DRB

I just stumbled across this company and once you look at what they have out and what they are going to release in terms of music players, it might change your mind. VOX | Feature-Rich Music Player for Mac Go to the Vox for iPhone and take a close look at the photo of the iPhone 6. Look at the file type, bit and sample rate. It's coming out soon and it's FREE.. They'll have more information on this when they do the final release, but rest assured, the company told me that the iPhone 6/6+'s apparantly do have 24 Bit capability, it's just the s/w has been turned on. My guess is that Apple is either just letting the 3rd parties run with 24 Bit either indefinately or until Apple can get enough content at 24 bit resolution. My guess is they could be just collecting as much 24 Bit AAC but are not ready to release them due to getting the hardware in the hands of the install base and collecting enough tracks to make it worth while. But in the mean time, us early adopters with a capable iPhone will soon be able to play FLAC, 24 files we are collecting from other sources.

I think you are right. For me to be convinced, I would have to listen to a variety of material with MQA enabled and disabled on exactly the same type of file format. And it had better be a noticeable improvement that can be easily heard by even a non-audiophile. The other thing that bothers me about this is that Meridian is VERY vague on how we, the consumer, can get it. Here's what Meridian has done or is planning on doing that makes me not know everything. 1. Meridian doesn't make ADC for the professional market and the content has to be encoded, so it would make sense for them to license MQA to people like Avid/ProTools, Apple/Logic, etc. etc. etc. so the content can be encoded. If this is the case, then they should offer Apple/iTunes, Microsoft/Windows Media Player, and/or the variety of 3rd party players like PureMusic, Amarra, Audirvana, JRiver, etc. etc., so that us users that don't have a Meridian MQA enabled DAC can enjoy MQA files in MQA mode. 2. Meridian did update their inexpensive Explorer2 DAC, which is pretty affordable. 3. Meridian is supposed to update the firmware for their Prime Headphone amp/DAC, which shouldn't cost any money. 4. Meridian will OBVIOUSLY update the rest of their product line. 5. Meridian has licensed receivers to Onkyo and another receiver company. But they haven't mentioned much more than that. I just recently bought a new AMP/DAC and it does just about everything, but MQA. I would hate to have to sell it just to play MQA, so having licensing the decoder that's s/w rather than h/w would be nice. Again, the bottom line is, does it sound better than the same file format/bit rate/sample rate with MQA than without. Until that is proven, then I can't get excited about it. I'm surprised Meridian didn't do AB comparisons, Meridian has a very good reputation and I know they won't release a new product without being considerably better.

The IDA16 will play pretty much everything you are talking about. Your computer is the source and depending on what bit rate and sample rate, the IDA16 will adapt to it. If you have a Mac, for playing download files (AIFF, DSD, ALAC, AAC, MP3, etc.) you can go with any number of player software that will sound better than just using iTunes. You just use iTunes as the Library and then you run a player on top of that. The players on the market are Amarra (they have several different versions from cheap to expensive), they also have Amarra sQ for use with internet radios. PureMusic Audirvana Fidelia Decibel Bit Perfect (integrates with iTunes where it's just more in the background) Some of these will support DSD and some don't. Some support FLAC files, some you just get an app like xACT which you can convert FLAC to AIFF or whatever you want. I personally don't like the sound of Pandora, Spotify and I rarely use them on my system. You can play around with Amarra sQ which is supposed to work with various players. Most of these s/w products you can get free evaluation downloads to play around with. Some are easier to use, less easier to use, but with more functionality. You kind of have to spend some time playing around with them. I personally switch between Amarra, PureMusic and Audirvana. Some simply sound better with different music. Some have features that I like. If you like older recordings played in mono vs stereo, you might want to check out PureMusic. As far as cables? I'm an MIT Cable fan for over 20 years and that's my preference. They cost more than cables mentioned by others, but that's something I can't tell you what to buy because the listener has to be the ultimate decision maker, but I would recommend at least borrowing some demo cables (it doesn't matter if they are the least expensive or most expensive, start with the least expensive first) and see if it makes a difference in your system with the music you listen to. As far as what you think is "crazy expensive". That's kind of elusive. So, if you can actually put a $ amount, that would certainly help. Also, you can spend money on room treatment if you have room issues (most of us have that) to get rid of flutter echo, low frequency issues, reflection issues, etc. I would also recommend looking into that as well. I always think that if one has the money and ability to put room treatment, that can sometimes make the biggest improvement in sound quality.

