Podcast Ep 79: Digital audio formats decoded

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I say we just go and see what happens. I agree. That's right. We're not rolling tape so we can make it sound perfect later. Yeah, this is recorded digitally. You know anything about that?

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I mean, it's just like magic happens somewhere and it's like, yeah, there. I don't know. That's how digital is. Letters are involved. I don't want to get technical. Spoiler alert, guys.

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(Music)

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Hello and welcome to Crutchfield the podcast. I'm your host, JR, here in studio with my co-host, Huffy. Howdy. And we have a special guest in the room today, Zach, from our video team. How are you today, buddy? Very well, sir. Thank you for having me. In today's episode, we are going to decode digital audio formats. Are you trying to make sense of all the digital music on your computer? Do you have a mix of WAV, MP3, WMA, AIFF, or FLAC files? Are you wondering what the difference is? Why do some sound better than others? What about all that old music you downloaded off of LimeWire back in your younger days? Or maybe you're looking to get started building your own digital music collection from scratch and you're wondering what file format is going to be the best for sound and maximize space on your hard drive. Also, I know a lot of people are looking to untether themselves from streaming services. And maybe you want your own music collection instead of, you know, renting it for the rest of your life. If any of that sounds like you, then this episode is for you. We're going to break it all down. And to help us do that, we have brought in someone that spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about digital audio file formats, Zach, from our video team. Thanks again for being here, buddy. No problem, buddy. Happy to be here. It's not your first time on the podcast, though, is it? Repeat. It's my second time. The other time was going through the YouTube comments that clown on us after our videos come out. That's right. And always a hilarious and somewhat humiliating thing, but humbling. Humble. Humbling is a good way. So, Zach, you were in a video recently for the JBL Bandbox Solo. It's a portable practice amp with STEM AI built in. Yep. Got that AI in it. Anytime you mention AI, it's going to have people are going to comment and say something about it, whether it's a pro or a con either way. Yeah. But one of the comments caught my eye specifically Pedro Sousa 511 two months ago was looking at this video and said this guy speaking looks like AI.

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You know, we get that a lot now, comment wise or, you know, fairly often. And I think that people right now are just confused as to what's real and what isn't. Yeah. It's kind of a scary point in human history to be in if you think about that.

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So I take that with a grain of salt. Thank you, Pedro Sousa 511. Maybe just he thinks you're too perfect. Like you're rendered too well. Yeah. Did you not hide your six fingered hand in that video? That's the worst part. Like try being a six fingered guy in this day and age, you know, nobody believes anything anymore. All right. Let's get into digital audio format. Unless you have a comment for me, did you come prepared with one for me? I assume not.

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You know, why would you assume that? Because I haven't been in a lot of videos lately. He hasn't been in a lot of videos and between all of us and you podcast listeners, most of the comments we get about Jr have to do with his very commanding voice and delivery. We get a lot of comments there. The rest of us get more of the AI comments for whatever reason. So I think we delete this whole part. This does not need to make it to the final cut of this podcast. Parts of it will make it in that part where he was complimented. Yeah, I know. That's what happens when you do the editing.

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For all intents and purposes, my podcast. There we go. Okay, we do need to get into digital audio formats as promised at the top of the show. Yes. And I think we should just list them all first and then talk about maybe like the pros and the cons and the use cases of the alphabet soup of audio formats. How does that sound to you guys? Delicious. That's good. There are a lot more of them than you might think. So I think that's a good call. So first Zach, is my list complete for the ones that we should probably discuss today? We're first going to discuss PCM, which is technically not a file format, but it's part of all of these. Then we've got FLAC, ALAC, WAVE, MP3, AIFF, DSD, and MQA. And our plan here is to explain all of those letters and the numbers that you see next to those letters for all of your digital audio file formats. For those of you that care.

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Did you plan to talk about any other format, Zach, or is that the list? That's pretty much the list. And I'm sure there's people out there that know of some of the other ones that are out there. Maybe the only one I'd add to that list is the AUG format, the AUG-Vorbis file, which is a very old digital file that we probably encountered on Kazaa and LimeWire back in the day. Oh, yeah. But it's still- I was never a LimeWire guy. Were you a LimeWire guy? I was a Kazaa man, but I was, you know, Blackbeard back then, like everybody else. Yeah. But I remember from your prior episode, Huffy was talking about how we didn't know back in the day what we were downloading as far as how good the file was, right? Like he was talking about going for the bigger file as an instinct and- Bigger number better. Hey, spoiler alert for everything I'm contributing to this episode, but go ahead. But it's interesting because the other way of looking at that at the time was I can fit more of them onto a CD or a, or whatever, if I get the small file. So who knows what kind of crunched up stuff we're- Yeah, this is before streaming. All of a sudden we had access to all the music, right? Because everybody was uploading it and then everybody was downloading it, but nobody thought at that time, what is the quality at which I'm downloading these audio files? No, we didn't think about it at all. It was just a song as a song and it's either it's on a record or it's on a CD or it's on a tape or a mini disc, my preferred format back then. But yeah, we didn't really think about that much. And I think people nowadays probably do a little bit more, at least you hear about it more. Yeah.

