Same. I did a direct comparison between Tidal and Qobuz and thought Qobuz sounded much better.

@@WalterReade well you're comparing lossy to lossless so of course Qobuz will sound better 😂

Not if they've been fed horse medicine.

Don't American satellites also fall? Is it a case of 'choose your satellite'?

From all the gear the US left behind, there's likely going to be Taliban/Isis satellites falling from the sky shortly. 🛰 🇦🇫

Satellites from the Soviet satellite states.

Absolutely agree 👍 Paul mentioned this in some other videos (in fact, their number is over 1000 i believe!)

You said a mouthful. In the past six months I have mentioned source material too many times to remember as the last frontier

I agree also. I recently listened to a 24/96 recording via Qobuz of an album released this year and it was one of the worst recordings I have ever heard. It was so overly compressed that I had to stop listening after two tracks.

Sooo true! Mixing/mastering people remain invisible and significance of their work understood by few. Paul mentioned in one of his videos it's an art... and many today don't know how to do right.

It's simple; It's either a well executed release or not. Endless examples exist of less than ideal sonics in "hi res", ... similarly, there's many releases with quality sonics via Redbook. Example; Donald Fagan's Nightfly, recorded on first gen digital rig +40yrs ago. How can it possess adequate sonics, ... let alone stellar sonics? How? It was simply well executed ... best practices were employed throughout, top to bottom. Care was taken throughout the 𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙚 process... Acoustic environment, mic selection/placement, signal path, gain structure, etc. Today, the mindset exists that it'd be unthinkable to use recording and conversion from just 10yrs ago! And of course, the latest updated state of the art gear would likely be preferred. But 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙡𝙮, simply being mindful (fanatical in Fagan's case) of best practices throughout is key to a quality sonics.

Keith Longstreth: If your best audio quality CD is The Animals Retrospective, I dread to imagine what the worst ones are

Woah.. really?

Yeah, radio shack was all about that for awhile.

I remember it well.

Yep! Radio Shack was bad at this. Didn't help that their "house brand" at the time was called Digital. I still have a pair of 3-way Digitals in my basement. Cabinets have seen better days but the drivers are still solid. 🤣

@Douglas Blake I think Phillips made drivers for DCM as well.

@@astheworldburns3590 Hey Paul, I certainly appreciate what you’re saying and completely agree that without a/b comparison…how can we tell a difference? A couple of points to that. First, we are likely a bunch of audiophiles; I know I am, and one thing we do as audiophiles is tweak, spend money for things we think will improve sound, and for me, A/B compare to try and verify those improvements. I have spent so many hours in my life moving a speaker literally 0.5 inches, sitting, listening, putting it back, moving another 0.5 inches, etc. to get “that sound” I was looking for. So yeah, in an A/B comparison with CD for instance, there is a noticeable improvement. That brings me to the second point, of what is a noticeable improvement? For me, even without A/B comparing, I have a certain standard to which I expect and want from an audio system. Since I’m old, I remember 8-track tapes, cassettes, and all of that. I can tell you unequivocally, that when 8-track and even cassettes were king, I did not like their reproduction of music. The hiss, the dragging, the lack of dynamics, even though we didn’t have better (aside from Vinyl), I knew that we needed better. When CDs came along, I was a teenager. I loved the direct track access, the lack of “tape hiss,” and the increase in dynamic range, it was fantastic. That said, when listening to a CD on any system, from a $500 Best Buy, to what most of us probably have, and up to those multi-hundred thousand $ systems we get to experience at a hi-fi shop every once in a while, a CD, sounds like a CD. It’s good, very good, but there is an nth degree of something missing; there is also an nth degree of fatigue or “squared off hard edges” in music produced from CD. Not dissimilar to early digital amps that could easily be picked out of a group of amps, a CD has a certain overall sound quality. More specifically, a lack thereof. If you recall, JVC introduced a CD format that was basically higher bit rate but still CD…I forget what they called it, but I remember hearing things (and quietness) that I hadn’t heard before at a shop in Columbus, from an Eagles album we’ve all heard a million times. I asked the owner “what is special about that recording? It sounds better” and he told me it was playing on one of those JVC-invented discs. Fast forward a few more years, and I listened to my first DSD128, and let me tell you; strings sound like strings, not reproduction of strings. Same goes for beautiful female voices, my gosh High-res does wonders for that part of the audio spectrum. I’m telling you at least my 100% truth, even without A/B comparing, this was the first time I had ever heard music played back and “felt” it like I did, and for the first time, I was finally convinced that what I was hearing was music, was instruments. I couldn’t hear the recording, I couldn’t hear the lack of some aspect of fidelity, I heard the room, the voices and the instruments. To me, it was that step out of the “uncanny valley “ so talked about in computer graphics. I didn’t feel like anything was missing, like something still needs to be improved. What is wonderful, though, is that even if my own standards have been achieved, I know that a new generation will in fact improve upon this. We will get better than DSD or whatever else high-res format, heck you guys are probably already aware of what will be replacing these current formats. I can’t wait.