Here's a better and faster way. Go down to a local MIT dealership, bring your favorite music or use theirs, bring some blind folds and tell them to swap out some cheap cables and MIT and don't tell you which one they are using and see if you can tell the difference. Obviously, have them first get your used to their system/room/material. Now, depending on the equipment, cables, the difference will fall into one of three areas. 1. No difference 2. subtle difference 3. Noticeable difference. Do your own comparisons. If you have even more desire, get a loaner pair of cables and have a buddy do the test, but make sure you're ears are rested and you don't damage your hearing in the process by turning up the music too loud. Listen to the recordings at no more than 85dB or lower to ensure no hearing damage during the test. Also make sure you aren't hung over or under the influence of mind altering chemicals or alcohol before or during the tests. Everyone hears differently. I've done my own tests and I can attest that the cables boxes do work. I'm in the process of conducting a low budget double blind test on some unbiased people as they are just regular people that don't have any high end audio systems. I'll post my results, but I'm comparing an older MIT design vs. 12 gauge twisted pair vs. 12 gauge zip wire. I so far have 3 non-audiophiles signed up to do the test. I figured if they can hear a difference, that should convince some people that even a non-audiophile can hear a difference. In my ABX test I'm conducting, no one will know what I'm changing and they will be blind folded during the entire process and I won't give them any test results until after everyone involved has taken the test.

It was just a knee-jerk observation that's all. I like your TAD's. Nice choice. :-) If you ever check into room treatment, the first thing to check into is low frequency absorption. It's typically the most difficult and costly and when it's done right, the rest falls into place a lot easier.

Please don't take this personally, but for someone that has an "audiophile" based internet magazine, I would think that your listening room was fully dialed in with lots of room treatment. The room accounts for about 50% of what you are hearing.

If they could put 24 Bit DACS in all computing devices that were decent and they didn't charge over $1.30 for a 24/96 file and 90% of the content that's currently on the market was remastered with 24/96 then it wouldn't be a fad. Obviously any content that was originally done at 16 Bit won't sound any better unless they come up with a way to upsample and run through a filter that actually does make it sound noticeably better, then there really isn't much they can do with the older 16 Bit other than taking out the compression they did during the mastering and then release those and that's about all they can really do with all of the 16 Bit recordings, which is the majority of the digital content already released.

Apple can talk about what they are playing around with, but when they actually release something is another story. Sometimes, they have to buy other companies or play with various technologies before they are ready to announce something. Tim Cook mentioned last year I believe it was that they weren't going to release a SmartTV because people don't replace TVs as often as they replace computers and it might not be prudent to have a SmartTV where the computer portion gets old but the user won't replace the entire product as quickly. Personally, they could do an upgrade module for the computing guts, but I don't know if they want to do that. There are also other reports coming in about other SmartTV's where people actually don't really use the computing portion of the TV and they pretty much use it as a dumb TV, so unless they can make something people would actually use, why bother in that highly competitive market. As far as the iWatch, Apple never mentioned WHEN they were going to release the product, the rumor milli is only so accurate. Usually nothing more than maybe 50% hit or miss, sometimes less, sometimes more. Now with 24 Bit resolution files, I doubt they will ever release lossless due to the file sizes and the cost of delivery. If they do, it will be AAC versions. When? Don't know. They have several things to consider. First is that they would have to upgrade as many of their products with 24 Bit DACs internally and that will drive up the mfg costs per product a fair amount if they want to have a decent quality DAC inside. Two, their mobile products would have to get internal storage increased to handle larger file sizes. Three, content. Do you have any idea how much content is REALLY available and how much they would actually sell? There's hardly any 24 Bit content, we are talking about thousands of albums worth, not hundreds of thousands of albums. To Apple, selling $1 Million worth of songs is chump change. To them, selling $10 Million worth of songs in a year is chump change. To them $100 Million worth of songs a year is chump change. How much potential business is there, REALLY? A lot less than $100 Million a year worth of sales in content. That's chump change to Apple. Remember, iTunes did around $8+ BILLION in sales in 2013. How much could they possibly sell in 24 Bit versions with the little content that's available? Not enough to worry about. I think it's a content issue myself. There simply isn't enough for them to worry about. I was hoping they would start this year. There is still a few more months left in the year of announcements since they usually make all of their announcements before November, but I don't know if they will. Maybe next year. or the year after. I just don't see that many of the 800 Million iTunes account holders bothering with 24 Bit audio for a while. Most of them simply won't pay the high prices they are charging for 24 Bit through places like HD Tracks and other stores.

