Zp 24/96

Sorry, I'm incredulous. You really think blu ray sounds on par or worse than red books? Movies are not sounding better to you at home over the past 10 years than they did in the DVD era? Really?
You are mixing two different things here - 2 channel music at home and the home movie experience.
The 2 channel music audio problem is what is a solved one, except where speaker quality and room response is concerned.
The movie thing is a different beast, and even now the home experience has a long way to go on the audio front as well. For example, you can't get the sound of a helicopter passing overhead from front to the back of the room by speakers at the side. Or at the rear. Well, you can, but it can be done better, and I won't be surprised to see the current 9.1 or whatever to go up to many more speakers/channels.
None of these things are found in the real world of music listening where the performances happen on a stage in front of you. You don't ever listen to a jazz trio where one player is on the stage, one is above and the third is behind you. Even a symphony orchestra is on a stage in front of you. Audibly improving this listening experience, once some minimum equipment levels are met, now revolves around speakers and the room response part of the home music audio thing.

Better sounding equipment allows more of the artists intent to come through, better gear allows the recoded music to create more emotional involvement in the listener..
I agree, 100% to the first part. Along with some others here, I am only pointing out that beyond a point the better gear does not result in better sound - once the brain is deprived of any other evidence than the input from ones ears, and recognising the ways in which the brain can be fooled into SQ impressions.
If the need for a subjective experience rules out such criteria, there is nothing to be said.

Beyond what point.? and certainly there are diminishing returns, and that it can become not better but different. But you can't tell me that if one takes a pair of lets say Wilson Sasha speakers and compares an Onkyo receiver to a pair of D'Agostino Momentum's that the difference isn't going to startling.. If you guys really think that there is simply no reason to even continue on since that means that you're deaf or dead 🙂

But you can't tell me that if one takes a pair of lets say Wilson Sasha speakers and compares an Onkyo receiver to a pair of D'Agostino Momentum's that the difference isn't going to startling.. If you guys really think that there is simply no reason to even continue on since that means that you're deaf or dead :-)
Without knowing much of any of the three bits of kit you are referring to, I can't comment on the startling claim. For instance the speakers may be just power hungry and need more watts than the Onkyo can deliver. If so, there would be a very audible difference.
But there is a third possibility too, to my being deaf or dead - that you are deluded:D.

So why not find a great hi end audio store near you and listen, assuming there are any stores near you ... good bricks and mortar stores have become unfortunately a dying breed.

So why not find a great hi end audio store near you and listen, assuming there are any stores near you ... good bricks and mortar stores have become unfortunately a dying breed.
Been there, done that. For ten years with amps ranging from an EL34 valve based 35wpc Unison amp to a Conrad Johnson 250wpc solid state. No audible differences which isn't surprising because they were all good hifi 2 channel amps to start with, defined by a flat frequency response within their designed power delivery limits. A hifi 2 channel amp is an even older solved problem than digital audio, and any measured difference from this flat response is no longer at audible levels for modern examples. If your speakers drive the amp out of its comfort zone by a higher power draw for the desired music/sound levels, the resultant distortion/clipping is audible though.
The benefit of this experience is now being able to hear Harbeth quality sound from the Connect Amp to the same extent I can even now from a 140wpc Quad 909 amp. With all the convenience that Sonos brings to the table.

If you guys really think that there is simply no reason to even continue on since that means that you're deaf or dead :-)

I run QUAD ESL-63's, considered by many to be among the top 10 speakers ever produced. I've tried many amps with them, but quickly came to the realization, as QUAD's Peter Walker always said, that quality amplifiers, kept within their limits, all sound alike. That is, they don't color the signal in any way. An amp that measures well will always sound good, as it won't add anything to the signal.

It's senseless to spend ridiculous sums on amplifiers, yet fools do it, thinking they'll somehow get better sound. They never, ever reach nirvana, so continue on their fool's journey, spending more, listening to the charlatans of the "high end", seeking perfection, while those who understand how amplifiers work simply laugh at them and enjoy the music. How pathetic the audiophools are.

I think that there is still plenty of room for audio improvement, but not so much along the bits per second or sample bit depth vectors. The trap is that, at this point in technology development, more bits is easy and more must be better, right? What some of us are claiming is that, since the benefit of more bits has been hard to demonstrate and clogging the network path with more data does have an easy to demonstrate impact on the number of players that can be reliably supported, stuffing bits seems like a step back.

---

I once was in the audience during a binaural playback demonstration of a "haircut" with a "snip", "snip", "snip" around our heads and down our necks. In this headphone demonstration there was no claim of "flat response", "low distortion" or any of the usual things audiophiles bark about, they were using a pinnae transform in their processing. All I can say about the demo is that, in turn, the hairs on my neck stood up and waited to be harvested. The companion demonstration without headphones, using speakers in a room, was not very convincing.

In my opinion the frontier is math transforms and room accommodation (either with more math or physical help), not more bits. Simply capturing, then releasing the original wavefront in our listening room is the wrong approach -- unless the studio room happened to be exactly the size and texture of our listening room.

Been there, done that. For ten years with amps ranging from an EL34 valve based 35wpc Unison amp to a Conrad Johnson 250wpc solid state. No audible differences which isn't surprising because they were all good hifi 2 channel amps to start with, defined by a flat frequency response within their designed power delivery limits. A hifi 2 channel amp is an even older solved problem than digital audio, and any measured difference from this flat response is no longer at audible levels for modern examples. If your speakers drive the amp out of its comfort zone by a higher power draw for the desired music/sound levels, the resultant distortion/clipping is audible though.
The benefit of this experience is now being able to hear Harbeth quality sound from the Connect Amp to the same extent I can even now from a 140wpc Quad 909 amp. With all the convenience that Sonos brings to the table.

Lol, I can't really explain why, but this response reminds me of the scene in the movie Patton when George C. Scott views the oncoming German Afrika Korps through his field binoculars. Knowing he has seen everything they are to throw at him and thus knows how to defeat them, he screams out "Rommel, you magnificent *******, I READ YOUR BOOK!!!"

the scene in the movie Patton when George C. Scott views the oncoming German Afrika Korps through his field binoculars. [/i][/b]
This wasn't on my mind at all, but I know the scene well. I see the movie about once every two years or so even now. My favourite part is the drive to relieve Bastogne.