buying CD's again. This is all I need.
Amen. I love the Sony discmans haha. I could see myself walking around with one of those, and little kids asking what it is.
@@JoshChristiane if they ask, tell em it's a portable waffle warmer
yeah but i still have noise wenn i rip a cd to alac or wav. I looked at spectrograms of my alacs and they all had noise. i didnt convert anything i just converted it from one format to another. i converted one cd to flac. still noise in the spectrogram
That's often from the CD press itself. I used to make my own CD's (from actual bounced prints) and depending on how you do it, it can cause noise. Dithering adds noise intentionally to help reduce bit error noise when going from 24bit to 16bit for CD standards, so it's possible that's also what you're hearing. This is why I buy digitally (7Digitial, iTunes, Qobuz) then download 44.1 16 bit CD quality FLAC or ALAC for storage. Nothing wrong with physical CD's though, which ripper are you using? I just use Foobar2000 and have had good results from it.
"Hi-Res" is mostly Scam...
What ?
As a speaker builder, musician, mixing and mastering artist i can say.
That most modern music is only 12 Bit, after the mastering stage...
Cause 1Bit is 6dB in dynamics...
So 16 Bit is 96 of Dynamics.
The lowest ( level ) tone in a song is around -35 dBFS and fades are down to -60 / -70 dBFS...
The highest ( level ) tones are going up to -5 dBFS...
So you have a dynamic range of 12 Bits = 72 dB...
Classic music, real classic music without compression on.. so with the brutal original dynamics... can benefit from High Resolution Media...
Okay kHz... 44,1 vs 192...
My experiences are... the higher the kHz, the more unnatural the sound is... it gets more and more clinical sterile...
So 16/44 is good enough for me...
WHEN the mastering was a good one...
AND THAT is the biggest problem today... over 80 to 90% of music out there... today... is sonic garbage !
I know, when i hear a modern produced song, what went wrong in point of physics, psychological and technical points... beside the stupid loudness of today...
Cause of this mess... Vinyl is at moment, although it is the worse format... the better choice over Hi-Res...
Why ?
Cause the cutting engineer need tracks which are less loud than the CD / Streaming versions...
Cause of that... dynamics came back and more of the original mix sound...
Cause for CD and Streaming, the life is squeezed out of the mix, to BE THE LOUDEST ON THE STREET !!!
A complete stupid mind set in the biz...
Why ?
Cause near everywhere audio is normalized... Even on CD... cause you are the normalization algorithm with you hands... Cause you dial the Volume knob of your amp...
16/44 on CD, when the Mastering was a good one, is fine and can sound warm like Vinyl... without the technical restrictions of Vinyl...
I hope this helps a bit :-)
Totally agreed with most of this. This was a good analysis with some excellent overall points made. I know it's a nuanced topic, and many confuse converter quality with format quality, so that alone can be deceptive. But in the end quality can only get so good before something sounds real, of course there will be a diminish of returns.
You spoke the truth
What about flac?
FLAC and ALAC (Apple's version of it) are both compressed lossless codecs. A codec means "compression-decompression". So both are file formats that compress and then decompress the audio on the fly. The reason they're popular is because you can keep the lossless quality of WAV or AIFF, but in a smaller file format with files that are often half the size. FLAC (and ALAC) are fantastic, but they have nothing to do with the quality of the audio itself, they just store the audio. Think about FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, and any other lossless format as all containers that hold the thing itself, but the qualities of that thing are not necessarily entirely determined by the container. MP3, AAC, and OGG are lossy formats so they will reduce the quality of the sound they store. FLAC supports 16bit, 24bit, and 32bit audio (for bit depth), and it supports 44.1khz all the way up to 600,000khz+, so the range of what it can store is basically infinite. I'm actually surprised the format doesn't get used more often than it does, as it's my favorite. Assuming you're building a music catalogue or collection, I highly recommend storing all of your files in 44.1khz 16-bit, FLAC or ALAC with full compression (8) enabled.
An important rare video
Thank you, :))
You mean dac high res audio is a waste of money i have a plan to buy ifi zen
The format itself yes, but the units no. The Ifi Zen is a good headphone amp, and the discrete amp within it will affect quality far more than just a file format. High quality headphone amps are definitely not a scam.
@JoshChristiane im talking ifi zen air blue is it worth it?
Yes, it's worth it. Bluetooth traditionally drops your quality in the stream transmission, and that device effectively just keeps the quality of the stream at whatever its source is. So basically that device just prevents the regular bluetooth transmission degradation. If you're heavily reliant on bluetooth and use it often then it's absolutely worth it to keep your stream quality at the source material.
Wow people need to wake up and listen to this I brought a Everso master edition now I need better speakers and Receiver glad I've seen this I'm sending the eversolo back I will never be fooled again thanks for this Awesome video 😀
Excellent info!
Thanks, Fizixx. Much appreciated :)
@@JoshChristiane 👍
Thank you Josh, very informative presentation!
