Comparing 192 Khz vtuner bit rate vs. 24/192 Khz CD spec. The same?

[bobdupuy]

My primary music source is a set of vtuner stations from an iTunes playlist on my PC, most of which publish bit rates of 128Khz, but my favorite (RCO) shows 192K, and BBC3 shows 320k. Based on this information, it seems that a digital coax DAC would be a better fit for me than a 24/96Khz USB connection. Am I comparing apples with apples?

It seems that some on this site who favor USB have said they don't have any sources that use 24/196, so it is irrelevant. Also it seems that portability and having a headphone amp strongly influence their choice, but these are irrelevant for me. So that leads me to favor the Arcam rLink over the rPAC. It seems that the digital coax will support 192K. Any thoughts on the rLink?

Finally, what does "jitter" sound like?

Bob DuPuy

 

[MajorFubar]

No you're getting your tales in a twist. As far as your vtuner is concerned, the bitrates 128k-320k are the bitrates of the MP3s or AACs being streamed to you, neither of which are even CD quality, though 320k is obviously closer than 128k, and most people are perfectly happy with 320k MP3.

When people talk about 24/192 audio, they're talking about audio which has been recorded at 24 bit 192kHz and then saved and streamed to you in a completely lossless format (such as WAV, FLAC, Apple Lossless or AIFF).

I can see why you are a bit confused, but the two things are completely different.

 

[chebby]

Finally, what does "jitter" sound like?

Bob DuPuy

You'll never hear it with modern equipment.

 

[The_Lhc]

You're mixing up your "K"s. The online stuff is Kbps, NOT KHz. Kbps is a data rate, KHz is a sampling rate, the two are not the same, although they are linked.

The online music stations, be they 128Kbps or 196Kbps or the Beeb's 320Kbps are all lossily compressed, a 24bit-192KHz audio file is losslessly compressed, if you want to work out the bitrate of a lossless file you need to multiply the bitdepth by the sampling rate and then multiply by two (because it's stereo, so two channels).

So, for CD or a lossless CD rip, the bitdepth is 16bit, the sampling rate is 44.1Khz, so that's 16 x 44100 = 705600 bits per second (bps) x 2 = 1411200, which is 1.346Mbps (note, that's MEGAbits per second, compared to your online stream measured in hundreds of Kilobits per second, Mega is ten times larger than Kilo).

For your hi-res example, it's even more of a gulf, 24/192, is 24*192,000*2=9,216,000bps or 9Mbps or about 28 times the data rate of the BBC's "hi-res" online radio streams.

EDIT: ******, knew someone would get there before me.

 

[chebby]

Mega is ten times larger than Kilo...

Huh?

 

[chebby]

I could be wrong but I think you are confusing the numbers of bits per second (192Kbps for instance) with sampling rate which is a measure of frequency (192KHz).

 

[The_Lhc]

Mega is ten times larger than Kilo...

Huh?

A THOUSAND times larger! **** it, I knew I was right the first time...