Yes. Pretty much. That is how it realistically works
If you are discussing bitrate you have to take into consideration what codec you are discussing and weather that codec is lossless or lossy
Oh well alright then, glad to know I’m on the same page on that level at the very least.
In particular, I’ve been looking between some stuff related to Apple. They’ve been promoting these “Apple Digital Masters” which supposedly are completely accurate to what the original master would sound like, but looking at their requirements for creating in that format, they’re using the 256 Kbps AAC Encoder, not their lossless encoder. I have a couple of albums on hand that are in that, and they’re running at around 1k Kbps, and supposedly, those digital masters are meant to sound exactly like their lossless counterparts, or something of that sort.
Apple Digital Masters are basically masters put under a certain guideline to ensure the music sounds good in aac 256. It can sound pretty good, but imo it’s because of the way they master. Essentially they make sure it doesn’t clip or brickwall and sometimes put more care into the mastering itself
If you have some songs at around 1000kbps I would think they are alac, not aac
Also thing the apple digital masters used to be called “mastered for itunes” or something
Oops, yeah I forgot to mention that those 1k Kbps files are in ALAC. And last I remember yeah they were called “Mastered for iTunes”. Either way, I take it that bitrate doesn’t have nearly as big of an impact? Seems more like the mastering itself contributes more to a person’s perception weather a song is high quality or not than the numbers themselves.
Pretty much, but only to a certain point. With lower bitrates in lossy codecs you can start to notice the lower quality of sound. If you have 320kbps mp3 or 256kbps aac you should have more then acceptable quality. It’s when you dip into those lower ranges that you start to really experience the quality drop. But yes how the song was made and the mastering do play a large role.
I can hear and tell the difference between a high quality lossy and lossless file pretty easily with the right gear, but once you go into the super high res lossless formats I can’t tell the difference. If I can tell a difference, it’s because sometimes when they release a higher res format they remaster it and it might sound better (or different). That’s why I like sacd sometimes, it’s because sometimes they remaster and put more care into the master and it comes out sounding better then the original cd lossless. But sometimes high res releases are just upscaled 44.1 16bit lossless to 24 bit 44.1 or higher which yields no audible quality difference (unless you have a dac that for some reason preforms alot better at 24 bit or something super rare like that)
I see, so either way, it will always be better to grab lossless files in that there is no perceptible loss in quality with competent gear, no matter all the mastering that goes into a lossy file. That being said, I’ve never heard of SACDs before, I take it they run off the same principle that was mentioned earlier over what Apple is doing with AACs, but putting that improved mastering into a lossless file.
Well they are entirely different in how they reproduce audio, because they use dsd instead of pcm to recreate the audio. I won’t go into depth about this, because articles online could explain this more efficiently. Just as an example a traditional cd is 44100hz and 16bit. A sacd would be 1bit and 2822400hz. Also a cd track might be at something like 1000kbps, where a dsd track would be around 5645kpbs. There is constant debate for what is better regarding dsd, but the main takeaway is that sacds sometimes have better masters then their cd counterparts.
If you can get a lossless cd quality file, that would pretty much be all you would need. If you have to use lossy, a 256 aac or 320 mp3 is just fine. Also there is variable bit rate (vbr) formats of aac and mp3, so you have to take those into account as well, besides other lossy formats like Ogg Vorbis, ac3, etc.
I don’t want to discuss mqa, as when I compare it is worse then a true lossless, but better then mp3 or aac to my ears
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Looking at it now, the physical library of DSD offerings seem pretty limited. Where else would these same file formats be offered, and do those places offer them in the standard CD format of 44.1 Khz 16-bit file?
SACD’s were created by sony as a high end format. There are very few offerings because of the more niche nature of sacd, so you will not find modern music (usually), and be stuck with most genre being classical, blues, jazz, and stuff like that. You can typically find regular cd versions of these sacds.
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The issue I have with DSD is that it’s often mastered in DxD which is just super high bitrate pcm, and disappointingly not a lewd anime series in this context, furthermore afaik sony has been phasing out DSD instead pushing for DXD itself as another (imho) silly, pointless format designed possibly for birds.
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Yeah, it is very hard to master in native dsd. I’m just here for the mastering and the other dxd lol
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Made me chuckle a bit. But yeah there’s nothing that drives me up the wall as much as cable related myths. More so when it relates to digital transfer and error correction being in place. USB Cables, optical or RJ45’s costing a metric fuckton for 50cm of cable.
Pro-tip: It doesn’t do shit. The data is being corrected for errors, always ensuring you get the exact same data as you sent. Any errors would make the package being sent again until successful. Faults would result in audio clipping or simply not getting any audio at all. So as long as your cable is properly shielded, protected and secured firmly, it doesn’t matter if you’re using a $5 one or a $5000 one. Save yourself the money and put your money where it’s worth instead. Like a better amp, speakers, headphones or whatever else you had plans to upgrade.
Anyways, on to the memorabilia.
