Misc. technical issues - streaming, dynamic range, etc.

[Sir Velo]

Is Spotify Premium still only 320kbps mp3? That's not even up to Radio 3 via Sounds (aac is step up from mp3 in audio quality at the same data rate). QOBUZ, for a similar subscription rate to Spotify Premium, provides lossless compression up to 96/24 audio quality. It's just annoying that QOBUZ does not have this particular recording in its catalogue at the moment. While off-topic and mentioning the Diabellis, I have just ordered the Geza Anda, who recorded rather little Beethoven.

I find it hard to believe that any serious music lover would prefer Spotify over Qobuz: the inferior audio quality notwithstanding, there is also the not so small matter of not providing booklets.

Moreover, pace Bryn, Qobuz offers bitrates up to 24/192, stratospherically in advance of its Swedish rival!

[Bryn]

I find it hard to believe that any serious music lover would prefer Spotify over Qobuz: the inferior audio quality notwithstanding, there is also the not so small matter of not providing booklets.

Moreover, pace Bryn, Qobuz offers bitrates up to 24/192, stratospherically in advance of its Swedish rival!

Re the 192/24 offering on QOBUZ, that does cost rather more than a Spotify sub, whereas the 96/24 costs about the same as the 320kbps mp3 from the latter. I have, it must be said, found rather too many QOBUZ 'tracks' stalling partway thorough, of late, and their search facility is way less than perfect. Even using the specific title they give a title will often fail to find it when used as the search criterion. It's almost as bad as the BBC search tool.

[Goon525]

There’s no difference in cost between Qobuz streaming at 192/24 and at 96/24. Either costs £150 pa, and the higher rate is only available for a very small number of releases. I consider myself an audiophile, and frankly I can’t hear the difference between 192 and 96 sampling. But 96/24 offers a massive advantage over Spotify MP3s.

I do agree Qobuz searching can be a frustrating activity, but I usually get there in the end.

[Bryn]

There’s no difference in cost between Qobuz streaming at 192/24 and at 96/24. Either costs £150 pa, and the higher rate is only available for a very small number of releases. I consider myself an audiophile, and frankly I can’t hear the difference between 192 and 96 sampling. But 96/24 offers a massive advantage over Spotify MP3s.

I do agree Qobuz searching can be a frustrating activity, but I usually get there in the end.

Looks like I have not kept up with QOBUZ pricing. When I started with them, 199€ per annum only got one 320kbps mp3. More recently, the same subscription rate offered lossless CD, then higher, data rates for streaming. From a listening point of view, rather than for audio editing purposes, sampling rates higher than the CD rate of 44.1kHz are unlikely to be perceived by the listener. However, 24-bit quantization certainly does offer real listening advantages over 16-bit.

[jayne lee wilson]

Current Qobuz page......

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/music/streaming/offers

...always read the small print..... I stick with £15 pcm myself, lifelong commitmentphobe & hate being tied up or tied down......and never - never have any stuttering using it on Audirvana. But designer Damien Plisson has always been obsessed with that kind of stability. With great success it seems.
But local broadband conditions can be a huge influence of course. More homeworkers in this neighbourhood now and some internet services have become slower, but thankfully not Qobuz/Audirvana playback so far...

Whether a given human hears any distinction between 192 and 96 will depend on whether there's any content above 48khz in the file, and whether the given human is able to perceive it in some way - which may again depend on what your systems (human and hifi) are doing....
Not many loudspeakers venture far into UHF without supertweeters.....

[gradus]

Current Qobuz page......

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/music/streaming/offers

...always read the small print..... I stick with £15 pcm myself, lifelong commitmentphobe & hate being tied up or tied down......and never - never have any stuttering using it on Audirvana. But designer Damien Plisson has always been obsessed with that kind of stability. With great success it seems.
But local broadband conditions can be a huge influence of course. More homeworkers in this neighbourhood now and some internet services have become slower, but thankfully not Qobuz/Audirvana playback so far...

Whether a given human hears any distinction between 192 and 96 will depend on whether there's any content above 48khz in the file, and whether the given human is able to perceive it in some way - which may again depend on what your systems (human and hifi) are doing....
Not many loudspeakers venture far into UHF without supertweeters.....

There is also the sometimes delicate question of just how much one's hearing has deteriorated with age and to what extent that will influence one's judgement about audio quality. I am satisfied with the sound produced by Spotify premium either on the desk top or web player and having tried Qobuz and Primephonic didn't persist as neither offered the chance to connect 5 other members of the family for the monthly payment.
I do however unreservedly accept that others appreciate and want the audio difference that the highest quality offerings of Qobuz and others offer.

[richardfinegold]

Spotify has invested significantly in Podcasts, paying Joe Rogan something like 100 million dollars for his show. I had kept my Spotify account active even after adding Qobuz due to inertia but now find myself listening to several podcasts a week, spread out over different providers such as Spotify, Soundcard, Apple and Google. Partly this is because I have been between jobs for the past month, and then we had our Election, but with Election over and my starting a new position next week I will probably cut that down.
For video content we pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. We have another app on the Apple TV for our Public TV (largely BBC content), which we pay for with a charitable donation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a donation that we have made for years and would be making regardless of whether they offer the App, but it’s a nice add on that we use. What we don’t have is a regular Cable Subscription. The crazy patch quilt of Apps that we use costs us less than 50% of the cable subscription. There is also some flexibility. Hulu can be canceled and reactivated easily on a month to month basis and since I use it primarily for sports, I have canceled when the sports that follow are not in season. And with being completely shut in with Covid, I have watched more video content in the last 6 months than I had in the previous six years.
With Music streaming now dominating the industry, I think that we will start seeing people carrying multiple streaming services similar to carrying multiple video streaming. Ideally I would like to marry the sound quality of Qobuz to the catalog breadth and podcasting offerings on Spotify.

