Upsampling TIDAL or other streaming service...possible?

[eco_bach]

Can anyone tell me if it s possible to somehow upsample the streams from TIDAL or Spotify?

 

I purchased Audrivana which has a powerful upsampling filter, bypassing Core audio. Just wondering if there was some way to feed it the stream from a streaming service like Tidal or Spotify

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Can anyone tell me if it s possible to somehow upsample the streams from TIDAL or Spotify?

 

I purchased Audrivana which has a powerful upsampling filter, bypassing Core audio. Just wondering if there was some way to feed it the stream from a streaming service like Tidal or Spotify

 

Not with Audirvana, because it doesn't support Internet streams. You can do this with J River Media Center on Windows using its live playback or loop through technology.

 

You may also be able to achieve it with Pure Music on Mac using its software play through feature.

[Bugsrus]

check out Amarra Sq 2 . Works well with Qobuz, Spotify and Rdio. I think there have been some hiccups with Tidal but they may be better in SQ2. There are a couple of threads on SQ running.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

check out Amarra Sq 2 . Works well with Qobuz, Spotify and Rdio. I think there have been some hiccups with Tidal but they may be better in SQ2. There are a couple of threads on SQ running.

 

I didn't think of Amarra Sq 2. I must give it a try. Does it up-sample though? I believe this is a feature the original poster was asking for.

 

Thanks

[ckpiv]

I didn't think of Amarra Sq 2. I must give it a try. Does it up-sample though? I believe this is a feature the original poster was asking for.

 

Thanks

 

yes you can upsample with Amarra sQ

[qyilulos]

I think there have been some hiccups with Tidal but they may be better in SQ2. There are a couple of threads on SQ running.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

yes you can upsample with Amarra sQ

 

Good!

[zoom25]

I think the up sampling with Amarra SQ 2 somewhat kills the dynamic. I am streaming with Spotify 320. I like the raw sound of 44.1, especially on headphones. Upsampling to 192 makes the sound a bit claustrophobic. It's kind of uneasy with headphones. I'll try it with monitors this weekend.

[audiventory]

I think the up sampling with Amarra SQ 2 somewhat kills the dynamic. I am streaming with Spotify 320. I like the raw sound of 44.1, especially on headphones. Upsampling to 192 makes the sound a bit claustrophobic. It's kind of uneasy with headphones. I'll try it with monitors this weekend.

 

 

Upsampling can decrease dynamic to 1 dB and less due appear new "virtual" samples with levels above levels of samples of source stream. It's upper limit.

 

Upsampling add artefacts/aliases. It's lower limit. It is more significant.

 

But audible result of upsampling not only depend on these factors.

Here we must consider joint system:

"upsampler+other DSP+DAC".

 

May by upsampled frequency is not better for certain DAC? Or other DSP impact to sound?

May be need turn off any DSP except upsampler and try upsample to other frequency?

[Miska]

All modern DAC chips run 8x upsampling for 44.1/48k content. If you upsample in software by 4x, you bypass the first two digital filter iterations of the DAC.

 

Rest is about finding an upsampling algorithm that sounds best.

 

Regarding inter-sample overs, the same applies also to digital filters inside DAC chips. Wolfson for example uses -2 dBFS digital volume to avoid inter-sample overs. Some others just clip the overs. I recommend using -3 dBFS volume setting in HQPlayer, but there's also algorithm to avoid clipping in any case and indicator to see how many times it has been triggered.

 

Upsampling for example to 192k can sometimes lead to overall better results for other reasons than just higher rate. For example with Marantz NA8005, jitter at 44.1/88.2/176.4k rates is 500 ps, but less than 15 ps at 48/96/192k rates...

[Miska]

Upsampling add artefacts/aliases. It's lower limit. It is more significant.

 

NOT upsampling is especially bad, because then there's huge amount of images. This was one of the primary reasons why I started developing my own player with upsampling, because DAC chips have poor digital filters. There are many that have way less than 100 dB stop-band attenuation. And even Sabre has just 120 dB (and thus they quote only -120 dB THD+N). I prefer using at least 192 dB (1/2^³²) myself.

 

Another thing is that many DACs do only 8x with digital filters and then rest 16x using sample-and-hold. This leads to another problem of strong image frequencies around multiples of 352.8/384 kHz. This in turn tends to intermodulate back to audible band. Solution to work around this problem is to upsample to DSD in order to get rid of those correlated images. And thus bypass practically all digital processing of the DAC chip and leave it to do just digital to analog conversion, but no DSP.

[zoom25]

 

I found some information regarding my Dangerous Music Source. It uses a Burr Brown PCM1789PW and does go through the upsampling method described previously.

 

I have tried upsampling in both hardware (Bryston BDA-2) and software (Audirvana Plus + Amarra SQ). With Bryston when I went from 44.1 to 192, the sound got smoothed over. It lost the kick and dynamics. Finding same results with my Dangerous Source and digital upsampling.

[Jimmypowder]

I think the up sampling with Amarra SQ 2 somewhat kills the dynamic. I am streaming with Spotify 320. I like the raw sound of 44.1, especially on headphones. Upsampling to 192 makes the sound a bit claustrophobic. It's kind of uneasy with headphones. I'll try it with monitors this weekend.

 

Agree

[jhwalker]

Agree

 

Same here - I have tried various ways of upsampling over time (e.g., different filters, to higher and higher rates, PCM > DSD, etc.), but I'm finding myself more and more settling on staying with the original format, at the original rate. Just sounds more "right" to me, with my equipment.

