You are exactly right about that! I have what I think is a pretty decent system.(Pioneer SX-1250 ,JBL LX600 speakers etc.....) over 1000 records,almost 1500 cd's...... but I never considered myself a audiophile. I just like my music,and sometimes I like to crank it up a lil' bit!!! That's all......

Mate. Spot on.

I’ve been out of HiFi since my early 90s Denon amp..so I appreciate Andrew’s explanation of the “new” stuff…a lot has changed since the original CD players..Keep doing your thing AR

But only if the dynamic range is preserved and the music hasn't become compressed.

@@stewstube70And if one isn't clipping. 99 per cent of music is compressed as part of the mix.

Yep, tweaking volume is an old stereo salesman's trick.

@@StringerNews1 But it's happened till now, even crazier See #LoudnessWar

Yes and no.. yes to fact that u can hear more notes when u crank volume up

That's not working out so well for me.

Absolutely. It doesn't matter the format, every recording with lower dynamic range compression just sounds better than one that is heavily compressed. Give me a better, less compressed master in any format over a heavily compressed one in whatever new and exciting format you'd like.

But...But...MQA is magical! ;-)

Your hearing isn’t very good, then. I have never heard CD sound that matches 24 bit sound, using the same master sourced recordings volume matched (such as on the 2L site). And, the difference of a 48/24 vs. 96/24, is audibly noticeable, and the trend continues up to DSD. To me, it’s like jumping up from a 15w to 30w light bulb, then from 30w to 60w, etc. yes, as you get to the higher levels, the difference becomes less noticeable, but I can always detect a benefit on ANY PCM as the bit or sampling rate increases.

Is that because you know when you're switching source material/formats? Ever done it in a double blind test where you couldn't see, nor knew what was coming next? Ever done it in a space you yourself weren't familiar with? These are all variables that go A LONG way in informing us as to what we think we're experiencing, remove them, and I wonder if your certainty would be as absolute. Not accusing, just curious. Thanks for watching!

@@doowopper1951 I think it's great that you can tell the difference. I tried it for myself and I truly cannot. I did hear an amp create distortion when I played a 192k file through it because it couldn't handle the high frequencies it was getting, but I have tested myself and I really can't hear over about 17,500Hz. If you can tell the difference between a 48k sample and a 96k sample, then are you saying you can hear not only 24,000Hz, but all the way up to 48,000Hz, and maybe even beyond?

@@AndyBHome depends on the music you listen to. Try led Zeppelin. Bonham's drumming was enough to convince me that 24-96/192 is the way to go.

@@seraphthecreator it's encouraging to hear that there are people like you who can drive improvements in the field. I continue to listen to higher resolution and frequency range files but with no improvements. I do like Led Zeppelin. I'll have to see if I can get my hands on some high res versions of their stuff.

It remains the gold standard for me.

Same here, i did buy some 24bit Flac but can't say I really hear any difference. Where I do hear difference is between a £60 pair of headphones and the £400 pair of headphones.

ok but did you try the opposite meaning boosting the volume on the lower res version to compare it to the "master"?

V i n y l s

The different purposes being?

can you elaborate on the difference in purpose of tidal and Spotify? I also have both, but I'm constantly wondering if I wouldn't cancel one of the other...

@@Pirxel Well, I can certainly put my two cents in on that question.. I use Spotify almost everyday for DJ-ing, or for parties, or when I'm in my car or where ever lol. It's a great platform to use. On the other hand, when I sit down for some quality time with my main system at home, I currently use Tidal's top tier which guarantees CD quality at the minimum. Tidal on my laptop with a Chiit Modi 3 DAC going to my pre-amp via quality rca calbles. The sound is magnificent!!!!!!

I listen to music from Spotify, too! Lately I have been listening to Amazon Music. Thumbs up. However, remember that music over the Internet has a couple of notes from music that are not there! For me I prefer music CDs, vinyl records, cassette tapes, and FM radio.

Grhrd. Great attitude. The more you investigate the more I lean toward this too.

Maybe a 10 year old with golden ears can distinguish between a 44.1kHz and 48kHz sampling rate but that's about it. If a CD was encoded in 14bit then some people would hear the noise floor but with 16bit it's also for most people comfortably beyond the edge of where transparency begins.

Please call records "records " not "vinyls " sorry just a pet peeve of mine. I'm a bit old school

@@johnbartel5229 How many vinyls do you have? hehehehe/hahahah

To be fair, FLAC and CD shouldn’t sound any different (assuming the FLAC file is made from the physical disc). FLAC is just a lossless compression format.

