Great read! Was interesting to see your perspective on things!
I got lucky here with the streaming thing, I’ve never ever been a streamer nor been curious about it. Not to mention that I always had a small library so when I got into audio I was able to easily replace all my music with lossless versions without paying too much. (altho at this point I have spent thousands on my music, but still not as much as I have spent on the gear lol). But talking about streaming, I do have Spotify family plan that I got originally for listening to music on the car or running because I didn’t have a SD card for my phone and then it turned out to be loved by my mom and sister too, they stream all the time. But for the past two weeks or so since I got a new phone and got a new SD card, I passed my lossless library to it, and have noticed a fairly significant upgrade in audio quality. And this is even with listening to music with Bluetooth buds. Don’t know if it’s a bit rate thing where the buds are still providing higher quality but I think it’s really just because I have the music locally stored. Something about decoding it from the phones high quality lossless files to the earbuds sounds much better. To the point that I’ve stopped using Spotify for when I go running or play music in the car and I just play the flac files I got. It’s legit made that big of a difference.
I didn’t say it’s better than local files, just that basing this on the lowest quality of streaming option is problematic. I use Spotify a lot, it’s still the best integrated option with Google Assistant and in the car but for when I really want to listen to music, I turn to Qobuz. YMMV.
I would be lying if I said that in the short amount of time I did try Qobuz in the past out of curiosity, that I noticed or didn’t notice a big difference in quality ur that’s because I didn’t and don’t really plan on using a streaming service for quality. I use Spotify because of the radio stations they have for artists, the play lists they have for certain type of music etc. Qobuz, I use their download store alot as it’s very complete, their streaming service is very complete in terms of being able to play most artists but I didn’t care for their recommendations etc whatsoever lol. But I will say this, when I first used Spotify I immediately felt the sound quality was kinda meh, still do and Infact now I feel it more to the point where I generally listen to local files on my car etc. With qobuz however when I used it I never got that feeling.
I can’t say I feel strongly enough about local vs quality streaming services to die on the hill of local being the best but that’s because I’ve always played music that’s locally stored.
I just wish Spotify would’ve released their hifi option and match the quality of the others. They are the better platform no doubt. 100% agree with your post.
Couldn’t agree more. Like a cheapass I have been jumping from free trial to free trial and spotify is the best except no hifi which is a deal breaker (yet)
That’s what I’ve been using the most of lately, if not playing local files. Most of my local library is redbook FLAC anyway. I have Amazon HD and Spotify as well, but the Amazon HD PC app seems to consume more system resources, which has caused some issues with crashes. Spotify is mostly used by the rest of my family. Some of the UHD stuff on Amazon HD does sound better, but for normal lossless, I think Deezer sounds better.
For me personally, I have used every service except Deezer (and probably lesser known streaming services I am not familiar with or I am forgetting). With that being said, Qobuz > Roon has sounded better than all of them. Only Amazon HD even came close.
Also with local files, it really does depend on a lot of variables…and if you are streaming the local files, a lot of the those variables overlap with Streaming Services as well. But all things being equal in the stream chain (same version album locally and on Qobuz, optimal signal strength and integrity, etc.)…I personally notice absolutely zero distinguishing differences between the two.
In my specific use case, I have a way stronger Wifi connection using Roon the way I have it set up with my laptop and my iFi Zen Stream. Prior to that, I was using a Shanling EM5 streamer with a native version of Qobuz. I pretty much chalk up the difference as just better connectivity and less system resources being used.
That being said, the quality of Qobuz far surpasses any other streaming service Ive used in the past, even without Roon. Only Amazon UHD came remotely close. The better quality with Qobuz was enough for me to not renew my Spotify or Tidal subscriptions.
I can’t tell the difference between a bit perfect ripped file (not legal) from Qobuz played locally and the streamed file from Qubuz direct or through Roon. I tried this test with both a 16/44 and a 24/176 examples.
A program like Audacity will allow you to do this but you’ve got to have some knowledge of setup both on the PC and the application as well as you need to assure a bit perfect rip in exclusive mode. I’ll add that it was much easier to do this with Tidal and their application than it was to get it working with Qobuz and its application.
I did this test because without being 100% certain of the version being streamed, it’s impossible to ever really know. I do run across streamed files that simply DO NOT sound like files I’ve ripped off CDs locally.
You jest but it’s a common issue people have with subscriptions, it was a major point of contention when we first discussed subscription games at Sony well over a decade ago.
And yet almost everyone dumps $100’s a month on their cable bill without thinking about it go figure.
Yes it’s problematic comparing versions, comparing 44/16 to 192/24 is equally hard, since you have no idea if one master was derived from another, or they were mixed the same because of the different target formats.
The only fair test would be to derive the 44/16 from the 192/24, but that’s not necessarily comparing the best possible on both formats, since it may well be the case that a slightly different mix on the derived source could be better.
What I can say is in general I have preferred the hires versions of material I am familiar with and that I would still take DSD over PCM 9 times out of 10, though hires PCM masters are really close.
I cancelled all my cable TV about a year ago, still have cable internet, stream everything, pay for the premium channels I watch cancel them when they are short of content I care about.
I think a lot of subscription anxiety comes from difficulty in managing and cancelling the subscriptions, my experience with most modern services, is it’s as simple as clicking on a button, and that’s radically changed my view on paying for them
