Hi res music retailers - who do you use?

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yd

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  • #1
    One of my favorite artists just released a new album - but I don't see a cd anywhere.

    Melody Gardot - sayonara meu amor

    So, given this kind of music is what I want as good as I can get for files, it looks like I need to buy online in hi-res/flac/96khz kinda format (which is totally fine, I want flac files all the time if given any kind of choice).

    So, did a little looking around and it seems it comes down to:

    HD Tracks
    7 Digital
    Prostudiomasters

    I have heard of the first one on that list. Given I suspect the files are the same just buy the from the cheapest or do people like one of these or someone else I didn't find better - it looks like I will need to be doing more of this going forward. Amazon just has mp3s and I am not going to pay for mp3s if real flac files are available/an option.

    edit:

    dangit, well crap. I was thinking, oh hey, this is cool, I can get some proper hi res stuff - looks like for instance I can get 96khz 24 bit versions of a couple of her albums. Gotcha would be, if .wav i would probably convert to flac to at least make reasonably smaller. Regardless, even if I didn't I am sure the htpc (Asus z390 lga1151 based computer) will play them no problem on MusicBee player. However, the htpc is connected to my d2a by toslink which I believe will only put out/accept 44khz. The d2a I have will accept higher than 88.2khz inputs but only by dual wire aka 2 xlr cables (which is how it accepts the transport connection for instance and then upsamples the cd - we can debate whether that actually does anything to a 44.1kz cd) - the point being, I have a d2a that would take 96khz input but have nothing that would output it on my source side.

    as such, at best I am getting hi-res tracks and downsampling to 16 bit 44khz and not sure there is any kinda of reasonable solution given my need to get an output into a pre-amp preferably by a balanced xlr connector :(
     
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    Ardax

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  • #2
    According to Wikipedia, S/PDIF over TOSLINK can do 48 kHz, so at least there's that.

    That said, I rather doubt you'll be able to tell the difference between 24-bit 96 kHz audio and the same thing correctly resampled and dithered to 16-bit 48 kHz. (or 44.1 kHz, for that matter).

    The extra resolution can be useful for mastering, but not for listening.

    Also worth reading: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
     
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    malor

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  • #4
    yd said:
    I can get 96khz 24 bit versions
    Click to expand...
    There's really no point to this at all. 44KHz/16-bit is perfect. The reason to use 24-bit is for mixing, to keep quantization errors down in the least significant bits, so that the accumulated noise drops out of the signal when it's remastered to 16 bits. And the reason to sample faster than 44KHz is for frequency response above 20KHz. Which you don't want.

    As someone who could, in his youth, hear well above 20KHz (I maxed out the Exploratorium tester in San Francisco, so I could hear to at least 26KHz for a few years as a teenager): you don't care about anything up there. It's all whiny, nasty noise. There is nothing musical, it's all awful. Engineers can't hear it and can't mix it. Imagine mosquito whines forever, but much higher pitched. That's the kind of crap that's up there. You don't care about it or want it for any reason whatsoever.

    Seriously, just buy 16-bit/44KHz. You will get literally nothing from higher resolution or higher frequency. The CD format is perfect. They got it in one, and unless human hearing changes, there will never need to be a higher standard for digitization of music.

    That said, FLAC format supports more than two channels. Any individual channel is fine at 16-bit/44KHz, but you can potentially do surround sound that way. That's nice for the old quadraphonic stuff (Pink Floyd in quadraphonic is quite cool), or if anyone starts doing multichannel stuff now. AFAIC, 16-bit, 44KHz FLAC is the ideal music format. It's bitperfect, runs on pretty much anything, and supports multichannel.

    Do not pay extra for anything above 16bit/44KHz. You might as well be lighting money on fire.
     
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  • #5
    hal_incandenza said:
    Doesn't look like they have this one, but I buy nearly all of my music on Bandcamp. Everything is available in FLAC
    Click to expand...
    They were on my list - until I saw they didn't have this artist/release so I chopped them off it thinking it might be indicative of less selection than these other ones (admittedly from a sample size of two possible tracks).
     