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And for the most part back then it was MP3s, like that took over. That was the file format of the day. Ag Vorbis was that. I don't, I never dealt with anything Ag Vorbis on my computer. Did you? No, I just remember seeing Ag Vorbis because it's a very weird name. It's fun to say. It is fun to say. Especially when you have a nice, amazing, deep radio voice that sounds great. Yesterday we'll be talking about Ag Vorbis.

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Disgusting.

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Or not talking about Ag Vorbis. I just wanted to say Ag Vorbis one more time. I remember the files being there and it being a choice, but I always went for the MP3 because that's what I knew and I knew that it would work. And however, I was playing that at the time, probably some of the early MP3 players really. Yeah. All right. So we're going to get into that MP3 and all these other file formats. That's probably all we're going to say about Ag Vorbis. But yeah, we recognize that it exists. That's about it. So PCM is the first one on my list and you're going to see that mentioned all sorts of different ways when you're looking at gear. When you're looking at digital audio, digital to analog converters. When you're looking at file formats, you're going to see PCM, which is technically not a file format at all. It stands for pulse code modulation. And it's really just the way that the audio samples are represented. It's basically two channel audio in a digital file with a bit depth and a sample rate. Usually two numbers that go right there with the file format. And this could apply to any of the other formats we're going to talk about today. It's kind of the underlying technology behind all of it. You know, I still run into that one sometimes when setting up televisions. When you have your audio output setting, you can select PCM as one of the options. Yeah. And the PCM option will get you two channels of audio out of your TV. And most newer TVs will also have like a surround sound option. Right. So then you wouldn't select PCM in that case. If you want surround sound, but we're not talking about surround sound today. It's this is really an all audio discussion. So everything is probably going to have PCM underneath it. And I did. I do want to explain those numbers real quick. There's the bit depth and the sampling rate. Bit depth is usually listed like with bits like 16 bit, 24 bit, things like that. And just to establish a baseline, 16 bit is the amount of bits you would have on a CD.

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That would be CD quality. So anything with more bits than that would be generally considered high res. Yeah. That's how I think of it. Yeah. And the next number is the sample rate. So the bit depth is basically how much information there is. And then the sample rate is how often the waveform or the information is measured each second. Like how often the thing that converts it from digital to analog analyzes what's there. So which one of those is more important? They're both equally important. Okay. Yeah.

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And 44.1 kilohertz is the standard sample rate for CD quality audio. So if you have a CD like a store-bought CD, you're listening to 16 bit 44.1 kilohertz PCM audio. And that's the store of the standard. So anything that's sampled more often than that 48 kilohertz, 88.2, 96 kilohertz, 192 kilohertz. We got some big numbers when it comes to sample rate and it doesn't always mean better, but it does mean it looks at the information more often. Jaffee, I see your hand is raised. Go ahead. Okay. So two numbers, which one of those numbers is more important?

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Well, 16 bit is enough for most people to be happy listening to music, but more bits, more data to be analyzed seems like a really important thing. But then you got to analyze it enough times to take advantage of all that extra data. So they both seem kind of equally important to me. Okay.

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I figured you would say that. Does Zach have a differing opinion? I mean, I think of the bit depth, maybe if one of them has to be more important than the other one,

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is more of an indicator at least to me of quality file. But I mean, that's not really based on much. And it's hard to hear the difference between 1644 and 2496 sometimes, honestly.

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Fair. Let's move on into some file formats. How about that? What do you think? Yes. Let's talk flack because you are, if you are shopping for audio gear with the quality of the audio in mind,

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whether it's for car audio, home stereos, headphones, you are probably going to see FLAC somewhere along the way. Flack audio is hard to avoid. It is the most popular high resolution audio format by far.

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Zach, we brought you in because you're the expert. Tell us about flack if you can, buddy. Well, as I understand it, flack is a container that has the digital stuff in it. So it can be a 1644 CD quality file. It can be a 24 bit or higher high res file, but it's a way to take the all the data from the raw PCM waveform and it's kind of counterintuitive, I suppose, but it can make a smaller file than the straight waveform without losing any of the information. That's exactly right. You could call it lossless, but you cannot call it uncompressed, right? Cause it does take that same information and make it a smaller file that is compressing it.

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But when it becomes decoded on the other end, all of the bits are still there of the original music. So you're not losing anything. It's just a smaller package for the same information. It's like in Willy Wonka when they, the candy bar machine, the kid tries to beam himself, you know? Yeah. And it ends up in the TV. Uh-huh. Mic TV. A bit like that, I suppose.

