Romulus
pfm Member
Thank you for your suggestion, I did find out and alas it's how I thought they will give a month free trial but they want your full card details; too big brother for me...
Streaming is inferior to redbook CD playback?
- Thread starter beammeup
- Start date
Thank you for your suggestion, I did find out and alas it's how I thought they will give a month free trial but they want your full card details; too big brother for me...
webster
Listen & enjoy.
All the main players are the same in that respect but as long as you cancel before the trial period has expired you won't be charged.
They are a reputable company with a good reputation, your card company will protect you from any fraud. As long as you are sufficiently intelligent to count 30 days, or make a note in a diary, you have nothing whatsoever to worry about.
camverton
pfm Member
I recently gave up on Qobuz, too many dropouts, and tried Tidal, and much to my surprise they didn’t require card details for the trial. it wouldn’t have been a problem as if I went on to sign up I would have had to give card details for the subscription, and not much point in trying something that I wouldn’t have wanted to subscribe to.
Anyway, now subscribed to Tidal, no dropouts, cheaper, better app with connect but perhaps very slightly softer sound.
webster
Listen & enjoy.
I bow to your superior knowledge - it's been a while since I had a trial of Tidal but I was pretty sure they required bank details at the time.
Interested that you say Tidal is cheaper - is that really the case or are you comparing Tidal CD quality with Qobuz Hi-Res?
Mozart
pfm Member
Yes but, golden eared audiophiles are capable of hearing things orders of magnitude well beyond audible range. They are very special people indeed. A national asset. They will soon be recruited by astronomers to hear pulsing neutron stars, detect covert submarine operations and butterflies flapping wings in far off lands. They refine their superhuman skills by listening to Prog Rock on vinyl. Dare you challenge them, they will label you a troll (favourite comeback) or worse ban you to oblivion. GCHQ have started recruiting these miracles of nature. Onboard every nuclear powered sub lurks an audiophile who steps in when the delicate sonar system and supercomputers fail. Captain orders up the audiophile to sit in his requisite armchair, with his pipe and slippers to start the Hunt for Red October. Once the mission is complete, Captain then allows the resident audiophile to wax lyrical about the joys of valves, vinyl, BBC monitors and DSOM to the crew of the sub/battleship. Back in Blighty, the audiophile is then commissioned to change the cables of the battle group with special audiophile cables which will (no matter the cost) win the war.
Audiophiles, your country needs you!!!!
camverton
pfm Member
No superior knowledge, just how it was a month or so ago for me and yes, I was surprised.
Yes I am now on Tidal CD rather than Qobuz hi-rez although I had Qobuz set to deliver CD rez due to poor rural broadband speeds. So yes, cheaper for my use but not a strict like for like comparison. When I was able to play hires files I preferred streaming at CD rez and upscaling using an m-scaler rather than streaming the hi rez version. To be fair I didn’t put extensive effort into comparing so I’m not offering this as a “fact” just my preference with my system.
notevenclose
pfm Member
Meantime, you might want to think about getting out more.
I have tried streaming but you always tend to jump to different tracks because you have thousands to choose from. No myself I always play an album from beginning to end. I choose about 4 albums every night and play each and every track. No i would not use streaming because you dont own any of the music on there and it means you have to rent the music off the company. It all adds up. Also top it off yes its a well known fact that streaming is inferior to a high end cd player.
No, I don't. I play albums just as I've always done.
Not true, I own loads of music that is stored on my NAS for streaming. Sure you can pay for a streaming service and then buy if you like it which is what I do. Music subscription services cost buttons in the grand scheme of hifi - 12 quid per month or thereabouts for Qobuz.
What would you call a high-end CD player? And compared to what streamer?
John Phillips
pfm Member
Unfortunately the record labels are certainly guilty of mangling the files they release. A recent example comes from the various releases of the "Money For Nothing" album. The 1988 original CD looks dynamically pristine with dynamic range DR15. The 1996 CD release was squashed into DR10 and the 2022 Qobuz high resolution file is further squashed down to DR7.
These differences will be obvious (and incidentally, high resolution does not always mean better).
Although it's tempting to be hasty when a difference is heard in this context, it's certainly better to not blame some mysterious issue in good quality digital technology delivering the file to your DAC. Blame the file first. That's much more likely.
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NickofWimbledon
pfm Member
Many dealers' comments may indeed show what they sell, but it is also easy to compare apples with pears.
