Audio quality/bitrate - is my old receiver putting out “hifi” quality sound?

[manny11701]

So I’ve been listening to hifi for a few years and am now looking to upgrade my beginner equipment. I’ve been reading about FLAC and different bitrates and the audio quality that these new receivers are capable of and it made me wonder how that translates to the Leyman.

I’ve got a monolith monoprice usb dac that I picked up for 25 bucks (this is my don’t judge me statement ) that goes into an old marantz ta-52 (super cheap, but I was broke when I got into the hobby). My connection is 3.5mm to an rca cable and then it plays from my speakers.

I have a friend who works in the audio industry and he said “once you get to the signal level, whatever was spit out by the initial device, that’s what gets created by everything else downstream if it’s just transferring the signal” I was wondering how accurate this is.

I don’t want to get too lost in the weeds of technicality, but I am curious as to how accurate this statement is and how much I should pay attention to advertised audio quality vs what we can hear.

Also random question: do our ears have a max bitrate that we can listen to? (Not talking the 20-20k hz range)

 

[Chrispy]

Likely you're doing just fine. What dac is it? The source is the beginning of an audio chain, and as you move through the chain you can possibly lose quality, or just play it in your preferred way as far as tone control/eq goes, but you can't improve on it. The cd standard of 16/44.1 (and 1411 kbps) was decided upon as it was audibly transparent....you can use higher bit depth/sampling frequency but you may not be able to hear any differences. You can always self test that if you think you can (with blind abx tests with something like Foobar2000). Personally I'm fine with a good 320kbps lossy stream, and have a hard time distinguishing that from cd....I don't bother much with higher res files except on bluray....

 

[amirm]

FLAC compression is lossless meaning quality is kept constant (lossless) so the bitrate changes depending on how difficult the file is to compress. To the extent you are playing FLAC files, you don't need to worry about its bitrate. Answering anyway, bitrate of CD quality audio in flac is from 600 kbps to 1.4 mbit/sec.

If you compress your file into mp3 and such, then the quality can suffer depending on how low you go and how good your hearing is.

If by "bitrate" your friend means sample rate, CD is 44.1 kHz and playing that will certainly be top quality.

 

[Power Pop 23]

I have a friend who works in the audio industry and he said “once you get to the signal level, whatever was spit out by the initial device, that’s what gets created by everything else downstream if it’s just transferring the signal” I was wondering how accurate this is.

I don’t want to get too lost in the weeds of technicality, but I am curious as to how accurate this statement is and how much I should pay attention to advertised audio quality vs what we can hear.

I consider your friend's statement accurate

Also random question: do our ears have a max bitrate that we can listen to? (Not talking the 20-20k hz range)

I think so and don't know my maximum. Many years ago, I did perceive a difference between a 1,411 kbps Compact Disc and a 320 kbps MP3. I like my gear to measure well enough to deliver 'most' of the 16-bit/44.1 Kilohertz standard of the Compact Disc

 

[DVDdoug]

You get the biggest difference or improvement with different speakers or different headphones. If you play a good quality MP3 through Taylor Swift's stadium concert system or (The Rolling Stones System) it's going to sound awesome!!!

Sometimes a subwoofer is a huge improvement but the easiest way to integrate one into your system is a with an audio video receiver which will have a line-output for a powered subwoofer and a crossover to route the main sound minus the bass to the main speakers, and the bass to the sub. There are solutions without an AVR but it's usually not as easy. (But a cheap "one note" subwoofer will sound worse than no sub.)

Or if you listen loud and you're getting distortion when you turn it up, you may need an amplifier with more power (and speakers that can handle the power).

Also random question: do our ears have a max bitrate that we can listen to?

There's not a "maximum" but there might be a minimum for acceptable quality... Higher resolution or higher bitrate never hurts!

Although uncompressed audio has a bitrate we usually only "talk about it" for compressed files, and usually only lossy compression like MP3. FLAC is always lossless regardless of the bitrate.

Bitrate in kbps is kilobits per second. There are 8-bits in a byte so you can divide by 8 to get file size in kilobites per second.

With lossy compression, a lower bitrate means more compression and a smaller file. With low MP3 bitrates more data gets thrown-away and at some point you'll hear quality loss. 360kbps is the highest MP3 bitrate (other lossy compression formats can go higher). So it can be a rough indication of sound quality.

But a 256kbps file may sound identical to a 360kbps file and/or both may sound identical to the uncompressed original, or you may have to listen very carefully to hear a difference (in a proper blind listening test). If you download an MP3 from Amazon it's usually variable bitrate with an average of about 256kbps.

As Chrispy said, CD audio has a bitrate of 1144kbps. FLAC is usually about half of that and no data thrown away.

 

[Chrispy]

You get the biggest difference or improvement with different speakers or different headphones. If you play a good quality MP3 through Taylor Swift's stadium concert system or (The Rolling Stones System) it's going to sound awesome!!!

