My Take: The quality of the recording / mastering matters the most... then formats are secondary...

@JamboLinnman

2 жыл бұрын

Spot on. There’s no doubt about that in my experience.

@tnarch

2 жыл бұрын

Totally agree to… i have heard great recordings even in mp3 that sounded great and in contrast albums in hi res that sounded really bad. Of course mp3 compresses dynamic range, however the good quality is still quite obvious if the recording is good.

@PragmaticTornado

2 жыл бұрын

That's it. Some music just won't ever sound really good, no matter the file or media quality.

@DocFUNKist

4 ай бұрын

Couldn’t agree more… the music nowadays is so poorly mastered

My argument is that too many high resolution streams aren’t available indefinitely. Here today, gone tomorrow. The CD that you own is always available when you want it.

@kman7222

2 жыл бұрын

ya, I prefer to have physical media for that reason alone.

@stereofidelic67

2 жыл бұрын

or the version they have up is a newly remastered version, which has been loudness-war-ed to hell. Whereas your original master CD from 1992, will not.

@DEVANC4VETTE

2 жыл бұрын

I think even CDs eventually get what they call "disc rot" in as little as 20 or 30 years, and of course vinyl wears every time you play it, streaming services may not last forever, tape or film falls apart, data on drives get bit rot or become out dated storage medium. I think it's just important to enjoy the music however you like because we wont last forever ourselves anyway. The music will survive in some form but its fidelity will always be in question.

@bikdav

2 жыл бұрын

@@DEVANC4VETTE That's interesting. None of my earliest disc form the early 80s have had the "disc rot" problem.

@DEVANC4VETTE

2 жыл бұрын

@@bikdav I’ve been lucky so far too. There are theories about temperature and air moisture and UV light and where it was pressed that can cause it to happen sooner. CDs are cheap but some of the PlayStation and Sega Saturn games are worth several hundred dollars and it’s a topic that comes up on those forums frequently.

Paul, your explanations are always so clear, common-sensical and layman-friendly, I relish spending time with you just to become more knowledgeable on all things audio. But after submitting the question twice on Ask Paul, and exchanging e-mails with your son (I believe) Scott, I still don't have an answer to whether it makes any sense, if you already have a high-end DAC, to spend much on either streaming or digital playback equipment, since that discrete stage of the audio chain is a fixed sequence of ones and zeros whose musical quality is entirely dependent on downstream equipment like the converter, amplifier, speakers, etc.; i.e. all analog, not digital. In other words, unless your CD, DVD, Bluray or streaming device is somehow altering the digital signal, does it matter how much or little you're spending on that link, if you're only using its digital output (coax, optical or whatever) bypassing its built-in DAC? Much as I'd love to visit you guys out in Boulder, I hope I don't have to go all the way out there to get my answer. Cheers.

Hi Paul, firstly thanks for your videos, both here and on the PS Audio channel. I use qobuz myself, which is streamed through Audirvana 3.5. On a PC. A lot of stuff on there at 24bit 96 / 192 sounds terrible. Whereas the 16bit 44.1 often sounds a lot better. I have found this with much older music from the 60s and 70s through to the 80s, whereas 90s onwards often sounds better in 24bit than in 16bit CD quality. I guess this is as you say due to the quality of the recording and mastering. But is it also due to the technology of the time and how good the people recording are at their job including their equipment?

@ThinkingBetter

2 жыл бұрын

I’ve had similar experience with some 192kHz tracks on Amazon HD music. Someone seems more interested in the marketing value than genuine audio fidelity.

May we please have a sample of directly recorded PCM vs DSD to compare? You gotta have tons of them and that would make your point better than words. I myself am curious to hear for myself - DSD sounds like a great format for recording.

Thank you! Basically trash in..trash out. Im so glad you mentioned source first. Overlooked by so many doing similar videos. Ive often said that if streaming would reach a point in which lossless, great mastering became consistent across the board along with a streamer that would be designed to support that then I would gladly sell all these records and cds that make me look like a hoarder lol. And joking aside, I seriously would. Here is to wishing success to the streamer you guys are working on!

Well explained - thank you

Thanks so much for the useful information and for NOT mentioning Vynil records, that I simply hate, there are already too many vynil experts out there, there's really no need for some others.... ; )

@yannisgk

2 жыл бұрын

VINYL :)

@danmarjenka6361

Жыл бұрын

The pops and clicks I hear when listening to vinyl continually remind me that I'm listening to a less-than-perfect source. It ruins any illusion of a live performance. That wrecks it for me. In fact, if you quantified the pops and clicks, I would not be surprised if it equalled distortion of 5.0%!

