Zp 24/96 | Sonos Community

Anonymous · 2007-10-07T10:52:48+00:00

Ability to play 24bit/96 files (like the competition: slimdevices transporter)

where would science be if they didn't explore outside the box ? If they didn't experiment ?

True, but you need to also add reference to the rigour that scientific experimenting is done with, before existing hypotheses are discarded in favour of newer ones.

Closed minds frequently require proof in written form. Open minds tend to try things for themselves without others opinions or reading stuff on the internet.

Since you bring up science so often, where would science be if they didn't explore outside the box ? If they didn't experiment ? That's the road to discovery my friend, experiment....you may find some of your closely held opinions may be mute.

Science always "explores outside the box", that is how it advances. Someone hypothesizes a new idea (i.e. People can hear something different/better from 24/96 recordings from the same master). Then that hypothesis is put to rigorous, peer-reviewed testing, and if it proves true, science accepts the new theory and there is much rejoicing!!

One problem . . . there has been rigorous, peer-reviewed testing of your hypothesis, and so far, it has been found to be false. Even more telling, the companies/patrons who would benefit most from this hypothesis being true (audiophile manufacturers/writers/aficionados) could very easily perform experiments to prove the hypothesis, and yet they stay away from these experiments like Superman from Kryptonite. Instead they, like you, critique the validity of 200 years of established biological, mathematical, and physical science. It is truly a case of believing in fairy tales.

And so I ask again, who exactly has the closed mind here?

PS - Let me address this again:

That's the road to discovery my friend, experiment....you may find some of your closely held opinions may be mute.

Here's an experiment for YOU to try. Take any of your precious 24/96 recordings and use a quality downconverter to make a 16/44.1 copy. Then load up any of the ABX programs that were suggested many times in the thread (foobar2000 or Lacinato for PC, ABXTester for Mac). Load up the software with the two copies of each file, use any quality USB DAC into your choice of headphones/amp/speakers, and test away!! Post screenshots of your results. But be careful, you may find some of your closely held opinions may be mute . . . errrm . . . moot.

We'll be waiting for the results! (Hell, we're still waiting for Erik's results!!!)

Someone who starts with a belief and then clings to that belief no matter what; who seeks out stories and hypotheses, however whacky or unsubstantiated which fit with that belief whilst ignoring the vast weight of knowledge and evidence that leave their beliefs in tatters...

... that is the person that is closed minded.

Cheers,

Keith

Monty Montgomery calls it "willful ignorance". These types populate way too many forums, often as moderators. They're annoying no end, simply refuse to accept facts. They "know better". :rolleyes:

So happy to have educated, knowledgeable mods here.

Take any of your precious 24/96 recordings and use a quality downconverter to make a 16/44.1 copy.

This, I suspect, is the source of this issue - the probability that much of hi res music is remastered and therefore sounds better on quality systems in a quiet environment. How many listeners would go further to understand that it is the mastering that is the variable making all the impact? Of these, how many would be ok to do the down converting?

If Sonos made a player that did this on the fly, the same sound quality would be heard without any user intervention. The down converted music should then be ok for streaming to other Sonos units without sync/bandwidth issues.

One way for Sonos to check the hi res box and stop all the chatter - like they have done for the wifi box. A better product idea than the blue play 1, imo.

IMHO, the "I just want Sonos to play my files!" lament is just a ruse. When faced with the overwhelming evidence that hires audio is snake oil, this is the fallback position for those who cannot argue the science, yet still believe they are correct. So they use the "I just want Sonos to play my files!" argument as a substitute for that which they cannot reasonably argue otherwise. When push comes to shove and you ask them if they'd accept no Sonos hires unit, and have every Sonos device downconvert instead, you would soon see their true colors.

Hires is largely a proxy for "better mastering".

IMO this is largely an easy way to convince people to pay a premium for better music. I suspect they would have a problem selling the same music at a premium in (say) lossless 16/44.1 format as it then becomes "just another remaster".

The people wishing to play these formats have mostly been convinced by this bogus association between format and quality, and have paid a premium based on this belief. Of course they're not going to want to downsample them as the implication is that the resulting file will not longer be the premium product they paid for. That is human nature.

Cheers,

Keith

When push comes to shove and you ask them if they'd accept no Sonos hires unit, and have every Sonos device downconvert instead, you would soon see their true colors.

Perhaps. Being charitable though, there may be a few that would be happy if Sonos were to play these files on the fly, even if as I suggested it would mean buying a Sonos Hi Res play capable player that would do the down converting and stream the results across to other non capable Sonos units. I am assuming here that current units may not have the grunt to do this on the fly converting given their hardware capability.

Of course they're not going to want to downsample them as the implication is that the resulting file will not longer be the premium product they paid for. That is human nature.

Some may be happy to let Sonos do this for them! I have no idea of the market size for such a solution of course, but it would be a way to address hi res play without obsoleting the installed user base.

I agree it would be an interesting solution.

However, there are some possible technical challenges. For a start it would break the "any room, any music" ethos as certain music would only work when streamed via this specific player.

I also don't think these people wouldn't be satisfied. If downsampling hires was acceptable to them, they would already have done it, and wouldn't be getting involved in these discussions (I've yet to hear a rational argument for not batch downsampling). I believe they would then just shift their demands for full hires support.

Cheers,

Keith

A good reason to keep this thread alive:

See - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/25/high_resolution_audio_engineers_to_agree_new_production_guidelines/

Surprisingly sensible for the most part. One suggested way to sell hi res: "packaging hi-res files with “high quality digital liner notes, credits, and other descriptive metadata”."

A good reason to keep this thread alive...

