16 bit vs 24 bit

Eerrr... the one that sounds best to your ears....

It is very difficult to hear the differences

Why do you say you can only choose one format,  why can't you stream in whatever format the material is stored in.   ???   Or am I missing something about JRiver.        What NAS do you have ???  

I didn’t realise there are ways of downgrading 24 bits to 16 bits by a user that easily...

Mike-B posted:

Why do you say you can only choose one format,  why can't you stream in whatever format the material is stored in.   ???   Or am I missing something about JRiver.        What NAS do you have ???  

In the settings you can choose only one format i don't have a nas  I'm streaming from my pc

meni48 posted:

Mike-B posted:

Why do you say you can only choose one format,  why can't you stream in whatever format the material is stored in.   ???   Or am I missing something about JRiver.        What NAS do you have ???  

In the settings you can choose only one format i don't have a nas  I'm streaming from my pc

 

Not having a NAS & a pukka network with your fabulous NDS & 500 series system is like having a top end Ferrari with no wheels.   It really is unbelievable to me.        That aside,  if you can only choose one setting,  then I would without hesitation junk the JRiver & install real DLNA/UPnP software such as Asset.   Once you have it,    it can be transferred to a NAS  when you get one.   

jRiver allows you to play bit perfect so I am not sure where you are going wrong. 

In dsp studio have output set to none and in output options select what ever device is your output device give it exclusive control and in the options have bitdepth set to auto. This should all be default anyhow.

Mike-B posted:

meni48 posted:

Mike-B posted:

Why do you say you can only choose one format,  why can't you stream in whatever format the material is stored in.   ???   Or am I missing something about JRiver.        What NAS do you have ???  

In the settings you can choose only one format i don't have a nas  I'm streaming from my pc

 

Not having a NAS & a pukka network with your fabulous NDS & 500 series system is like having a top end Ferrari with no wheels.   It really is unbelievable to me.        That aside,  if you can only choose one setting,  then I would without hesitation junk the JRiver & install real DLNA/UPnP software such as Asset.   Once you I have it,    it can be transferred to a NAS  when you get one.   

 I used Asset before but Jriver sound better to me,I asked before about having a nas and I got a answer that a pc is as the same as a nas,and now you surprise me 

A NAS is indeed just a computer, nothing more, nothing less.  I have a PC in the loft running OPenMediaVault its a great 'NAS' but its just a computer.

garyi posted:

jRiver allows you to play bit perfect so I am not sure where you are going wrong. 

 

In dsp studio have output set to none and in output options select what ever device is your output device give it exclusive control and in the options have bitdepth set to auto. This should all be default anyhow.

Okey it allows me to play it bit perfect,but Most of my collections files are flac and I transcoded to wav and now I can use only.one choice 16 bit or 24

meni48 posted:

 I used Asset before but Jriver sound better to me,I asked before about having a nas and I got a answer that a pc is as the same as a nas,and now you surprise me 

Yes a PC is the same in theory, so are Fiat Cinquecento wheels on your Ferrari.    In theory all such software should sound the same so I not sure why JRiver sounds different,  unless its because you are up/down sampling & transcoding & some of this is affecting your PC performance or you are streaming over wireless (another no-no)

Having a PC running to play the NDS is equally surprising to me,   I can understand it for playing an office/study type of system,  but NDS/500.  Wow !!!     How are you controlling the NDS ???    How is the PC connecting to the NDS.  ???

Mike-B posted:

meni48 posted:

 I used Asset before but Jriver sound better to me,I asked before about having a nas and I got a answer that a pc is as the same as a nas,and now you surprise me 

Yes a PC is the same in theory, so are Fiat Cinquecento wheels on your Ferrari.    In theory all such software should sound the same so I not sure why JRiver sounds different,  unless its affecting your PC performance or you are streaming over wireless (another no-no)

Having a PC running to play the NDS is equally surprising to me,   I can understand it for playing an office/study type of system,  but NDS/500.  Wow !!!     How are you controlling the NDS ???    How is the PC connecting to the NDS.  ???

It’s wired pc into a netgear switch and nds also into switch with cat6  regular cables and my router also wired to the switch,nothing wireless, 

My friend purchased a NAS with the same system as mine disappointed and returned back to PC

Ok - so what is the REAL problem then? Or to put it differently what is the REAL question behind the question? 