I agree - mastering/recording is key. Some remastered albums on HiRes can sound worse than the original as it seems they make them sound for apple earbuds - too much bass and compressed. Unless the artist or Producer was involved, ie Neil Young's output is terrific because he cares, I find original mastered versions which invariably sound better than something the record company remastered without the artist etc. My rough rule of thumb (there are exceptions) - originally recorded/mastered analogue I play on analogue vinyl (not vinyl from a digital tape - worse of both worlds). If it was originally recorded/mastered digitally I find the original master and play it via something digital...pick your poison...for me I stream or HDD via a Linn Klimax Organik (incredible)

that's the reason why i went back to cd after 14 years 👍🎵😊

This is an interesting thread and could go in a few different directions. I thought we were going down the path of “streaming is inferior due to the unavoidable bit loss of Internet transmission” vs. “less buffering / less loss in the CD format”. But then I realized that another factor that could be at work is the relative maturity of the CD platform, and potentially better electronics. But in the end, it’s all bits, and whether all 44.1k of them come through the air or from a plastic disc won’t matter if processed through the same DAC, right?

@christianholmstedt8770

2 жыл бұрын

If there were 'unavoidable bit loss of internet transmission' you would not see this video or even load this page.

@mwdiers

3 ай бұрын

Bingo. At first I thought Paul was finally going to say something reasonable when he started talking about the importance of mix/mastering. But no. He's still gaslighting everyone with his DSD and hi-res nonsense, magic pixie CD players, etc. No, there is absolutely no difference between a losslessly streamed 44.1K/16bit track, and that same track played on a CD player, over a decent DAC that can be had for under $200. In fact the built-in DAC in almost any CD player is just as good as that under $200 DAC. And no amount of additional money spent on said equipment is going to make an audible difference. Paul McGowan, as always, is just doing marketing to part a fool and his money,.

@razzman2987

2 ай бұрын

​@@mwdiersyou shure😂😂😂.c.mon man

@mwdiers

2 ай бұрын

@@razzman2987 Thank you for your intelligent and thoughtful reply.

Heres my Take based on my Many systems, First off i love to stream but My computer has to much noise when hooked up to my dac' but when using my dedicated CD transport (Audiolab 6000CDT) running str8 to my dac (coaxial) ohhh my big improvement over streaming !

@AlistairMaxwell77

2 жыл бұрын

your pc could stream optically , no noise , no physical connection, mathematically identical source data as your cd transport.

I am finding that most music I like (alternative) is recorded, mixed, and then released to the world, sounds OK, but not great. I have a PS Audio DSD recording and Pink Floyd Dark of the Moon on DSD and they are amazing to listen to. I wish more artists cared about the quality of their music on streaming services, CD, vinyl, etc.

Agreed - no blanket statements, it's less about the numbers and data rates and more about the DAC playback and simply *retaining* what's in the engineering - minimizing the potential degradation and not further processing it (eg lossy codecs - which includes bluetooth). Objectively, is Hi-Res (not upscaled) Audio closer to what was heard and approved during mixing and mastering? You bet.

I recently listened to your test track recommendation, Thank You by Boz Scaggs. Wonderful bass sound! Do you have a Playlist of test tracks you can share? Love your channel!

@petrmatejka1742

2 жыл бұрын

I suppose you mean Thanks to you from his album Dig (2001), right? A perfect track to test both bass and trebles.

@WWeiss-nv5vz

2 жыл бұрын

@@petrmatejka1742 Right, Thanks to You by Boz Scaggs

@danmarjenka6361

Жыл бұрын

@@petrmatejka1742 Is your last name Czech, like mine?

@petrmatejka1742

Жыл бұрын

@@danmarjenka6361 Yes, of course! Ahoj Dane ;-)

The issue with PCM streaming is that what your DAC gets is often converted in some way e.g. CD quality 44.1 kHz upconverted to 48kHz in your device. We need the gear to be loyal to the exact data that is streamed. The next question is if the data we get is genuine master quality even when advertised as such. Seems from Paul that Qobuz is manipulating the data. Please check the data from a CD vs same CD quality track on Qobuz and let us know what delta is found. It would be very interesting.

I use PLEX as my in-home media streaming system. I have ripped many CDs to uncompressed lossless FLACs, and also have a library of "high-res" recordings (24/96 up to 24/192), all of which are orchestral or single instrument classical recordings. PLEX seems to be able to handle, and distribute, all of them. It is near impossible to confirm which recordings were originally recorded in 24/192, and which were not. To be sure, I suspect my 24/96 versions of Carlos Klieber's famous Beethoven S5 and S7 were likely originally 16/44s. Still, I listen to them and they sound great. I also have Simon Rattle's Beethoven BPO symphony cycle in 24/192, but haveno idea whether they were originally recorded as high-res or merely upsampled. I am intrigued by DSD, but do not anticipate ever having access to much DSD content without investing in new equipment. So why does PS Audio NEVER have anything to say about PLEX, where I can stream my own music, and only these other independent streaming services that I must subscribe to? Just curious.

