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Have been a listener since early '80's when HOS was carried on local PBS stations early Sunday AM.I've never given HOS sound quality a second thought for simple reason the device I was listening to limited the quality. However, the selection of artists and their discography is the best. Thank You.

Great write up. I’m not sure if I was the listener who requested high-res but I did speak to you about this a year ago or so. 256 is nice but can’t compete with a high-res Tidal stream (which is my high-res subscription choice). I’m actually surprised that more listeners haven’t requested a high-res stream. I would think that HOS fans are a more “cultured” breed than most music listeners and have a specific taste outside the norm; I would expect them to be some amount of audiophile. Perhaps they just never asked you if it was possible? Clearly you are an appreciator of a quality source, based on your very detailed and well written explanation. ;) I always have and always will loved your service. Thank you. I still dream of the day I can listen to the program on my hi-Fi system. Cheers!

Thanks for the noodge, Tom. It's really not a question of whether we'll do this, but when. Frankly, we've only received a small number of requests for it, but we still want to offer a true hi-res service. We've talked about an uncompressed 16 bit/44.1 kHz "lossless" FLAC or ALAC stream.

It's just that other things constantly take priority and our development resources are very limited.

How can I subscribe to HOS?

Kevin Manson
[email protected]
2.17.2022

The shows have superb sound quality without being hi res. I have hi res recordings locally on a server
And I can’t tell the difference with ohm Walsh 3000 speakers, and a Krell showcase pre amp and Carver Av 505 amp. Maybe I need to spend $100k to hear that slight difference? I’m pretty picky about production quality of recordings. I’m happy with Stephen’s productions just as they are!

Opus is in my view the best sounding, highest fidelity audio format than any other codec at the same bitrate by a long shot. It is also amazingly versatile in supporting many channels and best yet, it's completely open patent-free tech.

On the other end of the scale, Facebook has just created a audio compression tool using neural networks called Encodec that can compress 4 minutes of music to 130kb, that means 30 minutes can fit on a floppy disc, and it really sounds quite good.

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