That's known as bias confirmation. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is.

Wow, I was debating CD vs records with somebody (who thought he was more qualified to judge cause he was an engineer who recorded and produced music n I was just a listener?) and so to reassure myself did some comparing again and that's exactly what (among other things) I came up with. CD's sound was clean, good separation , but from the speakers. Records (good condition n noise free), sound was all around the speakers. Coarse then he started throwing in pro digital with higher sampling n bits etc., when I was talking about to CD's. Plus engineers typically listen at a mixing board with near field monitors, not sitting back with a good, not even top system. Personally I think a experienced "listener" has the edge on judging. And he had no idea what my background was, go figure?

@@bradt.3555 The only way to convince a skeptic is to have them come over and sit in front of your system. Have them give you a top 10 list of their favorite albums or songs. Do some research and find which one has the best quality production and get that on vinyl.

@Douglas Blake , understood. im 62 years old. i worked 38 years on the RR. i was a roadie for rock bands. i love firearms. on hearing tests i top out at 14k. that said... i have a trophy winning competition truck stereo. my tweeters (Focal krx2) play to 22k. when i got in my buddys truck, his tweeters (Focal Utopia M) play to 50k. the difference is immediate & undeniably evident. i might not be able to "hear" it......... but i know its there.

Thank you Robin Goodfellow (a.k.a. Puck), you are absolutely correct. I once attended a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" where the part of Puck was played by two young actresses simultaneously, frequently alternating lines. It worked fabulously well for the character who seems to be everywhere at once.

I need to know more... Please elaborate.

@Douglas Blake I'm not saying you can perceive frequency above "20 kHz" (and yes, I know about what range is about possible to hear, also w.r.t. age). I'm making the case for the difference between RANGE ("20 kHz") and RESOLUTION (7 microseconds) of what we hear, maybe for want of better terminology. What is your point on sampling, maybe more in the context of the 7 microseconds? (I'll try and dig up my reference for this number)

@Douglas Blake Thanks for your insights! Studying on was and still is the plan.. btw, haven't found the source of the 7 microseconds, but it was on the KZfaq channel of Hans Beekhuyzen that I first heard of it. Greetings from Holland!

I think you're going to be bored by the mathy details. I could tell you how phase isn't audible above 1 kHz and pitch discrimination starts to crap out at 8-10 kHz. These effects are really easy to notice if your hobby is designing synthetic sounds. Instead I'm going to tell you where the actual big sound problems are, the ones that everyone has even with decent equipment. If you listen on headphones you have an EQ problem near 7 kHz. This is because your ear canals resonate and the acoustic impedance (frequency-velocity relationship) that comes out of headphones or IEMs doesn't match. I know these things don't match because they're individual and unique. You *can't* buy gear that fits you exactly. (Also, you can't make an exact match anyway. Best sound quality is when the headphones are mismatched the same way that real sounds are.) So Google tutorials on headphone EQ and learn to tune by ear. It's always a significant upgrade and learning to tune this yourself is an excellent introduction to critical listening. If you use speakers in a room you have room modes. With good speakers in a nearfield configuration these only affect bass. But they definitely affect it. Fixing this problem is also an excellent education because it's an exercise in tradeoffs. It's impossible to get it perfect! And again this isn't something to be solved with expensive toys. Effective bass traps are large more than expensive. (A bookshelf stuffed with fiberglass is going to be much more effective than any acoustic foam.) Most important: patronize live acoustic music. The number of people who circlejerk about getting the concert-hall experience at home but never bother with the concert-hall experience in an actual concert hall is hilariously high. Don't be like that. Find your local chamber ensembles, jam sessions, social dances, festivals, and random dudes drumming on plastic buckets. Show up, relish the sound, and drop some dollars in the hat.

