If you find that subscription services are not as good as they ought to be, I suggest the following use-case:
- Preview music from the service by streaming it in MP3. If the MP3 version does not sound so good, then the premium version is probably not worth any extra cost.
- Add the ok MP3 to playlists for background music
- If you find a keeper, download the best version or buy the CD.
Don't get me wrong. I do see use cases for the streaming services. They seem to be a good way to explore new (or new to me) music. I have found artists that way. But $10-15/month is expensive just for that.
My main beef with them, as pointed out earlier, is that they tend to be US-centric and that my access to content I enjoy may be revoked at the whim of MegaCorp Inc.
Tom
My main beef with them, as pointed out earlier, is that they tend to be US-centric and that my access to content I enjoy may be revoked at the whim of MegaCorp Inc.
Tom
(1) In August. https://darko.audio/2023/07/tidal-adopts-flac-forks-mqa-again-what-now/. If you have Tidal HiFi you can see how the bit rate quality now adds two new modes: " Max" and "MQA". Both are 24/96.
(2) I got over 4000 LPs.... and hundreds of CDs. Having Tidal avaialble helps a lot. I can find music that I don't want to buy but I want to listen. In many cases, it's not available. In many cases, I get to listen to music that I never heard so it's really no risk. For the cost 400 a year I get to hear a lot of music.
(3) If you're a keeper and don't even spend 360 a year on buying music... how big can your collection be?
(4) LOL, this hobby is a money suck... come on. face it.
Spotify is great for travelling by car/train/flight and enjoy better output than the radio could offer. Beside the price point in.my actual lifepoint the subscription is reduced to Peppa Pig and alternate terror for child minds. At home I'm still stuck with the first gen Sonos speaker and the greatest thing about Spotify is the connectivity. Soundwise everyone is totally right but Spotify is made for the masses and background music listening. The comparison to highres streaming solutions is a bit weird to read because this is not their target audience. If you expect more from a streaming company choose the fitting ones. Good done mastering can also be enjoyed at Spotify but surely not the last bits. I'm curious why noone put in the ring apple music or Amazon till this point 🤓
Big enough for me to enjoy it. What's your point? This is starting to sound an awful lot like a peeing match.
I respect Darko, but his mention about MQA being sideline and possibly going away is a bit speculative. There's no reason for Tidal to delete the MQA files. They can just offer the high-resolution FLAC in addition to MQA. Give people choice. Unless MQA stiffs them on the licensing fees and/or users demand that Tidal ends their support for MQA.
Re-checked Tidal's website. They do mention high-resolution FLAC being part of their premium plan. Good!
Interestingly nobody mentions DSD. Is that finally dead?
Tom
^ Spotify is great for travelling by car/train/flight
I used both PC and Android devices for listening to TIDAL. What I did was to put a 512GB flash chip in the Android phones and tablets so I download music. By now, I got something like 500 records downloaded... so when I go play, I can select "live" or "downloaded". That way when I'm in the car or up and about, I plug a DAC/headphone amp and use headphones... or if in the car, I plug it via USB and use Android Auto.
That means that if I'm in an area with good G4 reception I can do live... but otherwise, I can play off my storage. Given I love to do loooong drives... nothing like listening non stop to one of my private playlists running off my downloaded music. Zappa All Night.... Dead to the Twilight... late 60s Clapton-Cream-Traffic.. DISCO you say? Well that requires the home system. No problemo!!. It works for me very well.
^ starting to sound an awful lot like a peeing match
Not intended as such. Just a note. I spend money on buying music because I want lots of music that I can choose. Many people, like me, have spent an order of magnitude, or more, on their records/CDs than on their hardware equipment. That floats for me. So, when you say that some service is expensive, you ought to note that it is for you... for your priorities and decisions that you have made. But for others it's fully worth it. As you can see, I use Tidal Hifi, to me -us four- it's fully worth it, so is Netflix. THAT's my point. It's not how many records or tapes polycarbonate or VHS of SuperBeta or Laserdiscs I may have, it's about maximizing my choice.
That said, I am pissed off about music disappearing from Tidal. Like when Disney decided to pull a bunch of Halloween music and from one of my streaming playlists. I might have to start recording them... DAC->ADAC....
It does look like the major streaming, minus Apple and Spotify, are moving to support FLAC high bit rates. Apple I hate, sorry... Spotify is stuck in the MP3 days. Pfft.
Anyways, a chacon son gout.
My DACs do DSD but I haven't seen any streaming service offer it and I don't have any material that uses it. I almost got into DVD-A but not SACD.
I used both PC and Android devices for listening to TIDAL. What I did was to put a 512GB flash chip in the Android phones and tablets so I download music. By now, I got something like 500 records downloaded... so when I go play, I can select "live" or "downloaded". That way when I'm in the car or up and about, I plug a DAC/headphone amp and use headphones... or if in the car, I plug it via USB and use Android Auto.
That means that if I'm in an area with good G4 reception I can do live... but otherwise, I can play off my storage. Given I love to do loooong drives... nothing like listening non stop to one of my private playlists running off my downloaded music. Zappa All Night.... Dead to the Twilight... late 60s Clapton-Cream-Traffic.. DISCO you say? Well that requires the home system. No problemo!!. It works for me very well.
