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I don't even know where to begin looking. There are too many companies that make them and too many models. Anyone have and suggestions? Thanks in advance

Hi all- So, I'm looking for a solution to stream LDAC quality audio from my xm4's wirelessly to my windows 10 desktop. I see the BTA30 is looking like my best option...(as I read that windows does not support LDAC natively I see, I guess the consumer can go fuck themselves, and; yet again, Sony is sad)- anyway I'm a huge beginner at audiophile type stuff; especially codecs- so I wasn't super confident about setting up the BTA30 myself, which looks like it has coaxial and optical in/out ports, but also a USB-C port. I saw a similar thread from over a year ago talking about this unit, but it was never answered if/and or/ why LDAC streaming isn't possible when the BTA30 is connected to your win10 desktop (thru USB 3.0?+ does it matter?) via USB-C instead of using the optical ports. If this isn't possible using the devices' own USB-C port, then i'd ask how the hell I would go about hooking it up using the optical ports, if that's my only other option. I'm really looking for the most latency free/lossless experience possible. (yes I know bluetooth= no "lossless", i.e, bad, yes I know- I want to get as close as I'm able to, however) Thanks for yall's time and expertise

Does a UHD Blu-Ray use lossless HEVC to compress Master movie files? Or is it lossy? If so, does that mean encodes essentially take a lossy file as input to create another lossy file? Wouldn't that result in perceptible quality loss?

Hey! Very simple question Do any of you know a website or program which can convert a pdf file into individual PNG files WITHOUT COMPRESSION? I need this for a school work. All the websites I know of can convert them, but will compress them in the process. I need maximum possible quality! Anyone in here able to help out? Thanks in advance

Guys, do you know software that can handle editing Shadowplay video without losing any quality? My Nero Recode/Video can't keep the bitrate high as the original.. it makes my video quality always grainy and blurry.. Please help

Hi, Just want to hear some peoples feedback regarding if I should encode all my media or spend $300 or less on a 6TB HDD to keep my media lossless for my Plex server. Encode = time HDD = Money Cheers

amazons website youtube video Amazon has an HD Audio streaming service now They are going to offer lossless music in 24bit 192khz would be awesome if LTT or Tech Quickie could do a video... and maybe even a review.