Mike-B posted:

Why do you say you can only choose one format,  why can't you stream in whatever format the material is stored in.   ???   Or am I missing something about JRiver.        What NAS do you have ???  

the reason my most  files are flac so i transcoded all of them to wav, at this point i can only choose between 16 or 24 pcm

Answering your original question, if you have to choose then choose 24 bit.

best

David

meni48 posted:

My friend purchased a NAS with the same system as mine disappointed and returned back to PC

I for sure would not use that as a benchmark,  it raises questions as to what was going wrong to make the NAS sound 'disappointing'   but begs the big question of why the vast majority of the audio streaming world use NAS or some other specialist server & are so satisfied.    Before I moved to exclusively laptop I used my old PC to download & edit prior to uploading to NAS & did use it to listen on odd occasions.  I really could not hear any difference between them,  the downside was it was just not convenient.   The NAS, for me,  just does it so much better.

meni48 posted:

My friend purchased a NAS with the same system as mine disappointed and returned back to PC

Hi, don’t be surprised by this... right from the early days of Naim streamers  I found SQ differences between different ‘media servers’ with my Naim streamers... it was subtle but there, kind of almost like WAV and FLAC play back..

Last year I decided to investigate why... what I found was that unsprisingly the PCM payload data between media servers was identical, however when examining down at the Ethernet network level, I found the inter frame timing consistency varied between different media servers, OS and platforms (NAS, Unitiserve, PC, MAC, RPi) even when running the same software like Asset..  and such changes subtly adjusted the sound... such that some media server setups were preferable. 

So if you are hearing such changes it might be this effect you are noticing.

BTW I have found decoupling the DAC from the streamer very much diminishes this effect, as well as largely diminishing the differences between FLAC and WAV.

David Hendon posted:

Answering your original question, if you have to choose then choose 24 bit.

best

David

That’s what I did

garyi posted:

jRiver allows you to play bit perfect so I am not sure where you are going wrong. 

 

In dsp studio have output set to none and in output options select what ever device is your output device give it exclusive control and in the options have bitdepth set to auto. This should all be default anyhow.

I  didn’t do it yet but I think it will cancel my transcoding file back to flac or ape and I prefer to listen in wav format,I did have this choice in the beginning,but Anyway thank you  I will look later to your suggestion  

meni48 posted:

My friend purchased a NAS with the same system as mine disappointed and returned back to PC

the majority of members having ndx or nds use nas, unitserve, uniticore or melco.  You should investigate that because the pc as nas/ server is normally the worst sound quality solution.

Your wonderful system deserves a better nas/server than a pc.  Try a nas with adding a linear ps on it, less than 1k investment, and you should hear a real improvement.

I use for myself a unitserve / with optional linear ps for my nds and have compared the sound when streaming from my pc....the former is a good step better.

A minority use pc as nas with high end streamers but their pc are tweaked , dedicated only to music and use ssd, linear ps....etc

I have been doing a little bit of reading about high res lately and as far as I decipher anything recorded pre 1982 that claims to be high res has just been passed through an ADC and then remastered to sound better through a digital source and so to my mind altered for the worse.

 Anything recorded after the early 80's up until a couple of years ago is at best 96k but there is a huge debate that the human ear can hear nothing above 44k anyway so what you are actually hearing is diffrences in mastering.

I'm now more confused than I ever was but believe to better my LP12 TT with a digital source will cost more money than I have to spend.

I find that using LMS from my PC is quicker than my 10 year old ReadyNAS duo, or my Simpleaudio roomplayers, however, I find it hard to hear any audible differences. However, I can hear the difference with HD audio, if you hear no difference with 16/44 and 24/192 then just use 16/44. The Simpleaudio roomplayers have being upgraded with LMS, they are now a wonderful device! https://www.facebook.com/SAroomplayer/?ref=bookmarks 

What ever i tried to do i still see my files 2116 bitrate  instead of 1411 and my hd files are correct because on river settings i marked it pcm 24 bit, on the other hand if i changed it to pcm 16bit i will get correct 16 bit 1411 but i will loose the hd size bitrate, so is there any option to have both of them without canceling transcoding because most of my files are not wav, right now  i`m frustrated  not solving this issue, any help  guys.

meni48 posted:

It is very difficult to hear the differences

 

Its quite easy to read your phrase.