Music Streaming Services

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

  1. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    It could be worse. Thanks!
     
  2. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Qobus idiots change their mind every day where they are available, I om on the free trial but in terms of any reliability I gave up on Qobuz. Their quality may be good but their business sucks. It is a mystery to me that Roon is working on full integration with Qobuz. But they invested a lot of development years in MQA, no one knows why.
    IDAGIO, yes its is only for classical music, is streaming in CD quality probably the largest and the best curated catalog. I got on free trial, the price is $9.99 CAD, like $7 US. The problem is they only support Sonos and Chromcast.
     
  3. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    Can someone recommend a couple of specific tracks on Tidal where the "watermarks" are able to easily be heard so I could (hopefully) compare the same tracks on Tidal vs Qobuz to really appreciate the difference?
     
  4. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    I find the watermark distortion to be most obvious in solo piano, especially in sustained notes where it has a fluttering tremolo effect, and as notes decay they sound like an artificial reverb.

    The watermark distortion is especially bad on Yuja Wang's Sonatas & Etudes album, and I find it unlistenable on Tidal or Spotify (the sound is fine on Qobuz). The distortion is easily heard starting from the very first notes and continues throughout the album. On track #3 (Chopin's famous Funeral March) the long slow notes especially highlight the distortion.
    https://listen.tidal.com/album/5387443
    https://open.spotify.com/album/7LnbDcqUlWJaBtYaP08qDy
    https://play.qobuz.com/album/0002894778264

    [​IMG]

    Another example, Hélène Grimaud's Bach album. Sounds fine on Qobuz, distorted on Tidal/Spotify (e.g. listen to the sustained notes as they decay on track #1 at 1:01).
    https://listen.tidal.com/album/35911902
    https://open.spotify.com/album/1ZlzyBCwMuZJKcEOfK9fW6
    https://play.qobuz.com/album/0002894776248

    [​IMG]

    I believe that people have created Spotify and Tidal playlists that illustrate examples of the UMG watermark. You can try Googling for those.

    One note — I find that MQA albums on Tidal do not appear have the UMG watermark. I'm not a fan of MQA, but this is an actual benefit. This should be expected since MQA claims fidelity to the original master without alteration. I feel that when some people say that the MQA version of an album sounds better, it may be due to lack of watermark rather than MQA technology itself.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2019
  5. Ash1412

    Ash1412 Friend

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    Somebody posted in a profile post (its deleted?) that Tidal sounded better all of a sudden. I use Tidal on a daily basis but right now I'm just using a pair of Porta Pros off my phone since I'm on vacation. I'll say this: Tidal suddenly sounded quite a bit warmer and less sharp starting a few days ago. Its quite noticeable to me, since it threw the Porta Pros from sounding quite balanced to a bit warm and bloomy. Haven't done comparison with CDs. Might be removal of the watermark to compete with Qobuz? I remember it had a "sharpening" effect.

    EDIT: Just listened to the songs in the above post. Watermark is still audible. Guess thats not it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2019
  6. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    My free Qobuz preview subscription just ended. I liked the sound but their software is more buggy than the others. I'll decide whether to drop Tidal and subscribe to Qobuz when they officially launch in the US,. Their lossless CD quality streaming will be $20/month (same as Tidal HiFI). Their hi-res tier (up to 24/192 streaming) will be $25/month. They will also offer 1 year subscription plans for 15% less than monthly.

    I am now trying out Deezer HiFi (lossless CD quality) on a 1 month free trial. Deezer doesn't seem to be targeting the audiophile market as much as Tidal and Qobuz. The Deezer Mac and PC apps don't have audio output settings such as selecting the output (e.g. USB Audio) or exclusive mode, or to force player volume to max. If you want to stream from the computer to a USB DAC, you have to use it as the computer's systemwide audio output, and manually set the player volume to max. Their mobile apps top out at 320kbps MP3, pretty lame. On the computer, lossless streaming sounds good, maybe the same as Tidal HiFi but I haven't done a close comparison.

    There is a super annoying behavior in the Deezer desktop apps and web player. On any other streaming service, when you quit the player and come back later, it brings you back to where you left off — the play queue is restored and the current track might even be queued up at exactly the same point as before. However when you start up the Deezer desktop or web player, your previous play queue is gone and it resets to a default list of featured pop songs. Every time I start the app or web player, the play queue keeps getting reinitialized with the same stupid list of songs.