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  • #6
    malor said:
    There's really no point to this at all. 44KHz/16-bit is perfect. The reason to use 24-bit is for mixing, to keep quantization errors down in the least significant bits, so that the accumulated noise drops out of the signal when it's remastered to 16 bits. And the reason to sample faster than 44KHz is for frequency response above 20KHz. Which you don't want.

    As someone who could, in his youth, hear well above 20KHz (I maxed out the Exploratorium tester in San Francisco, so I could hear to at least 26KHz for a few years as a teenager): you don't care about anything up there. It's all whiny, nasty noise. There is nothing musical, it's all awful. Engineers can't hear it and can't mix it. Imagine mosquito whines forever, but much higher pitched. That's the kind of crap that's up there. You don't care about it or want it for any reason whatsoever.

    Seriously, just buy 16-bit/44KHz. You will get literally nothing from higher resolution or higher frequency. The CD format is perfect. They got it in one, and unless human hearing changes, there will never need to be a higher standard for digitization of music.

    That said, FLAC format supports more than two channels. Any individual channel is fine at 16-bit/44KHz, but you can potentially do surround sound that way. That's nice for the old quadraphonic stuff (Pink Floyd in quadraphonic is quite cool), or if anyone starts doing multichannel stuff now. AFAIC, 16-bit, 44KHz FLAC is the ideal music format. It's bitperfect, runs on pretty much anything, and supports multichannel.

    Do not pay extra for anything above 16bit/44KHz. You might as well be lighting money on fire.
    Click to expand...
    Interesting.

    But what I want is the flac file which is definitely be better than an mp3. And if I want a flac, the couple Melody albums I would want that I don't have that are not on cd are.....96khz/24 bit.

    So I buy that and something something 'downsample' it and use that file to get from the htpc to the d2a via the toslink (maybe at 48khz?)? Does the 24 bit part also need to downsampled to 16 while at it aka 16/48 or 16/44.1 (I think the d2a would take anything up to 48 over the toslink so could get 48 if that helps.
     
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  • #7
    It's weird that they don't provide 16/44. Higher bitrates can actually sound worse, depending on the DAC and/or conversion method. But assuming you're using a quality player like Foobar 2000, the resample down to 16/44 (or 16/48, DVD sound format) should sound fine.

    Another option is buying a used receiver and driving it with HDMI sound. You can stream pretty much any format to them and they'll sound fantastic. I really like Denon, but they're far from the only player in that space. I'm using a 1909 ($100) with an eARC converter ($50), and it sounds amazing. If your monitor doesn't do eARC, you may want a newer receiver that supports higher resolution; the old 1909 really only does 1080p properly, and is kind of laggy. But driven purely as a sound peripheral, it's phenomenal.

    If your monitor isn't driveable properly via HDMI, however, that's not a good option at all. (I'm using an LG C2, which is a television, and supports HDMI 2.1.)

    I have my default sound output at 24bit/96KHz, but that's because it can be mixing multiple sources, at potentially weird sample rates.(I do lots of emulation, and old computers did some really weird stuff.) Running at 96KHz means that multiple weird bitrates can all get mixed together with fewer issues. There's no reason to use that for prerecorded stuff, but as computer output, it's not worthless.

    AFAIK, you can send 16-bit/96KHz down a Toslink cable, if both the source and destination support it. But I don't think you can send 24 bits that way. Clocking higher is easy, going to more bits can't be done, AFAIK.
     
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    Ardax

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  • #8
    yd said:
    But what I want is the flac file which is definitely be better than an mp3. And if I want a flac, the couple Melody albums I would want that I don't have that are not on cd are.....96khz/24 bit.
    Click to expand...