It's been 3 months. The thread was about to come alive again on its own anyway 😛

Interesting link at the bottom of the page. Sony had its hand slapped for misleading advertising. Trying to demonstrate that "hirez" audio is superior to CD by using a very misleading stair-step graphic. Shame on you, Sony! You were once a great engineering company. You now appear to be led by marketeers, like so many others.

https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2014/3/Sony-Europe-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_244516.aspx

It's been 3 months. The thread was about to come alive again on its own anyway :p

LOL.

There are even more sensible comments in that section, I was surprised to read them.

Here is a good one:

Quote

The existing resolution/quality is perfectly adequate.

The quality of the content, not its reproduction, is so much more of an issue - it also cannot be solved by technical evolution. It is the creative, artistic aspect of the work. It requires different (i.e. artistic) skills, and ability. It also doesn't sell new hardware based on new technology - equipment from the last couple of decades is perfectly good enough.

If you are really looking at supposedly higher quality reproduction, you'll likely want a completely acoustically isolated and perfect listening room. You'll probably have to treat it as a clean room as any dust particles will play merry hell with the whole affair. And you'll spend your energy trying to discern whether it was a Northern or Central line tube that you think you could hear for 1.34 seconds after the 3 cymbal crash, rather than whether it was a jolly fine piece of music or spoken word or whatever.

Good original content, produced well, is what the consumers want. Not fancy technology.

Unquote

Applies equally well to hardware. Though the comment talks to recording, kit AND performance quality.

Sony had its hand slapped for misleading advertising.

What is more surprising to me is that the adjudicator knew enough of the subject to slap Sony's hand.

So, anyway, aside from the flamewars that seem to have ensued in the 8 years since someone asked for this, I am a user of Sonos and would like it if I could play back 96khz/24 bit FLAC files on it.

I normally only have 44.1khz/16bit FLACs from ripped CDs, but I recently bought the 2014 3-disk re-release of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery and I was so happy that I could just copy the included FLACs off the third disc. Clearly a music release for people like me! But no, Sonos won't play them. The other things I use to play FLAC (usually play or mpv on Linux) have no trouble with these files.

(Obviously I can rip the included CDs or do sample-rate and bit-depth conversion on these in an automated manner, but it would be nice if Sonos would eat these, even if the hardware product's DACs are 44.1/16 and it has to just convert the data on the fly.)

Sonos has repeatedly stated they are not doing 24/96 audio. They recently restated this fact in October, in this interview with various Sonos dignitaries, including co-founder Tom Cullen, who seems to agree with the scientists in this thread:

Hi-res numbers don't add up

While we’re talking about the competition, we can’t help but ask Sonos about its feelings on hi-res music. No matter who we asked, the answer was the same – don’t hold your breath.

“We’ve looked really hard at it”, says Tom. “Of course we want to make sure we’re not missing anything and we feel pretty good that we’re not. There are arguments you could make about deeper bit depth, but we are unable to make a meaningful argument on sample rate. We tried, we can’t – the math just isn’t there.”

http://www.whathifi.com/news/sonos-plans-brighter-and-brighter-wireless-music-future

In the same interview, Sonos also said this:

Quote: We ask about downsampling, which Sonos currently doesn’t offer - meaning any high-res music you own is completely unplayable on Sonos unless you downsample it yourself.

Jon Reilly admits: “We want to play everything, so we should do and that’s fair feedback. It’s something we’re considering.” Unquote

So maybe they will do something that allows hi res to be played in some manner.

I'm not sure if that wasn't softening the blow from Cullen's sledge hammer shoot down. PR is PR. 😃

Perhaps, and of no interest to me.

But like I wrote elsewhere, this hi res clamour may be getting to be a perception is reality thing that Sonos may have to accommodate in some manner like they did the "why do we need to wire anything to the router" noise. Another thing that was of no interest to me.

Hesitate to revive this epic thread, but has anyone read the new AES study (literature review more accurate?) that purports to show that "perceived fidelity of an audio recording and playback chain can be affected by operating beyond conventional resolution"? (at a rate slightly higher than flipping a coin). You can download it for free http://www.aes.org/journal/

As Monty Montgomery pointed out in his essential white paper, 192khz can cause audible distortion, most likely the differences being heard by a very few testers. Not a goid thing, quite the opposite, in fact. The flaws in this latest analysis is being robustly pointed out over on hydrogenaudio, where highly knowledgeable audio engineers hang out.

https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,112204/topicseen.html

Exactly. The key to the analysis is the use of "differences in perceived fidelity" not "improvement in perceived fidelity". Although I didn't read the whole thing (didn't need to), I noticed right away that they only considered the ability to perceive differences, not the ability to pick out the supposed superior hires files. As chicks said, this is fully explainable by Monty's intermodulation distortion introduced in the audible spectrum of the playback gear due to stresses from trying to reproduce the ultra-sonics.

Reading further on the hydrogenaudio site, it seems there is more than a bit of cherry picking and biases going into the meta-analysis. Also some pointed out the author of the paper and AES in general have a passing interest in (you guessed it!) Meridien Audio, and this analysis was published not long after an "award-winning" paper and subsequent follow-up release of new technology by Meridian.

I am shocked! Shocked, I say!! 😃 Anyway, good read. Especially this part:

Audio purists and industry should welcome these findings -- our study finds high resolution audio has a small but important advantage in its quality of reproduction over standard audio content.

The analysis showed something small, but it is by no means shown to be "important" or an "advantage". Could he be any more transparent?

Archimago is usually good reading for a down-to-earth take on such matters. See http://archimago.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/musings-digital-interpolation-filters.html and scroll down to the post-scripts at the bottom.

But... but... HiRez downloads cost way more. They MUST be better, right!? Lol.

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