^ starting to sound an awful lot like a peeing match
Not intended as such. Just a note. I spend money on buying music because I want lots of music that I can choose. Many people, like me, have spent an order of magnitude, or more, on their records/CDs than on their hardware equipment. That floats for me. So, when you say that some service is expensive, you ought to note that it is for you... for your priorities and decisions that you have made. But for others it's fully worth it. As you can see, I use Tidal Hifi, to me -us four- it's fully worth it, so is Netflix. THAT's my point. It's not how many records or tapes polycarbonate or VHS of SuperBeta or Laserdiscs I may have, it's about maximizing my choice.
That said, I am pissed off about music disappearing from Tidal. Like when Disney decided to pull a bunch of Halloween music and from one of my streaming playlists. I might have to start recording them... DAC->ADAC....
It does look like the major streaming, minus Apple and Spotify, are moving to support FLAC high bit rates. Apple I hate, sorry... Spotify is stuck in the MP3 days. Pfft.
Anyways, a chacon son gout.
My DACs do DSD but I haven't seen any streaming service offer it and I don't have any material that uses it. I almost got into DVD-A but not SACD.
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While 24-bits has legitimate mastering/mixing engineering advantages, it also lent itself to easy DAC performance metric comparison in the eyes of audio consumers, and so, was largely marketed on that basis. There was even an interim best performance figure of merit of 20-bits for a brief while. The supposition among audio consumers was that 20-bits was superior to 16-bits, and the subsequent 24-bits was superior to 20-bits. Not that any of those number differences were/is perceptible upon listening. Then, however, neither are competently designed transistor amplifier THD figure differences. Yet THD still serves as a distinguishing amplifier comparison metric in the eyes of audio consumers.
This somewhat akin to what Intel had established in the minds of PC consumers during that industry’s CPU clock speed war. The notion that the higher the CPU clock speed, the proportionally higher performing was the PC system in which it resided. Of course, a number of factors affect the users perception of PC performance, such as Cache RAM access, hard drive memory transfer latency and memory transfer bandwidth, just to name a few. Most consumers, however, aren’t PC engineers. Nor are they digital audio processing engineers.
In lacking the necessary technical expertise to accurately assess a technically complex product, consumers naturally seek out some clear product figure-of-merit for easy comparison. Which then provides, what seems like on the surface, to be a rational metric for a purchasing decision. Price, is the obvious metric for those seeking the lowest product acquisition cost. Value and max-performance shoppers, however, require some alternative metric. For audio DACs, that became bit depth, either in the DAC-chip’s internal hardware resolution, or in its Sigma-Delta Modulation noise-shaped effective resolution.
This somewhat akin to what Intel had established in the minds of PC consumers during that industry’s CPU clock speed war. The notion that the higher the CPU clock speed, the proportionally higher performing was the PC system in which it resided. Of course, a number of factors affect the users perception of PC performance, such as Cache RAM access, hard drive memory transfer latency and memory transfer bandwidth, just to name a few. Most consumers, however, aren’t PC engineers. Nor are they digital audio processing engineers.
In lacking the necessary technical expertise to accurately assess a technically complex product, consumers naturally seek out some clear product figure-of-merit for easy comparison. Which then provides, what seems like on the surface, to be a rational metric for a purchasing decision. Price, is the obvious metric for those seeking the lowest product acquisition cost. Value and max-performance shoppers, however, require some alternative metric. For audio DACs, that became bit depth, either in the DAC-chip’s internal hardware resolution, or in its Sigma-Delta Modulation noise-shaped effective resolution.
I could be wrong and maybe it already said, but AFAIK 24 bit could make some difference by recording, not by reproducing.
However, since all my listening are not in streaming, but from a local SSD, all they are in stereo WAVs 16-bit 44,1 kHz and I don't ask for anything better.
Not to mention the disproportionate file sizes.
AFAIK, Tidal provides FLAC files with different "quality" rate (and related costs, of course), but frankly I don't even want to hear about "lossless compression" in home listening, under any circumstances (car listening is the only FLAC exception, due to microSD size on my smartphone).
IMO, Lossless compression does not mean decompression without any "addition".
Maybe I'm an old fashioned guy, just my opinions.
16-bit is the container size. Unless you're a fan of 0 dBfs tones or Slipknot the actual data you hear typically occupies has much less bit depth. From my experience with cold, pre-processed microphone feeds after the conversion of an analogue broadcast plant to AoIP an unprocessed, uncompressed opera singer would probably require an average level close to -30 dBfs or more to avoid clipping. That's not 16-bit data where it counts, at your ear.
With all the massive advances in transfer speed and storage capacity the 16/24 debate, when the latter uses a fraction of a TikTok stream's bandwidth, is now a social argument over a technical one for all but niche edge cases.
With all the massive advances in transfer speed and storage capacity the 16/24 debate, when the latter uses a fraction of a TikTok stream's bandwidth, is now a social argument over a technical one for all but niche edge cases.
PSAudio seems to be all in with their Octave Studio releases. Then again, once you have the algorithm, just more server space. No idea what the license fee is like.
24-bit for home audio would simply be overkill. The 90 or so dB dynamic range of CD's 16-bits is more than adequate for living room use.