    Wanting the FLAC makes some sense. (Even though you're probably not going to be able to tell the difference with a reasonably high bitrate encode out of a modern encoder.) The frequency and bit depth are pure marketing shlock, but that's not your fault.

    yd said:
    So I buy that and something something 'downsample' it and use that file to get from the htpc to the d2a via the toslink (maybe at 48khz?)?
    Click to expand...

    Good player/conversion software should be able to resample the files without issue, if your d2a can't.
     
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  • #9
    malor said:
    It's weird that they don't provide 16/44. Higher bitrates can actually sound worse, depending on the DAC and/or conversion method. But assuming you're using a quality player like Foobar 2000, the resample down to 16/44 (or 16/48, DVD sound format) should sound fine.

    Another option is buying a used receiver and driving it with HDMI sound. You can stream pretty much any format to them and they'll sound fantastic. I really like Denon, but they're far from the only player in that space. I'm using a 1909 ($100) with an eARC converter ($50), and it sounds amazing. If your monitor doesn't do eARC, you may want a newer receiver that supports higher resolution; the old 1909 really only does 1080p properly, and is kind of laggy. But driven purely as a sound peripheral, it's phenomenal.

    If your monitor isn't driveable properly via HDMI, however, that's not a good option at all. (I'm using an LG C2, which is a television, and supports HDMI 2.1.)

    I have my default sound output at 24bit/96KHz, but that's because it can be mixing multiple sources, at potentially weird sample rates.(I do lots of emulation, and old computers did some really weird stuff.) Running at 96KHz means that multiple weird bitrates can all get mixed together with fewer issues. There's no reason to use that for prerecorded stuff, but as computer output, it's not worthless.

    AFAIK, you can send 16-bit/96KHz down a Toslink cable, if both the source and destination support it. But I don't think you can send 24 bits that way. Clocking higher is easy, going to more bits can't be done, AFAIK.
    Click to expand...
    Just so we are all on the same page, my setup is 'relatively' simple

    I built an htpc - mini itx asus strix z390 with a bequiet huge dead quiet fan cooler, a 750 watt power supply (big enough that the fan never turns on) and a core i5 chip and 16 gigs of ram and an m2 drive (holding music files, 95% flacs ripped from cd's I would estimate). That htpc I use the toslink/optical cable out to a d2a (Weiss Medea) which I assume is running in 44.1k/16 bit. Balanced output from there to a preamp and balanced from there to an amp and onto speakers. I have qled from Samsung but it is not involved in audio in anyway and I wouldn't know how it could be short of something happening in it to then maybe go by rca jacks to the single ended inputs on the preamp (surely not a good route).

    The preamp only has singled ended rca inputs and xlr.

    So the only thing I can see I can control is the htpc - and on that I use MusicBee as I have for many years. I don't know what it does with tracks for khz/bits, it just works with flac files and has always just worked with the d2a. I can download a hd track, not touch it and see what it does if I try to play it over the toslink; maybe it would autodownsample in the htpc d2a pre going out via the toslink because it (Musicbee) is going to 'know' that the toslink won't take 96khz/24 bit tracks?
     
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    hal_incandenza

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  • #10
    yd said:
    They were on my list - until I saw they didn't have this artist/release so I chopped them off it thinking it might be indicative of less selection than these other ones (admittedly from a sample size of two possible tracks).
    Click to expand...
    Depends on your genre preferences of course, but for my needs the library is pretty comprehensive. And they do Bandcamp Fridays very frequently where they waive all commission so all money goes to the artist
     
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    Billiam29

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  • #13
    I’ve been going between 7digital and the Qobuz download store as my sources.

    I should note that Qobuz somewhat recently started nudging users toward their downloader app which I’ve never been able to get working for some reason. You can still obtain your purchases over standard https web downloads but you have to download one track at a time. The ability to download an entire album as a single zip or tar went away with the push toward the dowloader app.
     
    malor

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  • #15
    yd said:
    I can download a hd track, not touch it and see what it does if I try to play it over the toslink; maybe it would autodownsample in the htpc d2a pre going out via the toslink because it (Musicbee) is going to 'know' that the toslink won't take 96khz/24 bit tracks?
    Click to expand...
    Give it a try, see what happens. The worst outcome you're likely to hear is silence.

