I'm not even quite sure how to phrase my question, but here it goes...

@61falcon,

If you’re new to streaming, I would not limit myself to 16bit/44.1kHz recordings as suggested above. Both Tidal / QoBuz offers high resolution (upto 24bit/192kHz) content. I would leave it up to your ears to judge if you can discern audible differences between low and high resolution tracks.

24-bit sound is a tricky thing to gauge. Does it provide for a greater resolution of sound? IMO and in my system, absolutely YES. The technical explanation is, higher bit recordings has room for 256 times the data. Are you going to be able to hear that difference? Hard to say as human hearing supposedly tops out at 20kHz, but that does not make higher sample rates useless. According to the Nyquist rate, to fully capture a wave, it should be sampled at twice its highest frequency. In other words, a higher sample rate, and a greater bit depth, gives your sound more wiggle room, meaning sound peaks are less likely to be truncated and the subtleties of the music are less likely to be drowned out.

Hope this helps!

61falcon,

I use QoBuz for streaming on my Aurender N10. The Aurender’s Conductor app shows each track / album resolution.

I did a trial of Amazon HD and it’s app interface and content were quite disappointing. They have a long ways to go. Since Deezer max out at 16bit/44.1kHz resolution, you can’t really compare unless you do a trial run with QoBuz. Tidal will only give you higher than 16bit/44.1 resolution if your DAC is capable of decoding MQA files.

If you choose do a trial run with QoBuz, you can then do a A/B comparison and decide for yourself if high resolution streaming is worth shelling out extra money.
In my system, QoBuz is the only streaming service that allows me to fully appreciate the high resolution content.

61falcon,

The Bluesound Vault app on tablet or mobile phone does not display streaming resolution. Your DAC LED light is a good indicator of that minus the bits info.

To elaborate ‘itjustnotme’ point, one mustn’t confuse the native high resolution file vs upsampled file from a low resolution. I would also check Vault audio settings and tweak the sound to your liking. I have my Vault’s tone controls turned off cause I only use Vault for its ripping capabilities.