[Bryn]

Current Qobuz page......

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/music/streaming/offers

...always read the small print..... I stick with £15 pcm myself, lifelong commitmentphobe & hate being tied up or tied down......and never - never have any stuttering using it on Audirvana. But designer Damien Plisson has always been obsessed with that kind of stability. With great success it seems.
But local broadband conditions can be a huge influence of course. More homeworkers in this neighbourhood now and some internet services have become slower, but thankfully not Qobuz/Audirvana playback so far...

Whether a given human hears any distinction between 192 and 96 will depend on whether there's any content above 48khz in the file, and whether the given human is able to perceive it in some way - which may again depend on what your systems (human and hifi) are doing....
Not many loudspeakers venture far into UHF without supertweeters.....

Not stuttering but grinding to a halt at the same point every time the relevant 'track' is played. A frequent enough problem to be annoying.

As to hearing frequencies above 22.05kHz, best of luck. Of course, higher frequencies captured at higher Nyquist frequencies than those used for CD mastering will have some impact on lower frequencies but these effects should be preserved during the resampling down to the 44.1kHz rate used for CDs. Anyway, such interactions take place in the air prior to stimulating the microphone capsules. Noise shaping down from 24 bits to 16 can preserve some of the dynamic detail of the higher quantization but the human ear cannot hear frequencies much above 20kHz, even in childhood. 44.1kHz (giving a maximum audio frequency of 22.05kHz) allows for some headroom. That said, it is claimed by some that current DAC technology introduces more distortion when working with 44.1kHz than when fed a digital signal with a higher sampling rate. The extent to which this may be regarded as "snake oil" salesmanship is open to question. I recall reading warnings against recording at 96kHz with some equipment due to distortion introduced by that equipment when high sampling rates were employed. Admittedly, the equipment concerned was fairly low cost.

[Goon525]

Not stuttering but grinding to a halt at the same point every time the relevant 'track' is played. A frequent enough problem to be annoying.

As to hearing frequencies above 22.05kHz, best of luck. Of course, higher frequencies captured at higher Nyquist frequencies than those used for CD mastering will have some impact on lower frequencies but these effects should be preserved during the resampling down to the 44.1kHz rate used for CDs. Anyway, such interactions take place in the air prior to stimulating the microphone capsules. Noise shaping down from 24 bits to 16 can preserve some of the dynamic detail of the higher quantization but the human ear cannot hear frequencies much above 20kHz, even in childhood. 44.1kHz (giving a maximum audio frequency of 22.05kHz) allows for some headroom. That said, it is claimed by some that current DAC technology introduces more distortion when working with 44.1kHz than when fed a digital signal with a higher sampling rate. The extent to which this may be regarded as "snake oil" salesmanship is open to question. I recall reading warnings against recording at 96kHz with some equipment due to distortion introduced by that equipment when high sampling rates were employed. Admittedly, the equipment concerned was fairly low cost.

Much of the advantage of higher sampling frequencies relates to avoiding brick wall filtering just below 22.05kHz - which impacts upon the audible spectrum. This was particularly a problem in the early days of digital, less so now as we've got better at it. There's still a lot to be said for shifting that filtering way above the audible spectrum.

Incidentally, Qobuz recently launched a family pack, for those for whom that's an issue.

[Goon525]

Re Bryn's problem: I hardly ever have technical issues with Qobuz - not quite sure where his problem lies.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Is there still a 19khz pilot tone on FM broadcasts ? I remember I used to be able to hear the 16khz tone on 625 broadcasts . I wouldn’t have thought many on the forum can hear above 20khz .
The main problem with all recorded sound is not sampling frequency but the compression introduced at eVery stage of the recording And editing process even on so called lossless recordings .

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Is there still a 19khz pilot tone on FM broadcasts ? I remember I used to be able to hear the 16khz tone on 625 broadcasts . I wouldn’t have thought many on the forum can hear above 20khz .
The main problem with all recorded sound is not sampling frequency but the compression introduced at eVery stage of the recording And editing process even on so called lossless recordings .

I've never heard the FM pilot tone, but like you, I could hear the TV tone. One TV wasn't too bad, but entering a shop full of them was horrendous.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I've never heard the FM pilot tone, but like you, I could hear the TV tone. One TV wasn't too bad, but entering a shop full of them was horrendous.

Final off piste comment
. There used to be something called sequential tone laid down at the beginning of video tape which swept up in stages from I think 50hz to 20k . I was told by one veteran VT editor that one purpose was to persuade even more veteran colleagues that failing to hear 5k was perhaps an indication to consider packing it in...

[Bryn]

Is there still a 19khz pilot tone on FM broadcasts ? I remember I used to be able to hear the 16khz tone on 625 broadcasts . I wouldn’t have thought many on the forum can hear above 20khz .
The main problem with all recorded sound is not sampling frequency but the compression introduced at eVery stage of the recording And editing process even on so called lossless recordings .

Ah, the stereo multiplex carrier half-wave, IIRC. The Testament CDs of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony have a very distinct peak at 19kHz, giving the game away as to which end of the transmission chain the recordings were taken from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_signal

[MickyD]

I've never heard the FM pilot tone, but like you, I could hear the TV tone. One TV wasn't too bad, but entering a shop full of them was horrendous.

Exactly the same here...imagine working in such a place all day!