Coming from the perspective of a mastering engineer, like Dave McNair of McNair Mastering, you perceive music from the non-limited masters of the actual recordings. Your reality is that 16/44 digital sounds fine. And it's a legitimate reality. Where it gets weird is when you take those masters and limit the dynamic range for CD, or even more for streaming to maintain your hierarchy in the volume wars of todays artificial perceptions.

As I have become involved in High Fidelity Sound Labs, a label that releases first generation digital an analogue masters with no limiting...  I really don't hear streaming sound they way I'd like it. This is because the streaming on Tidal and Qobuz and the rest contains more limiting than was on the original CD's and when I compared what we are releasing with what's on Qobuz,  it was 13.8dB.

So of course if I would stream one of my masters, I have to turn up the volume on the preamp or amplifier a whole bunch and then when the playback of that recording was over and it went back to Qobuz or anything else - the volume would blast you out of the room, not to mention sound thick and unrefined.

This is also a problem because of gain structuring - the ratios of the volume settings of the source, preamp and input gain controls on the amplifiers are optimized for a certain level. You can't change the level by 13dB and expect it to still work right.

So for streaming all my digital files both from my hard drives and from Qobuz or Tidal, I have been using Roon's volume leveling feature with surprising success.  It speaks volumes to Roon's technology.  It takes the 16 or 24 bit file or stream and converts it to 64bit floating point to do the volume leveling without any jitter or artifacts.

As you stream music, you can see what the volume leveling feature is actually doing.  For example the song I'm listening to right now has -6.4dB of volume leveling, meaning there was approximately that much limiting.  (limiting is artificially turning up the volume by doing it digitally in the recording)

So as each song comes on, the volume is the same, but those songs with the lower numbers, like our masters, at 0.8dB sound hugely dynamic and transparent, while the higher number songs like -9.2 or even 11.1 sound dull, thick and far less transparent.

Setting up the volume leveling in Roon to -13.8 or so has made a world of difference in the enjoyment of digital music streamed from either the hardrive or internet.

Ironically, the less limited stuff (that would normally be 10dB or more quieter and always sounded petite...) now has the most dynamics and balls and the stuff that was artificially volume enhanced with gross limiting now sounds quieter and duller. HA! Take That!

As is should be.  If this setting was standard on all digital playback gear it would almost instantly reverse the volume wars to where people would be trying to record the quietest, widest dynamic range possible.  It would become a dynamic range war instead of a volume war, and how sweet would that be - and why the FK didn't that happen instead of this?


Steve

Great information and guidance for Roon lstening Steve. Per your suggestion I have set my Roon volume at -13.8 via DSP settings. Now for some critical listening.

HK

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In my experience it is much more about the recording process itself than the data rate. I have plenty of 16/44 discs and files that sound remarkable, because they were well recorded, edited and mastered in the first place. Even from the dark ages of early digital in the late 70's and early 80's. Better than some contemporary hirez recordings. Or put another way there is nothing wrong with 16/44 that a good recording engineer (and a good DAC) can't fix.

Thanks Steve for the tip.

I never used the Roon volume leveling but I tried it last night. I set it at 14 and I liked the result.  (Qobuz at 96 khz hi rez )

My initial impression was it made for a more relaxed, pleasant presentation.  Easier to listen to, it seemed to soften the sound a little.

I am looking forward to continuing my evaluation.

Thanks
Bob