Sure, but if I can't hear a difference (or if anyone can't) is it really there? If I can't hear it, why pay for it? I too think it is important to test one's hearing (as a side note) and I do test mine once a year or so, which I think is FAR more important on the "piece of mind scale" than bit rate ;). Take care!

Same here

I have a piece of beachfront property in Kansas I think you'll be very interested in...

Well said. I felt the same.

I personally don’t hear much difference between CD and HRes. CD though much better than mp3 on my system.

@@psipsitronick9250 i hear ya, can't distinguish between flac and hi res, mqa masters, etc. either! I just pay for the streaming service who's interface is the most useful to me...the mighty Spot! To me the sonic differences are so small its a moot point...for me. Thanks for the reply, Man! Happy listening!

@ReaktorLeak You're right most recordings don't have anywhere near the 144db of soft to loud range although a live symphony orchestra can achieve over 110 db range which is beyond the reach of cd and way beyond vinyl. This why hi res recordings and playback is huge in the classical world. A common misconception is that you have to play it at these levels when you can just turn it down to limit the loudest passages and still enjoy the extra dynamics available. Again you are correct the 24bit will not produce more detail. However higher sampling rates( 96 - 192K) can reproduce frequencies above the threshold of our hearing that are certainly present in the same live orchestra and have a distinct effect on the frequencies we do hear. Many studio microphones are sensitive to 40khz and more and more speakers and amps are capable of "higher than human hearing" for this reason.

I’d have to add “amplifiers” make an impact as well as “cables”. This has been my experience.

This is 100% accurate in regards to your last sentence.

Well said. And there are thankfully labels out there like MA and Chesky and MoFi that understand this although somewhat regrettably they're very set in the musical genres and styles they promote. If you don't happen to love those genres you are S- outta luck.

Dolby Atmos is the newest gimmick. Alongside other competitors. They call it spatial audio. Some songs don't need it.

@@AndRewUK24 Zero songs need it, when you go to a concert and see a band. Some instruments might be to the left and others to the right. When was the last time a band flew over your head and landed behind you like a helicopter? I'm going to assume never. Stereo is the most accurate representation of real live music. They just want to sell computerized garbage.

Yes....but everything in your signal flow makes a difference. For example having the best mic in the world ..if your A/D converters don't match it very well then even if the mastering is done very well the 'bad' synergy at that early stage will still have an effect. :/ :) But I very much take your point. Its ironic that some, for example Ella Fitzgerald recordings from the 1950's sound way WAY more natural and 'real' than anything being produced today !

It's actually all in every link in the chain bringing the performance to your ears. But yes, mastering is an often overlooked link. One needn't read deeply into recording forums to find overconfident mastering engineers whose comments about e.g. monitoring preferences call into question their ability or intention to preserve the (remaining) vital acoustic data (breath of life) in the mix. Of course with electric/electronic music, like Lipton, it's not soup untill it's served.

Yes. All of it. You can't hear or recover what wasn't captured in the first place. Most of us can't unscramble the egg and rescramble it the way we want. Attempts to do this at the moment of playback in living rooms (or wherever) is like rearranging the deck chairs on a ship that's already sunk. Nothing rises above the source, and the final master - the recording we are listening to - is THE source. For everything else downstream, it's job is to get out of the way, adding or subtracting nothing. And the vast majority of recordings aren't made to satisfy the microscopic-sized audiophile community. And that's okay. My audio experience becomes simply listening, and enjoying or not, what the artist and producers has put in my hands as they delivered it. I've explored just about every digital file format. What I've come to is that a poorly produced recording is going to sound just as awful regardless of format. No file format will change or save a poorly produced recording. I am loving Tidal. More than I suspected I would. It's heavy with MQA - Master Quality Authenticated. I have a Meridian (who developed and are advocating for the format) Explorer2, which will do native high-performance hardware MQA decoding ("unfolding"), and I try Tidal's software MQA presentation. I suppose that MQA is intended to sound better, but it's not an ultra high resolution file format spec. Part of it is just to try to ensure that the recorded information gets correctly moved from one place to another, and efficiently, especially via streaming. On the more rigorous and formal production end of MQA design and intention, it sets up studio recording and playback specifications to do the same thing - ensure that what was recorded is exactly what gets delivered; that the blue or green light lights up on your little Explorer2 showing you you are getting exactly what was originally captured. (There is an entire MQA website describing and promoting MQA, and lots of good technical discussion floating around) Recordings made by 2L are one nice way to explore the file format thing. They have new, modern recordings, audiophile focused, in various formats, from Redbook, to MQA, to monster-sized 1-bit DSD. To make an honorable mention, I really like XRCD and HDCD files. Again, most of these were done for "audiophiles", but I feel a preponderance of the music I've listened to in these formats - the nano-sized volume of it - sounds really great. And mostly, Redbook still works just fine. Maybe Shannon and Nyquist were mostly right - 60'ish years ago. What I LOVE about Tidal is simply being able to hear SO much music in CD quality. Songs I love that I've never heard even at that quality level before. I'm listening to them for the first time!