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So you're going to see it when you go to download high resolution music, you're going to find files like 24 bit, 96 kilohertz flack files is pretty common, 24 bit and 192, right? So these are high resolution because they're higher than 1644 and they're in flack so that they're going to take up as little space as possible while still maintaining that lossless sound quality. Yeah. And I think that's why it won out over time really is because people started making these big collections, ripping all their CDs to digital files. Maybe, uh, certainly you can do that with records too. Um, word you're buying it from a place like HD tracks or, or wherever you buy those things from. Uh, but you've got a big hard drive with terabytes worth of, you know, very carefully curated music on it. Uh, and you want the best quality, but you also don't want to have to keep buying hard drives all the time. So right. Especially at the prices of hard drives today. No kidding. Kind of gone, gone a little crazy. I would call flack, uh, probably like the best all purpose choice for someone who is building a, like a, a library of the music that you want to own and not just stream off of like Spotify. Right. If you're looking to own the music and it, you want it to sound its best, you're probably going to go for flack. Yeah, I would, I would certainly do that. Just to, just to have the best thing you can on hand and you know, you can turn it into an MP3 from there if you wanted to, uh, make it smaller. But, but yeah, I think, I think that most people that collect music that way want the best they can get. And then in flack offers that smaller file size that really helps a big collection.

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Well, what if you're an Apple person? What if you're into the Apple ecosystem? Everything you have is Macs and iPads and iPhones. Uh, you might find that Apple's a L a C is a suitable alternative and more compatible and more friendly and just works in and, and sounds just as good as flack. It's basically the Apple version of a flack file. No, I'm in the Apple ecosystem too. And, um, I, and I do mostly streaming when I listen at home. So Apple has its own tricks. You got to kind of work around to say it out loud. I said it rhymes. We haven't even said the thing. A lack. There we go. See, run like, like Aflac, but with no F. Exactly. There you go. So, um, what about wave? Uh, if you've dealt with music files very much, you will have come across a dot W a V or wave file on your computer somewhere. Uh, Zach, what, uh, do you have wave? Do you listen to wave? Do you advocate for wave or is wave not something you really bother with? Wave is probably the first digital file I remember encountering and it registering in my brain, I think on my, on my computer back in the day. But, you know, wave is what you get when you record something, right? Like you're recording in at home. You're making a song or podcast for that matter. You start with a wave file, right? Correct. When I, uh, when we are done recording and I hit stop and I go look at the files that we are recording right now, they will be wave files. Yeah. So I have a lot of respect for them. I mean, I certainly wouldn't collect them that way because, you know, it's three times the file size or whatever it is for any benefit. Yeah. Who knows, you know? Yeah. It's basically just completely uncompressed, uh, perfect digital copy of the analog wave form that was captured. And it's primarily used in recording. If you're in the studio, you will be using a lot of wave files. You'll be creating them, editing them, modifying them, and then outputting them probably as something else like a flack or an MP3 or an ALAC. Uh, and so they're, they're critical in the recording world, um, but not ideal for building a library of songs. One reason is because they don't do a great job of maintaining metadata. Uh, with flack and ALAC, it can kind of be done just automatically with wave. You're going to have to manually update that stuff. Uh, and it's not always going to show up depending on the gear you're playing it on. So waves are great for recording and production, but not great for building a library around. So there's a potential that someone's gotten this far into this podcast where we're dropping all these letters and they don't know what metadata is. So you might want to take this out there. Do you want to contribute now, Huffy? Cause it sounds like you know what metadata is. What is metadata? All implying that I don't know what metadata is, but maybe just for consistency, you should explain it. All right, Zach, it's up to you now. Huffy, it has no idea what metadata is. Metadata is all that stuff that's in the file that isn't the music. It's telling you the artist's name, the track info, the album name, copyright stuff. And that stuff will display on however you're playing it, whether it's your car radio or your home stereo or whatever it is. Gotcha. So all the information you see on whatever you're playing that tells you what it is you're listening to. Yeah. It's got to see that in the file somewhere. So it might even be considered part of that too. Yeah.

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And wave just really isn't super metadata friendly. It's not like it can't happen, but it's going to be a lot more work to maintain the metadata for all of your WAV files. And if you have thousands of songs, that's a lot of work. You're manually entering that information instead of it just coming along for the ride with the file. And then even if you do, it won't always display properly. So again, WAV not great to build a library around. Sounds good. Is uncompressed. Generally speaking, it's CD quality sound that you'll have with WAV. So it's not technically high res, but it is a perfect digital copy or digital representation of the original. Analog waveform.

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AIFF is the next one on our list. Audio interchange file format. Ooh, is this as if? As if, Huffy. Okay.

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Which is an uncompressed PCM container.

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And it's typically been associated with Apple or Mac workflows. And it's very similar to a WAV. It's basically an Apple version of a WAV file. Yeah. You know, when we're, when I started looking up some of these file formats, I remember I'm aware that there is something named AIFF out there, because I've probably seen it somewhere, but definitely has never really registered in my life in any kind of way. Um, although I've probably listened to it because I have an iPad and an iPhone at home. So, so basically Apple said, Hey, WAVs are great, but they don't maintain a great metadata library. Let's do it better. And so that's an Apple version of a WAV with more reliable metadata, which makes it really handy for somebody that's like, say, DJing and all their music is on their Mac book and they plop that down on their board with their turntables. And they're going to mix and play a, you know, do a rave or whatever, whatever the kids are doing these days. Uh, and they want all the metadata to show up so that they have that stuff, the album art, the names and all of that. Uh, and that's just easier to do with AIFF. So if they're in the Apple workflow and they're like a DJ or something, they might be using a lot of AIFF files. Okay. So we've got two left on my list. Uh, well, maybe three left. Uh, DSD is the next one here, uh, which does take a fundamentally different encoding approach. Uh, instead of PCM, DSD is a little bit different. This is probably only for the people that really, really care about this and have a preference for this because all it's doing differently is instead of 16 bit, 24 bit, you're going to have one bit.

