Samsung calls it quits on 4K Blu-ray players

humored you with the notion of packet loss.

Even without packet-loss the replicated sound quality will not be as good as a direct source, its how the audio has to travel from the source to the receiver, and then the receiver to the speakers. There is different ambience and far less interference on its travel.
Which is why, its quite the dropoff in quality.
Sound quality is very delicate, right down to the OHMs, Bluetooth speakers make up for this with very low impedance designs, allowing voltage to flow more easily.
Download an MP4 from Youtube.
First, listen to it by streaming it on the App, then listen to it directly on your device.
Even with it being the same bit-rate, file type and quality, the local, direct version is noticeably better.
Same thing when I stream a movie on Netflix, my Blu-ray version's audio is ALWAYS superior.
 
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Wow...
Just........Wow!

Fidelity and sound quality are two different things and uncompressed source material has little to do with either one

I can record music with distortion and noise in a high quality uncompressed format but it still sounds like crap

The 1st CD's of Alice Cooper's "Welcome to my Nightmare" (Mid 1980's) may have been "TECHNICALLY" higher fidelity to the source material but sounded horrible when compared to the Album which was technically Lower Fidelity but had MUCH higher sound quality

AC/DC's "Giving the dog a bone" on their first CD sounds VERY bad, yet with minor Impact restoration, ambient tweaks and a bit-o EQ, a 128KBPS MP3 can sound much better than the uncompressed source material that it came from even though the MP3 is technically lower fidelity and adds noise

Maybe you should all take a break now, because........just wow!

As for Dolby surround.....
I invented a superior format before Dolby came along with an inferior clone
 
I can record music with distortion and noise in a high quality uncompressed format but it still sounds like crap
That is not the point in all the rambling. He is suggesting the Internet can not handle digital audio the way it handles everything else. Because audio is more than just a file.
 
The 1st CD's of Alice Cooper's "Welcome to my Nightmare" (Mid 1980's) may have been "TECHNICALLY" higher fidelity to the source material but sounded horrible when compared to the Album which was technically Lower Fidelity but had MUCH higher sound quality
Some of the original all digital recordings did sound like crap. One particular standout was Bruce Springsteen's, "The River". <(actually AAD in the case of a vinyl record) It was shrill, tinny, and annoying.
AC/DC's "Giving the dog a bone" on their first CD sounds VERY bad, yet with minor Impact restoration, ambient tweaks and a bit-o EQ, a 128KBPS MP3 can sound much better than the uncompressed source material that it came from even though the MP3 is technically lower fidelity and adds noise
Yeah well, people used to, and likely still do, mistake high frequency noise for high frequency music. I think the people you know more than, Dolby labs, proved that a long tine ago.

Males and females hear sound differently, and have different hearing curves. Sonically speaking, "what's sauce for the goose, isn't necessarily sauce for the gander".

Generally speaking, more open music records better than heavily instrumented and over compressed material. A lot of the direct to CD stuff from the 90's in Nashville was spectacularly well produced and recorded. OTOH, Today's Carrie Underwood has been not doing much more than screaming through her last several albums.

Modern recording technique differs little from the crap advertisers have been inflicting on us since the invention of TV. If you modulate the transmitter output more than 100%, .then your power output at the antenna will be over FCC limits. Enter the compressor, push the soft sounds up enough, and your commercial will be 5 times as loud as the program.

I only tolerate headphones, but love decent loudspeakers. The act of sound going through a certain distance in air, mitigates the transient response a bit, and provides a bit more reality

As for Dolby surround.....
I invented a superior format before Dolby came along with an inferior clone
I just don't know what to say here.
 
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captaincranky
"Yeah well, people used to, and likely still do, mistake high frequency noise for high frequency music. I think the people you know more than, Dolby labs, proved that a long tine ago."
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I'm not mistaking anything captain

I'm saying that I can make a better sounding MP3 than the original CD to "some" music (not all) with just few tweaks to the sound even with the added noise from compression

The improvements can be (and in many cases ARE) greater than the sum of the noise added!
 
captaincranky
"Yeah well, people used to, and likely still do, mistake high frequency noise for high frequency music. I think the people you know more than, Dolby labs, proved that a long tine ago."
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I'm not mistaking anything captain

I'm saying that I can make a better sounding MP3 than the original CD to "some" music (not all) with just few tweaks to the sound even with the added noise from compression

The improvements can be (and in many cases ARE) greater than the sum of the noise added!

I didn't suggest you were mistaking noise for high frequency content. Nor am I oblivious to the fact that every step in music production can add noise. Noise spec are always weighted anyway, which raises the obvious question. how noisy is the noise we're adding?

The other fact is, EO adjustments are dependent on exigent circumstances. The speakers in use, the room where the music is being played, and last but not least, both the opinion and hearing curve of the person doing said EQ'ing.