@AlistairMaxwell77

2 жыл бұрын

they want to sell you 10k audiophile stuff. not going to make cash with free software , a pc and usb dac ......

@judenihal

2 жыл бұрын

I would never rip CDs to FLACs. I will leave them as WAV due to compatibility and minimal CPU usage.

TBH, all my music is in m4a lossless format on my Mac, either purchased from HDTracks or ripped from CD to 16bit then converted using XLD. I then stream it directly through my Arcam blu-tooth DAC, to my Rega (in 16 bit). Might be some loss there, but nothing I can tell.

@rauland

2 жыл бұрын

My question is… if you’re ripping your CD’s on your Mac (I’m assuming your using iTunes), and all your tracks are M4A, why aren’t you just ripping lossless M4A direct from iTunes instead of adding a step to convert the files?

🤗THANKS PAUL…WE LOOK 👀 FORWARD TO TAKING YOU UP ON YOUR OFFER 🤗😍😍😍 Meanwhile THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE 🧐….for us laypersons 🤗😍😍😍

Well said, the most important part is the recording.

Lossless streaming at 44.1 16 bit is the same thing as CDs, but one thing CDs provide over lossless streaming or local storage of WAV files on a computer is that, CDs are physical and CD Players have better D/A convertors. Now it would be nice if I can play 24 bit audio and maybe even go up to 96k, the sound would be better!

@mwdiers

3 ай бұрын

No, the sound wouldn't be better at 96/24. It would just waste more space or bandwidth.

@judenihal

3 ай бұрын

@@mwdiers If you're using very high-quality converters and recording a large hall with real instruments being played, then it will sound better than if it was recorded at 44.1/16. For every other recording, 96/24 is unnecessary.

@mwdiers

3 ай бұрын

@@judenihal Uh, no, it won't. It may be recorded that way for mixing/mastering headroom, and in many cases should be, but a release of the master at 96/24 and at 44/16 will sound identical in all listening environments except for an anechoic chamber, and nobody listens to music that way. Even then the perceptible difference in dynamic range of 24-bit is very small, and inconsequential. 16-bit audio has 96db of dynamic range, vastly greater than the difference between the threshold of pain and the noise floor of any normal listening environment, even an audiophile's tricked out room. As for 96Khz, all that does is capture ultrasonics above 20Khz that no one can hear, and that will actually cause distortion and sound worse on a lot of audio equipment that's not built to handle it. Heck, the only people that can hear the full frequency range of a CD are teenage and under, and even they cannot hear above 20Khz.

I would like to know why my Denon DCDA 110 won't play DSD disks Paul ?

Everything I have ever streamed sounded metallic and like it was a digital format.

Paul, did I hear you correctly? Are both Octave and PS Audio open for visitors again?

You say you find physical media (in this case CD) typically preferable to streaming? (and that you are designing a solution for that?) Do you consider local hard drive or SSD storage "physical media"? If I have ripped a CD to a lossless .wav is that the same as playing the CD? Perhaps even preferable because no CD transport can be as stable as an SSD?

@380stroker

2 жыл бұрын

SSD drive to play music is the way to go. All music recording studios record to SSD, mix and master the music from an SSD drive playback. No moving parts, ultra fast readout speeds, it's the way to go as long as the clocking matches the sampling rate of the song.

Bit perfect is bit perfect. Also streming isnt lesser at all IF you truly chose to playback it as bit perfect and there is no timing errors too cos streaming comes as buffered. When you stream a song and pull the CAT cable off, the song will still be playing. Not the question is is the streamed file from differend master? That may be the case if streamed sound worse. It is not about streaming or physical CD. Its all the same as it come to data and data it is, not even sound at all untill it hits DAC.

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I'm also wondering if there could be a difference when using the same DAC. Maybe, if the connection isn't properly isolated, for example going via optical. There could be different noise over USB, similar as some people said, wave sounds better than FLAC, cause the real-time decompression might add some noise, hmm. I didn't check that case, but I've definitely heard noise over USB when using headphones.

@Thevikingcam

2 жыл бұрын

@@booom4849 IF you hear noises over USB the your system has a flaw somewhere

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

@@Thevikingcam Yes that's true, but this is not a trivial topic, as this happens with a top of the line DAC. Maybe a better USB cable will help. Many high-end manufactures decouple digital and analog as best as possible, cause this is a known issue. It certainly doesn't help when the PC is drawing hundred(s) of Watt, some is leaked via USB. Battery powered playback device can also help with this.

if youre going to have *RE-RUNS,* please include the original air date

Thanks for the insight. I would still rather listen to “crap” resolution of good music than “great” resolution of “crap” music! But, I suppose that comes down to taste and opinion!