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But the sampling rates are ridiculous. Like we're talking megahertz instead of kilohertz, right? Millions of times per second, instead of thousands of times per second, uh, where your digital to analog converter is analyzing that one bit of data. Uh, so it's a slightly different, not a slightly, a very different way of doing the encoding and the decoding, um, so that the numbers don't line up with anything else that we're talking about. They have their own sort of set of numbers. And if you're into DSD, uh, you, then you're probably also buying some other high end gear that can decode that DSD and you probably care more than the average Joe. And, uh, and DSD is cool for that. Uh, if, uh, if you're not that person, then DSD may or may not be for you.

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That sounds about how I feel, uh, feel about it. I think if I had a big collection of digital music, I'd think about that. Huffy, it almost looks like you have something to contribute regarding DSD files, which I wasn't expecting, but I'm totally open to it. If I recall, that's what super audio CD used like back in the day. You are correct, sir.

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Okay. That's interesting then. Yeah, there was a format war back then it was super audio CD and DVD audio, both high res music file formats on a disc that needed to be spun and read by a laser. Right. Uh, and super audio CD was very niche, right? Like you really kind of had to know and be into it and seek those discs out. I remember we carried some of those that were incredibly high end. So to play, you know, imagine a CD player that obviously would play a CD, but we had one, it was an ESPs that, you know, it. Yeah. Dropped a CD and had a weight that would go on top. It would take you about five minutes to play the disc, but it was, it was an experience there. It was a spectacle and it was a high quality machine and played these DSD files. And you know what? They sounded better. And in the right two channels set up, it was as good as digital audio could get back in that time. And if you're trying to buy that stuff now, you might find like classical music, jazz, stuff like that. You might still find super audio CDs in those, like that's where that's the musical stylings that seem to generate interest in super audio CD in today's world. But there's not much else other than that. And those were DSD files on super audio CD. And there still are DSD files of all types of music that you might find out there in the digital audio world. Not a new thing. It's been around for a while. Correct. Yeah. All right. Uh, how about MQA or master quality authenticated? You know, remember Zach, uh, we went to Vegas there for CES a few times. I always like to bring that up and point it out because Huffy didn't get to go. I miss going there. I thought I really do. Man, every episode. Well, we, there was one year where we stumbled upon a big booth where they were, uh, pushing MQA pretty hard. Uh, I had a bunch of listening stations, a bunch of audio and coded with MQA. Uh, and that seemed to be a big deal that year. I thought it was, oh, okay. This is the new thing. Uh, fast forward about 10 years. Not the new thing. Uh, never really took off. Uh, and some would even consider it, uh, controversial.

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Controversial. I know. I've heard that too. I can't imagine how, but, uh, to me, it's just another one of those things where formats come and go and the cream rises to the top. Right? Yeah. Like, uh, we've decided collectively that flak is probably what we're going to use for most things or MP3s. And then, you know, the, the Apple equivalents. So it was marketed as high res and efficient with regards to file size, but you had to have a complete ecosystem of support for MQA. If you wanted to get all of the benefits of MQA and, um, it's technical claims and the licensing model that it required, uh, to put it gently, you could say that that attracted debate. Uh, I can see how that might happen in 2026. And so if you're shopping for like a digital to analog converter, you might find ones even today that still decode MQA, uh, which is good, right? There's nothing wrong with that, but you probably don't need it anymore because nobody's using MQA anymore. It's just not a dominant file format of any kind.

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And then there's WMA there's MP3. Uh, there's a, there's a whole bunch of other very compressed audio formats, which is what we were dealing with with LimeWire and such, uh, very compressed and not high res. Right. So, uh, we don't care as much about those, even though you're going to end up with a bunch of those on your computer, you may have thousands of them. Still on your computer. Uh, and that's great, but if you were building your own library today, you probably wouldn't go WMA is or MP3 is or wave files. We would recommend even flax or a lax depending on if you're into the Apple thing or not. Yeah, that's how I would do it. And if I had MP3 is, I just want them to be as less compressed as possible. Uh, you know, the, the, a more crunched MP3 is not quite as good as, you know, a Spotify level MP3 say. So Zach, as a person who listens to a lot of digital music, uh, has access to a lot of digital music playback gear here at Crutchfield. Uh, and, and who thinks about this stuff more than the average Joe, what do you do? Like, what is your library comprised of? How do you listen to music? Let's talk, let's talk real world applications here. Paint me a picture of you listening to these high res files. Well, I'm sitting there. Not high res files. There might be times when you don't. Right. So yeah, I think, uh, so if I, if I'm, I've, I've been here a while I've drunk the Kool-Aid. I'm very lucky at Crutchfield to have access to all this gear, whether I'm buying it for myself or just trying it out. Uh, in the video team, we get stuff pretty early and we set it up for a video and we, and thus we get to listen to new stuff, you know, months before it comes out sometimes. So I like, uh, I stream mostly, uh, I have a, I have a turntable now and I listen to that a little bit, but, um, mostly streaming. So it's, I want the best quality music I can get, but convenience is also a factor. That's kind of what attracts me to streaming too, is the lack of physical media is kind of a cool thing. Just as much as physical media is also a cool thing. I mean, there's, there's so many ways to enjoy, but. And all of the vinyl enthusiasts that were listening with some sort of morbid curiosity for out throughout this digital conversation just stopped listening. Right. Uh, I'm sorry to both of you. Yeah.