    I saw that Deezer will be supporting MQA (announced in September but not currently in the product):
    https://www.audioxpress.com/news/mqa-streaming-expands-globally-with-deezer-new-hifi-service

    I was looking into whether Universal Music Group albums are watermarked on Deezer, and found something very interesting. I came across a number of albums (including the two albums I posted earlier) where Deezer has two versions of the same album with different release dates, and one is watermarked and the other not.

    For example, in the list of albums by Martha Argerich, the 1st and 4th in this row are the same album with slightly different release dates.
    [​IMG]
    The 03/12/2002 release is watermarked; the 01/01/2002 release is not watermarked. I have no idea what's going on here. I suspect that either the record label or Deezer goofed, and only the watermarked version was supposed to be available on Deezer.
     
  7. Deep Funk

    Deep Funk Deep thoughts - Friend

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    Tidal is becoming worse. The random shuffle of tracks even sometimes in album cued tracks is a minor issue.

    Thing is, it annoys me so much I cannot stand it. I will keep Tidal for new releases. Everything I want I get the FLAC-version.

    Is Spotify still decent? In my experience Spotify never really disappointed.
     
  8. Metro

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    I won't continue with Deezer after the end of my free trial. As a lossless streaming service, I would prefer to stay with Tidal rather than switch over. I'll decide about Qobuz when it officially launches in the US.

    Deezer has too many annoying or missing things that count against it.
    • Lossless is only supported on the desktop apps — mobile tops out at 320 kbps MP3.
    • The desktop apps don't save the play queue across sessions.
    • Instead of saving the play queue, every time the desktop apps start up, they preload the play queue with a selection of featured pop tunes. There should be nothing going into my play queue unless I put it there!
    • No detailed album information available, as on Tidal and Qobuz.
    • In the short two weeks that I've used it, the player stopped and froze in the desktop app several times. Recovery by starting a different track and coming back, then it plays fine.
    • On many classical albums, the track information is practically useless — you have to find what you want to hear by trial and error (example below)
    • Various annoying UI behavior. For example, in a list of albums, if you open one to look at it and return to the list, the list scrolls back to the top instead of leaving where it was.
    Deezer's lossless sound is good but no better than Tidal. One good thing I'll say about Deezer is that it has the Chesky Records catalog. I enjoy many of Chesky's Brazilian jazz and bossa nova albums. Chesky pulled their catalog from Tidal a year ago (but they stayed on Spotify, Google and others). I think Deezer is the only service that has lossless streaming for Chesky Records.

    Here's an example of useless classical track info on Deezer. This is an album of Mozart on Sony Classical by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra.

    Here is the track list on Spotify:
    [​IMG]

    Pretty similar on Tidal:
    [​IMG]

    On Deezer, guess which track is the one you want and hope you picked the right one:
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2019
  9. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    So I received my Beta testing credentials for Qobuz USA. After playing around with it for a few hours, here's what I think:

    +Available to use on different apps, including USB Audio Player Pro and BubbleUpnp
    +Hi-Rez without the MQA Bullshit.
    +Can actually buy your music, with super fast download speeds. Also includes Cover Art and good enough tag data. This part is the biggest draw to me over Tidal and also Onkyo Music/7digital, Qobuz has more stuff you can buy for very reasonable prices.
    +Different sample rates when buying your downloads if you just want Redbook over Hi-Rez.
    +Tons more audio options than Tidal for bitperfect, and has DNLA/Upnp support in beta.

    -The PC App is shit. Completely freezes on me after two minutes. To be fair, it's in Beta and I reported the problem. Tidal PC app is leagues better at this time.
    -It appears Qobuz PC App uses a cache system where it saves audio on your computer while streaming. While if you play the same stuff over and over again you don't have to use data, but it feels sluggish on my end.
    -Albums for streaming/purchase isn't available on Qobuz USA, but is available in the other markets (most of the George Clinton 80s albums).
    -When using Bubbleupnp and USB Audio Player Pro for Tidal, you can like tracks/artists/albums and your saves is transferable everywhere. No way to like tracks/artist/albums on Qobuz using third party apps. You have to use the Web Player or PC App.

    I can't comment on Roon since I don't have it. I presume it'll work leagues better than Qobuz own app at the moment.