Regardless of how good or bad streaming sounds, it does not always work! I stream with Qobuz and it does what it is supposed to do; however, my internet provider goes down from time to time. My physical CDs, SACDs, DVDs, BLU-RAYs, LPs, and REEL to REEL tapes are always available ( never got around to pick up a DAT player ). Another thought: If I have the best sounding DSD of all time and yet have some of the worst made speakers of all time, what's the point?

@michaelweston409

Жыл бұрын

My spotify streaming goes down all the time due to bad internet or phone internal issues

Well, but what about fully downloaded content from streaming services like Tidal? How do they compare to a CD?

Confirms my belief! Until further notice....

I use a few systems of listening. One is my Klipsch wireless earbuds while at work. Polk Monitors for my Home Theater. Hybrid Audio Technology/ OZ Audio for my car audio. Klipsch computer satsub in my office. Sony MDR-7506 headphones for my immersive Pink Floyd/Van Halen kicks. Everything that I listen to is streamed. I haven’t touched a cd in years. Streaming is way more convenient in that no matter what I’m doing, I have access to random music or my personal choice. It’s Def you get your cake and eat it too. If you’re getting hung up on bit rates and A/D conversions instead of enjoying life and listening to music, then maybe you were never meant to be happy. You’re more into never being satisfied. Or remembering when you thought you weren’t satisfied, but later found out that at that moment you actually were satisfied, and is now chasing that moment back from the past to relive that satisfaction. But you get everything back to moment, and you find out that you’re not satisfied because you memory lied to you. So you move on to the next satisfaction because someone suggested that they found a satisfaction and you want to create theirs for your own. Or, just listen to your favorite music or random music and be happy.

What do you stream Qobuz with?

But is CD better than lossless streaming?

Streaming a 'HQ' brick walled limited, auto-tuned, quantised track by Lil..whoever Vs listening to Abbey Road on 16bit CD.

@carlhilton4747

2 жыл бұрын

Abbey Road on CD; any day, anytime, anywhere.

@TheAxe4Ever

2 жыл бұрын

Easy question. Abbey Road on vinyl!

@stereofidelic67

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheAxe4Ever Rather go for the full-fat frequency response.

@stereofidelic67

2 жыл бұрын

@@carlhilton4747 Original or 50th Anniversary mix?

@carlhilton4747

2 жыл бұрын

@@stereofidelic67 Mine is the original, haven't heard the other.

So does that mean you can’t stream well recorded music ?? If I stream or play off a cd the same song all I hear is a little different volume.

what are some of your favorite music tracks wether cd quality or high res?

@Paulmcgowanpsaudio

2 жыл бұрын

Do a Google search for PS Audio Paul's Picks

@clydesharman2053

2 жыл бұрын

@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio awesome hell yeah will do ty

In reality high-definition audio (as in true 24-bit and 96-192 KHz) never really caught on our ears Mostly because the improvement is not audible to the human ear. The humble CD is capable of storing pretty much anything you can hear and not much more. It was designed that way. With high-definition audio, you’re literally paying for quality improvements that you can’t hear. The signal on a CD is recorded by sampling the original audio signal 44,100 times per second (44.1 kHz). The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, on which all digital audio is based, states that this will EXACTLY preserve a signal that contains nothing higher than half the sampling rate - 22,050 Hz in the case of a CD. Human hearing tops out around 20,000 Hz, and that’s for a young person with healthy ears. 96 kHz will exactly preserve sound up to 48,000 Hz, and 192 kHz will preserve up to 96,000 Hz. Unless you happen to go “woof,” you can’t hear anything between 22,050 and 48,000 Hz. And even a dog can’t hear much higher than that - maybe a rodent or an insect could hear the extra frequencies preserved by 192 kHz sampling. Similarly, using 24 bit samples looks very good on paper, but it doesn’t really preserve anything extra that you can hear. Using 16 bit samples, which is the standard for a CD, gives you 65,536 (2^16) possible values to which any given sample in an audio signal can be rounded. Using 24 bit samples gives you 16,777,216 (2^24) possible values. The rounding of samples to the nearest available value creates what’s called quantization noise. That noise is measured by the dynamic range, which is the volume in decibels to which you must turn the loudest sounds in order to just barely hear the noise. The dynamic range for 16 bit audio is 96 dB; for 24 bit audio it is 144 dB. Now, consider that a very quiet room in a typical home has about 30 dB of background noise. That means that to hear any quantization noise on your 16 bit recording, you’d have to turn the volume up so that the loudest sounds are at 126 dB. That’s about the threshold of pain for most people. So unless you plan on playing your music so loudly that it makes your ears hurt (and you have equipment that can produce that volume), 16 bits is plenty. Note that the 174 dB you’d need to hear quantization noise with 24 bit is loud enough to literally KILL you! Double-blind studies have been done that show listeners, including audio engineers, can’t reliably tell the difference between 16/44.1 and formats like 24/96 or 24/192. This applies only to the final copy of the recording, however. If you will be doing post-production, equalization, dynamic range compression, or other edits, the audio needs to be at least 24 bit and 192 kHz in order to prevent distortion from multiple rounding errors. But there’s no advantage to using higher sampling frequencies or bit depths than used on a CD on the copy used by the masses. High-def recordings do sometimes sound better than the regular CD, but this is due to better mastering and production on the high-res version. For example, the high-res version might not have been victimized by the loudness wars. If you really want higher fidelity sound, you’ll want to (1) use better speakers/headphones, better amplifiers, add a headphone amplifier if you don’t have one, etc. (2) use a better format for your music. MP3 is tolerable when used at high bitrates, but if you have the space and support for them, use something lossless like FLAC or Monkey’s Audio and (3) seek out older pressings of CDs at used CD stores and online. Anything made prior to about 1994 or so is likely to sound considerably better than a modern CD because the loudness wars weren’t yet in full swing back then. Alternatively, you could try vinyl if that’s your thing.

