Fitzcaraldo215

Do you have a third party Blu-ray decrypter installed? I use RedFox AnyDVD myself. I neglected to mention that above, but JRiver has always required that.

I normally use a ripped Blu-ray file on my NAS. But, there is an optical player in my PC which I can get access to Blu-ray discs. Both are played by JRiver, and the optical player is the source of ripped files for my NAS. I realize that 4K Blu-rays are now the norm. But, I don’t think that for classical music, which is my interest, there are a whole lot of releases. We’ll get to 4K, etc. when the time is more fruitful.

That post was from 2017, but I still use JRver for SACDs, Blu-ray’s, over 90% in multichannel for classical music. I have been transition for a number of years. 3-1/2 years ago I had a stroke, which left me aphasic. I moved in a retirement home. I recently set up my Blu-ray’s on a new 96TB Synology NAS. My multichannel system was sold. There wasn’t enough room in my retirement apartment. But, I am the proud owner of a Smyth Realiser 16, which uses 2-channel headphones to simulate via “virtual” speakers in stereo, 5.1, 7.1, Dolby Atmos, DTS-X, and, not implemented yet, Auro. I am using it with just 5.1 and 7.1 sound for SACD and Blu-ray. I just love it. I think Auro is of most interest. Atmos or DTS-X, I do think, are really significant for classical music. So, understandably, I have deemphasized Blu-ray’s for the past 3 years. However, your post is coincidental with my renewed interest in Blu-ray. Holly Molly, just today, I have found that JRiver WILL DO THE Blu-ray menus beautifully, as of Release 24, now Release 28. You have made my day!! I use two things for remote. One is a Logitech wireless keyboard with touchpad, cost about $25. Two, is JRemote in a iPad. I really don’t have any need for zoom control.

Facetiously, maybe, I dismissed the sound field from consideration, for a reason. But, that plays into @barrows hands. There is an infinite number of sound fields anywhere, slightly or drastically different in the hall. And, on reproduction, you do not know which sound field was which. All of which is beside the point. But, it’s the plausible event of a symphony orchestra in question. How can we not know, with whatever sound field, how he damn thing sounds, whatever the sound field to our ears was measured.

Who cares about the original sound field? It betters the stereo paradigm by a fair bit, at least for classical music. By that I mean two things. Objectively, by having sound sources better able to reproduce the enveloping surround and a center channel to improve imaging. Subjectively, on an “absolute sound” scale, it delivers clearly more realism.

In my home, not me. I listen overwhelmingly to discretely recorded multichannel. What you say is completely valid, though, in home stereo. It was 12 years ago, and I heard my first Mch system. I heard a much, much closer approach to the idealistic “absolute sound”, considerably narrowing the gap between my live classical experience at concerts and my home system. I remain a complete devotee of multichannel.

I have in excess of 4,000 to 5,000 of discretely recorded on my NAS. It is mainly classical, and it encompasses SACD and some downloads plus BD-A and -V. I am thrilled to own it. I find it to be a substantial upgrade in sonics to my previous attempt at recording collection - previously vinyl and CD over many years, I have thousands of each. I have not bought a CD in over 10 years or certainly and not an LP. I listen avidly to almost nothing but Mch music, and it indeed is very satisfying.

I agreed with Alex mainly about shifting filter artifacts into inaudible ultrasonic territory. He and I likely differ on other details. I am not seeing the elimination of filter artifacts in typical DAC measurements in RBCD, even with oversampling. These are most visible in the time domain, not the frequency domain.. But, even if a DAC were near perfect with RBCD in this regard, the filter artifacts are likely to still be there in the signal itself from the A-D on the recording production side, unable to be fully and accurately dealt with in D-A. As for audibility, that is up to the listener. And, it is subtle, so some hear it, some don’t, even in controlled listening tests. If I sound like I am parroting Bob Stuart, much hated in this forum, there are many other audio scientists and practitioners who agree. I am also no advocate for MQA. I believe a hirez audio recording/playback chain audibly solves many of the problems MQA claims to address.

You are quite welcome. Kal and I and others are still here if you need us. Having wandered about in the audio wilderness for decades and hearing exaggerated promises about this or that stereo system or upgrade sounding “just like live music”, hirez discrete Mch was the first time I was truly happy with comparisons to my live concert experience. I have been at it for 11 years with no regrets whatsoever. No multi, multi kilobuck stereo, and I have heard quite a few, is as good as this. Mch is easily the biggest and most satisfying audio discovery of my lifetime. Good luck and happy listening.

I don’t think I am saying what you say I said. I think what I said was there may be a benefit to using higher sampling rates and bit depths, ideally as natively recorded, for hirez playback. I never did advovacate upsampling everything to hirez for all playback. I don’t think upsampling accomplishes much, if anything. I thought I was fairly clear that many, if not most, of the advantages of hirez seem to occur on the recording production side, but that to hear all of those advantages, one must play in hirez. I don’t think there is any consensus agreement on the notion that oversampling is exactly equivalent to upsampling, or that oversampling produces the same measured and perceptual results as hirez recording + playback. Theoretical arguments are not my thing. I base my views on many, many measurements of actual DACs from many sources, most of them using oversampling with RBCD vs. hirez. That, plus my own, non-scientific, anecdotal listening experience. But, measurably, there seem to be consistent, measured filter artifacts in RBCD playback, even with oversampling, that are shifted into ultrasonic inaudibility with hirez recording/playback. I don’t think there is any solid evidence that oversampling, which we have had since the ‘80’s, accomplishes the same thing.