@Douglas Blake Uhm, a speaker can reproduce multiple soundwaves at the same time if engineered properly. Let's say a woofer is given the signal to reproduce a 100Hz soundwave. While the cone is doing its 100Hz cycle, it can also vibrate at a separate, higher frequency (let's say a 500Hz soundwave) within that cycle of the original 100Hz wave. Of course, there are limits to how many concurrent soundwaves a speaker can produce based on the electronics, material and other engineering stuff in which I am not an expert. But a single speaker can definitely produce multiple concurrent soundwaves. And when I say speaker, I mean a single driver, so don't draw the wrong conclusion that I mean a speaker with multiple drivers (tweeter, woofer etc.).

​@Douglas Blake the whole point of a3d vibrating surface is that it has to be in many different places at once

Most people cannot hear 20KHz. The average 35 year old male has 11dB hearing loss at 8KHz.

@Douglas Blake Where did you come up with the cone having to be in more than one places at once? I did not claim such a thing and there would be no need for it either. A speaker cone can reproduce multiple higher frequency cycles within the cycle of a lower frequency. The same thing happens with the biological eardrum. While reproducing, let's say, a 100Hz vibration, it can also reproduce a higher frequency vibration that will have shorter cycles that fit within that larger initial cycle. Envision the cone doing a large back-front 100Hz cycle, but within it, it's doing smaller, shorter back-and-front cycles of a higher frequency. The cone does not have to be in 2 places at once, but can still reproduce one or more additional frequencies within that same large cycle of the initial low frequency wave. That's how we can hear multiple soundwaves at the same time.

@@geoff37s38 That may be true, but it does not invalidate whatsoever the core of my argument of being able to hear multiple sound frequencies concurrently.

Correct! I did the same with my signal generator a few years back, feeding my speakers with HF beyond the nominated 20Khz. I couldn't hear anything but, surely I did smell the tweeter voice coils as they...melt! Expensive mistake.. 😯

@@m.9243 Came close! Fortunately the distortion let me know immediately what was going on, and the voice coils just got a few degrees above ambient. Still scary to feed almost the full power of the amp into those tiny little voice coils. And yeah sucks to hear about your tweeters. Hopefully they had replacement drivers in your case?

@@mysock351C Yes, I had to get them from France! The speakers in question are JM Lab / Focals Electra 926. The tweeters were not cheap either.. Made of Titanium and worth $ 370 each.. Live and learn!

The British empire has a very successful history of polishing turds and taking away the real wealth of their colonies

This is not how digital audio works. Here is a good explanation kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ma-BbKyJuLvepYE.html

@@geoff37s38 Thanks for the link. Took me a while to watch it, but I enjoyed it. I'd be curious to see how these experiements would translate to the real, imperfect, and infinitely more complicated waveforms of actual music, but this was very informative in terms of clearing up some general misconceptions I had about digital audio. Thanks!

My Topping NX4-DSD portable DAC/amp playing bitperfect USB source material from Neutron Player on my old phone sounds really good for the money (Neutron bypasses any system drivers). The NX4 seems to pair a lot better with IEMs than my big Sennheiser HDs, but for portable use, that's fine. People also seem to like the Monoprice Monolith portable DAC/amp for the same use-case. I wouldn't buy a propriatary gadget specifically for "transporting" digital audio files or streaming sources as they're never going to be as future-proof or tweakable as something running a major OS paired with an external DAC/amp (which you can upgrade any time you like) and a good app like Neutron. I can lie in bed, pop in IEMs, and access my entire digital collection of hi-res, redbook, and compressed files from my network drive without moving or disturbing my wife. And if I want to switch over to watch Paul's latest post or listen to an audiobook, all I have to do is open those apps.

@Douglas Blake I can also plug my speakers into that wall outlet over there... 😜 but more speakers are damaged by distortion imho

@Douglas Blake thats why i used the DSOTM immersion box set. IIRC the CD has the same mix/master as the stereo 24/96kHz mix/master. IMO the DSOTM in high res is the best album in high res.

@Douglas Blake i mean the box could always be wrong, we are talking about info the record labels put on there and they're totally 100% right all the time.

Be happy, you are young and have a good hearing.

@@magicscreengames4353 im pretty sure ill be deaf when im older, i listened to music so loud in my youth that even the loudest setting on my phone is too quiet

Which Dac and preamp are you using with JBL L100a speakers.

