Curious if any of you can shed some light on a streaming quality question I have.

little wing

little wing

Audioholic General
First of all, let me apologize for sidetracking someone else's thread. So I'll start one, to see who can answer this question about streaming quality. If I understand right, Spotify does not offer CD quality streaming. If not why does my audio input on my receiver say PCM 2.0 44.1kHz/16bit? It says this when I stream WAV files from my PC with Jriver . When I stream Pandora it says MP3, and when I stream SiriusXM it says AAC. I'm not having a problem or anything, it all works good, but again I am just curious,
Thanks,
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I'm leaning towards the avr/app transcoding it. Even when feeding my avr optical digital input for streaming Spotify on an Audio Chromecast, the avr shows it as 44.1 PCM....
 
G

Gmoney

Audioholic Ninja
First of all, let me apologize for sidetracking someone else's thread. So I'll start one, to see who can answer this question about streaming quality. If I understand right, Spotify does not offer CD quality streaming. If not why does my audio input on my receiver say PCM 2.0 44.1kHz/16bit? It says this when I stream WAV files from my PC with Jriver . When I stream Pandora it says MP3, and when I stream SiriusXM it says AAC. I'm not having a problem or anything, it all works good, but again I am just curious,
Thanks,
Same here on my a1080, always says PCM or MP3 when streaming. Wonder also I don't know enough about settings and have played around a lot even trying to switch up settings in my 4K blu-ray player say Hi-reg up to 192hz, 96hz and 48hz. But no matter what settings it shows PCM or MP3 on Yamahas OSD when you pull up Display, it will show PCM, DD PLll Movie But once a blu-ray in 4 K or just plain blu-ray it than shows TrueHD or MasterHD.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
I have done this: take the lowest bitrate MP3 file (like 128 kbps) and use an audio converter software to “upscale” to the highest quality audio file (I think 192kHz/24bit) and my Yamaha will read the file as “192kHz/24bit”. So it’s a fake 192kHz/24bit file.

They do the same thing with video resolution - take 720p and 1080p and upscale them to 4K resolution. So it’s fake 4K.

I think they do the same with some Atmos and DTSX files - many of them don’t sound very active because they’re fake.

Since Spotify does not claim CD quality, you can’t sue them just for upscaling the files. :D

Just like how Netflix doesn’t claim that their 4K files are “True 4K” and Atmos files are “True Atmos”. :D
 
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little wing

little wing

Audioholic General
I have done this: take the lowest bitrate MP3 file (like 128 kbps) and use an audio converter software to “upscale” to the highest quality audio file (I think 192kHz/24bit) and my Yamaha will read the file as “192kHz/24bit”. So it’s a fake 192kHz/24bit file.

They do the same thing with video resolution - take 720p and 1080p and upscale them to 4K resolution. So it’s fake 4K.

I think they do the same with some Atmos and DTSX files - many of them don’t sound very active because they’re fake.

Since Spotify does not claim CD quality, you can’t sue them just for upscaling the files. :D

Just like how Netflix doesn’t claim that their 4K files are “True 4K” and Atmos files are “True Atmos”. :D
What audio converter software? Are you saying Spotify upscales files? I don't have any beef with Spotify or anything. When I stream Spotify it sounds really good. Clean, clear, dynamic. All the music streaming that I do works really good and sounds good. (Pandora, Sirius, Spotify, and my network) Of course, I think my WAV files sound the best. Could be perception though. My poor Oppo 105 just sits there unused most of time, unless I play a few of the Multi-channel audio discs that I have.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
What audio converter software? Are you saying Spotify upscales files? I don't have any beef with Spotify or anything. When I stream Spotify it sounds really good. Clean, clear, dynamic. All the music streaming that I do works really good and sounds good. (Pandora, Sirius, Spotify, and my network) Of course, I think my WAV files sound the best. Could be perception though. My poor Oppo 105 just sits there unused most of time, unless I play a few of the Multi-channel audio discs that I have.
I think if the original files sound awesome, it doesn’t really matter what bitrate they are.

But I do think up-scaling is common practice these days. For one, your Yamaha isn’t lying about the bitrates - 48kHz, 96kHz, 128kHz, 192kHz, etc.

So if the file is NOT CD quality but still shows up as 48kHz or 44kHz, it has been upscaled.

I don’t recall the software I have (I’m not at my house now), but I use it to convert any music files. I can even convert video files to music files. :D

EDIT: Okay, I am using the "Bigasoft Audio Converter 5" to convert my files. I can take an MP3 and convert to WAVE or Apple Lossless or FLAC or whatever I want.

I can even take a YouTube VIDEO and convert it to a music file (MP3, WMA, WAVE, FLAC, etc.).

 
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lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
A variety of programs can process files....Audacity would be one.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Do you have a problem with their streams particularly? I've been a premium subscriber so been a while since I've used the free stuff, but still use Pandora free streams at lower bitrates and while maybe not the best performance, still great for finding new music (which I use streaming services for generally....no desire to simply rely on their offerings/library vs my own)
 
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