    So at the moment very mixed emotions. Download store is great and I'll be doing more FLAC purchases on Qobuz than Onkyo Music (unless an album price is cheaper on Onkyo Music). But the Qobuz app blows hard.

    Still, I have high hopes for Qobuz and with some investment, it perhaps get me off Tidal. However, Tidal still wins with more of the stuff I want is on Tidal than on Qobuz.
     
  10. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    @Uri Cohen glad you got your Qobuz beta invite. Sorry you are having problems with playback same as I am on Windows 10. The Qobuz app does not freeze but playback starts distorting randomly usually after about 5 minutes of streaming. I talked to David Craff of Qobuz about the problem on another forum. Qobuz works fine using Audirvana+ and I am not hearing any complaints from Roon users so far but only been a day. I assume they are delaying full US launch until they have fixed their desktop app among other priorities. They probably only have one shot to displace Tidal so problems must be fixed.
     
  11. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    I agree. They need to get their PC app in order before they do the full rollout. I'm already giving Qobuz my money by doing a second purchase set with them today:

    [​IMG]


    You don't understand, I been putting off the original version of YMO first album with the US added reverb shit. I could get the CD, but I been too lazy to do it.

    With this download store, there goes my wallet.
     
  12. Sunflower_sutra

    Sunflower_sutra Acquaintance

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    I mainly have stuck to tidal as it allows me to download albums to a android DAP to be played offline at no extra cost. Does quboz charge extra for offline downloads? Even if they are played only in the quboz app
     
  13. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    The Qobuz app lets you import music for offline listening at no charge but you will lose access if you end your subscription.
     
  14. starence

    starence Facebook Friend

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    In case anyone missed it, Qobuz support has been added to Roon. It's been working well for me so far.
     
  15. Greg121986

    Greg121986 Almost "Made"

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    Has anyone used Qobuz from their phone? I drive a lot for work, so not only do I download albums to my phone, I also stream with Tidal consistently while driving. Truthfully, Tidal runs like crap on Apple CarPlay (Iphone XS + Chevy) but I'm fearful that Qobuz could only be worse. If Qobuz takes any longer to grant me the privilege of handing them hundreds of my dollars I may abandon the idea of switching altogether.
     
  16. Metro

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    I used Qobuz frequently from my phone during my 2 month preview subscription. The only particular issue I noticed is higher CPU usage than Tidal and Spotify (which I also use on the phone). What do you mean by "Tidal runs like crap on Apple CarPlay "? Stable stream? UI interface? If it would help, you can download music for offline playback on all of the services.
     
  17. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    There will inevitably be a free trial when Qobuz opens up to regular subscribers in the US. I’ve used Qobuz in my car without problems but I don’t use CarPlay so I don’t know what the issue is for you.
     
  18. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    At this time I won't jump on actually subscribing to Qobuz streaming, I just canceled it. They really need to fix the issue with their PC app, but also I hate the following thing with Qobuz:

    If using Third Party Apps to access the Qobuz service (like BubbleUpnp and UAPP), you can't like an artist/song/album. You can only like stuff on the official Qobuz apps and website. Now with Tidal you can actually like artist/song/album on any Third Party App that supports it. So I can be on UAPP on my phone and like this album. After liking the album I can have this album accessed on the Tidal app on my PC, the Tidal App on my ZX2, and on my phones/tablets that runs UAPP.

    Also, more stuff that I like is available on Tidal than on Qobuz at this time. However, you can save $39.98 if you pay one year of Qobuz Hi-Fi upfront (and not monthly). So if you want to save some dosh, you can do that.

    But Tidal been around the game for awhile, I like that interface a lot more than Qobuz. Also, it's still a good service to discover new shit. What I did is listened to the new Vangelis album that just came out on Tidal. I said OMG I must buy it, so I went on Qobuz and purchased it in FLAC.

    I wish I had more room to buy CDs, but the space is running around in my bedroom. At least there's steaming and cheap hard drives for backups.
     
  19. starence

    starence Facebook Friend

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    I'm not sure where you live, but Qobuz will have a larger catalog at launch than they have now in the US beta.
     
  20. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    In Florida, I'll wait until Qobuz brings out the full library. I noticed some differences between Qobuz and Tidal with regards to the library in the US.

    Honestly, Tidal works better for me at the moment. Qobuz Hi-Rez is good for people who care for it, but honestly the mastering of an album is the main factor here. Hi-Rez to me is pretty overrated.
     

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