Great topic georgehifi, im interested to see what comes out. Im not sure where you get your 10.6 megabits/min figure, but with Internet Providers offering 100mbps speeds, 10.6 mbpm is no problem. Please correct me if I am wrong, but here is my 2 cents worth.
I think duckworp hit the nail on the head. My RME ADI-2 FS DAC displays the bit rate of the stream it is processing from Qobuz. As duckworp pointed out, the bit rate tells us how much data is being streamed per second. When my DAC tells me it is processing 24bit at 192 kHz, I believe it. So 2 x 24 x 192000 = 9,216,000 bits/sec. My internet service provides 100Mbps, so streaming 24bit 192kHz is a piece of cake.
So the question becomes, why would Qobuz transmit to me 9 megabits/sec (24bit 192kHz) from a crappy highly compressed audio source file when it could send me 24bit 192kHz from the finest source available? Sounds like bad business to me. Remember, a CD is only 16bit 44.1kHz, which is 2 x 16 x 44,100 = 1,411,200 bits/sec.
From what I have read, Qobuz transmits FLAC files to me. I really don’t care what other people say, it is a FACT FACT FACT, that when a FLAC file is uncompressed, it is identical to the original WAV file it was created from (except for a few bytes of metadata ID). So unless the act of uncompressing the FLAC file is causing interference, the FLAC should sound identical to the original WAV file.
Looking forward to reading more reply, thank you.
Dale