Sometimes a subwoofer is a huge improvement but the easiest way to integrate one into your system is a with an audio video receiver which will have a line-output for a powered subwoofer and a crossover to route the main sound minus the bass to the main speakers, and the bass to the sub. There are solutions without an AVR but it's usually not as easy. (But a cheap "one note" subwoofer will sound worse than no sub.)

Or if you listen loud and you're getting distortion when you turn it up, you may need an amplifier with more power (and speakers that can handle the power).


There's not a "maximum" but there might be a minimum for acceptable quality... Higher resolution or higher bitrate never hurts!

Although uncompressed audio has a bitrate we usually only "talk about it" for compressed files, and usually only lossy compression like MP3. FLAC is always lossless regardless of the bitrate.

Bitrate in kbps is kilobits per second. There are 8-bits in a byte so you can divide by 8 to get file size in kilobites per second.

With lossy compression, a lower bitrate means more compression and a smaller file. With low MP3 bitrates more data gets thrown-away and at some point you'll hear quality loss. 360kbps is the highest MP3 bitrate (other lossy compression formats can go higher). So it can be a rough indication of sound quality.

But a 256kbps file may sound identical to a 360kbps file and/or both may sound identical to the uncompressed original, or you may have to listen very carefully to hear a difference (in a proper blind listening test). If you download an MP3 from Amazon it's usually variable bitrate with an average of about 256kbps.

As Chrispy said, CD audio has a bitrate of 1144kbps. FLAC is usually about half of that and no data thrown away.

Make that 1411 kbps on the cd....I've not seen one of Amir's cd files in flac that only offer an 11kbps advantage, generally about half seems about right, but depends on settings somewhat.

 

[boxerfan88]

FLAC is another type of ZIP file, no?
Bitrate isn’t relevant to FLAC, yes?

If 16/44k1/2ch pcm goes inside FLAC, what comes out decoded must be 1411kbps, no?

 

[Chrispy]

FLAC is another type of ZIP file, no?
Bitrate isn’t relevant to FLAC, yes?

If 16/44k1/2ch pcm goes inside FLAC, what comes out decoded must be 1411kbps, no?

FLAC is a lossless compression routine, so I suppose quite similar to a zip file....

Bitrate can change somewhat with what settings to rip to flac (at least in my experience).

When playing a flac file created from cd, I don't see 1411 but rather the bitrate of the flac, but don't know if that varies with devices (but with a variety of devices the bitrate has never been 1411 from a ripped cd in flac).

 

[TonyJZX]

if this is your dac

Monoprice DAC & Amp Dongle Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Monolith by Monoprice USB DAC (29512) portable DAC and headphone amplifier. It was kindly sent to me by a member and is on sale for US $60. I like the volume control on the right. Other than that, there is not much else to it. Monolith by...

www.audiosciencereview.com

and you have typical vintage amp and speakers i think feeding it redbook flacs... you are getting the optimum performance you are going to get

you can get a more SOTA dac like an SU-1 or better but it wont be leaps and bounds

ALSO I feel like high res flacs *should* be fine on that dac but it doesnt cost much money to get a $100 dac and try it on

i think most of us here collect mostly 320 mp3 to redbook flac and we all use reasonably good dacs

that monoprice is getting long in the tooth but a current dac isnt going to transform things if you dont also upgrade the amp speakers

 

[kemmler3D]

“once you get to the signal level, whatever was spit out by the initial device, that’s what gets created by everything else downstream if it’s just transferring the signal” I was wondering how accurate this is.

This is correct as far as it goes. Every link in the chain is delivering a copy of a copy, but the good news is those copies tend to be indistinguishable from the original if your gear is decent. The copy usually only really gets messed up once it hits the speaker itself.

I don’t want to get too lost in the weeds of technicality, but I am curious as to how accurate this statement is and how much I should pay attention to advertised audio quality vs what we can hear.

This is unfortunately a pretty nuanced and technical question, but advertised audio quality tends to be whatever the marketing department thinks will impress you, not necessarily something you can actually hear. Varies by manufacturer and category. Seek independent reviews with measurements to get the real story.

Also random question: do our ears have a max bitrate that we can listen to? (Not talking the 20-20k hz range)

The answer here is yes, sort of. We don't hear bits directly, but we do know how much data it takes to encode audio that goes up to the limits of human hearing.

People can hear up to 20khz (sorry) so that means the sampling rate we can hear is at most 40khz. (you need 2 samples per cycle of the maximum frequency you want to represent.)

The dynamic range people can hear is about 130dB (quietest to loudest sound) which corresponds to 22 bits if we round up. (6db ~ 1 bit)

So the maximum bitrate people can hear (uncompressed, i.e. WAV not FLAC) is roughly 1760 kbps (40,000 x 22 x 2 ears for stereo)

You will notice that 24 bit 44.1khz files have more data than this.

 

[boxerfan88]

This is correct as far as it goes. Every link in the chain is delivering a copy of a copy, but the good news is those copies tend to be indistinguishable from the original if your gear is decent. The copy usually only really gets messed up once it hits the speaker itself.

Fully agree. On the other hand, many believe a change in cable can transform night to day, or day to night.

Sorry … I couldn’t help it.

Now, back to original programming…