Denon used to have this Denon Link cable (The Cable™) which is basically just a Cat6 they use as an interconnect, priced at a whopping $500. Any Cat6 would work, yet there were people defending this. Worst offenders were often found in the Head-Fi sections where they were also trying to peddle their own garden hoses filled with magic dust (metal shavings), claiming it had some Amazing Properties™ that just revolutionized the sound. The drama there used to be amazing when someone bought a cable only to cut it up and show the insides to the rest of the sceptical crowd. Laughs were had amongst claims hailing defamation and showing off company secrets.
Sadly I don’t have a link for this one, but this also takes me back to the infamous wooden knob someone tried to push on Head-Fi, also for $500 (must be a magic number?). It “opened up the highs” to new brilliant heights. Really makes you think. 
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This is a fallacy I see portrayed by a lot of individuals who have never been in hifi and don’t know about DSD. Native DSD is a bit-stream that cannot be corrected by its very nature. It relies on the density of bits so a 1 flipping to a 0 would result in a slightly different waveform being output. Unlike PCM this wouldn’t sound distorted, it would just sound different. DSD cannot be corrected as it is a continuous stream that fills up a buffer. There is no ‘chuck’ or ‘block’ to verify.
Manuel, a guy who spent over a year verifying audio blocks for PCM tells me of the kinds of errors that can arise with standard USB cables.
Maybe you misstook my post as critique against the format because of the previous posters being on that topic? I’m not arguing against DSD though, I’m calling bullshit on products like Denon Link, wooden knobs, magical dust garden hose interconnects etc, that’s where my beef is and I think people should stay away from products that basically do bugger all.
I’ll give it to you that I’m not that well read on DSD as a format, or how / if error correction works on it. In my defense, my anecdotes were from a time where DSD wasn’t even a thing outside of SACD. So what you say is probably true in regards for DSD, I need to read up more on it.
Hahaha, by the gods
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I think the Phillips and Sony engineers who developed the red book CD standard and settled on 44.1/16Bit all those years ago probably did their job too well. 44.1/16 basically took digital audio as far as it needed to go, that was brilliant for consumers but the industry has been looking for a way to persuade the market to upgrade to a “better” format for years. Unless you want surround sound (and I would love to see much more multi-channel music) then there really isn’t any reason to go beyond 44.1/16. I have quite a few multi-channel “pure audio” blu-ray discs of classical music and the multi-channel experience is excellent, however if listening to the two channel high-res stereo versions provided by the same discs I can discern no difference from the regular CDs they were bundled with.
What hi-res music streaming/downloads might offer (might) is better masters that undo the damage done by re-mastering and optimising new releases for car audio and BT speakers and which have been strangled by over compression. In that case the value of high-res would not be the higher frequency and/or bit depth but use of good quality masters in preference to some of the truly awful masters that have been released.
I think one issue with digital audio is that some approach it as being like analogue, when it isn’t. In the vinyl era tweaking was necessary, cartridges and tone arms etc needed to be set up, vibration isolation wasn’t just snake oil and things like phono stages made a real difference. Digital audio changed all that but I think some parts of the industry and hobby were desperate to try and develop new digital tweaking, or alternatively went more and more off the rails with things like cables, cable lifters, magic rocks etc.
If all the above marks me as an objective type, and I do value measurement and objective evaluation, I’m also of the view that over obsessing about measurement is unhelpful and that measurement in itself will not tell you whether or not you like a pair of headphones, for example. Measurements can verify manufacturer claims and indicate tuning etc, but we all have our own preferences which are no more right or wrong than anybody else’s. And I fear that obsessing over particular metrics can drive unfortunate behaviours and become misleading, and can result ina culture of over optimising products for a single metric which might not mean that much.
Audio gear is about music, if you like the sound of something and it allows you to enjoy music then really that is what matters. I believe in the old adage of buy what you like and like what you buy. If people like audio jewellery then I see nothing wrong with that as long as it is honestly sold as audio jewellery, what I object to about a lot of the snake oil type products is that they are marketed and sold under false pretences of improving sound quality, which is dishonest. And it is not all snake oil. For example cables have to be the right gauge for the load they carry, good quality connectors which give a tight fit and resist oxidation, good stress relief etc all make for a better cable, but they won’t change the sound. And you don’t have to pay much for well made high quality cable.
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Found this to be illuminating from Grover Neville’s review of the Zen DAC on (of all places) InnerFi (https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/ifi-zendac-review):
More power does not determine a system’s volume - that is in fact determined by gain. A lower powered amp will actually sound louder than a higher powered one if it has more gain at a given input. Power is more important in determining what the maximum current or voltage a device can swing into a transducer when hit with musical peaks as well as how loud waveforms are. So, think of power as being a rough indicator of how dynamic a system can be, and gain as determining its relative loudness when listening. I’m grossly oversimplifying and all the electrical engineers are squirming, but I think you get the point.
He later elaborates that raw power can be needed for bass control and of-course for genuinely power-hungry headphones.
I think this is what’s referred to as headroom.
Interesting. Grover says that power is the max current or voltage a device can deliver to a headphone to handle musical peaks. My crude understanding is that headroom means having more power than is needed even for typical peak loads at your current listening level, given the music and equipment you’re using. Does that work for you?