# "Master" Bitrate with Tidal's Streaming Service: Classical



## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

I value musical performance the most, but a technically good recording is always welcome. When using Tidal's streaming service, it is unfortunately hard to search for the higher bitrate lossless files, what they call "Master" (generally 24bit 96Khz FLAC but occasionally 24/192 FLAC), since their search function is stunted, and their focus is decidedly on pop music.

What have you found as streams in higher bitrate FLACs on Tidal ("Master" in Tidal speak)?

Two that I have stumbled across are:

Mahler Symphony No. 2, Berlin Philharmonic, Ratte.

A remastering of Beethoven's 5th & 7th symphonies, VPO with Carlos Kleiber conducting - magnificent as ever.

Anybody else stumble across any?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

.......................


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Not an answer to your question, but I have used Tidal quite a bit and I ditched it. Too often the order of tracks was random, and too often the music was poorly tagged. Their classical catalogue is OK but not specially big compared with Spotify . Sound quality is good, but so is Qobuz, which I now use, supplemented by Spotify. 

A good 24/96 thing in Qobuz is the Aeolus Bach with Ewald Kooiman, I don't believe it's in Tidal.

Although I think that the high quality source is a good thing, so many other things come into play to make a truthful sound through hifi, the DAC for example, and the room, that I tend not to be too bothered about the bitrate at the source now.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

You'll have a higher success rate if you select artists who recorded on a label currently owned by Warner. For example, while Herbert Von Karajan is most closely associated with DG, he made a lot of recordings for EMI. A quick search found about 20 Master titles. More than 50 by Callas.

And bear in mind, Tidal is using MQA for these Masters. Unless you have a native MQA decoder (or Tidal has upgraded its capability since I read up) Tidal's desktop app software decoder only does 96/24.

I don't want to get into a discussion of whether MQA works.

Edit - and 27 by Rattle.


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## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Not an answer to your question, but I have used Tidal quite a bit and I ditched it. Too often the order of tracks was random, and too often the music was poorly tagged. Their classical catalogue is OK but not specially big compared with Spotify . Sound quality is good, but so is Qobuz, which I now use, supplemented by Spotify.
> 
> A good 24/96 thing in Qobuz is the Aeolus Bach with Ewald Kooiman, I don't believe it's in Tidal.
> 
> Although I think that the high quality source is a good thing, so many other things come into play to make a truthful sound through hifi, the DAC for example, and the room, that I tend not to be too bothered about the bitrate at the source now.


My solution to the horrible filing of classical music on most services is to treat the album as the basic unit and work with the tracks within, this way they are in order etc.

I have looked at Qobuz a little but have not found them much better. Maybe I should relook at them. They don't seem to have an 'app' for Windows, and I am not sure it will stream high res FLAC files from their website.


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## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

Question>
What's the point of seeking "higher bit rates", if the source recordings come from tapes or digital recordings at 16/44.1 or less??
24/96 KHz is total overkill, and often, it gives more digital artifacts due to SRCs. 
Why not sampling at 192 KHz? Or 500 GHz? I mean, when does this quest stop?
It's not like new information miraculously appears in the audio files and improves the sound...

Isn't this some sneaky scheme of labels to pry on the gullible and resell their same catalog for more?

What am I missing?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> Question>
> What's the point of seeking "higher bit rates", if the source recordings come from tapes or digital recordings at 16/44.1 or less??
> 24/96 KHz is total overkill, and often, it gives more digital artifacts due to SRCs.
> Why not sampling at 192 KHz? Or 500 GHz? I mean, when does this quest stop?
> ...


Because...
1. Digital master tapes are done at higher than 16/44.1 and then converted to the lower format for production
2. Analog master tapes have more information than can be accurately encoded at 16/44.1

That doesn't mean that the average listener can detect the differences, but they exist. More often than not, the differences show up as odd little audible artifacts that result from the down-conversion to CD.


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## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

But aren't old master tapes full of analog artifacts inherent to that media and technology? The net quality of them doesn't go much further than the equivalent of 16/44.1, even less than that. No new information can come out of them because it does not exist.

Wouldn't that be like capturing an LP digitally at 32bFP/192?.... All that does is capture the inherent media distortion with the same accuracy of 44.1 or 48 KHz, but with 4 times the wasted disk space and processing power, plus the detrimental artifacts of downsampling the masters again for mass delivery.