That's the ticket laddie. If Red book standards are taken full advantage of the additional bits and sample rates aren't worth obsessing over. The majority of us can't distinguish between Red Book or a High Resolution copy of the same master.

its actually not though. If you listen to a mixed song pre-mastering, you will hear very little difference between that and a final master. Some hi frequency transients might be gone, but that's about it. What most non-music studio savvy folks don't realize is that they're talking about mixing and not mastering. Especially since most "re-mastered" albums are actually re-mixed.

as a musician my self and also a sound designer... what I only want to say is, if you made the track in higher resolution then just sell it like that so what you made is what your fans get instead of driving the crowd nuts of which is the best while you're just releasing it at 44khz for streaming services, if you dont think your 96khz or 192khz recording is not worth selling it that way then it's your choice, just dont argue with audiophiles anymore at that point lol..

​@@yasunakaikumi Human ears don't hear sounds above 20kHz so why would anything above 20kHz be needed? You'll only be making pets go crazy.

What does it matter. Storage space is so cheap these days. Just take the best quality. Or like me 24/96. My 1 terabyte usb cost me like 100 dollars and it fits all my music.

I have a lot of 80s albums that sound so flat with no life. Downloaded the remasters and way better. Some of those old álbuns you can’t even tell there’s any bass

The splitting of the uncompressed file shouldnt be different when you put it trough Layer 2&3. They use checksums to make sure it is the same after it recived. I mean when was the last time you had a broken download or stream? UDP can be troublesome, but even then I come back to my question.

Dennis Wade truth. I have claimed this for a while as well.

Subjectivity is definitely not bad, but not all things are equally subjective. When it comes to what you like to listen to it's entirely subjective, but whether something actually changes the sound in a manner that's perceptible by the human senses is not subjective. If you are OK with wearing the emperor's new clothes then that's fine, but I think there is a lot of value to learning one's own limitations. It's hard to learn if you don't accept that your own perceptions and thoughts can be flawed. I'm saying this in a general sense, not about the particular topic of the video. Even if the guy buying an expensive set of cables that de facto doesn't result in a different signal is happy with them I still think he was taken advantage of by the manufacturer.

The Raging Dolphins Maniac - Great comment and sums it up perfectly.

Not a lot of MQA fans 'round these parts. Thanks for watching all the same!

@@andrewrobinsonreviews To be clear not a fan of MQA, fan of yours tho!

How are you listening to these?, equipment makes a difference.

@@daverich3352 I have Grado SR225i + little dot 1+ with Vokshod tubes and a Modi 2. Or I can use my WH1000XM4s or I have B&W 605s connected to a Cambridge Audio AXR85.

You must be deaf. If you said 320kbp then I’ll I’d believe you. But 256 is noticeable to almost everyone. Unless you listen to your music with Apple earphones and Bluetooth From what you said your equipment was. I also have the wf1000mx4. Use it for jogging. And I can still hear the difference, especially these with the Sony A105. Even though I’m running and not focusing much on the music. It’s still a big difference. Now in the car and at home the difference is massive.

@@vitorfernandes651 Do you hear a difference between the A105 Vs devices when using Bluetooth?

“Not £850 better.” Well said.

True.

You can scientifically test for differences in formatting simply by performing a diff. Take one waveform and subtract it from the other (or invert one and add them causing wave negation). The resulting difference will give you empirical binary differences you can actually listen to...... this is really easy in something like audacity. The differences are so ridiculously retarded you can't even hear them under 70db. People that buy "hi fidelity" audio formats are idiots. The only real rule of thumb to consider is using a good clean lossless format and encoded properly (44.1/16).

Audirvana is indeed a nice UI/Player, but, MQA unfolding aside, isn't it just using WASAPI or ASIO direct sound drivers? Many other players can be configured to do so too. Or is something more being done to lower the noise floor? Edit: Hmmm - I see from the Audirvana site it suggests it does more such as stabilizing the power supply and minimizing CPU activity.

I didn't even know that you needed a compatible dac for mqa! So if I am playing tidal (master quality) with audirvana with a non certified dac it "converts" to 24/96, but what if I am using the official windows application? It may explain why I didn't like the tidal sound compared to flac played in local! I like the idea of a super mp3, 16/44 flac size but with a lot more quality due to an efficient compression, but with all those limitations I am not sure it's what I want...

