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Tidal,Qobuz is that it?

Purité Audio

Purité Audio

Trade: Purite Audio
I have had Spotify for years ,but only really used it to listen to music which I would then purchase and then rip from CD.
But I have been comparing Tidal and Qubuz ,sound quality is excellent ,lossless
huge choice, as touched on by Clive in his B&W800 thread is there really any need for physical media?
I would be interested to hear people's thoughts.
Keith.
 
Spotify is buying bandwidth left right and centre and I think they will have to go the premium route as well, Apple's acquisition of beats I think will probably be streaming lossless. Then there is Deezer which is currently lossless and I think Rdio is probably going to announce lossless as it's an arms race in the music delivery biz. Feature for feature they all copy each other so differentiation will be down to how you like the app and how big the licenced libraries are.

Oops just noticed this is trade discussion, sorry, Ill back out now.
 
C Hi, I welcome comments, are there any drawbacks though, not in terms of the user but in terms of the future of the music industry?
Keith.
 
Purite Audio said:
I is there really any need for physical media?
I would be interested to hear people's thoughts.
Keith.
Click to expand...

As long as the user has fast internet high quality streaming could be all anyone needs.

People without fibre internet could have intermittent drop out problems as more and more large content is streamed.
 
I still find this very relevant and promising. I have decided to skip the NAS stage because I can't be arsed to rip CDs and mange a library (a friend tells me it's gotten much easier but he still gets the occasional problems).

I'll concentrate on three sources: vinyl (can't be arsed to digitise this, I'll just play it), CD (because my son's children audio books are not available on any streaming service I'm likely to subscribe to) and CD-quality internet streaming. So-called hi-res formats are nice but not essential in my experience so far.
 
Yup there are some recordings I have I still wish to play, a friends own recordings of his quartet for example, when clients bring CDs it is useful to have a transport, vinyl yes.
I sometimes use active room correction, ( Dirac/Amarra) but I can implement the correction
after the source, MiniDSP.
It is really liberating not having to rip and then back up .
Keith.
 
I haven't tried streaming yet (though, as a French speaker I've been tempted by Qobuz), partly because our rural internet connect probably isn't up to it, but also partly because I worry about my relationship to the music.
I fear the choice, "ephemerality" and lack of ownership might lead to consumable listening, but no real connection to the music. When you've bought a disc, I find you put more "effort" into getting to know the music.
My new purchases sit by the system until I've played them often enough to be put on the shelves. Would I make streaming work like that ? I doubt it.
 
Now I find I listen in exactly the same way as before, choose an album/piece of music and listen to it in its entirety , initially I suppose you do flit around a little more, because there is just so much to explore.
Keith.
 
The Internet connection speed is possibly the biggest setback to people in rural areas and we tackled that head on with a satellite connection. I find a fairly constant 17MBits/s to be adequate for all Netflix, quobuz and so on, several different streams can happen with no issue. I found tagging and paranoid ripping of CDs ike cleaning large record collections - a bit of a chore and the few FLACs I have and stored happily fit on a 128gb SSD so the NAS is mainly there to store movies, all my on site backups, my own work and general stuff, I don't really consider it a source per-se.

I like fiddling with my LP spinner and indeed am spinning records now, and it's nice to have something when the Internet is down (usually ice on the satellite dish) and I cannot be arsed to go out and wipe it down.

But I made the choice not to go back to owning huge stack or records or especially CDs and I find my monthly music spend is a lot less and my music listening has widened a lot. Listening to A lot of french, chanson and fado recently. The really raw Fado is something I do not find on Tidal so Quobuz has the edge.after a while you settle down to either your old or a new way of listening. Many older LPs have filler and it's quite easy to just skip. A lot of bands now don't bother with lp length formats in the conventional sense.

I really cannot see the point in buying a cd, in fact I don't even own an optical drive, there is nothing like that in this house.
 
I have just gone from Spotify to Tidal and I am very impressed.

It's as good as the physical CD and of course has way more albums than I have CDs or records!
 
I have Tidal too, Qobuz was stuttering a bit, probably my network, what about delivery,here I just have a MacBook connected to the Grimms.
Keith.
 
I'm finding that Tidal's lack of gapless playback is a real turn off, Qobuz is a lot better in that respect. It also has a great classical library that would be completely killed by lack of gapless playback in some places.
 
CliveGrace said:
I'm finding that Tidal's lack of gapless playback is a real turn off, Qobuz is a lot better in that respect. It also has a great classical library that would be completely killed by lack of gapless playback in some places.
Click to expand...

Interestingly, Linn's implementation of Tidal on their DS streamers is gapless so it can't be difficult.
 
I've been a Spotify Premium user for years. 90% of my digital listening is 320kbps Spotify. Is Tidal really noticeably superior? Might have to sign up for a trial...

Lefty
 
Spotify premium is very, very good. However Tidal is better in SQ by some margin and that's all that matters to me.
 
I like Tidal very much,Qobux too, but I can't seem to eradicate a small buffering issue at the beginning of every track.
I can't help but think this is the future, I haven't turned on my NAS since Tidal arrived.
Keith.
 
Some labels don't stream so you have to buy. ECM, Tzadik and so on but that's pretty much the only reason I have music on the NAS plus HiRez files are not streamed and are locally Stored as the bandwidth would kill my monthly allowance.... so the NAS its also a backup, a media store for TV shows, print server, downloader and cloud server as well as an email aggregator and so on.

But yes, If i find myself in Qobuz and they have what I have on the server, I just stream. Life is too short. I Have just paid for a second month of Tidal but I think I will be sticking with Qobuz as its got a better selection of stuff I listen to... But Qobuz is not ideal either, while it has gapless, it also lists files in searches but are only "extracts".
 
I haven't experienced the issue with gap less playback here, can you let me have a specific piece which should play gaplessly?
Keith.
 
Purite Audio said:
I haven't experienced the issue with gap less playback here, can you let me have a specific piece which should play gaplessly?
Keith.
Click to expand...

Try pretty much any opera or classical choral piece - the gaps usually fall between songs and recitatives and music. The gaps correspond to the tracks on a cd, but on a cd you don't get the gaps. There might be 100 such gaps in a work - really irritating, and they make nonsense of the bit-perfect, music lover, Hifi claims. Some pop music, typically live concerts, is intended to play gaplessly also. It's easy enough to fix if your software guys are half decent, or even vaguely competent.
 
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