Music Streaming Services

Discussion in 'Computer Audiophile: Software, Configs, Tools' started by rott, Feb 22, 2017.

  1. psuKinger

    psuKinger Facebook Friend

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    I currently have subscriptions to both Qobuz (Sublime) and Tidal (HiFi), and a lifetime subscription to Roon. I just took advantage of the new Qobuz pricing and re-locked-in for another year; I have no intention of dropping it any time soon. I just picked up Tidal just to fool around with it a little; I have every intention of dropping it after we get on the other side of the holiday season.

    For most of the stuff I tend to listen to, at least over the last 6 or 7 days since I picked Tidal back up, the two catalogues have a lot more in common than they don't. I've found a couple of Blues Travelers albums on Tidal that weren't on Qobuz, and one (new) Sister Hazel album that I didn't know about... but most everything that I "bump into" organically while cruising around Roon tends to either be available on both OR I already own it.

    I do listen to some Jazz and Classical, but far from exclusively... I probably mostly listen to a combination of early-90's grundgy rock, late-90's punk rock, 90's pop rock, 70's classic rock, modern blues-y rock, and that Norah-Jones-y Natalie-Merchant-y blurred line that lies somewhere between Jazz, Pop, and Singer-songwriter-y stuff... and when I'm in those sandboxes, the libraries for the two catalogues seem to have a lot more in common than they do differently today, which is an improvement over where the Qobuz catalogue was 9 months ago.

    From a sound quality standpoint, both services sound very good to my ears... much better than any of the other alternatives out there that I've tried. For reasons that I would struggle to put into words, I do find that I tend to prefer the sound quality on Qobuz over Tidal, if only by just a little bit....
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2019
  2. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    That's 90% of what I am listening to and why I am on Qobuz. I started streaming with Tidal but for me Qobuz is a bit better Tidal without JayZ and MQA. Who can say no to that, particularly if your genre is classical?

    But I like very much Amazon entering hi res streaming, that shows the game is not anymore about the small minority of weirdos obsessed with SQ like you know who..
    All other players were put on notice that from now on this is not about JayZ or the labels that would love MQA either, no matter how big they are. Amazon dwarfs all that. It becomes about who can deliver better listener experience and service at reasonable price. Hopefully...
     
  3. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    Customer service for Amazon Music HD is non-existent. Their forum is not useful. At least the manager for Qobuz US is active on Audiophile Style and they are serious about providing high quality streaming to audiophiles. I doubt we will ever see Roon or Audirvana integration with Amazon Music HD, that is not Amazon's style.

    Exclusive mode on the Windows desktop app? If that was a priority for Amazon we would already have it. I might be wrong, we'll see. The real benefit of Amazon getting in to this market is price pressure on Qobuz and Tidal. We have already seen Qobuz lower prices for US customers to meet Amazon. If you are in the EU you still pay the higher price per month though, that is already upsetting folks. Still waiting to see what Tidal does.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2019
  4. netforce

    netforce MOT: Headphones.com

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    Qobuz can be confusing at times. Here is just a random example I noticed one day:
    [​IMG]
    The first one on the left is explicit/hi res, the second is also explicit/hi res, third is explicit/44.1khz, fourth is not explicit/hi res, fifth is not explicit/44.1khz.

    I saw this on the phone one day was just super confused. Can't tell the difference between the first and second one beside the first one seems overall just a little shorter.

    Overall though, been on Tidal for a few years and Qobuz for a few months. The UI on Tidal is little nicer and easier to navigate. Library between the two is basically what I expected, things I can't find on one I can't find on the other. Things I can find on one I find also on the other. Nothing too different between the two in that realm.

    In the end, I think I am going to cancel Tidal and keep Qobuz. Similar enough between the two but Qobuz is kinda winning me over.

    Got both in Roon setup so just playing around with both at the moment.
     
  5. Bloom

    Bloom MOT: Bloom Audio

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    Yeah, stuff like that does drive me crazy with the Qobuz app when I use it on my phone. Thankfully in Roon, all the dupe albums are in the "Versions" tab.
     
  6. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    Deezer is finally supporting lossless on mobile and web (lossless was only on their desktop apps until now).
    https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/18/deezer-hifi-on-mobile-and-web/

    I trialed Deezer early this year. Sound quality was fine but I chose not to continue:
    https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...ic-streaming-services.3994/page-7#post-241817
    Qobuz and Spotify have become my main services, and I still have a Tidal subscription for streaming lossless albums that haven't made it into Qobuz's catalog.

    BTW, Deezer and MQA announced back in 2017 that they would be collaborating, but it doesn't seem like anything ever happened. Deezer is a much larger service than Tidal (many more subscribers and countries).
     
  7. Elmer Danilovich

    Elmer Danilovich MOT:Earmen, HeadAmp, Bricasti; AKA:MShenay

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    I have to be honest, I some how wound up with all three...

    Tidal, Qobuz and Amazon HD Music

    I like HD music on my Laptop, the program works nicely and with a few small tweaks it's close to what I get from Foobar2K with Ultra HD stuff, Tidal I enjoy exclusively with xDSD or just on my LG V8 with porta Pro's and Qobuz... as soon as it dipped down to $15 I jumped on board, I enjoy it with everything that isn't xDSD and I likely won't be renewing Tidal

    As a business I've found Qobuz to be very much involved in the community, I've bumped into them at a number of shows and every-time they've really gone above and beyond to engage with the community

    Most recently they even took an Entire Headphone Station to the "Headphone area" at CAF this year. So, while I hope the Library starts to grow a little quicker I'm quite content to give them my business now and into the future. In terms of how each sounds I've not sat down to compare them head to head, for the most part I'm using each service where I find it works best for my needs.
     