[miguelito]

NOT upsampling is especially bad, because then there's huge amount of images. This was one of the primary reasons why I started developing my own player with upsampling, because DAC chips have poor digital filters. There are many that have way less than 100 dB stop-band attenuation. And even Sabre has just 120 dB (and thus they quote only -120 dB THD+N). I prefer using at least 192 dB (1/2^³²) myself.

 

Another thing is that many DACs do only 8x with digital filters and then rest 16x using sample-and-hold. This leads to another problem of strong image frequencies around multiples of 352.8/384 kHz. This in turn tends to intermodulate back to audible band. Solution to work around this problem is to upsample to DSD in order to get rid of those correlated images. And thus bypass practically all digital processing of the DAC chip and leave it to do just digital to analog conversion, but no DSP.

Miska: Is it possible to set up HQP on mac to take the TIDAL stream and upsample to DSD before going to the DAC?

[marantzfan]

Very curious to know the answer to this as well.

[Miska]

Miska: Is it possible to set up HQP on mac to take the TIDAL stream and upsample to DSD before going to the DAC?

 

HQPlayer can play FLAC streams over HTTP, either in FLAC or Ogg container (and also all the other content formats). If Tidal client can launch external player for such streams, or for locally cached files, then possibly yes.

[miguelito]

HQPlayer can play FLAC streams over HTTP, either in FLAC or Ogg container (and also all the other content formats). If Tidal client can launch external player for such streams, or for locally cached files, then possibly yes.

How do you make HQPlayer play a FLAC stream? And related to this: is there a mac app that would allow me to create such a stream? I am thinking like using Soundflower or similar.

[Miska]

How do you make HQPlayer play a FLAC stream?

 

You can either specify a URL as command line argument, or use a playlist containing one or more URLs. Also drop-events containing URLs are accepted.

 

And related to this: is there a mac app that would allow me to create such a stream? I am thinking like using Soundflower or similar.

 

Something like Nicecast seems to be closest, if it can produce for example FLAC or AIFF stream.

 

 

Commonly used test stream can be found here: http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac

 

 

P.S. I have also tested that streaming DSDIFF and DSF works...

[miguelito]

You can either specify a URL as command line argument, or use a playlist containing one or more URLs. Also drop-events containing URLs are accepted.

 

 

 

Something like Nicecast seems to be closest, if it can produce for example FLAC or AIFF stream.

 

 

Commonly used test stream can be found here: http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac

 

 

P.S. I have also tested that streaming DSDIFF and DSF works...

Miska,

 

It would be nice if HQP could take an audio input device as the input stream (for example, line in, or a microphone or similar). If it could do that, I could use Soundflower to route TIDAL to HQP.

 

I just read about Nicecast and it only seems to be able to stream in mp3 format. I wonder if Audiohijack could output a FLAC stream.

[Cebolla]

Something like Nicecast seems to be closest, if it can produce for example FLAC or AIFF stream.

 

 

Commonly used test stream can be found here: http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac

Miska,

 

Isn't the D-Dur FLAC stream in an Ogg container, ie Ogg FLAC, rather than pure FLAC? See tech report:

Technical report - Broadcasting and Transmitting Audio Signals Using the Lossless FLAC Compression Encoding

 

So, I imagine not many hardware players out there can support an Ogg FLAC stream, without help in decoding. For example FFmpeg can be used in the MinimServer UPnP media server's transcoder to decode to a WAV or an L16 stream, more acceptable to most UPnP/DLNA supporting streamers. Also, Foobar2000 & VLC software players can play Ogg FLAC streams & files.

 

 

There are also a few other internet radio stations that stream in Ogg FLAC, eg from rock music radio provider Absolute Radio:

Absolute Radio

http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/absoluteradio.co.uk/arflac.ogg

 

Absolute Radio Classic Rock

http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/absoluteradio.co.uk/acflac.ogg

 

Absolute Radio 70's

http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/absoluteradio.co.uk/a7flac.ogg

 

Absolute Radio 80's

http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/absoluteradio.co.uk/a8flac.ogg

 

Absolute Radio 90's

http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/absoluteradio.co.uk/a9flac.ogg

 

Absolute Radio 00's

http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/absoluteradio.co.uk/a0flac.ogg

 

Unfortunately, these streams, unlike the excellent classical radio D-Dur one, appear to be heavily dynamically compressed in their source material, so I don't see the point of the hires carrier!

 

John

[Miska]

Isn't the D-Dur FLAC stream in an Ogg container, ie Ogg FLAC, rather than pure FLAC? See tech report:

Technical report - Broadcasting and Transmitting Audio Signals Using the Lossless FLAC Compression Encoding

 

Could be, I don't remember anymore, but both options are supported by HQPlayer.

 

There are also a few other internet radio stations that stream in Ogg FLAC, eg from rock music radio provider Absolute Radio:

 

Good to know, seems to work fine too...

 

 

Unfortunately, these streams, unlike the excellent classical radio D-Dur one, appear to be heavily dynamically compressed in their source material, so I don't see the point of the hires carrier!

 

That's common problem with traditional FM radio stations that also broadcast over internet as they often seem to capture the audio at the point where it goes to the transmitter, so after their normal frequency-band compression (they call these settings "sound" of their radio station and consider it a secret sauce).