Many audiophiles assume that all hirez has to offer is ultrasonic frequency response, which we can’t hear directly. Ergo, they conclude hirez must be BS. But, that is overly simplistic. They ignore the added bit depth, which on recording better preserves low level detail though the many stages and level adjustments of the recording production chain. Many engineers know this, and many CD releases today use 24-bit recording/mixing/mastering chains prior to final downrezzing to RBCD as a result. I don’t often agree with @sandyk, but I also agree that hirez potentially avoids many of the filter artifacts of RBCD by shifting them up to ultrasonic frequencies, both on A-D in recording and on D-A in playback. So, we have two possible reasons why hirez might offer somewhat better sound, but both subtle. Some hear them, others do not. That is totally consistent with Reiss and others’ findings, including my own. Reiss also demonstrates clearly that prior training on how to take the test, how to listen and what to listen for noticeably improved listeners’ ability to discriminate. Random, untrained listeners on average did not do as well. It is also compounded by many audiophile anecdotes on the web. Some unthinkingly listened to hirez remasters from analog or RBCD and concluded hirez makes no damned difference. I won’t argue with that under those circumstances, but just because an album says hirez on it, doesn’t mean it was truly hirez. It really must be hirez throughout the recording and playback chains to hear any potential, small differences. Differences between RBCD and hirez are further complicated today by the increasing use of hirez on recordings intended for distribution as RBCD. Anecdotally, my experience has been that those RBCD recordings are generally improved compared to prior generations if they are not victims of the loudness wars. Classical recordings are what I listen to primarily. And, listening differences on those via RBCD and hirez playback seem much smaller and more difficult to discriminate than they used to be. Just a comment about me and my listening. Wherever possible, I prefer to listen at the native recording rate, or as close to that as I can get. I do violate that with SACD, which I convert to 176k PCM in order to apply DSP features and functions. Most of the thousands of recordings on my 52TB NAS are classical from SACD in Mch. I have not bought a CD in over a decade, and I have acquired very few stereo releases compared to Mch. Mch is almost always in hirez automatically. That is not a problem for me.

For amps, I have 3 stereo amps plus a monoblock for 7.1: a Spectron Class D, 2x Parasound A23s and a Bryson Powerpac 120. I believe in short speaker wires, hence long interconnects, ergo my Exasound E28 has balanced XLR outs. I have 10-meter interconnect runs to my surround and back channels. Incidentally, I have not done an E28>E38 upgrade because I am a bit worried about those long interconnect runs, and there is no balanced E38. Also, those Parasound amps are terrific, especially for the price. And, they make bigger models in 2/3/5 channel configurations. But, there are other brands that are good, too. I have no direct experience with Rotel, but I hear nothing negative about them. If I were you, I would probably get a 3-channel amp for up front and use the Rotel for the surrounds in 5.1. The center channel is important for both music and video. It may seem subtle, because it does not define the soundstage spatial boundaries like the main fronts. But, it fills in the center of the soundstage, providing more coherence, detail and depth, and it anchors the frontal image. It also delivers much better dialog articulation on video. And, while my dream system would have 3 identical speakers across the front, as Kal suggests, I am not at all unhappy with my horizontal center speaker, a Martin Logan which matches my other ML speakers quite well, especially after Dirac calibration.

Hey, no problemo.

And, no one but Frank has heard a “well sorted” system. We are all the losers in these miracle audio breakthroughs. Only he can save us, but he just won’t tell us how it is done. Just idly speculating here, but either he does not wish to reveal his precious secrets and make a fortune from publication of them, or it is total, uncontrolled, boastful audiophile crap conjured by an egomaniac web troll childishly wanting attention. Take your pick. Anyone up for a holiday pilgrimage to rural Australia to hear these audio wonders for themselves? They just do not seem to travel well. I am too busy listening to beautiful music, myself, on my own system, provided that the recordings themselves are excellent. Oh, you would not believe the fantastic sonic wonders of what I have achieved in mysterious ways. I am not telling, but I will reveal absolutely all to you for only a few thousand bucks, much less than the trip to Australia. And, I will match my superlative, totally subjective, unconfirmed verbal descriptions with Frank any day of the week. What a deal.

Here is something that is not clear to me. Say I have tagged DSF files accessed by JRiver. I apply WavPac to one or more of them. Now, can I go back and edit their tags in JRiver as usual? Can I then store the edited tags back in the compressed media file without having manually to unpack to DSF then repack using WavPac? In other words is tagging functionally identical in JRiver with a WavPac file to a DSF file with no extra steps?