@thnwz

Жыл бұрын

Excellent comment, competent opinion!😉

Best sound is CD with a professional CDJ player by pioneer the CDJs can smooths out or whatever it's made to do can make a 44.1kHz sound as good as 96kHz that is why there expensive and DJs are supposed to sound best. Cause we play all different types of music.

Are we better playing old cds that are the same as when they were recorded or records that go down hill every time they leave the sleeve , should we use digital amps , or valves that are going down hill every time they get powered up ,,,, non of this hifi thing is easy , its all a compromise .

In my system, where I have spent a lot of time and money on cleaning up the Ethernet network, Streaming significantly outperforms CD, where the CD player cost £2000 and the streamer cost £1000

@ericjensen9091

6 ай бұрын

Your 1,000 pound CD player is a low bar.

@richardtrussell8220

6 ай бұрын

@@ericjensen9091 the CD player was £2000, please read my comment.

@ericjensen9091

6 ай бұрын

@richardtrussell8220 Oooops! My point is the same, though. After I rob a few banks, I'm going for a $69,000 Burmester.

@richardtrussell8220

6 ай бұрын

@@ericjensen9091 well, yes, I expect a much more expensive CD player would beat a £1000 streamer, but probably not a £20,000 streamer.

@ericjensen9091

6 ай бұрын

@@richardtrussell8220 Perhaps so.

I love all my Vinyl rips to 24 or 32 bit or to DSD. when I play those back from the USB post of my phone through a stand alone Schiit DAC, they all have the same Vinyl analog warmth with no digital harshness or brightness , to my ears...All of you are free to disagree...thank you

@bradhuskers

2 жыл бұрын

What you fail to understand is that digital can display warmth. Initially, that wasn't the case. Today it is. When digital photography came about, it wasn't as good as 35 mm film. Today, it's better. Progress. Get yourself educated.

Doesn't electronic musician working with synthesizers I've learned to think of bit rates like lenses on a camera , Each one has a different focus, Yet I find the higher the resolution and the sampling rate the silky or icier and thinner many things sound Lower a bit resolutions can sound harder more aggressive And Punchy A lot of what determines how good A Cd player is Has to do with the analog digital conversionAnd the premium stage and the unit, also older recordings from the sixties and beforeWe're typically recorded on mixers that use vacuum tubesAnd recorded to an analog formatThose recordings typically sound the best on 2 amplifiers and played back on in log formatsIon and atara 10 Is analog real to real And I'll still swear to this day That high quality and a low tape is the best sound you can get , but it still comes down to a matter of preference There have been surveys conducted that showed this younger generation actually believe that compressed degraded formats for streaming Sound better to their ears But they're typically listening to this through little earbuds

I have some dual SACD/CD format disks that I play on a standard CD player, and they sound fantastic. Other CDs can sound very mediocre. I think the top quality mastered recordings spoil you, and a lot of other recordings can sound mediocre after that. But I think a lot of mainstream music was mastered to sound ok and a lot of people really don't care about it having that extra level of audiophile quality.