TLDR: Tidal has an awful implementation of exclusive mode and you should avoid using it. TIDAL DOES stream proper lossless FLAC identical to anywhere you could buy it, but their player is awful. You can avoid it by streaming Tidal through "Roon" instead Why am I doing this? I've for a while felt that Tidal whilst great in terms of resolution etc, sounded somewhat harsh in comparison to either local FLAC files, or interestingly, Tidal streamed through Roon. Also, a lot of people have often accused tidal of "bass boosting" or adding DSP to their music to create a false illusion of increased clarity. I can't say that I feel its bass boosted but it certainly seemed different. And after hearing the staggering difference between streaming tidal natively vs through Roon, I knew this was NOT placebo and wanted to find out what was happening. Testing Tidal vs Roon measuring in Windows First, I played "Weak" by AJR on both Tidal, and Tidal via Roon, streaming the same track directly into audacity. Both in bit perfect 16 bit 44.1khz. I then used "Audio DiffMaker" To perform a null test (subtract one audio file from another. If there is a result, it means they are different. If not, it means there is no difference between the two files.) The result was a 0 null, meaning as far as audacity was concerned, both players were outputting 100% bit by bit identical audio. Which surprised me as there is definitely an audible difference, much more than placebo. Perhaps a FLAC file would show a different result? I purchased a FLAC from HDtracks of the song I was testing, and played it through both Foobar and Roon, which showed a 0 null again on both instances when compared either to eachother or to the original Tidal stream, suggesting these players are identical. Which was odd. Within the OS it seems, there is 0 difference at all and in theory the players should sound 100% identical. Testing Tidal vs Roon measuring real DAC output I was not happy yet though. I was convinced something more was going on. And if it couldn't be detected within the OS then it must be to do with how the player and the DAC itself or its drivers are interacting when playing in WASAPI exclusive mode. So: I hooked up the output of my RME ADI-2 DAC to my audio interface input, in order to record what the dac was ACTUALLY outputting. I performed a null test once again between streaming the track through tidal vs streaming tidal through roon and boom, we have a difference result: RoonTidalStreamNullTest.wav That file is the result of the null test between Tidal and Tidal through roon. Ie: Anything present in both files is removed and only the difference remains. And as you can hear, there is a LOT of difference, meaning not only is the audio altered a little, its changed a LOT. If we look at a peak FR measurement for that file, done with RME Digicheck, we can see that there is a significant amount of increase in the higher frequency areas. Suggesting that the Tidal player is playing audio "Brighter" than Roon. This would explain why to my ears it sounded harsher than other players. To be clear, Roon was operating in WASAPI exclusive mode, not ASIO mode, so as to make it a fair test. Next, I wanted to find out, given as the digital-only measurements showed 0 difference, and yet we clearly see a difference here. What happens if we put both players on equal ground by having them operate in WASAPI non-exclusive mode. Ie: through the windows audio mixer? So, I did just that, again measuring the output from the DAC in each case and.......nothing.....100% identical, 0 null. Therefore this shows that the problem lies within Tidal's implementation of Exclusive mode. And SOMETHING about it is bad and causing audio to be altered in an undesirable way. And also shows that when not using ASIO/WASAPI exclusive mode for lossless files, the player you use does not matter, as the windows audio mixer is handling all outputs and the result will be the same. Yeah its different, but is it wrong? Whats to say that Tidal is wrong? Surely It could be that Tidal is "correct" and Roon is wrong? To test this, I got the FLAC for the track purchased from HDtracks, and played it through Roon. I then null-tested this against Roon-Tidal streaming, Tidal native streaming, and Foobar playback of the same track. Null test results: Foobar/Roon: Small differences, but so incredibly low that it would be completely inaudible. Roon was technically more accurate Roon Flac/Roon Tidal stream: 0 null, completely Identical. This means that since the roon tidal stream was identical to the FLAC played either through Roon or almost identical to the track played through Foobar, it is indeed Tidal's native player that is "wrong". Conclusion: Something about TIDAL's "Exclusive Mode" implementation causes audio to be altered. This would explain why a lot of people accuse TIDAL of adding DSP to their music. They aren't, their player is just awful and alters the music because its bad. If you play TIDAL through Roon, it is 100% identical to an actual local FLAC file from a site such as HDtracks or 7digital. Meaning the actual "Streaming" part of Tidal is indeed just streaming lossless FLAC and is actually excellent. So what's the "Best" way to listen to music on my PC? I did a couple tests between ASIO and WASAPI exclusive mode, and for my DAC anyway, there was 0 null, meaning no difference at all. So ideally, the "Best" way to listen to music is either local FLAC files, or tidal streaming, played through Roon, and outputting to your DAC via WASAPI exclusive or ASIO. Preferably ASIO to avoid any driver or software issues with switching sample rate or bit depth. (Foobar is also excellent. Technically not as good as roon, but the differences are 100% inaudible and its free so...) ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In the next couple days I will be doing some similar experimentation in order to determine the optimal way of playing lossless music on an android DAP. As that can be a bit of a hassle given its 48khz native sample rate. (My initial suspicions are that USB Audio Player Pro will be king)

the general sound in games is it compressed. and if it was compressed what bitrate is it. thanks

Hi there, apologies if i've posted in the wrong place. I'm looking to get into a bit more high quality/fidelity lossless FLAC audio listening through headphones, i currently have some bose QC25s from when they first came out, and they're great, but i know there are much better options now. If someone maybe could recommend some headphones around the £250 ($320) price point. I'll be listening through my PC, through a Focusrite scarlett 2i2/ I'm up for open or closed back headphones not too phased by that. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

So Currently i've been recording Fortnite with obs CRF of 12. Inshort the main question is if a lower CRF would be worth it. I have a r7 1700 and a 3 tb hardrive so specs aren't that much of an issue. I really haven't noticed a difference going from 15 to 10 so my question is the gap so small that its hardly noticeable? Would premiere be able to handle clips of high file size recordings with only 16 gb of ram.

Heylo, So i have a 7th Gen iPod classic that i love (Can a piece of tech be any more gorgeous?). only thing is, it really doesn't have high quality playback. I use my headphones (Audio technica m50xs) with a DAC, so im used to good sound, but the ipod just doesn't cut it. I feel like my phone provides better audio output. Anyway, Im looking for good recommendations for a music player with quality output, good battery life and maybe somthing that could access spotify (but not needed)