@@ShellstaTube I am running a WIN PC out USB through a Jitterbug to a Schiit Modi 2 Uber DAC so I am not sure it makes any difference whether or not it is WASAPI or ASIO. I can change the setting in Audirvana from one to the other and I don't notice a difference. I will check on that tonight. Thx.

@@karellen00 Your you referring to the official windows version of Audirvana? If not what app are you talking about. Just so I clearly understand your question. Thx.

@@edholmwood Sorry, I intended "what if I use the TIDAL official Windows application?", In comparison with audirvana and its 24/96 unfold

Everything above 48kHz SHOULD be totally indistinguishable to you, because the only thing sample rate does is determine what the band-limit is on the reconstructed analogue waveform. It is 24kHz for a 48kHz sample rate, which is already above the limits of human hearing. There is absolutely no benefit to a higher sample rate. Literally none.

Very true. 24/48 is the sweet spot.

Yes. CD quality or slightly above CD quality is just enough for me. Basically that 16bit or 24-bit. No need for MQA. Another words just apple music quality is just enough for me with a Simple DAC and Hi-X15 Headphones.

@@filippiasec Oh, okay.

I had the same experience when I played music on Blu-Ray it was punchier. Then listening more, I came to the conclusion that to get the full effect in a movie of high energy bursts like a gun shot or bomb blast relied on this punchier sound.

@Gordon Fadie Exactly how did you perform your tests? Specifically, what kind of speakers and amplifier did you use? One has to realise that if their amplifier isn’t able to decode or process hi res formats, then quite obviously playing hi res music through such an amplifier won’t provide any benefit whatsoever. Much the same happens with speakers if they’re not of a high enough quality to actually elucidate and express the improvements which hi res allows for. Most important of all, imho, is to be intimately familiar with the songs one is using to audition hi res audio. I’m a musician, an electric bass player, mostly playing jazz, funk, blues and classical music. I’ve many, many albums which I’ve listened to well over 500 times each, and particular songs that I’d have listened to easily over 1000 times. I believe this is one of the major keys to noticing much, if any benefit from hi res audio, that is, being incredibly familiar with the subjects you’re auditioning. And that’s precisely the exact reason why, when you listened to the same song recorded in multiple formats, you noticed no differences between them. If you’re unfamiliar, or even familiar but not intimately so, there will be myriad sections in most songs which go completely unnoticed by the ‘untrained’ ear of a ‘casual’ listener. Even for a trained musician, it’s just amazing how much one literally misses out on and simply cannot hear until one has the sheet music in front of them and is reading through it as the notes are being played from the speakers. So many times I’ll be listening to an album or song which I’ve been both listening to and also playing the song on my own instrument for, at times, over a decade and then when I finally get hold of a known accurate transcription and literally I hear passages which I’d never heard until the sheet music pointed it out for me. Consider, if you will, if this happens to a highly trained musician, imagine just how much one is missing out on if they’ve no musical training at all. Obviously, I’m not referring to whatever is in the top 40, etc, as the music is far too simplistic for anything to go unnoticed. Not to mention the fact that all these styles of music just repeat the same words, chords, etc, over and over and over, never presenting the listener with anything unexpected, improvised or melodically/harmonically complex, so it’s not at all surprising that one wouldn’t notice any improvement from hi res versions of these types of music. An easy analogy to further bring home the point is that billboards often have pixels, or ink dots/line screens which make each drop of ink up to the size of a golf ball!! But have you ever driven past a billboard and thought, “wow, those dots on that billboard are SUCH low resolution and just SO chunky that I can’t even figure out what it’s a picture of or what they’re trying to advertise!”?? I’m guessing the answer is no. Now consider how much lower the resolution on a billboard is compared to a 4K laptop screen and it’s oftentimes an order of magnitude or even greater. So this is analogous to having either or both an amplifier and/or speakers which simply don’t have the capability to reproduce the higher resolution sounds which is being fed into them. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that the listener is just as much, if not even more of an issue when performing such auditions. I can tell you with absolute, 100% certainty that the improvement when listening to the identical album on CD and SACD, through the same SACD player, the improvements are myriad! Very obvious, is the soundstage, which is far more detailed, presents much greater separation between not only instruments, but even musicians, the clarity and acuity is increased with subsequent levels of finesse and fluidity one simply could not hear from the musician on the CD recording as the medium just doesn’t have the ability to faithfully record, let alone reproduce such almost imperceptible differences which the musician produces on their instrument, again, not forgetting that one MUST be very familiar with the music being auditioned or the point is moot. Just to belabour the point, one wouldn’t expect to find a homeless hobo judging a fine dining cooking competition because their palate just isn’t experienced enough and trained well enough to even be able to notice some very intricate and delicate, nuanced differences between how one chef makes the dish compared to the competitors rendition of the same recipe. People, don’t fool yourselves, in ANY AND ALL occasions where there is more information being provided and said info is readily accessible (meaning, trained listener, high quality amplifier, speakers, etc) and one possesses the means to be able to access the additional info, and it was writing on a wall, well, even Blind Freddy himself could see the differences. I’m hoping you understand what I mean. Seriously, this is the last one: I also used to race motorcycles and now, when watching the MotoGP on tv, often the commentator might mention something which the rider just did (or didn’t do) and I have to rewind it and play it back in slow motion to be able to even just perceive what it is the expert commentator saw very obviously at full speed, on a tv screen, not even in person at the track. That’s just a very easy to understand example of exactly how much of an insanely huge difference the person listening makes to this whole process.