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Uh, which, you know, I meant to actually address that at the top of the show. If you're a vinyl person, this conversation may or may not interest you. But if you're, again, if you're considering building a library, you might do it. Streaming is the most convenient way to listen to music and it's your preferred way. It's, it's amazing. I'm I'm, I remember seeing ads on TV 25, 30 years ago where the idea was you've got every piece of recorded music at your fingertips, you know, and now we think of it like, Oh, I'll just go on to Apple music or title or Coboz or whatever. But back then it blew my mind. Like, how is that possible? Like, Oh, computers are good for something, you know? Yeah. A few years before that, that idea was a mega CD changer linked to another mega CD changer where you could have hundreds and hundreds of CDs, uh, that you could access. And that wasn't even as high res as we're talking about, or now we can literally listen to just about anything. So I, I listen at home. I have a high res setup in my home office where I am streaming from my tablet or my phone or, uh, or whatever. Into a whim streamer, which feeds a separate deck, which goes into a preamp because I need a subwoofer output that my integrated amp that that preamp feeds does not have. So I've, when I go to stream music, I have to turn about four switches. Uh, and, and by the way, you don't have to do it that way. There's way easier ways to do that.

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So that's my high res and I really want to sit down and listen to the best quality stuff possible. I also recognize I'm 51 years old. I don't have the best hearing anymore probably. So there's a certain level where I'll stop with it, but, um, but then, you know, there's a lot of times when you're on the go, right? Like you're in your car, you're cooking dinner. Uh, I go out back with my, in my yard with my projector and Bluetooth is how I stream a lot of things. Despite the fact that I care greatly about sound quality, but it's not always convenient to have that the best sound quality possible everywhere you go. Can we talk about that for a second? Bluetooth? Yeah. Yeah. Just because I think the majority of people, uh, I'll go ahead and speak for the majority of people here. Um, that's probably how they're interacting with their digital music files, right? Yeah. They're probably streaming and they're probably sending it over Bluetooth to something to hear it. Right. Right. Yeah. I should say my, my chain is based around wifi and bit perfect transfer is what I'm going for. Yeah. Uh, Bluetooth is kind of the MP3 of everything where it just kind of packs it into a, uh, an easily transmittable, uh, file that you can play on just about anything. And it's great. I listen to a lot of Bluetooth music too. So, and I think right there, I, I find talking about Bluetooth probably more interesting than most people, just because that's not something that a lot of people talk about. I don't think, but that can be certainly the bottleneck and a really high end audio system, right? Have really high end headphones. You can have be paying for the better subscription and then that could potentially be the bottleneck. But the good news is these formats, they're not staying still Bluetooth from 10 years ago is not what it is today. And of course, Bluetooth has been around a lot longer than that. We're actually up to Bluetooth 6.0 at the time of this recording as something that is that's out there and available. And that can, at least on my research, do high res, um, and not be the bottleneck, but you got to have it on both ends, right? You got to have, yeah. And you can't have an Apple device, uh, or really an Android tablet. Yeah. So the thing that most of us have, right? So that's why I find it so interesting. It's like potentially you could have no bottleneck, but then depending on both the format of the Bluetooth or the version. And the device and you know, it's the device on both ends and you know, who makes it? There's so many potential for, you know, you can't just go pay for the higher res music and get some new headphones and think, and know that you're actually getting what you're paying for. In today's world to, to listen to music over Bluetooth, it's just not high res, right? If you have the perfect storm of the music file on a device, Bluetooth thing to another device and all of that is compatible, you might get some LDAC and some other things that are high res ish. But it's Bluetooth is, is the limiting factor.

[00:32:35:13 - 00:33:42:04]

And that's just how it is. That doesn't mean it's how it's always going to be, right? Like everything gets better. If we're having this conversation in five years, we could very well be talking about the best high res Bluetooth devices and how to take advantage of it. I'm looking forward to that episode. I can't wait to tune in. Oh yes. Yeah. I mean, if Bluetooth could get to CD quality, I'd be over the moon about it. Cause what I've always wanted to do is title connect. So a nice bit perfect stream straight to my headphones. Nothing to me. Exactly. It's built into my ear cup. That's what I want. And, and I think a lot of people think they're getting that. And probably aren't. Yeah. And you know, if you're streaming out of your computer, your computer is often turning everything into a 48 kilohertz file, no matter what it is before it goes out the USB cord into your DAC and stuff. So it's, uh, it's nebulous to do this. If you're trying to stream the best quality possible these days, but getting better, I think to your point, Huffy. Yeah. So theoretically Bluetooth 6.0 can do 32 bit 96 kilohertz.