It's going to take over 10 years to get EVERYONE that uses a computer/mobile device to have a 24 Bit DAC internal to their device. It's a hardware issue first. If you don't have 24 Bit DAC in your iPod, IPad, IPhone, Android phone/tablet, Windows phone/tablet, etc., then there is no reason to buy 24 Bit. It's a growing number of people that are buying external USB DACs, but it's no where near any significant percentage of the population by any stretch of the imagination. It's going to take over 10 years to get 24 Bit internal DACs into the hands of 90% of the population that buys audio content. It'll take Apple about 5 years from the date they first start to spit out 24 Bit internal DACs. when that is I haven't a clue, I was hoping they would have at least started doing that, but it may be later this year or the end of next year. I know it's going to happen, it's just a matter of when. then it's going to take them about 3 years to finish their side of the transition and then another 2 to 3 years until THIER user base has 24Bit internal DACs. For Windows, since there are so many players at various price points, I could easily see the Windows install base taking more than twice as long, and the same thing for Android. They simply can't put a 24 Bit internal DAC in a smartphone that sells for $100 to $300 and expect to make any money on the hardware. Pono isn't making any profit from selling their unit, they are just trying to give the product away so people sign up and buy content through their service, but I expect Pono will go out of business. They only got less than 20,000 users signed up in the first 30 days and that is NOT going to be enough people. Their run rate for attacking new users isn't going up, it's going down. I predict they'll be out of business within around 2 years.

The Pono got less than 20,000 people to sign up in a month. Apple has over 800,000,000 iTunes account holders. Do the math. Pono is only going to take some of the Astell & Kern marketshare, which is also VERY small in comparison. The number of people downloading 24 Bit files isn't that many. It's definitely about 1% of the market. Apple is probably the most likely candidate to actually get 24 Bit actually sold to the mass market, but there are two distinct reasons why it will be slow to adopt. 1. Availability of content. 2. Price. The masses barely pay $.99 or $1.29 a song now and it's less likely they'll pay twice that amount.

When did Apple start selling Lossless downloads in the first place? AAC is lossy. I would be interested in seeing how their AAC 24 Bit files will sound in comparison to AIFF/FLAC/ALAC 24 Bit files that everyone else sells. I think it's partly amassing a large enough chest of 24 Bit files. Having a couple of thousand albums on iTunes at 24 Bit is SMALL, that won't put any major dent in iTunes, maybe they are waiting to have a couple of HUNDRED thousand albums before they flip the switch. The number of albums on HD Tracks is Boutique level, that's not going to get Apple's upper management excited. Having 1 Million 24 Bit files ready to download is a little more enticing. And how many 24 Bit files are there on HD Tracks? A thousand? Two Thousand? Ten Thousands? That's chump change. Plus, with Apple's model, they like selling individual songs whereas HDTracks, etc. sells mostly complete albums. Which makes more sense from a revenue perspective. Plus, right now, they have to constantly discount 24 Bit files to at least 10% to 15% off, so that makes me think they are charging too much.