    I have no idea how good MusicBee's resampling is, if it does that internally. Clean 44/16 sources will always give you optimal results, whenever you can get them. 48/16, the DVD standard, is also fine; it's slight overkill, but no biggie. It carries a little more bandwidth, so you can get multichannel sound via lossy compression if your DAC decodes it. From the names, I'm guessing your setup is stereo-only.

    96/24 will probably sound fine. It won't sound better, unless they used a different mix. It could potentially sound worse. Ideally, if you can get a 96/24 track of music you already have in 44/16, comparing would give you an idea of whether the resampling is good.
     
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  • #16
    malor said:
    Give it a try, see what happens. The worst outcome you're likely to hear is silence.

    I have no idea how good MusicBee's resampling is, if it does that internally. Clean 44/16 sources will always give you optimal results, whenever you can get them. 48/16, the DVD standard, is also fine; it's slight overkill, but no biggie. It carries a little more bandwidth, so you can get multichannel sound via lossy compression if your DAC decodes it. From the names, I'm guessing your setup is stereo-only.

    96/24 will probably sound fine. It won't sound better, unless they used a different mix. It could potentially sound worse. Ideally, if you can get a 96/24 track of music you already have in 44/16, comparing would give you an idea of whether the resampling is good.
    Click to expand...
    Yea, stereo only. I have zero interest in faffing around with centers/rears and whatnot.

    I did think of a high res 'solution' a FiiO R7 or R9. Put music on sd card, xlr outputs of anything and everything bitrate/khz you want to preamp. Bit dubious mind you - anything that uses an external power brick is susceptible to a crappy power supply and concomitant issues. That said, it could take the Medea right out of the equation as I would just use the htpc for streaming 'television' video to the qled and could usb/c audio to a FiiO. That said, you don't have me looking to get too excited about this not to mention I really don't foresee tons of high res audio coming down the pipe for me to bother.

    Its bad enough I have a hunch I will be looking for a new amp/preamp and speakers in the next couple years.

    I think I will try a couple of the providers (album each) and see what happens - it could be the sound of glory or.....silence. At worst, I will just do a convert somehow.

    edit - interestingly, an email reply from Weiss - the d2a manufacturer - says the toslink shoud work up to 96khz so something to try once I get some time to do some album shopping. Been a very busy day.
     
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    Kiru

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  • #17
    malor said:
    There's really no point to this at all. 44KHz/16-bit is perfect. The reason to use 24-bit is for mixing, to keep quantization errors down in the least significant bits, so that the accumulated noise drops out of the signal when it's remastered to 16 bits. And the reason to sample faster than 44KHz is for frequency response above 20KHz. Which you don't want.

    As someone who could, in his youth, hear well above 20KHz (I maxed out the Exploratorium tester in San Francisco, so I could hear to at least 26KHz for a few years as a teenager): you don't care about anything up there. It's all whiny, nasty noise. There is nothing musical, it's all awful. Engineers can't hear it and can't mix it. Imagine mosquito whines forever, but much higher pitched. That's the kind of crap that's up there. You don't care about it or want it for any reason whatsoever.

    Seriously, just buy 16-bit/44KHz. You will get literally nothing from higher resolution or higher frequency. The CD format is perfect. They got it in one, and unless human hearing changes, there will never need to be a higher standard for digitization of music.

    That said, FLAC format supports more than two channels. Any individual channel is fine at 16-bit/44KHz, but you can potentially do surround sound that way. That's nice for the old quadraphonic stuff (Pink Floyd in quadraphonic is quite cool), or if anyone starts doing multichannel stuff now. AFAIC, 16-bit, 44KHz FLAC is the ideal music format. It's bitperfect, runs on pretty much anything, and supports multichannel.