[00:33:43:05 - 00:33:46:04]

That sounds like high res. That sounds very high resi, right?

[00:33:47:10 - 00:34:00:15]

Theoretically. Yeah. No, that's, that's great. And that's where we'd like to be. I think, I think that's why maybe in the long term Bluetooth ends up winning out over time, just because it's built into everything already and everybody knows how to use it.

[00:34:01:15 - 00:36:30:12]

Well, remember the early days of Bluetooth when it was just totally janky and it was just annoying. Just gotta be 10 feet away and, uh, don't move. I can send you a contact card from my flip phone, right? Like it was, it was practically useless and hard to get working to today's world where everything is Bluetooth. Uh, and it makes a lot of things extremely convenient and it's working towards being the all encompassing, even high quality. Music solution, but we're not quite there today in 2026. Uh, but it sounds like Bluetooth 6.0 might be the next generation and we might get there. The Japan audio society, you know that right. Yeah. The GAS. Yeah. I didn't know they were going to come up in today's episode. Right. Of course, the Japan audio society. I get their newsletter every month. Yeah. Yeah. They've, uh, they've actually certified Bluetooth 6.0 as high res audio wireless. So, oh yeah. Delivering quality, lossless streaming. I definitely see a future Crutchfield podcast episode. I'm intrigued by this. I'm skeptical because that's how I roll, but I'm intrigued by this for sure. So you're a high res music guy. You just described Zach, a, uh, an intricate system of separate components in your home where you sit and listen to music while sipping some sort of tasty beverage. I'm sure, uh, four different power buttons, four devices. No remotes. Just knobs and dials. Yeah. It's awesome. I like that. Yeah. I love that. But, but you also described going out in your yard and mowing the grass or setting up your projector. And, uh, in, in a case like that, you're just streaming and using Bluetooth. Yeah. And, you know, and I, I want it to sound as good as possible. So when, when I can, I, you know, I will choose a better quality file, go into the settings of, uh, the app and change it to the highest quality stream you can. Um, but you know, in that situation, enjoying music isn't all about trying to hear every single detail. It's just becoming part of what I'm doing at that time. You know, if I'm cooking dinner or something, and I like to set up two Bluetooth speakers in stereo, I feel like that's, that's my, uh, my secret to getting the best Bluetooth sound really is just to have a stereo pair. It makes such a difference. It's twice as good. More speakers. More speakers is always the answer. Yeah. More speakers and more power, everybody. That's what you want. Bigger number better.

[00:36:31:16 - 00:37:56:03]

Yeah. Generally speaking, except unless it's real expensive or something. So let's talk about the streaming services real quick. We're talking file formats, we're talking convenience, uh, and pretty much all of the major players in the music streaming world have embraced this, uh, have realized that everybody has the bandwidth or cellular over wifi, uh, to go ahead and send us through the air. Lossless music of some kind, but what file format are they using for that? And I do have the answer. Uh, do you know what a huffy, what is Apple using for their file format, uh, for Apple music streaming in high res? Is it AAC? No, no, no. Darn it. Flack. I'm going to start some letters. Uh-huh. Letters, letters, letters. Zach, you want to bail them out? Well, you already guessed those two. So I'll have to say a lack. There you go. It's that, yeah. Yeah. It's their version of a flack file rhymes, lossless, but still compressed. Uh, and you're going to typically get 24 bit, 192 kilohertz, a lack files when you're streaming high res Apple music. Unless you're using Apple airplay to tell us more. Apple airplay to compresses everything down to 256 currently, whether it's in high rate, whether you're starting with a high res file or not. And that's why I switched from Apple music to title personally,

[00:37:57:10 - 00:40:14:16]

because, uh, the way I discovered this was through the whim app. The whim app gives you, tells you how many bits are being streamed through. And I was not seeing what I expected to see. I was streaming a high res file from my Apple Mac book and, uh, over Apple airplay two. And. The, I thought there was a, something was wrong with the equipment. It was streaming to keep saying the same number. And, uh, and yeah, uh, there's people out there that use Apple airplay one if they can, because that did allow. I think 16 bit audio to get through. Wow. Another case of the sequel not being better. Well, you know, Apple's always in look, Apple airplay two does not sound bad by any means. Um, but if you're in this crazy world of trying to chase sound quality and you've got equipment that can resolve it, then. Then yeah, you start to care a little bit. And airplay two does bring some convenience options in that airplay one didn't have. So multi room audio sending it to different devices around your house. Uh, but to do that, I think their compromise they're making is let's downgrade the signal, uh, the bandwidth, the file that we're sending a little bit. So it's a little bit easier and more. Uh, reliable. That's exactly it. I think it's, it's about the ecosystem of the Apple devices working well together is the compromise. So you've switched to title, which is indeed, uh, doing lossless high res in flak 24 bit, one 92. Uh, and as mentioned earlier, they have moved away from using MQA, uh, as their way of doing high res and they're just doing flack now. That's what I've heard. Uh, I, I can't tell you it made a, if I could hear a difference on any of the songs, uh, out there. But I, but as I understand it, they've gone away from using MQA masters for a little while now. Cobas, uh, another one that does high res music streaming also using flak 24, one 92 same as Amazon music, unlimited flak 24, one 92. Uh, now here's the, uh, here's the big one. What about Spotify? Cause they are the most recent player they recently adopted and started allowing us to stream Spotify music in what they call Spotify premium lossless.