I posted this on www.superuser.com as a question and answered myself, probably like a douche, but regardless, I can't seem to get the words out the way the community over there demands of me... So I will put it here because this man named Linus is the one that put the brain fart in my skull... through my crappy wired headphones and got me thinking. Link to SuperUser post if it stays up... Trigger Warning: Jargon and nitty-gritty details ahead... tread slowly, but faster than 328kbit/sec ! According to new product listings which caught my eye, the manufacture-specific codec AptX which is now owned by CSR (bought up by Qualcomm) is using a method that is consider lossless, rather near-lossless. Can I use this right out of the box, If I were to purchase a pair of bluetooth headphones that say they use AptX capable, or is there more to it than just "buy it to hear lossless sound out of your phone?" I'm asking this because of all the complaints in the community about Apple Inc. getting rid of the 3.5mm audio input. Audiophiles will claim that it's better to stay wired, shielded, isolated, and noise-canceled. Yeah sure delivery is important, but isn't that delivery made possible by the hardware components which then begs the question of if the protocols implemented on that hardware can compete with current wired technology. Information links here, and here (click on technical paper on CSR site for hardware details). Information of Bluetooth stack by Microsoft. From what I understand, under the A2DP Bluetooth profile, you are able to use certain codecs under SBC and optional codecs as outlined in the bluetooth specifications papers. It is limited to 2 channels stereo per A2DP service connection which is important to note. Now here is where it gets a bit confusing. AptX (formerly Apt-X) is also an optional supported codec under A2DP, but it has changed hands and seems like it has been rewritten many times, and now lastly owned by Qualcomm. It is now being promoted as lossless, rather as near-lossless, as outlined from wikipedia link in the question above. Just 2 years ago it was lossy with AAC as mentioned here. I am not sure whether it is hitting the bandwidth limitation of a single A2DP profile max 721kbit/s. But What can be said is that it may actually be maxed out depending on physical location of device compared to source location. The system-on-chip (SoC), CSR8645, which was developed by the AptX license holder to develop products with AptX support is capable of 2 A2DP connections of 96 kHz each, if I understand all the information correctly provided by CSR websites. This should mean that in Bluetooth 4.0, the new A2DP standard 1.3.1, and Qualcomm owning the codec could lead to implementation on all mobile devices, such as phones (as asked by so many on superuser) and wearables which use Qualcomm chips through firmware update since AptX is just an encoding method written in the programming. So is this better than standard lossy codecs which are computationally taxing on processors, well according to information provided on the specification thus far it points towards a higher quality sound, given physical position is optimal of source and sink (phone and headphones respectively), and if utilized/implemented on both ends as lossless. The other limitation is the actual file encoding which is getting improved, according to LinusTechTips (youtubeID:sPdJX_PJro0), by Apple on iTunes only. Apple claims to soon provide 24-bit 96kHz files playable through their services. If you have AptX capable headphones, assuming the lossless variant, and Apple pays Qualcomm to let them put it on the iphone only then can you get close to hearing high quality music at lossless encoding. This is better because current availability for lightning cable headphones is maxed at 48kHz. This would out perform the wired versions of current headphones for the iphone 7 (lightning cable ones), as of this writing (sept 23, 2016). But there are a lot of conditions that need to be just right in terms of hardware and software for this to work out in favor of getting that crisp higher than CD-quality lossless sound out of Bluetooth 4.0 headphones using a proprietary codec called AptX (AptX, AptX-live, AptX-lossless, AptX-low latency, etc...) Plus, as a kicker, this codec could save on battery as well. Now it has to be seen if Google will also follow suit and provide higher quality audio files, at least for offline playback, so that this supposed higher quality codec standard can be used to give me really great sound out of something wireless... Please correct me where I may have missed something. Also a nice, long, detailed, and pretty video about this would be much appreciated!

so I use Google play almost exclusively to listen to all my music but lately I've gotten curious about lossless audio formats such as .FLAC and .WAV. does google play allow you to download uncompressed versions of your songs? if not is there a legal way for me to download lossless music files from my library without having to buy them again? im expecting to receive a pair of ath-m50x headphones in the next week and considering a fiio X1 music player. otherwise i'll be listening through a OnePlus 2.

Hi, Whats the most efficient drive (cost and failure rate) WD red nas drives or HGST drives for a plex server? Cheers.

I recently got OBS Studio to record in lossless mode, however I cannot figure out how to make it record in the mp4 format, rather than the flv. Your help is greatly appreciated.

I have recently started a youtube channel and I need some advice for my videos. I am recording lossless at 60 fps with OBS for maximum quality, but what would be some good settings to render the footage at while still retaining the high quality. I am editing with Sony Movie Studio 13

Hello everyone! My name is Jonny, I am a product design student from the UK, I am in my final year and i am currently undertaking my last project. I have had a keen interest in audio since the young age of 10. I am now 21 For my final project I am designing a High quality speaker unit which utilizes wireless streaming from mobile phones and other enabled devices. I have compiled a quick 10 question survey to gather information which will help me make the right choices during the product development. It would mean the world to me if this amazing community could give 5 mins of their time to help me out! One day I hope to be working for an audio design company such as Cambridge Audio. Here is the link to the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z8SZFDN If you have any questions about the project or if I missed anything on the survey please leave comments below. Kind Regards Jonny