    Do not pay extra for anything above 16bit/44KHz. You might as well be lighting money on fire.
    Click to expand...
    I agree wholeheartedly w/ Mayor. Of course you're free to spend your money as you wish*, but you just won't notice a palpable difference. That's why I get my music on CD when I'm able (admittedly harder to do w/ newer music these days).

    Otherwise, I've been using Bandcamp or Qobuz (found them while searching for an old reggae album that I can't find on CD for a reasonable price).

    *Want to spend money that'll actually make your music sound better in your listening room? Get some room treatments!
     
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    Billiam29

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  • #18
    Advanced apologies if I missed something in my skimming of the prior posts. When it comes to changing the sample rates of a hi res file, I believe Windows will resample any music audio output to whatever the system settings are for the output device. It kind of has to in order to mix in things like notification sounds, call alerts, and other system or application sounds that may occur while the music is playing.

    My understanding (from serveral years ago admittedly) is that the only way around this situation is to use an “exclusive mode” WASAPI or ASIO driver for your audio output device. Your music playback application then needs to be ASIO or WASAPI aware so that it can send the unfettered music bits to that driver instead of the default Windows audio stack.

    I believe MusicBee can use both ASIO and WASAPI. I’m using it with the generic ASIO4ALL driver and a Topping E30 DAC connected via USB. My DAC’s display shows it’s always receiving exactly the sample rate of my source files.

    Again, my understanding of this stuff may be outdated. It may also not be applicable to your hardware setup yd as I’m still kind of fuzzy on what exactly that is.
     
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  • #20
    I'm not a believer in high rez but I do collect as much multichannel music as possible, whether it's concert blurays or old DVDs with 5.1 tracks (not DVD Audio) or even CDs mastered with DPL2 hooks in mind (these translate fine to FLAC or MP3, imho); sometimes it's lazy mixes that are inferior to what Atmos up-sampling can now do on the fly (which is often strictly worse than stereo), but there are some real gems out there, too, from remasters of old quadrophonic recordings to gee-whiz true Atmos implementations with 3d space used to its fullest potential.

    At any rate, if you want to try something new or next level, I recommend that route over bigger file sizes. Worth faffing about imho.
     
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  • #21
    Billiam29 said:
    I should note that Qobuz somewhat recently started nudging users toward their downloader app which I’ve never been able to get working for some reason. You can still obtain your purchases over standard https web downloads but you have to download one track at a time. The ability to download an entire album as a single zip or tar went away with the push toward the dowloader app.
    Click to expand...
    This is why I won't use Qobuz anymore. It's absurd to expect people to install a desktop app just to download files in 2024.

    I guess my order of preference is something like this:
    1. Bandcamp
    2. The artist or label's own download store
    3. 7digital
    4. iTunes
    5. Amazon
    6. Getting hit by a car
    7. Beatport
    Qobuz would have been #2 before the app nonsense.
     
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  • #22
    Well I liked the website look of ProStudioMasters and both it and HDtracks wanted you to put a downloader in place so I just bought my two 'albums' at ProStudio. Bandcamp didn't have the album, the artist didn't have this new one either. 7 digital, dunno, just didn't like the website as much again. Itunes, hard hard pass on anything provided by Apple. Amazon was only mp3.

    So anyhoodles, two 96khz/24bit Melody Gardot albums downloaded. Music scanned for new files, bing bang boom, they were in and on my desktop computer no drama and playing via the desktop to my integrated (which is the trs out to rca jacks on a intgrated amplifier and listening via my new HifiMan headphones). Worked no drama which I was not surprised about.

    Sent the files over the network down to the htpc. Opened MusicBee there, scanned, new files no drama. Play and......works no drama.