[00:40:15:19 - 00:44:42:17]

I think that's a CD quality. If I'm not mistaken. So Spotify has gone to lossless and here's what they're saying. Uh, it's flak underneath, uh, up to 24 44. So the sampling rate nowhere near what is possible on title and Cobas and Amazon, et cetera. Uh, so higher bit depth, but CD quality sampling rate at 44.1 kilohertz. So technically lossless, but not, uh, at the higher sampling rates. And, uh, you got to go into settings and change it up to lossless, uh, to, to get that. And I've watched a few YouTubers go and do an analysis of the audio signal that they're getting on different music streaming platforms. And the waveform is a bit perfect copy on some other platforms like Cobas and title, uh, but not necessarily the case on Spotify. So they're still doing something to it to make it the sheer volume of music that is coming out of those Spotify servers every day might require them to make some sort of compromise to make it reliable and usable. Yeah, I think it's great that Spotify did that. I mean, we were waiting for them to do that for years. They would tease it every so often. Uh, the better, you know, the, the better the baseline, the better, I think, and Spotify to me has always done such a good job, uh, when I was a Spotify subscriber at one time at getting me to discover new music, which is one reason I love streaming because, you know, the computer tries to figure out what you'll like based on what you've been listening to. And then it'll give you some stuff to check out. And, uh, that I, I discover music at a much higher rate now than I ever used to. You might just use a discover weekly. Do you ever listen to that? Discover weekly. Every week there's new music there. And it's pretty darn good at finding music that I enjoy along with music. A lot of it I've heard of, but a lot of it's very new to me. When you're listening to this music, Jr. How paint me a picture of how you're doing it, because you might have a bottleneck in there that you're not aware of. Okay. Tell me what my bottleneck is at home. Here's what I'm doing. I have a MacBook pro. Okay. I have Spotify. I've set it to lossless. Okay. I have that going through an audio interface, a focus, right. Scarlet four by four. So that is, uh, my deck that's actually, uh, so that's connected to my computer with USB and then, uh, analog outputs from the deck or the interface down to a, uh, on Keo stereo receiver powering a pair of Wharfedale bookshelf speakers. That's my home office set up. And aside from the car, uh, which is definitely where I listened to the most stuff, but when I'm at home and I have that set up, that's what I've got going on. So where's my bottleneck, huffy? Your ears. Your drummer, your ears have been shot for years. That's a hundred percent true. I think I've got a pretty good system. That is sounds wonderful. That's a nice setup. I would say that that sounds great to me. That same streaming in your car, you're not getting that, that same resolution. And in my car, on my Spotify app, on my phone, I have elect, I tried it. I tried lossless and driving around. If you have great cell service, it's fine. Uh, country though, but I do, I drive out away from Charlottesville to go home and lossless. Is enough takes up enough bandwidth that it will be a little jumpy. It'll cut in and out or pause for a second. Uh, and that's not acceptable at all. Uh, and so I've, I've downgraded to very high, whatever the next level is in Spotify. That's what I go with in that. I get pretty consistent playback. I also download when I download in Spotify, I download in high res. Gotcha. So if anything that's living on in the Spotify app on my phone is in high res. Are you listening to headphones ever? You know, when you're out doing your frisbee golf or whatever you call it. Yeah. Riding a bicycle, frisbee golf, mowing grass, uh, working out at the gym. Those are the four times I am regularly using headphones and I have a variety of headphones to choose from those cases. You're not getting the high res Bluetooth baby Bluetooth is your bottleneck. Right. So, so yeah, it's, yeah. And I'm okay with it. Just like Zach is okay with it. Right. Yeah. I'm sure it sounds great. Yeah. Right. What you've done is you've gone, you've chosen the highest quality file you can for what you're using at the time. And you're driving out in the country and the cell signal is weak.

[00:44:43:21 - 00:44:53:17]

You know, a really stuttery, uh, high res file that can't play is no good. You just want to play the best you can and enjoy it as much as you can.

[00:44:56:02 - 00:46:32:00]

So does high res, flack, et cetera, mean it's always going to sound better? The answer as we've just demonstrated clearly it depends and it depends on a lot of things, uh, how is it going from digital to analog? What device are you using to do that job? Is it that little tiny chip in your computer or your phone, or do you have a separate digital to analog converter or a separate device with a really good one? We've got a whole episode about digital to analog converters. It was the August episode of this podcast this year. So, uh, we just did it. So if you want to deep dive into DAX, do that on that episode, but the DAX matters in most cases, as long as the rest of the gear is, uh, in line, uh, after the DAX, how is it being amplified? Uh, yeah, I've come to realize over the years that, uh, the amplifier is so important in the chain, just how much current can it deliver? Can it, can it control those speakers? Just so, and it makes a big difference. You can get to a certain volume level sometimes, but just lose dynamics and a good ample will fix that problem. Uh, is the music being sent through the air at all? And if so, how? Cause as we've discussed, Bluetooth is a bottleneck. If you're streaming wirelessly from one device to another at home, you have the opportunity to do that over your wifi network in various ways, but not every single way is going to give you high-res on the other end, as Zach mentioned with AirPlay 2, for example. So the gear you use to wirelessly transmit sound from your computer to your stereo system matters as well.