Hey guys, I wanna ask about some technical stuff and not-so technical stuff about audio playback on some audio devices. I'm planning to get a good music player to replace my current iPod Nano 6th Gen. Not necessarily replace it as to size and all, but as a music player in general. So here's what I'd like to know - on the iPod Classic and iPod Touch technical specifications page, I noticed in the "Audio" section, it says... Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz *that's not the earphones' frequency range but the range of the audio device itself. So does that mean it wouldn't playback some frequencies below 20Hz and above 20KHz? I mean, sure most of us probably won't hear or at least barely hear sound with those frequencies but it's more of that feeling. It's hard to explain so just an answer to that question would suffice. If I had some good headphones that could produce those frequencies then that would make it useless if a particular device would just filter it, right? And, I want to know if the new Xperia Z3 Compact can do this. Nothing about frequencies are listed here in Sony Mobile's product page.

I just installed titanfall and as already rumored, the 49 GB big game consists to about two third of uncompressed/lossless audio files. Impressive, considering the Source Engine is quite old. btw you can play it already following this guide: http://www.reddit.com/r/titanfall/comments/1zu6f0/how_to_play_titanfall_early_on_pc/

To all the audiophiles out there, How can you determine if your "lossless" FLAC is truly "lossless". Some tracks that I have gotten, such as Dark Knight Rises soundtrack, have really a great difference between the mp3 and the FLAC. It becomes very obvious when the bass kicks in, there is no distortion or sharp sounds of any kind. All is smooth and very detailed. But some songs such as typical pop or rock, or maybe even dubstep, it becomes very hard to tell because there are so many synthesized sounds going on at the same time, how do you determine if the track is truly lossless? I googled this topic and came across this Spectro app. I analyzed a 320kbps and FLAC. Some FLACs are even worse than the 320kbps in terms of the frequency cut off. Not sure if this is a legitimate way of determining true lossless though. What do you guys think?

I would like to know what everyone's favorite audio Codec is. My personal favorite is FLAC. Amazing quality. Huge file sizes, but storage is so cheap I don't really care. When I get music, I just order the CD, then rip it using foobar2000. Foobar is an awesome music player, ripper, tagger, encoder, etc. that you can add components written by any one to. Logan over at TekSyndicate has some great foobar videos. Sorry, Linus... You don't have any videos over foobar.

Hey guys, This video: I tried this with my own files (MP3 VS FLAC in this case) and I couldn't tell a difference. I got a 50% on the test with 8 trials and realized that perfectly implies I was guessing. However, I do acknowledge that my speakers/audio equipment are "run of the mill". I would like it if someone with awesome speakers, DAC/Sound Card, and an AMP would test this. Just to see. And be honest. Preferably 10 or so trials. I just couldn't tell a difference at all. Thanks, Vitalius.

Greetings, I've been upgrading a lot of things recently, and in the past few months I have focused a lot on my audio setup. I've purchased a decent pair of headphones (Sennhesier HD 280 Pros) and have started to realize how horrid some of my older music is (in both quality and musicianship). I've been buying a lot of indie music from Bandcamp recently, simply because I can get it in FLAC. However, it would be nice to have some lossless versions of signed artists... My question is: Where can I buy lossless albums? From my understanding of the music industry, the labels have to provide lossless audio to the stores, so it would be very much dependent on the label, I assume? Surely there must be a 7Digital-esque store for lossless audio... I am from Canada, so my hopes on finding something other than "questionable" means of obtaining lossless audio are pretty much nil, as just getting 320kbps MP3s is hard enough. tl:dr - I want to buy FLAC albums of mainstream music. How do I do.

Summary Will be available for free to all subscribers, including those on family and student plans. Will have 75 million lossless audio songs in its catalog by the end of the year and 20 million to start. Lossless audio starts at CD quality, which is 16 bit at 44.1 kHz, and goes up to 24 bit at 48 kHz natively on Apple devices. Tops out at 24 bit at 192 kHz. For the highest-quality “High-Resolution Lossless” experience, subscribers will need external equipment like a DAC to enjoy it. Quotes My thoughts Amazon Music HD already dropped price to $9.99 a month to compete with Apple Tidal is officially dead now. Jay Z cashed out at the right moment. I personally use Spotify and I hope Spotify also gives lossless audio to all premium subscriber at no extra cost. But knowing Spotify, they will probably respond with a complaint to the EU instead of competing and providing Spotify HiFi for free like Apple. Sources Apple announces lossless Apple Music is coming in June at no added cost - The Verge