I just don't see what's the point of digitally capturing an old analog tape stream in sample rates that high. According to recognized mastering engineers (Bob Katz) and engineers who actually make the ADCs (Dan Lavry), those sampling rates are overkill and can have even detrimental effects in the resulting master.

I have yet to meet a person, even a professional musician, who can pass my blind listening tests. I enjoy doing them, and nobody has been able to distinguish a 256 kbps AAC file from a 24/192 or 32 bFP/192 remastered recording with higher accuracy than random luck.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> But aren't old master tapes full of analog artifacts inherent to that media and technology? The net quality of them doesn't go much further than the equivalent of 16/44.1, even less than that. No new information can come out of them because it does not exist.
> 
> Wouldn't that be like capturing an LP digitally at 32bFP/192?.... All that does is capture the inherent media distortion with the same accuracy of 44.1 or 48 KHz, but with 4 times the wasted disk space and processing power, plus the detrimental artifacts of downsampling the masters again for mass delivery.
> 
> ...


1 - About the amount of detail on analog master tapes, intuitively that makes no sense but I'll leave it to an audio engineer to give a better explanation
2 - Capturing an LP is a totally different matter than dealing with original master analog tapes. Every analog generation removed from the original has some loss of detail. LPs are at least two generations removed from the original, usually at least 3.
3 - Listening tests tells you more about the listener's ears than the information on the media.


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## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

This is a great article that explains everything much better than I could. It clears up a lot of very common digital audio misconceptions. 
I think you might enjoy it too:

*24/192 Downloads and Why They Don't Make Sense.*

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

haziz said:


> My solution to the horrible filing of classical music on most services is to treat the album as the basic unit and work with the tracks within, this way they are in order etc.
> 
> I have looked at Qobuz a little but have not found them much better. Maybe I should relook at them. They don't seem to have an 'app' for Windows, and I am not sure it will stream high res FLAC files from their website.


In Tidal, you would have things like a CD with three quartets of four movements each, and they'd stream all the first movements one after the other, then all the second movements . . . This happened several times and it's just not acceptable, especially given the cost.

Qobuz haven't ever shown up with that type of problem. Recently their search facility became much more intelligent, and that, combined with the sound, makes them my favourite right now.
Spotify has the best catalogue by far, and is the least problematic. But, as you know, the sound quality isn't as good as Qobuz or Tidal . I should say I haven't tried amazon.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> This is a great article that explains everything much better than I could. It clears up a lot of very common digital audio misconceptions.
> I think you might enjoy it too:
> 
> *24/192 Downloads and Why They Don't Make Sense.*
> ...


That article has been the subject of endless debate since it was published. I think it's interesting to see what Apple says about it in its recommendations for "Mastered or iTunes.".

The Nyquist sampling theorem states that to accurately represent a signal one must use a sampling rate double that of the highest frequency being represented. The highest frequency audible to humans is around 20kHz; therefore a sampling rate of over 40kHz is required to accurately capture the audible range of frequencies. Compact discs' 44.1kHz rate is adequate for this need.
*Even so, many experts feel that using higher resolution PCM files during production provides better-quality audio and a superior listening experience in the end product.* For this reason, 96/24 resolution is quickly becoming a standard format in the industry, and it's also common to see higher resolution files, such as 192/24.

. . .

An ideal master will have 24-bit 96kHz resolution. These files contain more detail from which our encoders can create more accurate encodes. However, any resolution above 16-bit 44.1kHz, including sample rates of 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, and 192kHz, will benefit from our encoding process.

https://images.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf

Some people disagree. You may - or you may feel that even if 96/24 is best for mastering, it is unnecessary for the consumer release. Those debates have been going on since the first hi res releases 20 years ago, and we won't end them here.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

They may exist, but can anyone really hear them? The evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Who on earth would trust what Apple says? They are consummate liars.


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## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

jegreenwood said:


> That article has been the subject of endless debate since it was published. I think it's interesting to see what Apple says about it in its recommendations for "Mastered or iTunes.".
> ...
> 
> Some people disagree. You may - or you may feel that even if 96/24 is best for mastering, it is unnecessary for the consumer release. *Those debates have been going on since the first hi res releases 20 years ago, and we won't end them here.*


Debate? I didn't know there was still "a debate" about this. 
I thought all this had been resolved long ago by demonstrating it with science and crunching the numbers without an agenda. All this _is testable and demonstrable._ 
Also, I thought this had been demonstrated via double blind listening tests... the ones that almost nobody can pass despite what they _claim_ they can hear. That's the ultimate reality test. The one no audiophile will ever want to try.

