Music Streaming Services

That is partially true but not quite accurate. Tidal uses files given to them by the record labels, which may be MQA encoded or not (it is the record label, not Tidal that does MQA encoding). Several of the major labels (notably Warner) have been converting their catalog on Tidal to MQA and the proportion has been rising, but a large proportion of Tidal is still currently not MQA encoded.

For the lower lossless tier, if a file is MQA encoded, Tidal streams it with its MQA flag removed so that it can't be expanded to higher resolution. It will only play at 44.1 or 48 but the file still has MQA encoding with its artifacts.

 

Apparently certain labels only provide their files in MQA-encoded FLAC, namely 2L. Came across the below today, and a couple similar threads on Computer Audiophile. Some posts from our very own @crenca there and on the Roon forums. Any updates on this front?

• https://m.facebook.com/2L.music/posts/2826196087415799
• https://community.roonlabs.com/t/qobuz-mqa-file/66606

 

I have been enjoying Amazon HD Unlimited Prime Autobots Roll Out for a month or so and it seems pretty good so far. No MQA in sight. I use via a desktop app so no idea about Roon or other front end integration. Not sure how the catalog stacks up to others, but so far everything I have looked for has been available. Would be curious if anyone else has played with it.

 

To be specific (source: me; how to repro: buy or trial the most expensive Tidal subscription tier): There are many titles that are not available without MQA. You get "nominal high res MQA" and then if you step back/down to "CD resolution", it's 16/44.1 but still lossy MQA encoded. This includes albums that were available before in true lossless Redbook. Looks like Tidal are running a background job to encode their catalog into lossy MQA (including likely some amount fake upscaling to nominal higher resolutions)?

I ended my Tidal family subscription a couple of months ago. Found Qobuz to be eminently survivable, with the nice upside not just of true lossless but also e.g. PDF booklets (relevant for classical music, e.g. line by line translation for operas, ...).

 

I hadn't tried Tidal but using basic Amazon was enough to make me try Tidal's BF offer. 3 months for $1. Can't be worse. Lightly checking this thread, it seems there is no "go-to" for this community. After two days use it's been very mildly frustrating but no more than Amazon's. Hardly a fully baked assessment though.

 

I don't understand the obsession with the MQA stuff. it's pretty irrelevant and just food for the mind. I just use my ears. my ears tell me that Tidal on High quality (not Hi-fi, not Master or Hi-fi plus or whatever the f**k) sounds the closest to the CD out of the streaming services I have assessed. this has VERY little to do with the actual files on their servers and almost everything to do with the coding/sound processing of their respective web/mobile player applications. my findings were largely the same years ago before the arrival of MQA and Apple Music when comparing Tidal to Spotify.

I was just curious if anyone else had the same findings.

 

God I'm fed up with how Qobuz and so many other streaming services don't even bother separating an artist's EP's or Singles from their main albums. Qobuz is a f'ing mess, you open an artist's catalog and its' just full of singes and EP's and all kinds of crap you have to click on to find their main albums. And they aren't even listed chronologically. I just tried to play a Neil Young album and they also had multiple copies of many albums spread throughout the list (Tidal does too, but at least they are grouped together)

I wish Tidal would drop the MQA bullshit, but their user interface is by far my favorite. Every artist has

Main Albums
EP's/Singles
Live Albums
Compilations

All separated

Device manufacturers need to stop supporting MQA. Then Tidal will have to drop it.

 

This is by far my biggest complaint about Qobuz. I generally just search for artist and album name that I want to hear. Apple Music is much better, with several categories: Top songs, essential albums, albums (studio), singles and EPs, playlists, live albums, music videos.

 

Qobuz recently revamped their organization on the web player, but looks like that hasn’t made its way to the mobile app yet.

I think Tidal has the better organization too, but I am so tired of MQA and knowing that when I listen to the regular lossless files that it’s a variation of MQA that I think I’m willing to live with Qobuz’s quirks.

Besides, don’t lots of people use Roon as a front-end for Qobuz anyway?

 

I hope one day Spotify gets lossless streaming going to add to the options, but it looks like it's on hold for now. I've been trying out apple music (3 months for 15$ I think). It's been working decent so far, just need to figure out how to transfer my playlists.

 

That’s exactly how they display discography of an artist in Roon.
1. Main Albums
2. Singles and EPs
3. Compilations
4. Appearances
5. With <other Artists>

 

I’m not interested in Roon or using a computer to play music so Roon doesn’t work for me…

I use Bubbleupnp on a Samsung S10e and I’m very happy with this setup.

 

I’ve been happy with Audirvana/Tidal for three-ish years or so; one minor irritation has been that nothing indicates an album is MQAd so I can’t immediately grab the non MQA (without listening to a bit of each when there are two identical albums).

 

If you get a cheap Intel NUC then it will just lie in a corner of your house and you can stream music via your mobile only using Roon and you wont need a laptop or desktop to stream but yes you need a very basic small NUC to run the Roon core. So initial setup requires some work.
Also since you already have good exposure to various music so it may not add lot of value but for ppl like me who had limited exposure to western music, Roon really helps to discover new music and artist and is worth the price for its UI and feature set that it offers.

 

Not sure if you're still looking for a solution here, but I used Free Your Music to transfer playlists from YouTube Music to Spotify when I switched last year. Worked pretty well, although the song mapping was only about 90% accurate. Sometimes it would pick up different songs with the same song title, so you'll just have manually go through and double check.

 

Thanks! Haven't heard of this, I'll give it a shot. I've been using https://soundiiz.com/ . It's been decent, but I don't really like the monthly fee. It looks like Free Your Music has a buy once option that just doesn't have auto-sync which would be good enough for me.

*Actually it looks like "Share playlists across streaming services" requires the monthly subscription, so I'm not sure.

 

Does anyone know of a way to transfer an album from Bandcamp to Tidal?

Don't get me wrong, I buy lots of music from Bandcamp, mostly all the albums that aren't available on Tidal, or bands I love and want to support. But there are instances like compilations, where it would be really nice to import the whole compilation album into tidal, so I can listen to it in tidal and very easily add artists I like from the compilation.

Soundiize is supposed to be able to do it, but it wants me to sign into an account with "Hype Machine" but Hype Machine has no way of creating an account.

Again, not trying to pirate or cheat Bandcamp, it's really just for complications so I can ore easily add them to my library instead of manually trying to add them individually which is a PITA. Also, I can listen to them in higher quality.

thanks!

 

Maybe https://www.tunemymusic.com/ if you download the music, then upload it.

 

Is there some way to bulk download all my Bandcamp purchases at once? I have so many that have collected over time and I've just been waiting to download them and can't imagine clicking the download link on each album to download them all.

I'm flabbergasted that Bandcamp doesn't have a native way to do this. But there must be some hacks out there. I've googled it and there do seem to be some hacks but most are over my head.

I use a Mac.

 

Has anyone ever reached the limit of artists in their catalog for any streaming service? They claim there’s a limit.