Gordon...you absolutely nailed this one!! Kudos to you!!!

@@aaronperelmuter8433 Thanks for your insights. I respect your knowledge as a trained musician. My son also plays the bass. So that's cool. I'm coming from more of a basic position. I'm wondering how much my listening enjoyment, and my life in general, would improve by investing in a super-high-end system. If money was no object, then by all means, give me the best of the best. But someone like me has to make choices and those choices involve compromise. So I just wanted to experiment with some supposed hi-res products, just to test if I could hear the difference. My stereo is a basic off-the-shelf Onkyo with JBL speakers in a 12x10 nook in the basement. I realize that whole setup might be a bottleneck, but to borrow your analogy, even on a crappy TV, one can tell the difference between VHS and DVD, and between DVD and Blu-ray (but I can't really tell the difference between 1080p and 4K). So I should at least be able to distinguish between 44. 1 and DSD. But you yourself said reading sheet music helped you hear things in songs you missed otherwise. Let's say my stereo IS the problem. As I mentioned in my rant, I bought some high-end headphones, an external DAC and a headphone amp. Completely cut my crappy stereo out of the picture. Still not blown away by what I'm hearing. I thought it was supposed to sound like the musicians are right there in the room with you. It all sounds nice and clear... No pops or hiss. You can hear more details typically with headphones anyway so I'm not quite ready to attribute that to a higher bit rate. As a musician you should be quite aware of limitations human hearing. I too have a collection of music made from 1970 to today. I have vinyl, cassette tapes, CDs, and downloads that I've listened to a million times and I know ever note, every nuance, every change, every drum fill. Problem is I have to buy them all again now just to enjoy them in the way you described. Or use a streaming service like Qobuz (which I do). Oh well I'm beating a dead horse now so thanks again for your input.

Real quick clarification on the above. An amplifier does not 'decode' anything. It takes an already decoded analog signal and amplifies it. Cheaper components within the amp may introduce noise or distortion, but decoding is done by a DAC. And that's what lured me down this rabbit hole; the promise that the built in DAC in your component is garbage and therefore you need an external DAC to make your existing CD collection sound good. Rubbish. Rubbish. F*cking rubbish.

depends on what equipment you have.

@ReaktorLeak This is not true because our hearing in the middle register is so sensitive that it corresponds to more than 16 bits. that's the reasons why sony created super bit mapping. the purpose was to create a 20 bit quality to 16 bit data

I think you should have said, “some audiophiles....” I don’t fit the definition of an audiophile, but when i hear well recorded music played back on good equipment... well hell.. even badly recorded music played back on good equipment, i immediately hear how it all combines to sound far better than those same recordings on my system. (Shoot, i enjoy my system, though...no lie.). But ,yeah, it doesn’t take an physicist to discover quality records played back over quality systems SOUND far better than average recordings played back on average systems. fo sho!

it's a good sounding CD for sure......

Tidal isn't even as good as your CD with the DRM scheme of MQA adding noise and artifacts to the audio. Don't believe the Tidal lies, you get better qaulity from Deezer and Amazon HD. Stay away from all things MQA.

That track should have won the Oscar , best track of the A Star is Born OST ,pure gold. To tell the entire lifespan of a relationship in 3 minutes that is genius.

Spotify doesn’t use mp3. They use either ogg or aac, depending on the bit rate you select.

Exactly, i have come to the same conclusion. Mastering, not format, is what makes a track sound better. Vinyls for example usually have a very midrange oriented master which people mistake for "warmth". Some of the "mastered for itunes" tracks are notorious for sounding better (not all of them) despite being 256VBR. I also find Led Zeppelin's 2014 remasters better sounding than my old vinyls regardless of format.

MQA is controversial because its a lossy codec.