Most modern music, particularly hip-hop has a tonal spectrum which by every decade since stereo was introduced standard's, could only be considered "deviant". There's 3 notes tops in the bass, and you can hear it almost literally, miles away.

I'm most likely as sensitive to mixing errors as you are

The following track is one which I consider one of the most beautiful power metal ballads ever written. The mix is absolute sh!t and almost destroys the song. Tell me what you think.


Do me one small favor though, please don't try to tell me it's repairable without direct access to the master tapes, if even then.
 
captaincranky
"The following track is one which I consider one of the most beautiful power metal ballads ever written. The mix is absolute sh!t and almost destroys the song. Tell me what you think."
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True Dat
Total Sh!t mix

Many mixes can be improved by using the EQ match in iZotopes RX

You can generate a Flat Pink Noise profile and match any stereo track to the EQ curve of Pink Noise to any degree from 0 - 100%

Most older songs can be improved by "Approaching" a true flat response (Hello Neil Young)
Many of the newer songs done really well cannot be improved upon

and many, but not all Rolling Stones tunes are actually made worse by approaching a true flat response due to individual tracks having such wildly different parameters

So, if it were a Rolling Stone tune, Mick Jagger's response might be >

Well,..... the tracks may not be "Technicly Perfect"..... BUT,...... if we jus Mash them All Togetha, We've got a hit!

But my initial response is the same as yours
It cannot be fixed without the original tracks
 
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You are experiencing degradation from compression and passing it off as something else. .
If that were the case, we wouldn't be having this conversation, and blu-ray audio wouldn't be blatantly superior.
Anyone who streams music compared to a direct source is experiencing degradation and inferior sound quality, but it has to do with more then just compression. Even without compression, as shown, it [streamed content] would still be inferior, and is, to this day.

Blu-Ray disc was too expensive for the consumer. DVD's worked just fine.
DVD's get upscaled and still look great, some of my DVD's look at good as Bluray as the source material was less then 1080p and upscaled anyways.
 
If that were the case, we wouldn't be having this conversation, and blu-ray audio wouldn't be blatantly superior.
You are laboring under the false notion that blu-ray would loose quality when streamed uncompressed. I'm finished with your ill advised speeches. Maybe the next guy will believe you, I don't. That's because I do understand. You must have a tighter definition of the term streaming. Something more alone the lines of live broadcasting. I can see having the issues you mention in live broadcast. Where there is no time to buffer, and lost data can not be resent.
 
You are laboring under the false notion that blu-ray would loose quality when streamed uncompressed. .
Correct, it does right now.
Lol, that's what were talking about. Why, not if.

Which is why streaming is inferior even though many places like Tidal are using 24-bit/96 kHz streams. Apple Music for instance, features one of the lowest bit-rates out there: 256 kbps. Its AAC format creates a sound quality on par with 320 kbps MP3s, which is essentially equivalent to CD-level playback from a statistical standpoint, which is your point, but its still not as good...the music is still going to be better if you have the 320 kpbs music already downloaded as opposed to streaming it. And it is.

If you spring for Spotify Premium, you’ll still only have access to 320 kbps tracks, which is equivalent to MP3s. But it still pales in comparison to the emotional experience that High-Resolution Audio delivers.
High Res audio streaming is the new thing trying to make up for this deficiency by using higher sampling rates then the source material, this tech might be the first step in true unbothered HD sound replication:
High-Resolution Audio is audio that uses a higher sampling rate than in CDs and MP3s for the encoding and playback of music. Higher sampling rates mean that more samples per second were taken when the original analog sound was converted into digital
Source: Sony.com
https://www.sony.com/electronics/hi-res-audio-mp3-cd-sound-quality-comparison

Which is why I said streaming music needs to be at a higher quality to even match or compete with a local, direct source. It's not about packet loss, its about the data's travel. Sound quality is very delicate.
Btw, I've supplied sources backing up 100% of everything I have posted in this thread, NOT A SINGLE post has countered any of it, nor has anyone posted data to counter. Just throwing that out there :) .
 
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Correct, it does right now.
Lol, that's what were talking about. Why, not if.
They are not streaming uncompressed. So no you will not get the same quality with compressed streams. I'm not arguing that position, I know you loose quality. For me though the loss is negligible and I could care less. But again I'm not arguing about the quality of video/audio compression.

Its AAC format creates a sound quality on par with 320 kbps MP3s, which is essentially equivalent to CD-level playback from a statistical standpoint, which is your point
No it is not my point, because MP3 is a compression format. I'm arguing is uncompressed. Which you are challenging the quality difference between uncompressed playback of streaming vs local source. Streaming does not change the output, compression does. Your complaint is with compression not streaming.

I'm placing you on ignore. I'm giving myself a timeout from your postings.
 
They are going to be sticking with Streaming devices. The new TV with apple play contract has a lot to do with this.
 
