Hi Res lossless 24bit 192khz to sonos five via Line in jackplug

I can definitely tell by listening that the line in does not pass on the hi res audio signal, it digitizes it to something far less than what the artist intended.

Any line only takes analog signal voltages; none can take or directly pass on a hi res digital input. And how exactly do you know what the artist intended and how do you know even then that any deviation from that is not due to the many other things that can affect the sound waves that reach your ear drums?

Reading all the preceding posts and the handwringing and tying oneself into knots is a classic example of a first world problem caused by/for gullible customers of purveyors of digital snake oil - it is amusing, and also sad because this speaks to universal human failings.

I’m not going to stoop to that level of criticism, but beauty really is in the ear of the beholder and I hear an immense difference.  It does depend on your source and system.  There’s a reason every streaming provider is jumping on the hi res bandwagon, but there will always be old schoolers who are happy with low res, and that’s ok.  As a studio musician for my whole life, I’ve seen the demands that recording artists put on the engineers to get the sound a specific way, and they definitely weren’t mastering to mp3.  Let’s agree to disagree, I wish you all best Kumar.

I am fine with agreeing to disagree; I have found that arguing over Hi Res audio tends to be like doing so across as big a chasm as religion v science, as an example, so that is a good way to go. I will just pick and make one correction where you seem to say that low res works for me. It does, but only if you define CD format/quality as low res - which it is but only in comparison to high res in terms of bits and bytes of data it contains. But 16/44 CD quality is as good as it needs to be for me and for those that do not partake of the Hi Res audio thing.

I also know that mastering engineers master using more bits than 16/44, and I also know why they do this and that this has nothing to do my being able to get better sound quality than CD only from Hi Res audio.

I’d be fascinated to read of any controlled evaluation which conclusively proves that listeners can consistently differentiate hi-res from Red Book, given a common (hi-res) source recording. On the contrary there are tests which demonstrate precisely the opposite.

Higher sampling rates and bit depths obviously have their place in the production chain, to avoid errors and filter effects, but are unnecessary as a final delivery format.

Streaming providers are doing hi-res because that’s what consumers think they want, because marketing has convinced them so and, well, bigger must be better right?

Any “immense difference” can typically be explained by a more careful remastering for the ‘hi-res’ version. 

As for “mastering to mp3”, such a concept is surely oxymoronic? 

Bigger must be better, but ONLY if the Sonos or any other app they use has a visual indication that says that what they are listening to is bigger - there is enough hand wringing seen here on why that indication is often not there to be seen. It is like they need their eyes to tell their ears of what is the bit count in the stream they are listening to, to be sure it sounds better. Quite silly.

Compare that to HD video where any indicator on the screen that says 1080P/HD is completely redundant. 

It gets even sillier when MQA fans crave the little blue light on their decoder.

Ah yes, but sit far enough back from the set and they all look the same: SD, HD or 4K.

Bigger must be better,

Of course it is, how else could they charge more for the service. 😁

Except many of them no longer charge extra for lossless, never mind ‘hi res’.