    Now I have no idea what is getting outputted from MusicBee but the d2a most certainly didn't drop its connection to the htpc when I started any of those tracks so....success....I think? Maybe toslink to the Medea does support 96khz? Or maybe MusicBee is putting things to 44.1 if a cd flac and maybe 48 if 96 is available, dunno.

    And now I definitely need to do some soldering because I need to swap out the midrange on my right driver...again. These speakers, as much as I love them, need an update at some point now that they are 27 years old.
     
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    malor

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  • #23
    yd said:
    Its bad enough I have a hunch I will be looking for a new amp/preamp and speakers in the next couple years.
    Click to expand...
    I probably wouldn't bother. Again, 96/24 is snake oil. There's no reason to buy things in that format. 44/16 is perfect, and if you've got a good DAC, amp, and speakers, there's no reason to upgrade because of higher bitnesses.

    If for some reason MusicBee or your DAC don't like 96/24, and you're forced to buy that format, you can probably use Foobar2K to resample the tracks down to 44/16 for playback. I haven't used Foobar for resampling specifically, but it's a Swiss Army knife for format conversions, so it can probably do that, too.

    edit to add, after reading more comments: @richleader's points about multichannel and Atmos being interesting are good. @Kiru is also correct that room treatments can really help. I'll add that software room correction in a receiver can also be a big quality improvement. Doing both room treatments and room correction are likely to give you a substantial upgrade in perceived sound quality.

    Bitness and sampling rate don't matter at all past 44/16. If you do hear anything additional, if you have unusually good hearing, anything you get above 20KHz will suck.

    Trust me. As I said upthread, I used to be able to hear up there, and it's all awful. My current middle-aged ears get nowhere near that frequency range anymore, but oh god, I remember what was up there. Distracting whines and ringing all the damn time.
     
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    yd

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  • #24
    No no, I am only pondering the speaker/amp upgrade because I know the clock is ticking on capacitors now that the guts are 26+ years old. I enquired at the amp manufacturer and I could do a swap out but given the weight and box size, I would be without for the better part of three months (sea over, air back) and would be in for half of a brand new alternative. Speakers are now on the 3rd mid range swap out and eventually I am concerned the cross over goes. That is why I am pondering their upgrade - and also a lot easier while the missus is working so the money doesn't feel quite as stingy.
     
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  • #25
    I'd definitely look into doing a receiver. IMO, Denons are particularly good. They have excellent DACs and amps, and can do room correction. Denon uses Audyssey, and IIRC, you want the MultEQ XT version, which gives you many more adjustment points for the subwoofer, which is usually the thing that needs correction the most. Note that correction can't fix room nulls, only peaks; you have to either do room treatments or very carefully position the sub to fix nulls. That's why both things done together can be so helpful.

    Doing a receiver also makes it extra-easy to run smaller mains with a sub, which is usually both cheaper and (IMO) better than full range speakers. Placement becomes much easier.

    From there, it's a matter of getting the signal to the receiver. IMO, HDMI is your best delivery method. Using an HDMI 2.1 TV and sound card, with an eARC connection back to the receiver, will give you the best video latency and will pass any sound the TV supports. LG OLEDs in the C2 and earlier models will not pass DTS formats, only Dolby, but C3s and newer will. I don't know what happens with other brands.

    That setup gives you anything, from simple stereo up to arbitrary-channel Atmos, at any bitrate and bit depth. Adding that to an existing HTPC is probably just a matter of upgrading the video card to something with HDMI 2.1. NVidia cards from the 3000-series and newer all have that feature. Dunno nothin' about AMD.
     
    continuum

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  • #28
    malor said:
    You gain nothing from separates. Usually, you lose a ton of stuff. Seriously, listen to a Denon. They are really, really good. You can spend many thousands more, and get worse sound quality.
    Click to expand...
    ++;

    I forget the current favorite of the audio world but years ago it was Denon, a bit more recently it was Yamaha, and I think currently (past 2 or 3 years) it's back to Denon.