It took close to two decades for a CD player to be able to reproduce reasonable quality sound. I think we need to give streaming a lot more time before we make comparisons. I have compared identical music via streaming and CD and for the most part the CDs just have something about them that streaming does not. Then when I compare a CD to a vinyl record I can say the same thing. Nevertheless, most of the time I am listening to CDs for the convenience but several times a week I start to browse my record collection and I’m really happy that I do now because I left it behind so many years ago and now that I am back to vinyl properly recorded, I understand why vinyl is making a giant resurgence. Each of these three reproduction methods are so variable that Paul is absolutely correct. What’s up to the listener to make careful choices and what they purchased now that we know how poor some of the recordings are just terrible. Eventually DSDwill set itself apart from the pack and then we can make a generalized statement.

Been saying this for years …cd is on another planet compared to anything else streaming is ok for easy listening and on the move .. but critical listening 👂 you will notice a sharp difference in every aspect as long as there great recordings in the first place 🥇

The answer is easy. Vinyl! 👍🏻

@Wuppie62

2 жыл бұрын

Similar problem: you have good and bad recordings and good and bad pressings. Then you need good equipment to get a good result from a good recording+pressing.

@MichaelCosta_

2 жыл бұрын

People seem to demand 24 bit as a destination for final mixes and shun the 'lowly' 16 bit, only capable of 96dB of dynamic range. What sort of dynamic range do people think vinyl is capable of delivering? HINT: The humble CD is not concerned.

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

@@MichaelCosta_ There you are again, well I think something is wrong about the dynamic range measurement, as vinyl sounds much more dynamic than CD. Partially could be because the PCM filter does blur the transients, that it cannot really use the 96dB, so its much less in practice? and on the other hand, vinyl basically has an analog 64bit+ signal, so once you are fairly confidentially above the noise floor, the micro-dynamics really shine.

@MichaelCosta_

2 жыл бұрын

@@booom4849 That doesn't make any sense. Once you are above the noise floor of vinyl, there might be the equivalent of a usable 10-12 bits of range. Vinyl does not sound more "dynamic" than CD, in the true meaning of the word. Yes, vinyl can sound wonderful - that's the euphonic distortions, but make no mistake, these are non-linearities and inaccuracies. Yes, they are pleasant sounding, and perhaps that's what we are discussing here.

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

@@MichaelCosta_ Just you know what I mean, I have the impression that I can hear the pre- and post-ringing of PCM, which basically makes the transient slower. You don't have this effect on analog vinyl. Everyone talks about distortions of vinyl, I'm not so sure about that, as it sounds pretty realistic to me, but I must note I have a high-end dynamic phono preamp. Why would you have 10-12 bits of range? Maybe you are referring to the decibel scale? What I mean, you have an analog scale, so by definition you don't have quantized bits at all.

as you know Paul, nothing in life is simple. why would audio be any different :)

I prefer the convenience of streaming. To be honest I can't hear the difference with my old ears.

The answer to everything: "It depends".

CD. Definitely. Streaming quality sucks compared to physical media.

Streaming involves adaptive bitrate encapsulation to compensate for network bandwidth, hence why audio streaming of any quality sounds like shit ! Hi-RES FLAC on a dedicated data medium is the way to go !

Take out the word "streaming"; problem solved. Trying to stream 24\192 is difficult because there are too many factors involved (bandwidth, what rez are you truly hearing at that moment, what did the streaming service do to the files, etc.) Hard Drives are super cheap. Flash drives are super cheap. Just buy it and store it.

ceteris paribus

CD. Next.

DSD cds sound so impossibly good that the music seems divorced from reality.There is an unreality about the sound. That is my personal feeling. That is why I prefer AAD cds, tapes and records. More natural and organic. To my ears.

@jamesrobinson9176

2 жыл бұрын

I disagree, but you have a good screen name! Cheers

@ylcnblack

2 жыл бұрын

i agree AAD recordings are much better. That’s why i hate compressed sound remastered cds.

@samc269

2 жыл бұрын

Very true, and anything beyond 16bits 44.1khz is no longer enjoyable. The "big boys" in audio cd industry has been trying to create new markets to make more money by introducing the 1bit or bitstream in the early 90s that led to the beginning of the end of cds Manufacturing of a 16bits cd player was more labour intensive, needed individual calibrations on focus and voltage current for the laser assembly but not necessary for 1bit making the 1bit player more economical to produce.

@artyfhartie2269

2 жыл бұрын

@@jamesrobinson9176 Well, you know what Harry Callahan says about opinions.

