BaL 12.10.24 - Beethoven: Symphony 4

[Goon525]

Plus buying CDs gives the artists decent royalties. Streaming gives them a pittance, and recording companies would cease to exist if required to live by streaming alone.

No, recording companies are more profitable than they’ve been in years - almost entirely due to streaming, I accept there is an issue for artists.

[richardfinegold]

Sorry, but your 1 simply isn’t true. Almost everything recorded for Classical in the last 15 years or so is recorded at 96/24 or similar. Older stuff is rarely upsampled - but of course analogue masters may be remastered at higher rates than previously.
As for 2, I think much depends on the quality of your streamer. I’ve compared live Qobuz steaming vs downloads and not been able to distinguish. Incidentally, there are some Qobuz DSDs.

The last 15 years? I really doubt that if I sample my CDs purchased in 2009 I am going to find many 96/24. More like half that period, starting a couple of years prior to the pandemic. More to the point for this Forum, as most of us are a certain age, a lot of the recordings bandied about here were made in the 1960s-80s era. Those that are being advertised as higher resolution by the streaming or download sites without question are being up sampled, and again one doesn’t need a streaming service to do the up sampling because plenty of kit can do it for you
Regarding the compression issue, as I stated in my premise, Qobuz still sounds very good, but try comparing a recording of the Rachmaninov Third PC by Antal Dorati, Byron Janis and (I think) the Minneapolis SO . First listen to a High Resolution download from HDTracks, then listen to the Qobuz Stream.

[Goon525]

How can you tell if your CDs from 2009 are recorded in higher resolution than the 44/16 in which they’re issued on CD? Chandos usually tell you at the back of the booklet, but hardly any other companies do. I can tell by calling them up on Qobuz/Roon. If I can be bothered I’ll open a random Gramophone from 2010 and check the resolution of the first say 20 issues reviewed.

Incidentally, very often differences in sound quality boil down to different masters having been used. I don’t own the Rach 3 you mention, but I’ve just looked on Roon, and there’s a 192/24 version - actually with the LSO, I think it’s the 2nd with Minneapolis. I could compare it with the 44/16, also available via Qobuz, but not sure there’s much mileage in it. I’m afraid I’m unwilling to buy the download just for the sake of this exercise - but I accept it would be interesting.

[richardfinegold]

How can you tell if your CDs from 2009 are recorded in higher resolution than the 44/16 in which they’re issued on CD? Chandos usually tell you at the back of the booklet, but hardly any other companies do. I can tell by calling them up on Qobuz/Roon. If I can be bothered I’ll open a random Gramophone from 2010 and check the resolution of the first say 20 issues reviewed.

Incidentally, very often differences in sound quality boil down to different masters having been used. I don’t own the Rach 3 you mention, but I’ve just looked on Roon, and there’s a 192/24 version - actually with the LSO, I think it’s the 2nd with Minneapolis. I could compare it with the 44/16, also available via Qobuz, but not sure there’s much mileage in it. I’m afraid I’m unwilling to buy the download just for the sake of this exercise - but I accept it would be interesting.

If I could be bothered I could try to dig out the issue of Hi Fi News that addressed this, but it was released before the pandemic as High Resolution downloads from yester year became the flavor of the month in Classical Music. The article contained a few quotes from anonymous recording industry people that most of the older fare, and definitely the stuff that was originally recorded in analog and subsequently transferred to digital, were up sampled. At the time I was enamored with new releases of High Resolution and shelling out for them and then purchased a few of these older recordings. The one that raised my ire was a Mendelssohn Symphony set from Bernstein and the NYPhil. I had the first CD issue of the same recording and and a DAC that up sampled and with that in tow I couldn’t distinguish between the two.
However I think you are suggesting that Qobuz might be using a Higher Resolution stream of a recording that say was issued in 2005 in plain vanilla red book. I know that I’ve seen this kicked around in Audio Forums -the one that I am on has many recording engineer types- and some of them believe that most of these streams are just up sampled.
Up sampling can sound very good. That is I like to have the option on my DAC. Sometimes it leads to a certain thinning, particularly in the midrange.
I think we’ve wandered a bit from Beethoven