1. That's a valid point of high res streaming impacting the Cellular carriers. I don't know if high res will only be restricted to downloading through WiFi/traditional ISP and not be allowed through cellular data. 2. That's got nothing to do with it. They need revenue any way they can get it and releasing 24 Bit for ITunes would help bring more revenue from the masses, but it's a little more complicated than that. It's called how fast can they pump out remastered content? They are only releasing a small handful of stuff for everyone else and that's not that much. So, from Apple's perspective, I would think that they would want a MUCH higher number of remastered content happening a LOT faster than it is. 3. Beats has nothing to do with 24 Bit on their streaming service. that's just for people that want to pay for basically a radio service and that'll just be restricted to 16 Bit for a long time. It's not a big deal to change the s/w and release 24 Bit when they get to that point, but I don't think Beats is the reason why Apple hasn't released 24 Bit file downloads. 4. Probably collecting it until it reaches a big enough level so when they do release it, they already have a bunch of content to actually sell. Nothing worse than announcing something and there's nothing to sell. 5. Apple is a specs company when they CAN be a specs company. I think for some things they are ahead of the curve and some things not. They did release 24 Bit ARM tablets/smartphones a long time before anyone else. But I think the 24 Bit situation is much more complex. HTC has it because to them, it's just releasing h/w, HTC doesn't have a music service unless they were planning on Beats being that Music service and things just fell apart as a result. HTC is grasping for sales so they kind of have to add functionality to set them apart, so they decided to release 24 Bit h/w now instead of a 64 Bit Processor first. Apple decided to release a 64 Bit processor before a 24 Bit internal DAC. HTC doesn't have a music download site to content with. But I don't see HTC spending a lot of money promoting this fact. 6. I don't think that's as big of a part of it. It's just not viewed AS important right now. When Apple does flip the switch, depending on how great their lossy version sounds compared to lossless, Apple may capture the majority of high res sales and force a lot of these others to right out of business. That's what some might view this as. 7. Making iTunes automatically switch is a trivial problem, since Apple doesn't ship anything with 24 Bit internal DACs, it's not high up on the priority list to change. The 3rd party crowd like BitPerfect, Amarra, PureMusic, Audirvana, and JRiver do this and people that listen to 24 Bit will buy these s/w apps for automatically switching as one of the many reasons. I think it's not a reason why they aren't bringing out 24 Bit files. I think it's more of they aren't fixing it until they release h/w with 24 Bit internal DACs is more like it. Conclusion. I think it's safer to say they are going to flip the switch, but it may/may not be this year. If they do flip the switch, it'll probably be Sept/Oct this year at the soonest, but it may be held off until next year.

I think it's a matter of when they plan on releasing products with built-in 24 Bit DACs. One thing I saw months ago was that Daniel Hertz was going to start selling his M8 and M9 products through Apple Stores. This is a $7,000 system and that I heard that his system won't be shipping until Oct time frame. I don't if that's a coincidence or not, but it would make sense that it was. Now, typically Apple has refreshed the iPod lineup in Sept/Oct, but last year they didn't do this. Maybe Apple is planning on this type of refresh. I would personally think that Apple, MIGHT (I'm not saying they WILL because I don't know), but it's possible that if they are going to turn on 24 Bit files this year, it'll be done in Sept./Oct and that there should be at least one hardware announcement of a music listening device that has a 24 Bit DAC internally and that would have to be an iPod (Touch) at minimum. I just thought that expecting it at WWDC is the wrong time frame. Yeah, it would be nice, but I think when they decide to release it, it'll be more of a Sept/Oct thing just before Christmas. One thing is Apple's not reliant on 24Bit file sales rescuing Apple iTunes. It's more of a "guess what we have?" type product rather than a "The biggest revolution since the iPod type of product". For it to make sense for Apple to go 24 Bit, they would have to have hardware that plays 24 Bit files right out of the gate.

I haven't found many speakers to play well in an untreated room. I think it's always important to figure out what room problems one has and then find the right products to address the issues. I just got through listening to a treated room where the person was trying to prove how much room acoustics play in the listening experience. It was an eye opening experience for me. If I had the financial resources to buy an expensive system, my first priority would getting the room to sound right. If you get the room to sound right, especially with low frequencies, any pair of speakers will perform much better and you'll end up not having to turn up the speakers louder to hear the bass, and you'll really enjoy your money's worth of electronics/speakers. you don't necessarily have to spend the money for a custom room or tons of room treatment, but certainly low frequency absorption below 100Hz is the most expensive and problematic issue we have with regards to small rooms. Diffusion and midrange/high frequency absorption is easy for the side, rear and front walls. But really focus on the low frequencies below 100Hz, you'd be amazed at how much deep bass with definition you aren't hearing. I kind of freaked out at this product demonstration. I heard a used mid fi pair of speakers connected to lower end used electronics produce sound that was simply amazing. But the person who conducted the demo said that his clients get HUGE improvements on their high end equipment that far exceeds any single product upgrade. That's how impactful proper room treatment is to a system. I haven't heard the Magico products, but I've heard only great things about the product line. But they are not inexpensive. I hope to at least hear their listening room if they allow visitors at their factory.

Do you have any time to evaluate and add the Bel Canto offerings. They have three on the market. I would be very interested to see your evaluation. Great job on your post. Very useful.