@artyfhartie2269

2 жыл бұрын

@@samc269 The sound of cassette tapes for example has more power. Full bodied. Slam. Like a concert hall or studio feel. None of the stridency and compressed bass of digital audio. The trick is to clean the heads now and then with isopropyl alcohol with q tips very gently, lube with head lube and demagnetized the tape path with a demagnetizer wand. And to check the head alignment. I do it with a small screwdriver if I hear any distortion (my ears by now are very attuned to audio) and listen to the sound and watching the VDU display. And very importantly to use good well kept tapes, making sure the pressure felt pads has not fallen off (can be fixed) and to turn DOLBY NR OFF.

I listen music in every format. Vinyl, CDS, cassettes , mp3, stream.... I still own several Sony / Panasonic cassettes walkmans, portable CD players, hi resolution Sony mp3 players.... But the music in " file" format was never my thing, besides being able to carry 30 000 songs with me. As per cellphones, they all sound horrible, cant listen music on a phone.

Streaming SUCKS because is not physical ! I will never buy something "liquid" except water.

Tdk sa90

Memeber DVD Audio? I member DVD-Audio..........

@2:07 "...simultaneously, through all the same equipment, we record CD, high resolution PCM, and DSD ... DSD just blows all of 'em away" Paul, how are you splitting the feed from each microphone to get 3 independent feeds into 3 independent analog-to-digital converters? Or, are you using 3 different microphones? If so, have you repeated your tests by switching the microphones, to ensure that all 3 microphones are actually identically sounding? Also, it stands to reason that if you are simultaneously recording to CD resolution, high resolution PCM, and DSD, that you have 3 identical analog-to-digital converters. I am not familiar a single box that can do both PCM and DSD analog-to-digital converting, and that you have 3 of them running simultaneously for your test? Since converting an existing DSD file into a high-resolution PCM file yields virtually no sound difference, then the PCM format is DSD's equal, when the PCM file is created properly. Ergo, something is amiss in how you are creating your real-time recording of your PCM files in your testing. Please clarify my observations / understanding of your process and the gear involved, and please correct anything where I am mistaken. In the future, please include in videos, such as for this topic, a shot of the gear that you used for what you said @2:07. Thank you.

@robinr5787

2 жыл бұрын

And there you are again. OK let's see how this ends.

@unclefester2

2 жыл бұрын

The full sentence begins at 1:56 with the word 'If...', which would suggest to me that it is a hypothetical comparison based on having a 3 feed setup. I guess Paul is trying to say that based on his years of experience, this hypothetical setup would yield the results he has offered in his answer.

@NoEgg4u

2 жыл бұрын

@@unclefester2 @2:19, Paul says that he's "done this more times than he could remember", and he has made similar comments in his other videos. Granted, his "if" implies hypothetically. But he has actually done what he is speaking about.

@Paulmcgowanpsaudio

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, it's a good question. First off, yes, it's easy to split off the identical microphone sources and of course, the same microphone and feed in real time is used to make the test. Simply Y splitters on the XLR outs of the microphone preamp. To your point about A/D converters, we use the same converters (Ed Meitner custom converters) for both but obviously, inside the converters it's a very different story. Completely different technology making a DSD converter vs. a PCM converter. And (I suspect) to your point, that's where the difference may lie. Hard to say because while DSD is so much closer to the live microphone feed, it could be because of the converter. Still, we have to convert in the end, so....it may be semantics with me saying it's the format and you saying its the converter. In the end and for whatever reason, DSD is better,

@NoEgg4u

2 жыл бұрын

@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio Thank you for the information.

Science and mathematics prove that a CD sample rate is enough to reconstruct the audio signal when played back. Can auditory illusions dismiss scientific results? Absolutely. That is why they are separate endeavors. The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is a theorem in the field of signal processing which serves as a fundamental bridge between continuous-time signals and discrete-time signals. It establishes a sufficient condition for a sample rate that permits a discrete sequence of samples to capture all the information from a continuous-time signal of finite bandwidth. The selection of the CD sample rate sample rate was based primarily on the need to reproduce the audible frequency range of 20-20,000 Hz (20 kHz). The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem states that a sampling rate of more than twice the maximum frequency of the signal to be recorded is needed, resulting in a required rate of at least 40 kHz. The exact sampling rate of 44.1 kHz was inherited from PCM adaptors which was the most affordable way to transfer data from the recording studio to the CD manufacturer at the time the CD specification was being developed.

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

This is absolutely misinformation. I did the math myself, and you can easily see at least in the high frequencies, that 44 kHz sampling rate does bad, as it cannot capture fine fluctuations in the frequency content. Humans also perceive in the time domain, not purely in the frequency domain. DSD captures the wave much more correctly.

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

To be a bit more clear: The missing puzzle piece here is that in order for the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem to do its thing, the wave has to be brought into a well-defined shape. The wave needs to be bandpass filtered, or another words the signal needs to go through the anti-aliasing filter, which essentially is able to change the waveform dramatically. Science does still not fully understand how human hearing works, so let the wave be a wave and don't make assumptions that the human ear would be an organic implementation of Fourier theory.

