Question Silly question but....am I listening to hi-res?

miffy93

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I already sign up to tidal hifi, which sounds good, but wanted to give qobuz a go as I’d been told I wouldn’t need any additional hardware to listen to hi-res audio, unlike tidal.

Setup goes as follows:

Qobuz studio app installed on android tv box, spec:

Android 8.1 TV BOX, T9 Smart Box with 4GB RAM 64GB ROM RK3328 Quad Core 2.4GHz/5GHz Dual Band WiFi 4K Resolution H.265 Bluetooth 4.1 USB 3.0 100M LAN Ethernet

Android box supports -
Support Music format:MP3/WMA/AAC/WAV/OGG/AC3/DDP/TrueHD/DTS/DTS/HD/FLAC/APE

HDMI cable from android box to Onkyo HT R390.

Running all this through mconnect player shows 24bit 96kHz, as per attached pic, but amp reports it at 44.1, pics attached.

Don’t get me wrong, it sounds good, but......could it sound better?

Thanks.
 
It looks to me as though your Android box is downsampling the audio before outputting it.

Find a hi-res test audio file somewhere (here, for example Download samples ), download it to your Android box and play it back and see what your amp says.
 
Nearly all Android TV boxes will resample audio files to 44KHz.
So as you've seen, the playing software might report the file's native sample rate and bit depth but your Onkyo will report accurately what is actually coming out of the TV box. One of the few Android TV boxes to support hires audio via HDMI is the NVIDIA Shield which to use your example above plays 24/96 FLAC files at the correct sample rate and bit depth if you are using Plex, Kodi or Google Play Music as the playing app. Nvidia do have a page on their website describing "How do I play high resolution audio on my Shield TV".

Edit: Actually I should have said nearly all Android TV boxes will resample audio files to 48KHz so your reported 44KHz is unusual.

--
JB
 
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I already sign up to tidal hifi, which sounds good, but wanted to give qobuz a go as I’d been told I wouldn’t need any additional hardware to listen to hi-res audio, unlike tidal.
Ironically, it looks like you do need additional hardware, as your Android TV box doesn't appear to even support outputting 'normal' hi-res audio, never mind decoding TIDAL's proprietary MQA hi-res tracks!
 
Thanks for all the replies/advice.

So basically the android box I have, even if I bought an external dac, isn’t up to the job?

So I take it the only way around this is to buy an external streamer, such as the teufel that’s been suggested?
 
Unfortunately, Android boxes aren't the best for outputting audio. I have an Nvidia Shield TV which either resamples everything to 44.1 (odd, given that 48 is the standard for video) or 192 if in the 'high quality' audio setting. Personally, I'd rather it was just a passthrough.

Then again, the most recent (v8) update for the Shield TV has made a pig's ear of a number of things and no longer works with the USB DAC to which it was connected. Bit of a wash-out at the mo!!
 
Thought I’d do a bit of tinkering this morning so unplugged the android box from the onkyo and plugged in the laptop.

Tried both qobuz and tidal and the amp reported 96k for both.

If I buy an external streamer, like the teufel or wx-ad10 does that mean I can still use my tidal hifi account at hi res without buying an external dac as well?
 

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The Teufel won't do Tidal MQA. It'll play anything from Quboz though.

Quboz hi-res is a good step up from CD if you have the equipment to notice.
 
Thought I’d do a bit of tinkering this morning so unplugged the android box from the onkyo and plugged in the laptop.

Tried both qobuz and tidal and the amp reported 96k for both.
Being honest did it make any difference to SQ?

I'm not convinced it matters that much, the fairly budget Onkyo system you're using will have a far greater effect than any miniscule difference with bit rates and formats IMO. Can you connect both at once and get a friend to switch back and forth so you don't know which is connected?
 
Being honest did it make any difference to SQ?

I'm not convinced it matters that much, the fairly budget Onkyo system you're using will have a far greater effect than any miniscule difference with bit rates and formats IMO. Can you connect both at once and get a friend to switch back and forth so you don't know which is connected?


It seemed to, but maybe it’s all psychological, who knows!
 
Getting very tempted by the Yamaha WX-AD10 as an entry level ‘dipping my toe into the hi res world’. For the price and features it seems fine.

What I can’t seem to clarify is the Mqa support, if any. I realise it won’t do the full unfold, but will I see any Mqa benefit?

I’d rather continue using tidal rather than qobuz as I have 2 Logitech squeezebox touches I use it on and am happy with these, hence the Mqa question.

Any info much appreciated, thanks.
 
Thought I’d do a bit of tinkering this morning so unplugged the android box from the onkyo and plugged in the laptop.

Tried both qobuz and tidal and the amp reported 96k for both.

If I buy an external streamer, like the teufel or wx-ad10 does that mean I can still use my tidal hifi account at hi res without buying an external dac as well?
Could you not just use the laptop (or some other PC) for the whole thing? No external streamer, no DAC. Just your laptop and your amp.

That's what I do with my PC and my amp.
 
I’d rather continue using tidal rather than qobuz as I have 2 Logitech squeezebox touches I use it on and am happy with these, hence the Mqa question.
Aren't you using the Logitech Media Server with your Squeezebox Touches?

If so, Qobuz is actually available to them via the Qobuz 3rd party LMS plugin.


Getting very tempted by the Yamaha WX-AD10 as an entry level ‘dipping my toe into the hi res world’. For the price and features it seems fine.

What I can’t seem to clarify is the Mqa support, if any. I realise it won’t do the full unfold, but will I see any Mqa benefit?
Yamaha's MusicCast app doesn't support MQA when connecting to TIDAL's online server via a TIDAL HiFi account, just like the Squeezebox device's mysqueezebox.com TIDAL app's connection. So you'll get the exact same 'MQA benefit' from TIDAL as you are currently getting with your Squeezebox Touches.
 
No settings within Spotify will make it any better then 320kbps.
 
Could you not just use the laptop (or some other PC) for the whole thing? No external streamer, no DAC. Just your laptop and your amp.

That's what I do with my PC and my amp.

I can't do this, so not really an option thanks.
 
Aren't you using the Logitech Media Server with your Squeezebox Touches?

If so, Qobuz is actually available to them via the Qobuz 3rd party LMS plugin.


Yamaha's MusicCast app doesn't support MQA when connecting to TIDAL's online server via a TIDAL HiFi account, just like the Squeezebox device's mysqueezebox.com TIDAL app's connection. So you'll get the exact same 'MQA benefit' from TIDAL as you are currently getting with your Squeezebox Touches.


I don't use the standalone LMS (as in installed on a pc somewhere) I just use the internal squeezebox version.
 
Gone for the WXAD-10 as an intro into the whole thing, for £119 it seems to have plenty of features. Ok, i know I won't get the MQA capability but the rest of the stuff so far is good (playing audio from Nas, Qobuz, Airplay, Spotify connect etc).

Will see how it goes, may be an upgrade into something more expensive in the future, but at the moment i'm happy with this.
 
I don't use the standalone LMS (as in installed on a pc somewhere) I just use the internal squeezebox version.

playing audio from Nas
Is there a reason for not running LMS on the NAS itself, where it would be the best place for providing the NAS's audio files over the network to the Squeezebox devices as well as the convenience of being available 24/7 for support of Qobuz, Spotify, etc (via LMS plugins)?
 
Is there a reason for not running LMS on the NAS itself, where it would be the best place for providing the NAS's audio files over the network to the Squeezebox devices as well as the convenience of being available 24/7 for support of Qobuz, Spotify, etc (via LMS plugins)?

Yes, my NAS doesn’t support LMS. I could’ve gone done the route of replacing it but went down this road instead.
 

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