I rip all of my CDs to FLAC onto an SSD connected to my ROON Core/Mac Mini M1 and Holo Audio Cyan 2 DAC.
So when I play the FLAC files via ROON it plays/upsamples them at 192kHz.
Thoughts!
Thanks for the compliment! :) Sounds like a great setup! I love Roon and its music management service, super high-quality. I can't speak for their hardware they sell since I don't use it. As a general rule upsampling is less degenerative than downsampling. If it's also scaling the bit depth then going upwards is less of an issue because dithering isn't required. It's more of an issue when you're downsampling or scaling down bit depths. With that said though you're not gaining any quality either, obviously, it's just unused data being added. This is a situation where your DAC is going to matter way more than arbitrary rates, and the Holo Cyan is a phenomenal converter. You have the perfect setup, no need to change anything as long as your music is easy to access. For my listening setup I use a Burl converter into Adam A77X's, I also have a stereo Cinema Marantz in my theater room that runs into some nice tower JBL's. I LOVE audio and good speakers, but the room you're listening in will matter even more than the speakers in a lot of cases. Treating a room properly is undeniably complex, but that's definitely the next step if you haven't already. I'm sure you're using really good speakers already since you clearly have a passion for music and audio.
A bit unbalanced and dogmatic this video. There are studies by Oohashi and colleagues that so called inaudible sounds/hypersonic effect can create brain responses. The Sanken CO-100K is the first 100kHz microphone in the world designed for actual professional recording. Audiophiles are not just interested in instruments that can generate frequencies/harmonics above 20KHz (gamelan, trumpet, violin, oboe, cymbals) but also accuracy in the time domain (detectyable pitch variations are in the tens of milliseconds range). These harmonics in turn modulate other frequencies in the "audible" range. There are numerous audiophile recording studio's that record in DXD (384Khz) and DSD 256 formats (Eudora, Yarlung, Channel Classics, 2L, Reference Recordings, Impex) If you listen to multitracked electronic music there is indeed little point in listening to Hi Resolution formats. They make most sense for recordings by humans in a room space with real instruments: fingering a bass or manipulating a bow on a cello or cymbal crash in air.)
All interesting information, thanks for sharing that! This is obviously a very complex topic with many things to consider, and research is constantly being done as to what can influence the things (harmonics especially) that we hear. For audiophiles like us it's an interesting pursuit to see what can be done for high-end reproduction, but for the average listener streaming music at 128kbps on Spotify running through $15 earphones it's all kind of a moot point anyways, lol. The real question is simply if people can tell an audible difference, and on that front the answer of course is no. In mass blind tests people can't even tell the difference between lossless and 256 AAC lossy file formats, and the people who can tell the difference often end up preferring the lower quality file format (complex reasons for this).
There is definitely a point of diminishing returns. 384kHz is objectively better quality than 44.1kHz, but that doesn't mean that a normal person under normal listening conditions with a normal DAC through normal speakers can tell a difference. And even using the most expensive DAC, amp, and headphones made on the market, the great majority of people still cannot tell a difference, so we are picking at straws about pointless differences in the real world. I've seen (and done) many blind tests, and nobody I've ever tested has been able to tell a difference (including myself).
A test on this very subject was done with Ted Jensen, arguably the man with the most sensitive and well-trained ears in the world, and he simply could not tell a difference. If the world's best and most lucrative mastering engineer, with the absolute perfect studio, speakers, and setup cannot tell a difference, then it simply does not matter.
Best thing to do is find a good graphic equalizer
“Our ears cannot hear better than CD quality”. I beg to disagree. With suitable hi-fi equipment, the difference between, for example, 16bit 24kHz (CD quality) and 24bit 96kHz hi-res recordings is easy to hear. The higher res you go I agree it is almost if not fully impossible for most people to appreciate.
You got a few things wrong here. You said CD quality is 16bit 24kHz, but CD quality is NOT 24kHz, it's 44.1kHz. This may have been a typo on your part, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant 44.1kHz.
The theoretical frequency reproduction limit of a 44.1kHz recording is a little over 20kHz.
No known human in any testing in audiological history has ever had the capacity to hear above 20kHz. It simply does not exist, and never has. So I'm not sure why you think you can hear a difference.
ANY difference you hear in blind testing will be due to dithering, or AD/DA quality differing at specific rates. This is not the format difference though, that would simply be converter quality. And I do not doubt that some converters operate better at higher rate, but that's a converter issue, NOT a resolution issue.
Bit depth is for dynamic range, and obviously it matters as well to a degree, but there is a point of diminishing returns there.
I personally have never met an individual who could actually hear the difference between 44.1khz, and 192khz, and if they could tell a difference it would be from dithering or the operational AD/DA simply being a higher quality converter at a higher sample rate. But all things considered equal there should be absolutely no discernable difference because our ears simply cannot hear beyond 20khz, outside of extreme anomalies.
I do appreciate your comment and hearing your opinion though, so thanks for sharing it!