@lindsaywebb1904

2 жыл бұрын

@@booom4849 I suggest you watch Dan Worrell s Video on the matter. As an aside, this might reflect the state of my hearing but sitting in a high end mastering suite - a fully controlled listening environment - I can't make out a difference between the hi-res pre master and subsequent dithered 44/16 Redbook. Maybe there is a difference but spending your life chasing it and squandering resources to stream hi-res audio is a bit sad

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

@@lindsaywebb1904 Well, I double blind tested 192 vs 48 kHz in the past, and it was super easy to hear the difference, once I figured out what to look out for, for example hearing the separation of two violins was much sharper in 192 kHz.

Paul, don't be so quick in labeling who you are calling 'Musicians'. There are way too many 'Performance Artists' who really haven't accomplished the necessary "Chops" to become a Musician. "Too many Cooks & not enough Chefs" (To a much higher degree; I suppose).

Sorry Paul, but while you are entitled to your opinion about DSD sounding better, real listener surveys don't support your opinion, and as you said high-resolution audio is technically better and PCM audio achieves higher and better resolution. In fact,. ​the vast majority of DSD material that is available was converted to PCM for editing or uses a PCM source and is then converted to DSD. Even your Sonoma system converts DSD files to 3 or 4 bit PCM to achieve edits before reconverting to DSD. It's odd how you claim that DSD is the best but that the best sounding material is material that comes on CDs.

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

As far as I collected statistics on the web, the real listener surveys agrees that DSD is the best sounding format. I'm also blown away by my DSD256 vinyl rips. Haven't checked same data rate PCM, but I would think 768 kHz PCM could sound fine aswell with a slow filter, but probably not just as good. As far as I know, Sonoma does not go into PCM for edits, and yeah the CD thing is odd, maybe because there is some serious production effort gone into some.

@AlistairMaxwell77

2 жыл бұрын

@@booom4849 sonoma converts to 4bit for some of the digital editing and effects functions

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

@@AlistairMaxwell77 But still maintains 2.8 mHz, right? That's not PCM.

@JonAnderhub

2 жыл бұрын

@@booom4849 Please share links to those studies. Thank you.

@booom4849

2 жыл бұрын

@@JonAnderhub No link to share, that's my personal study observing the web for years, weighing opinions for right or wrong.

Streaming is only convenient.

It would be great if streaming serivices renumerated better but at the end of the day you have to vote with your feet. Sure, you can moan about "the poor artists" but don't then continue to use the free version of Spotify. Either way, I'd rather be listening to Neil Young (or anyone for that matter) at Carnegie Hall on vinyl than anything by the RHCP in 24/96. Music. First.

My conclusion is high res isn't as you say clean cut..amazon hd music sounds bad and yes I tried with my chord dac and still sounds crap..as for vinyl well that's too expensive and not practical.. A certain editor from Analogue Planet sent me a needle drop zip file from original vinyl played on high end equipment etc.. Now if I'm happy listening to that analogue music on an mp3 file then why can't record companies master cds properly??....the whole industry needs a shake up as public are so gullible thinking so called high res audio is good..not saying everyone is that dumb but its basically con...

My dac performs much better with 24 than 16. The bass in particular is soooooooooooooooo much better.

@lindsaywebb1904

2 жыл бұрын

That's a peculiarity of your DAC. Not an intrinsic difference between audio playback from 24 or 16 bit files.

@jamesrobinson9176

2 жыл бұрын

@@lindsaywebb1904 maybe, maybe not

spotify lacks quality. buy a dream theater CD and rip to mp3 320kbit and listen on your phone with headphones. now listen the same with spotify and if you cant notice the difference see a doctor ASAP for your hearing lol

Speaking of recordings, I hate how nowadays lot’s of songs sound overly compressed just to sound “modern” when in reality it sounds un-natural.

Nope. The majority of people don't have the ears to tell the difference. Unfortunately . Infact, the majority of consumers does not really care about audio quality.

I agree 100% with you today, and I confess that before playing the video, just when I read the title, I thougth we were going ton disagree because I know how you like DSD. But I 100% agree, CD quality or even MP3 320 kbps could be very good if the original recording is good. The key is the master record ínstead the final file resolution.

Hires is a waste of time.

You can't polish a turd. Just give me good music first. I'll worry about the format later.

cd is dead, forget about it, hires have more worddepth 20,24bit etc these would not fit in a cd!...mqa is agglosaxonic crap haha ;)

digital sucks. y'all have been sold a pet rock. there's a sucker born every minute.