Zp 24/96

[Max N]

Hello
As a long time Sonos user, I swing by this thread every once in a while. I have posted several times advocating that Sonos should support HiRes files.
It became apparent that wasn't about to happen, so a while ago I invested in a dedicated media renderer in my main system, which allows me to listen to HiRes files. I still use Sonos for the rest of the house - in fact I recently added a Play 5 to my son's room.
In case anyone is interested, I'll share my experiences with HiRes. I don't do blind testing, but I do level match and use AB switching. When I began these experiments my entire music collection consisted of lossless rips of my CDs. My expectation was that I would prefer HiRes files to these lossless files. These are my conclusions:
1. There was no consistent preference for HiRes over lossless (ALAC)
2. There was no consistent preference for lossless over AAC
3. There was no consistent preference for HiRes over AAC

I found that in my case, what mattered far more than the format was the mastering quality of the file. I cannot emphasise this enough. For me it has been a bit of a revelation. I now spend more time trying to establish the 'provenance' of specific releases and then buy the one which I think stands most chance of being well mastered. This does lead to me having bought several versions of tracks, but for sanity's sake I delete the non-preferred versions from the library once I've made a judgement.

This leads me onto another topic (hopefully I will be forgiven for going off-topic, but I think it is relevant). I'm sure most of you know all about the 'loudness wars'. I was aware of it but hadn't really thought through the consequences. Over the last few decades, mastering engineers have progressively applied more and more compression, increasing the apparent loudness of music. Each successive 're-master' almost invariably means a more compressed version. This means that it is very hard to find a version/release of an album that uses even a fraction of the dynamic range offered by 16-bits. To say that we need 24-bits is a sad joke I'm afraid. A well-mastered 16-bit version will have more dynamic range than a more compressed 24-bit version.

Sorry for going on, I'll sum up my findings:
1. If you want to experiment with HiRes audio, build yourself a dedicated renderer and allow it to co-exist with your Sonos system.
2. Don't get hung up on the format (sample-rate or bit-depth). Mastering quality is far more audible.
3. Dynamic range is one clue (not a guarantee) that a particular release has been sympathetically mastered.

Lastly, a request: Does anybody know of a website or database which rates different masterings? There's lots of information on the Steve Hoffman site, but it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

[Kumar]

Originally Posted by Max N

These are my conclusions:
1. There was no consistent preference for HiRes over lossless (ALAC)
2. There was no consistent preference for lossless over AAC
3. There was no consistent preference for HiRes over AAC

I found that in my case, what mattered far more than the format was the mastering quality of the file.

Sorry for going on, I'll sum up my findings:
1. If you want to experience HiRes audio, build yourself a dedicated renderer and allow it to co-exist with your Sonos system.

Most music lovers will agree with your conclusions in 1,2 and 3 above.

My question is to the last sentence, given that any hi res files one may have would still be of interest for two reasons:
1. Because one has them
2. Because they are from a better master.

Why not just downsample them to a Sonos supported format and do away with the need for a separate co existence?

[Max N]

I didn't phrase it very well, I've edited that sentence

1. If you want to [experience] experiment with HiRes audio, build yourself a dedicated renderer and allow it to co-exist with your Sonos system.

I don't expect people to change their mind about HiRes formats just because of my opinion. But if they feel so strongly about it they can get on and do their own experiments. (OTOH, it cost me quite a lot of time and money to find this out for myself, so if anyone does take my word for it they can save that expense LOL)

[gaz]

Originally Posted by Max N

Does anybody know of a website or database which rates different masterings?

Sadly, no. Like you I sometimes find myself having to try several before I find the best. It would be great to have more info available to reduce the hassle (and cost).

[Majik]

That is, IMO one of the big cons with hires: the hype over the format masks the real benefits to be had.

In turn, this gives the potential for people to be ripped off: at least one of the major hires music suppliers was caught red-handed selling full resolution material that had been simply reformatted into a hires format. These were then sold, at a premium, as "hires" (although most people didn't notice until someone did some measurements on the files).

Arguably, "hires" is just a storage format, and only a part of the format is usable for audio, with the rest containing noise. In this respect, these converted versions could be argued to be just as "hires" as tracks that were directly converted from 24/96 (or better) masters. However, customers were rightly expecting something better, and that was not delivered.

The "better" in this case was a better quality of source master. The unhealthy obsession (and ongoing misconceptions) with "hires" storage formats obfuscates this. It's a distraction, and quite a pernicious one.

A site which did reviews of the different versions that were on the market (irrespective of the storage format) would be a good thing.

I suspect getting full and accurate information on the provenance of the released recordings is probably a major barrier. Whilst the possibility exists for record companies and distributors to recycle and resell old versions of music at a premium price by sticking a shiny new "hires" label on the packet, they are unlikely to open their records to this sort of scrutiny.

Cheers,

Keith

[buzz]

If we truly want to recreate anything that might be present in the concert hall, we'll need to up the sample rate to 601KHz:

http://www.nature.com/news/moth-smas...ecords-1.12941

96 is for lame old men. Not even a mouse or a bat would appreciate 96.

For more creature limits see this Wikipedia article.