[00:46:33:01 - 00:47:45:23]

How good are your headphones or speakers? That plays a huge role. That I mean, that's where the rubber meets the road. That's where the sound is transferred from an electrical audio signal into physical waveforms in the air. Uh, and if you have a good speaker and a good pair of headphones, that will make a difference over a cheap set of speakers or headphones. Yeah. I've certainly used both of them over the years. We have access to a ton of different choices and we gosh, I'm sure there's many other Crutchfield podcast episodes where we talk about speakers, amps, and headphones, uh, to go listen to. And if you want us to talk more about that stuff, we'd let us know. Uh, we're happy to dive into any topic, uh, regarding surrounding those. Cause it's what we do. It's what we do. We talk about that stuff all the time. Yeah. And think about it when I'm not here sometimes. Yeah. I dream of it. Yeah. Yeah. What is your listening environment? That matters big time, right? Are you mowing grass or are you sitting in a quiet room surrounded by high end audio gear where you have total control of the environment? Uh, that will matter. Right. And if you don't have total control, you probably are going to make some compromises and as high res as important then as it is in your quiet listening room, probably not.

[00:47:47:06 - 00:50:17:21]

And lastly, how and when was it recorded and mastered? Right? There's absolutely, you can absolutely have a high res version, uh, of a not so great mastering of a song or an album, uh, and compare that to a well mastered album, uh, that is CD quality and the CD quality will win every time. Right. So who mastered it? When was it mastered? Uh, was it mastered with dynamic range or was that compressed a bunch? Right? Like all of that matters as well. And if you're really into this high res stuff, you should be thinking about all of those things, right? The D to a converter, the amplifier, the speakers, the Bluetooth or wifi, your listening environment and the mixing and mastering and recording of it all. All of that matters. Uh, so high res and the file formats you use are just one small piece of that big, huge puzzle. All right. So that is Crutchfield, the podcasts thoughts on high res music files. Hopefully we've made some sense of the file formats, the alphabet soup of it all for you, if you still have any questions, if you think there's some topic in this realm that we have left untouched, that you want us to discuss a little deeper, let us know, email us a podcast at crutchfield.com is the easiest way to do that. You can also go see most of our previous episodes and notes from each show, links to products that we've discussed on episodes over at crutchfield.com slash podcast. Uh, and it's easy to email us from there as well. Uh, and, uh, and so that kind of does it for this episode, Zach, thank you so much for taking time out of your YouTube work, uh, where you scour for comments that you can reply to and upload videos and set all the metadata and all of that. Thank you for doing that work. And thank you for being here today. You bet, buddy. It's great to be here. Huffy. Thanks. Thanks for your incredible contributions. Oh, you're welcome. Podcast. Yeah. You're just trying to keep a high standard around here. That's exactly why you're here, buddy. All right. So that's it for this episode of Crutchfield, the podcast. Uh, thank you to Alexis and Abby for dealing with any kind of social media stuff. If you post on our social medias and mention the podcast, they'll send us those comments, uh, email us, like I said, go to the website. Uh, thank you to Dom for reviewing my edit of this show where I've cut out all of the stupid things that we said and left only the good stuff. Thank you, Dom, for approving all of that. Uh, and last but not least, thank you to Bill Crutchfield for continuing to pay us to talk about the coolest gear on the planet. Thanks, Bill.

[00:50:19:01 - 00:50:21:10]

Thank you, Bill. Peace out, everybody. We'll see you next month.

[00:51:09:01 - 00:51:16:00]

(Gentle Music)

[00:51:21:03 - 00:52:04:06]

So we were out to lunch on the video team one day and we got on this jag about a buddy cop show called "JR and the Huff" with you guys in it. And the whole idea was built around a sight gag of whenever, you know, in the TV show or the movies, the guys facing away from the camera for a second and they stick a line in there, that's just to kinda fix the script after the fact. Yeah. But we always thought it would be funny is if whenever we switched to the rear view, if it was just huffy, because you guys have a similar hairstyle, but the rest of it is not the same. It would just be a funny little-- Just like one person doing everything. But you guys would be a good buddy cop team. That's quite generous of you to call what we have hairstyles. (Laughing)

[00:52:06:13 - 00:52:11:20]

HR is not allowed to hear any of the outtakes, just so you know, so. Oh, good.

[00:52:13:00 - 00:52:18:17]

You can call us bald. I know it's a four-letter word, but let's be honest, you're not too far away from being on the club, so.

[00:52:20:05 - 00:52:25:14]

(Laughing) Oh, I'll be combing this over for years, even before that happens. (Laughin