Hi fellow dCS friends.
Writing to ask if anyone with Qobuz (or TIDAL) could kindly play this album and see if their DAC shows it as 16-bit or 24-bit. While editing software shows the album as 24-bit when I play back via my Aurender (Which also shows 24-bit) or via Mosaic (taking Aurender out of picture) my Rossini APEX shows 16-bit not 24-bit.
Its very strange and seems specific to this album as other 24-bit/44.1s show correctly.
Thanks
Thanks Greg - what is odd is that Mosaic shows it as 24/44.1 for me from Qobuz but the physical display on the Rossini says 16/44.1.
Interesting. I had an odd situation a couple of years ago with a Sound Liaison download. Roon showed it as 24 bit, but the Vivaldi display showed it as 23 bit. Seriously, not 16, but 23. When played back on my MSB or Matrix, it showed as 24. I never did get it figured out, but when I get a chance, I’ll check the Vivaldi box display, just to be sure.
Here is a pic showing that 23 bit oddity:
I suspect it is because Mosaic artwork etc.display may show the metadata drawn from the Qobuz database but the readout from the dCS processor itself shows what it is actually processing i.e. it performs its own “count”. That is also why @PaleRider saw a 23 bit readout as that is what Vivaldi actually counted. It is also confirmed by Greg’s photos, a 16 bit 44.1 sample rate file upsampled to 24 bit 352.8 sample rate that Vivaldi DAC then processes.
It looks to me that Qobuz have entered some incorrect data ( of the hundreds of Nina Simone albums showing on the UK Qobuz database none are high res). I cannot check being a Qobuz UK subscriber . If you use another Qobuz service then the database will not be the same as the one I can see, it is different for each country serviced.
Hi Pete
I will add I actually purchased this album, which I normally would have done via Qobuz with my Sublime+ subscription, but in this particular case I purchased via HDtracks as they had a crazy good sale on it. I opened the files in multiple editing tools and all say the files are 24-bit not 16-bit. I even converted them to a different lossless format and still same thing.
It’s really very odd. I then checked Qobuz to see if FLAC files from there were the same and indeed they are the same. There must be something in the file causing the dCS software to think they are 16-bit. Or in general since Greg shared the MSB DAC thinks they are 16-bit.
Hi Guys,
I don’t have this album to take a look at but there is a difference between the file format and the audio that it contains …it’s perfectly possible to create a 24 bit file with 16 bit data in it (in which case we’d see that from the data and flag it as 16 bit). I’m not saying that is what’s happening here but it could be.
BR
Phil
Just to check this out, as well as Phil’s suggestion about file format and content format, I bought the album at HDTracks and am downloading it now.
UPDATE: both the MSB Select II and the dCS Vivaldi stack display the HDTracks files as 16 bit, though Roon reports them as 24 bit. Something is amiss.
I have written HDTracks’ customer support and reported my situation.
I think the various music houses source the files from same place so suspect this is why the Qobuz files also render at 16-bit like HDtracks.
sent you a private message with a link to a single song for inspection
Playing qobuz using mosaic only direct to vivaldi upsampler. Mosaic shows 24 bit. upsampler shows 16 bit b
[Off-Topic] Greg: Any particular reason why you’ve got Clone-mode ON while Upsampling to DXD? (1st pic) 
Thank you and yes it is 16bit audio in a 24bit file…
Cheers
Phil
Mystery solved. Not a good look for the distributor of the files to the various music streaming/download services.
Thanks
Well, the DAC would say what it got FROM the Upsampler, which is… Upsampled, no?
Greg! Have you not removed the protective plastic from the Upsamples and DAC screens?!
I THINK @Anupc may have already mentioned this previously but there’s a rather fun piece of software that can be quite interesting to have a play with - it’s called MusicScope and there’s a review of it here . It was a paid for app but it is now free.
As far as the point of this thread is concerned then in this particular instance the Mosaic app is displaying the metadata information reported by the service provider (the Mosaic app doesn’t actually take part in the playback path so it doesn’t see the audio data) but the Upsampler actually has the audio data and, as has been discussed earlier, the Upsampler (and our DACs too) “look” at the data that is actually being played and report back exactly what they see so if they get a 24 or 32 bit file where only 23 bits are being used then they will report 23 bits … in this case the file would appear to be a 16 bit file in a 24 bit wrapper.
Phil
Good catch! Completely accidental Anup. I had just been playing with various settings and trying out new combos when this topic arose. It’s usually off.