I've got JBL XPL 160's which were sold as designed for digital audio. Yes, they are. But the best sounding I've ever got them is with a tube 12AU7 preamp with an direct coupled Accuphase MOSFET poweramp. BHK's are not much around in this country...

@@zargamali8531 The JBL L-100a's are not being used now. They are sitting in their JBL boxes. Many decades have passed since I bought them new and the crossovers need to be rebuilt. Presently, I'm using a pair of JBL 4365's speakers. I have two DACs, a PS Audio Perfectwave Directstream and a Denafrips Terminator+. I'm looking for a used Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC now. I've heard very good things about that DAC. My preamp is a PS Audio BHK. Using a McIntosh MC452 amp (much to the chagrin of Paul, lol!)

@@edmaster3147 Yes, I've listened to the XPL 160's, very nice. I've also been thinking about replacing my BHK preamp with an all tube preamp instead of just the the input stage like the BHK. The problem with 'modern' tube preamps they have seem to gone to the 'neutral' side of sound. Good sound, but not anything like older 'tube sounding' preamps. Weather that be a good thing or bad I guess it's all up to each person's taste. By the way, where are you located? I'm in the U.S.

@@Mark-lq3sb I'm in the Netherlands. I got the idea of 12AU7 pre with MOS-FET power amp by the BHK. As I already got an Accuphase amp an Aric Audio pre found its way in my system funny enough, those are so rare over here. I like tubes, but the Mosfets are much more capable to drive the speakers. But if you love the old tube amp sound, Steve Guttenberg just did a review on a Bottlehead tube pre, which he said sounded really 'tuby', perhaps thats something for you.Cheers.

but that is the problem with cd quality, high res only improved on that.

but how come that to my ears on my system, Hi Res and DSD sounds so smooth where the same recording sounds more harsh on CD quality?

@@edmaster3147 He's just bs-ing, as many here on Paul's videos do. Hi-res files are not about ultrasonic frequencies, but about capturing and reproducing multiple frequencies in the audible 20Hz-20kHz(ish) spectrum. The industry is just misdirecting people into thinking that they are giving you ultrasonic frequencies, but what they are in reality doing is giving more frequencies in the audible spectrum, hence the higher resolution (higher number of frequencies (aka vibrations) in the audio content).

@@edfort5704 The funny thing is though, that Paul's knowledge makes sense and I implemented some of his tech tips which work spot on. I don't believe that the industry is misdirecting, I do believe that lack of factual knowledge often leads to mistrust.

Im not a fan of p.s audio stuff. Never heard any but prices are insane. But i dont think he designs anything. He manages the company. The engineers do the math.

The more you separate them the better loop antenna you create to pick up interference from AC power. It is extremely unlikely to be audible either way but if you care about tiny differences from one effect you shouldn't ignore tiny differences from others.

Do you not have improvement with 24 bit and higher sample rates?

Cd 16/44.1 is absolutely nice, specially with a transport. But dsd or sacd does sound better when recorded on dsd. I just cant jump in to sacd as there are too few that does it right. Now im just collecting cds and im pretty happy with it. If sacd gets more and more available (wishful thinking), i start collecting those too.

Who decides if the DAC is perfect?

@Douglas Blake Probably not, but does that really matter, except when designing circuits to make sure there have not been any blatant design flaws (hey, it happens)? Rhetorical question, it doesn't. I listen to diverse genres of music, not test signals with the biochemical kludge that is the chain from my external nervous system to my brain; my personal version of an ongoing trial-and-error process that has gone through God knows how many iterations over literally billions of years since the first common ancestor of life on Earth. It's a messy process, yet here we are. That includes the engineers who designed and fine tuned your aforementioned scope and FFT analyser. Paul McG recently gave an example of when they were comparing the two finalist designs for their newest phono preamp. Both measured nearly identically (nothing is ever identical) and both met the design criteria by numerical analysis. When they plugged them into their reference system for evaluation, one gave a reasonable facsimile of the 3-dimensional sound fields of the voices and musical instruments in the recording venues. The other sounded as flat as the proverbial pancake. Which one do you think was advanced toward production? Another rhetorical question. Don't confuse measured precision with the complex external reality (What a concept! -- Robin Williams).