  8. Riotvan

    Riotvan Snoofer in the Woofer

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    Anyone have a problem under Qobuz with Win10 that the bar to skip to other parts of the song does nothing? It happens randomly and quite often, have to restart app, its a pain in the ass.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2019
  9. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    Got a noob question I couldn't get a straight answer on. Let's say you have your sound settings in Windows 10 at 24bit/192khz. And you have a DAC that can oversample at 24/192. If you are using WASAPI in Qobuz or Exclusive Mode in Tidal, is the stream being upsampled to 24/192? I don't think Windows would downsample that rate to 44.1khz is it because it's completely bypassing the mixer?

    Any idea what the rate is with Tidal Masters? The muting relay on the Gungnir clicks when I play a track and then when I go back to HiFi mode. I'm thinking its playing at 96khz. Not sure though couldn't find information on their site.
     
  10. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    @treboR I believe using those settings both Qobuz and Tidal bypass Windows Sounds and stream at the rate displayed in the apps it does not matter that you have sound settings in Windows 10 set at 24/192. With Amazon Music HD it does matter since in shared mode everything would be up-sampled by Windows to 24/192. When I had Tidal the app did the first unfold for Masters to 24/88.2 or 24/96.
     
  11. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    In exclusive mode, Windows sends the original stream directly to the DAC without up or down sampling (your 24bit/192khz sound setting would be ignored).

    Tidal Masters (MQA) files are 24/48 or 24/44.1 FLAC. They can be played directly as FLAC files, or decoded to 2x, 4x or 8x rate. The Tidal app can decode MQA in software to 2x (e.g. to 24/96). Higher than 2x decoding requires a DAC with MQA hardware.
     
  12. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    Gotcha. Now let's say if you have the option to select a 192khz rate on a DAC, is it upsampling the incoming stream?
     
  13. Riotvan

    Riotvan Snoofer in the Woofer

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    That Qobuz windows 10 app is a f'ing pos. Randomly stops playing, skips and pops and then it's good again. And my internet is more than fast enough, as is the hardware. Maybe i need to get a streamer or some shit... I mean sound quality is perfect when it works.
     
  14. randytsuch

    randytsuch Friend

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    Same thing playing from browser? I know on a macbook, the chrome browser player appears to act differently from the mac app, but I don't see those issues on either.
     
  15. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    Really suggest you try Audirvana player, it has always been solid for me with Qobuz. Free to try for 30 days then $75 to keep it. Plus you can use a remote on your phone and it has support for VST3 plugins like equalizers.
     
  16. Senorx12562

    Senorx12562 Case of the mondays

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    100% agree. My free trial is up in like 10 days, but I may not use it again before then. And no, I won't be paying another $75 for more software to make it work. Just started a $2 for 4 month trial of Tidal, so for that 10 days, I actually have all three of the big lossless streaming services.

    As far as sq goes, Tidal and Qobuz are indistinguishable to me, but the ui on the Tidal is light years better than Qobuz' app. This is my 3rd try with Tidal and I must say there has been a great deal of improvement since the last attempt. While the sq of Amazon's offering is noticeably inferior to that of Tidal, and their ui a little less so, unless their pricing gets closer to Amazon's, Amazon will probably get the nod. The difference in sq is at the margin, I am cheap, and I am not trying to make some political statement. I guess Tidal has four mos. to convince me otherwise, and I think it will have to be price that does it.
     
  17. randytsuch

    randytsuch Friend

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    Something I realized this morning, but likely doesn't effect many, if any others.
    I play background music at work and while out and about with tidal, and recently with qubuz.
    I have tmobile, and with tidal you can stream without it counting as data. But qobuz is not on their list of free music streamers, so their music counts against my data limit.
    Will likely make me drop qubuz, I don't want to use all my data on music.
     
  18. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    Before MQA Tidal did not have exclusive mode and the Windows app was very buggy, while Qobuz did have exclusive mode and was pretty stable. Now both have exclusive mode and Tidal seems to be more stable on Windows while the Qobuz app occasionally hangs even for me.

    I'm not sure why Audirvana can code a player that is very stable and Qobuz can not. Even Tidal acts up occasionally, it did for me until I dropped it 6 months ago. Please just don't support Amazon Music HD, we don't want them to force Tidal and/or Qobuz out of business until they have a monopoly and can jack prices up.
     
  19. Riotvan

    Riotvan Snoofer in the Woofer

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    Haven't tried the web player, that will go through the windows mixer right? Not something i want.
    Seems better without asio and using Audirvana, admittedly my setup is a bit weird.
    Yep paying more money for a working app seems fucked to me. Can't get Amazon Music here in high quality because reasons. Don't want to support Tidal with their MQA bs either, meh. Will see what i'll do, been thinking about a minidsp SHD Studio which has volumio integrated and also dsp stuff i want.
     
  20. gefski

    gefski Facebook Friend

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    Audirvana/Tidal has been glitch free for me as well for 3 ? years. All the bad behavior I see posted about Tidal's app is something I haven't had to deal with.
     

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