    Unless you have a massive room and need absolute tons of power, a Denon X4800H or X6800H is going to be more than any reasonably sized (even by American standards) room is going to need.
     
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  • #29
    continuum said:
    Denon X4800H or X6800H
    Click to expand...

    If you're using a powered sub, you don't need anywhere near that much wattage (and expense) in your receiver. The sub provides the vast majority of the power, and even 30 watts per channel will be more than enough for the mains. You'd only need more if you were both using full-range speakers without a sub, and wanted really strong bass. That's quite a rare combo. Subs make way more sense in most cases.

    With a good sub, I'd probably buy the cheapest Denon with at least Audyssey MultEQ XT, unless there's some specific killer feature you want. For a long time, that receiver in any model year was usually around $800, but I bet it's more now, probably $1K or $1200. I'm out of date on both Denon models and Audyssey versioning, so there may be another edition with killer features that I don't know about. Definitely do not jump in blind on my recommendation, because my opinion is not educated about current gear.

    So what you're saying there is absolutely true, in the sense that a 4800 or 6800 will do anything you would currently want, but I'd also check out the most recent 19-series as well. That'll be way cheaper, and it will sound just about as good, albeit without as much raw power.

    I'm not, btw, a big fan of spending a ton of money on receivers, because they change faster than anything else in the system, and extra money spent on the receiver rarely translates to much improved sound. You're usually better off buying up on speakers and going lower-end on the electronics. Speakers matter a lot, and they last for decades. Electronics past a certain level of competence and quality should all sound about the same, and they're usually obsolete within five years. As long as you can get the good room correction software in a cheaper model line, that seems to me to be the way to go most of the time. At least with Denon, what you're usually buying is amp power, and mostly we don't need it.
     
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    malor

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  • #31
    poochyena said:
    I noticed 7digital charges more for FLAC files than for mp3 files. Is there an actual technical reason for this, or is the price difference simply to try to get more money out of people? Is it literally just a different, less compressed, format or is there something more to it?
    Click to expand...
    FLAC is lossless. It supports many formats, but usually you're getting them in 44.1KHz/16-bit format. Depending on how they generate the FLACs, these can be literal bitperfect copies of the CD edition. There's no difference in playback between a FLAC and CD. FLACs, however, can be easily protected against bitrot. You can generate PAR2 files for them, or you can stick them on advanced filesystems with error detection and recovery, like ZFS mirrors or RAIDs.

    MP3 is lossy. It will be smaller than FLAC, but it throws away a substantial amount of the original data. A 320K MP3 is generally not distinguishable by human ears from a lossless source. (it drops everything above 16KHz, so some in the under-25 crowd can pick out MP3s easily.) However, it can't be used to properly generate other lossy formats. All MP3s have (deliberate) errors, and if you re-encode them into another lossy format, you end up with all the errors of both formats, and sound quality rapidly degrades. FLACs, on the other hand, can be used to generate any other lossy format you want, should you have a need to compress your library for some portable device. (this is becoming less and less meaningful over time, as devices get bigger.)

    The reason to charge more for FLAC is probably that the files are bigger. The actual meaningful cost to the provider to send you a FLAC vs. MP3 is minuscule, so most of it is price-gouging. FLACs are technically superior, so they charge more.

    edit: note that the important part is "lossless", not "FLAC". All lossless formats are equivalent in terms of sound quality, and it's generally easy to convert between formats, it just takes a few minutes. FLAC is a widely accepted standard that almost everything can work with, and it supports multichannel music and higher bitrates with ease, but for stereo, CD-quality sources, any lossless format is fine.

    example: buying Apple Lossless files is just as good, and you can convert them to FLAC or MP3 if you want without any issue. Or you can just play them as-is, they'll sound the same as a CD.

    edit: MP3s drop above 16KHz, not 16Hz. Oops.
     