If you have a scholarly article that refutes the one I cited, I would certainly like to read it! 



eugeneonagain said:


> They may exist, but can anyone really hear them? The evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Who on earth would trust what Apple says? They are consummate liars.


Exactly. 
They're part of the industry who want to sell us even more "remasters". First, it was mp3 at 192 kbps. Then it was AAC at 256. But now that's still not enough. Now its FLAC or PCM at 24 or 32bFP/192 KHz. Next will be xxx at 500 GHz. 
_You must know that you will NEVER be finished with this and your music catalog will suck next year when we invent a new format that will make music come alive like never before... But do not test it or do not do blind tests. Just take our word for it and our expert's opinions without questioning.
_
It reminds me of the fiasco with the SACD from some time ago... hordes of "golden eared" critics made fools of themselves when it was shown that many of their "approved" recordings in their new favourite format were in fact remasters from old tapes or redigitized CDs... _But they sounded so much better and clear. The bass seemed to take on a new life, the highs came with a new clarity as if surrounding the speakers, blah, blah... _:lol:

The audio industry is FILLED with unscrupulous businessmen who want to sell you anything as many times as possible. 
Some are the same people who sell special markers, so when you paint your CDs they will sound truly spectacular; or the ones who sell "cable elevators", so your speaker cables never touch the floor and ruin the beautiful music (due to the gremlins caused by the QUANTUM energy fluctuations between cable and floor - See? They said quantum! The Q word. How sciency!). Or how about some 20 cm special stones that radically change your listening environment? 

Last I heard, the consensus was that sampling/recording at 24 bits at 60KHz was still a bit of overkill, with 24/48 being preferred, even if it's still much more than needed to accurately and *perfectly* represent sound digitally.


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## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

BTW, I do not mean to come off as too negative or impolite or stubborn about this. It's just that, in my country, we have tons of conmen who try to cheat you at every opportunity, and I'm sick and tired of it!

_Oh, before I forget, I do know of a politician... A Mexican PRINCE who needs to get his recently acquired fortune out of the country and you can make a ton of money if you help him. Let me know if any of you are interested._


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> BTW, I do not mean to come off as too negative or impolite or stubborn about this. It's just that, in my country, we have tons of conmen who try to cheat you at every opportunity, and I'm sick and tired of it!
> 
> _Oh, before I forget, I do know of a politician... A Mexican PRINCE who needs to get his recently acquired fortune out of the country and you can make a ton of money if you help him. Let me know if any of you are interested._


There are endless discussions on this matter. Check out the Steve Hoffman Forum. I left it because I got tired of people derailing threads in this manner.

Perhaps now we can return to the the OP's question.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

jegreenwood said:


> There are endless discussions on this matter. Check out the Steve Hoffman Forum. I left it because I got tired of people derailing threads in this manner.
> 
> Perhaps now we can return to the the OP's question.


I don't think this is a derailment at all as it addresses something posted in the OP; whether or not someone else feels it is not the answer they want.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> I don't think this is a derailment at all as it addresses something posted in the OP; whether or not someone else feels it is not the answer they want.


The original poster asked for help finding classical Tidal Master titles. Why turn this into the umptenth debate on hi res.

And with that (and having already offered what assistance I could to the OP) I am signing off on this thread.


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## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

Sorry I got a bit carried away.

It's just that I'm a little passionate about these issues. Sorry about the big detour. 

Please carry on with the OP.


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## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> In Tidal, you would have things like a CD with three quartets of four movements each, and they'd stream all the first movements one after the other, then all the second movements . . . This happened several times and it's just not acceptable, especially given the cost.
> 
> Qobuz haven't ever shown up with that type of problem. Recently their search facility became much more intelligent, and that, combined with the sound, makes them my favourite right now.
> Spotify has the best catalogue by far, and is the least problematic. But, as you know, the sound quality isn't as good as Qobuz or Tidal . I should say I haven't tried amazon.


I just came across my first out of sequence recording on Tidal. A Naxos recording of the Dvorak Spillville, IA quintet. The quintet tracks are split all over.


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