Funny how there are lots of viewpoints here about streaming audio quality, but the one thing I have a gripe with concerning streaming audio AND video is when the stream is interrupted. It simply is not there in any "quality" for however long that interruption lasts, and that is really noticeable with "live" sports, but also other types of programming if your network connection has the inevitable interruptions, whether from congestion at any point along the tortuous path.

Play with traceroute sometime to see how many "hops" there can be for packets from the source to you - dozens are not unusual, and that means each hop is a network hardware point (or virtual - same difference in terms of how the packets are passed along) that can experience interruptions of the packet stream from sketchy cabling/connectors to software glitches to DDoS attacks to buffer bloat to just plain overload of subscribers (big games on ESPN are common examples). These are all delays that might be compensated for with retransmits, but those are not always succesful, and that can be seen with ping command output showing errors.

If the packet does not make it through the network in time, if at all, the interruption to the stream becomes evident to our eyes and ears. I hear it every so often with TuneIn radio, and see it with Youtube TV via Roku. Stuff happens. That is why I still buy discs for movies since I cannot stand theaters, and there are not enough shows I care to watch to justify trying streaming aside from live sports from August football through the Final 4 in April. Then I drop the OTT streaming service for the summer, and watch the few movies I like (LOTR at least once a year ;-} ), and with closed captioning since my wife and I are both hard of hearing, although we can hear enough music for our enjoyment, even without all the high notes beyond my range (but stereo separation/surround sound will spoil the experience with my one totally deaf ear).
 
If the packet does not make it through the network in time, if at all, the interruption to the stream becomes evident to our eyes and ears. I hear it every so often with TuneIn radio, and see it with Youtube TV via Roku. Stuff happens. That is why I still buy discs for movies since I cannot stand theaters, and there are not enough shows I care to watch to justify trying streaming aside from live sports from August football through the Final 4 in April. Then I drop the OTT streaming service for the summer, and watch the few movies I like (LOTR at least once a year ;-} ), and with closed captioning since my wife and I are both hard of hearing, although we can hear enough music for our enjoyment, even without all the high notes beyond my range (but stereo separation/surround sound will spoil the experience with my one totally deaf ear).
So I was watching Alien: Covenant via streaming (Xbox Store with an Xbox One, HDMI to Optical) and the video just stopped playing about 20 minutes left of the movie! So I powered down everything, went back to the movie in and it showed I had 22 hours left of my rental, tried to play the movie, would not work! Something on their end messed up, got my 5.99 back though.
I STILL haven't seen the last 20 mins of that movie, but I liked Prometheus too and have that on BR, I'll pick up Covenant for $5 in some blu ray bin down the road then finish it.
 
This is terrible news because you lose a lot of audio and video quality when you stream. The video quality certainly gotten better lately with the 4K streaming and upscaling, but audio will never be anywhere close.
audio will be the next thing to be upgraded in streaming services (we are already seeing this happening) so it will be fine.

I wonder if the next get consoles will still feature a blu-ray player. if they wanted to they could make a cheaper version without it.

Audio has needed to be upgraded ages ago. 3D positional audio has been a thing and yet we still get flat music, TV Shows, ect.
90% of people who use either TV speakers or a thin soundbar that can not produce descend sound wont appreciate this upgrade. People want their speakers to be small or even invisible. And they gladly give up rich and enjoyable sound for that as if it doesn't matter at all. A very small percentage achieve both, invisible speakers and good sound by mounting them in walls. But that's such a small number that it is no use mentioning those.
 
I think I get where you're coming from. Most streaming services allow a reduction in bandwidth (read: reduction in audio/video quality) where there is network interference, slowness, solar flares, you name it. This drives the quality down as the service at their end and the app you're viewing the content with both adjust to continue giving you the picture and sound but at lower quality. Which of course can look and sound like crap.

However if you are streaming locally at home from your back end server to your front end client, usually you only have the option to deliver the original content, no real-time downrezzing option. Either it gets all the data in the file or it doesn't, there's no option for lowering the quality. As long as you get a smooth picture and audio, you are getting the identical data as if you were viewing and listening to the file locally or from the disc. Otherwise you'll see or hear dropouts until that data can be delivered, which I experienced frequently before upgrading to 5GHz 802.11ac.

I reduce the bitrate on my Blu-ray copies as the movies still look and sound fine to me and yes, I tested to arrive where I'm comfortable with the quality. And that is a noticeably higher quality than typical streaming. Of course it's also slightly lower than Blu-Ray though I don't notice it.

But I listen to all music at original rez. I have a mix of mostly CD 16/44.1 and others, 16/48, 24/48 and a bit of 88.2 and 96. The bitrate and depth differences are extremely minor compared to the drastic differences in album production quality. Give a listen to Metallica's Death Magnetic on the CD, compared to rips from Guitar Hero III. Night and day on the *same album* with similar bit rate and depth.
 
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