Question about bitrate

kjpeters

Commendable
Apr 9, 2016
2
0
1,510
Hi. I use an LG G4 as an audio source and a Fiio A9 amp along with a pair of ATH-M50x's. I've noticed that my LG G4 can only output sound at 192Kbps. The streaming service I use, TIDAL, offers 1411Kbps streaming. Is my audio quality being bottlenecked by my phone's lower bitrate output? Am I missing something here?
 
Solution
How Good Is The Sound Quality On TIDAL?
Normal quality:

96 kbps (AAC +)

High quality:

320 kbps (AAC)

HiFi:

Flac 1411 kbps - Lossless

(16/44.1 khz)

keep in mind the above are kbps (kilobytes per second) and referring to the file size per second. bigger does not always mean better and it depends on if its lossy/lossless, file type and original recorded quality - generally bigger is normally better though. its easy to get confused as khz (kilohertz) is a thing as well but is different as it refers to the frequency per second audio information is sampled at.

a headphone jack being listed at 192 kbps (again, kilobytes per second) doesnt make sense to me as its not streaming. if you saw it listed i would suggest you show your...
How Good Is The Sound Quality On TIDAL?
Normal quality:

96 kbps (AAC +)

High quality:

320 kbps (AAC)

HiFi:

Flac 1411 kbps - Lossless

(16/44.1 khz)

keep in mind the above are kbps (kilobytes per second) and referring to the file size per second. bigger does not always mean better and it depends on if its lossy/lossless, file type and original recorded quality - generally bigger is normally better though. its easy to get confused as khz (kilohertz) is a thing as well but is different as it refers to the frequency per second audio information is sampled at.

a headphone jack being listed at 192 kbps (again, kilobytes per second) doesnt make sense to me as its not streaming. if you saw it listed i would suggest you show your sources. generally on soundcards and other devices with analog output its more frequent to see the quality of the dac (digital to analog converter) to be written in khz (kilohertz). keep in mind 192kbps does not equal 192khz!

the 1411kbps (again, this is the file size per second) is a sample rate of 44,100 per second. generally this is considered excellent although much higher sample rates do exist (its said that 96khz is about the human limit of hearing differences)

 
Solution