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    Schpyder

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  • #32
    yd said:
    Now I have no idea what is getting outputted from MusicBee but the d2a most certainly didn't drop its connection to the htpc when I started any of those tracks so....success....I think? Maybe toslink to the Medea does support 96khz? Or maybe MusicBee is putting things to 44.1 if a cd flac and maybe 48 if 96 is available, dunno.
    Click to expand...

    FWIW, the Weiss Medea (which is absolutely the most ridiculously overspecc'd audiophile DAC in history, when it was new in 2003 it sold for almost fourteen thousand US dollars) will absolutely support 44.1/48/88.2/96 kHz sample rates on any of its individual inputs. You only need to double wire inputs 1 and 2 for the utterly ridiculous and completely pointless 176.4 and 192 kHz sampling rate capabilities.
     
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  • #33
    Schpyder said:
    FWIW, the Weiss Medea (which is absolutely the most ridiculously overspecc'd audiophile DAC in history, when it was new in 2003 it sold for almost fourteen thousand US dollars) will absolutely support 44.1/48/88.2/96 kHz sample rates on any of its individual inputs. You only need to double wire inputs 1 and 2 for the utterly ridiculous and completely pointless 176.4 and 192 kHz sampling rate capabilities.
    Click to expand...
    So what you are saying is it is a really good d2a then ;)
     
    malor

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  • #35
    Schpyder said:
    Yessir! Although, like a lot of tech that's 20+ years old, it's probably been surpassed at this point by a $10 IC that resides on your smartphone's PCB.
    Click to expand...
    Probably the old Burr-Brown DACs will sound about as good. TI owns them now, and I think they sell a really nice-sounding chip for like $3. I'm not sure if the $3 model goes above 44.1/16, though.

    The old Squeezeboxes (eventually bought out and then shot by Logitech) used that chip, and they sounded fantastic. They came out in 2003, so fairly contemporary to the Weiss.
     
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  • #36
    malor said:
    The old Squeezeboxes (eventually bought out and then shot by Logitech) used that chip...
    Click to expand...
    I’m fond of throwing shade at Logitech as much as the next guy. Where the Squeezebox is concerned though, you do have to give them credit for open sourcing the underlying software.

    Strictly speaking, I don’t recall if it was according to Hoyle open-sourced but I think it effectively was. There seemed to be quite a few options for for the Logitech Media Server (LMS) and Squeezebox player clients the last time I looked. That was probably 3+ years ago though.
     
    malor

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  • #37
    Billiam29 said:
    I’m fond of throwing shade at Logitech as much as the next guy. Where the Squeezebox is concerned though, you do have to give them credit for open sourcing the underlying software.

    Strictly speaking, I don’t recall if it was according to Hoyle open-sourced but I think it effectively was. There seemed to be quite a few options for for the Logitech Media Server (LMS) and Squeezebox player clients the last time I looked. That was probably 3+ years ago though.
    Click to expand...
    It was a nice ecosystem, but when my SB3 failed, my only realistic replacement option was the Java client, and that sounded awful. I'm not sure if it was Java itself, the computer, or the DAC on that motherboard. I don't remember what I ended up using.

    I really liked that kit. I wish Slim Devices hadn't sold themselves.

    IIRC, the server software was written in Perl, which was kind of weird. I'm sure it made more sense in 2001. I never got the idea that it wasn't fully open source. Maybe there were proprietary plugins or something?
     
    yd

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  • #38
    I appreciate the whole receiver idea and argument by the way malor, but it just isn't the way I would want to go.

    The wife is used to seeing 2 huge Jeff Rowland amp boxes and boxes on top of those - its like having your wife fine with you having a Ferrari. You don't let her get used to seeing a mini van in the driveway as practical as it may be!

    Funnily enough, I need a new espresso machine and my wife quasi vetoed the small Descent xxl because it doesn't look as nice and 'proper' as our now dead full sized Alex Duetto and said it would have to go in a kitchen corner out of sight. So a full sized ECM synchronica or Rocket R91 it may very well be then honey!
     
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