Streaming's vast library is a pro and a con. With many versions of an album available, it is easy to pick badly - I suggest using the Favourite function liberally when you find the 'right' version for that reason. If the CD or the stream you pick for a comparison is not great, then you probably won't learn much.
The vast library thing may also mean that someone with 2000 CDs gets very little benefit from streaming, while having a CD player (not just an ability to rip on a laptop and NAS) may be pointless for someone with 50.
The number of albums with High Res steams on Qobuz seems to keep rising at an accelerating pace - hurrah! In any event, comparing a decent CD to a lesser stream (esp if very compressed) again won't tell us anything useful.
Some disagree, but even good CD players have character to some extent. I have yet to hear any CD player I like as much as my ancient Naim CDS2 except for kit that costs silly money. If I were doing the comparison between my streamer (NDX2/ XPS2) and a less appealing CD player, I suspect I'd be voting against the CD player, not the CD.
After all that, to me the best-sounding CDs I have are rarely beaten by any stream I can find, even with my two-box streaming source. However, lots of CDs (esp from 80s and early 90s) are clearly beaten by a good stream, and that number went up after I put the XPS on the NDX2.
My tentative conclusion is that comparably good boxes of either sort give comparably good results if they actually have the same starting data, and most of the differences/ failings I think I hear in the comparison are really me noticing differences in the music being fed to them.
An easy way to test that is to add rips to the comparison. Since adding the power supply box to my streamer, I have yet to hear any album sound markedly better or worse if I play the CD directly or if I play the ripped version via my streamer. So if I like the CD better than the Qobuz HR option, I will like the ripped version as much as the direct CD and more than the Qobuz HR option - and vice versa.
As a summary: -
1. For comparably priced boxes, these differences are small or zero if comparing a good CD to a good HR stream.
2. Most of the time, the choice will be driven by the actual versions of the original recording that were used to make CD/ HR stream, not the boxes.
Does that look right to everyone else?
Streaming's vast library is a pro and a con. With many versions of an album available, it is easy to pick badly - I suggest using the Favourite function liberally when you find the 'right' version for that reason. If the CD or the stream you pick for a comparison is not great, then you probably won't learn much.
The vast library thing may also mean that someone with 2000 CDs gets very little benefit from streaming, while having a CD player (not just an ability to rip on a laptop and NAS) may be pointless for someone with 50.
The number of albums with High Res steams on Qobuz seems to keep rising at an accelerating pace - hurrah! In any event, comparing a decent CD to a lesser stream (esp if very compressed) again won't tell us anything useful.
Some disagree, but even good CD players have character to some extent. I have yet to hear any CD player I like as much as my ancient Naim CDS2 except for kit that costs silly money. If I were doing the comparison between my streamer (NDX2/ XPS2) and a less appealing CD player, I suspect I'd be voting against the CD player, not the CD.
After all that, to me the best-sounding CDs I have are rarely beaten by any stream I can find, even with my two-box streaming source. However, lots of CDs (esp from 80s and early 90s) are clearly beaten by a good stream, and that number went up after I put the XPS on the NDX2.
My tentative conclusion is that comparably good boxes of either sort give comparably good results if they actually have the same starting data, and most of the differences/ failings I think I hear in the comparison are really me noticing differences in the music being fed to them.
An easy way to test that is to add rips to the comparison. Since adding the power supply box to my streamer, I have yet to hear any album sound markedly better or worse if I play the CD directly or if I play the ripped version via my streamer. So if I like the CD better than the Qobuz HR option, I will like the ripped version as much as the direct CD and more than the Qobuz HR option - and vice versa.
As a summary: -
1. For comparably priced boxes, these differences are small or zero if comparing a good CD to a good HR stream.
2. Most of the time, the choice will be driven by the actual versions of the original recording that were used to make CD/ HR stream, not the boxes.
Does that look right to everyone else?
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
I recall some experimentation at my local dealer using a pair of line-optical and optical-line boxes as a way to optically decouple the signal. From memory, these boxes were about £50-100 so not expensive. They significantly closed the gap between streaming and CD, the takeaway for me being that the biggest problem with streaming remains the noise.
What noise?
Cereal Killer
432
the caretaker
pfm Member
Playing qobuz hi res through my cyrus dac x+ and playing cd through my cyrus cd xt se...cd wins!
90% of my listening is qobuz!
NickofWimbledon
pfm Member
@the caretaker - thanks. Do you find all your CDs better than any stream, or just some favourites?
the caretaker
pfm Member
Yes all cds are better, unless they are shabby recordings, however most of my listening is qobuz. I like the new music and it does sound good but not as good as cd!