@Douglas Blake Looking back over my previously message, I find no indication that I believed that you do not listen, that is pretty much the default position for people who watch and comment on PS Audio posts. Presumably to a thoughtfully assembled system. Doubtless not the same as my thoughtfully assembled system. It's still a reasonably free country with many and diverse options. And I too am weary of these little on-line debates, while the many significant challenges facing people in the wide world tend to get set aside; some of which are too quickly rising to existential levels. We have both expressed our positions with abbreviated arguments within the limited time-space of the comment chain and which are not likely to change these aspects of our respective world views. So let us part ways on our chosen paths for now. The frequently anastomosing nature of reality may bring us together again. Or not.

By that logic no need for radar.

@@ryacus Why stop at radar? There is the whole continuum of the electromagnetic spectrum ranging from beyond the cosmic microwave background radiation and high gamma radiation. Massively useful for astronomy beyond that tiny sliver of what human eyes can see. And frequencies of sonic pressure waves beyond that narrow bandwidth of what the human ears can hear. Other biochemical lifeforms have senses that exceed ours in many ways. Yet when it comes to what is generally called art that is experienced and evaluated by H. sapiens (frankly a rather pompous self designation), it is irrelevant. Maybe someday, artificial intelligence may be able to evaluate aesthetics as we do (and good luck finding a commonality of opinion in these matters) to a lesser or greater extent, but will it consider that as something other than a waste of bandwidth? To focus on just music for this forum, that is something that is important me, including the reasonably good, yet none-the-less imperfect reproduction of imperfect recordings. I appreciate the work of clever engineers and their tools to make this possible. However, when I personally listen to music in its broad variety of genres, my all too human nervous system is what I have, not a spectrum analyzer which would useless to me anyway for this enterprise.

This may help Why we need hi-res audio (physiological aspect) kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qMWnq7V4zqjTeps.html How it is achieved in digital audio kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oKiJjbeFqti4iWw.html

@Douglas Blake maybe, if you have time, you can pick some examples from there two particular videos and post them here in comments, please? I'm interested in truth after all

lol, climb a 14'r and you get more from the sun.

Lest someone reading your comment actually believes you, if that were true, the speakers would have to also emit energy in the visible spectrum, so they'd have to literally be glowing hot when doing what you claim them to do :)

does it depend on the performing artist or genre? Deathmetal perhaps a higer count?

Why would a flat open land be throwing yellow ice?

Well considering that most rooms resting level is about 30dB or higher, CD range is 93dB so in most cases to get full CD dynamic range you’d be listing at 123dB+. If you’re listening that loud then you WILL incur hearing loss after a short time. That has been proven, the Georgian’s did not prove the 30mph thing, so it’s not similar.

​@@noahnovotny2100 Dynamic Range is not equivalent to, nor does it have anything to do, with _Acoustic pressure_ or "loudness".

@Douglas Blake I'm aware of that. But, getting back to the point, _Dynamic Range_ is not equivalent to, nor does it have anything to do with _Acoustic pressure_ or "loudness".

@@gregf9160 Dynamic range is defined as “the ratio of the loudest undistorted sound to the quietest discernible sound, expressed in decibels, that a system is capable of producing.” So it actually has everything to do with sound pressure level. Specifically, it has to with the difference in the loudest and softest in which a system can be perceived. Like I mentioned previously if you are in a room with 30dB resting white noise, then to have a perceived dynamic range of 93dB, you have to have a sound pressure of 93dB above the minimum of 30dB. So 123dB, nothing complicated about it. That’s assuming that the sound engineer used that full amount of dynamic range, which is unlikely. Overall, I’m not saying dynamic range of the recording is irrelevant, but in most cases, you will be limited by the dynamic range of your room, speakers, amp, or even the recording itself, well before the recording media runs out.

@@noahnovotny2100 no, it doesn’t. Dynamic Range is a measure of bandwidth, not power. The fact the decibel is used as a unit of measurement (actually, just comparison) both of power and bandwidth is irrelevant, they are not the same thing. Anything and everything can be measured in Db. Bandwidth and Power are related of course, but are two distinct and unrelated things.

more likely a Chinese sattelite xD

Maybe not most of these videos, but definitely a few :)

Don't companies already do that then they charge made in USA prices crying about labor costs

So he's not big on every genre of food, but still likes variety in the ones he does like. I'm not on the same page as him, but I'm not big on seafood.

@@soulshinobi But I'm not big on living to be 100.

If you suffer from listeners fatigue you are a weak human and should be not breed.

@@ryacus what makes you assume I’m human?

Hires root beer? I haven't drank that in years.