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Gear / Technical Help => Playback Forum => Topic started by: MakersMarc on January 14, 2020, 04:40:18 PM
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So I had Tidal for a year. Decent content but either red book or MQA for the most part. And although some MQA releases do sound good, some did not. Pricey at 19.95 a month.
Hit up a Qobuz free trial and cancelled the Tidal immediately. Qobuz has a ton of 24/96 releases, in many many cases Tidal only had redbook and Qobuz has hi res.
And the Qobuz stream just sounds better, hi res or red book. Way better. Content seems pretty even. Way better search functions too.
Thought this might help someone in the market. $14.95 ain’t cheap but it’s a better product than the $19.95 Tidal. IMO. And I simply won’t pay for lossy streaming.
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Streaming services = about the cost of 2 releases a month and nothing to keep at the end...
(Unless you re-record the stuff you like, although that is against user agreement and law)
If you have use of all of the content, it's probably well worth it.
About quality, it will always vary due to the nature of streaming, and I do not believe any service will guarantee bit rate/depth.
Like cell carriers, they always fallback based on conditions and have limited caching in the stream...
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Streaming services = about the cost of 2 releases a month and nothing to keep at the end...
(Unless you re-record the stuff you like, although that is against user agreement and law)
If you have use of all of the content, it's probably well worth it.
About quality, it will always vary due to the nature of streaming, and I do not believe any service will guarantee bit rate/depth.
Like cell carriers, they always fallback based on conditions and have limited caching in the stream...
do personal plex setups provision like that?
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Streaming services = about the cost of 2 releases a month and nothing to keep at the end...
(Unless you re-record the stuff you like, although that is against user agreement and law)
If you have use of all of the content, it's probably well worth it.
About quality, it will always vary due to the nature of streaming, and I do not believe any service will guarantee bit rate/depth.
Like cell carriers, they always fallback based on conditions and have limited caching in the stream...
I have thousands of cds and downloads, but for example, if I want to listen to the entire Rush catalog, I’m in for like $500. Or $14.95. On a disability budget, Qobuz is perfect.
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Streaming services = about the cost of 2 releases a month and nothing to keep at the end...
(Unless you re-record the stuff you like, although that is against user agreement and law)
If you have use of all of the content, it's probably well worth it.
About quality, it will always vary due to the nature of streaming, and I do not believe any service will guarantee bit rate/depth.
Like cell carriers, they always fallback based on conditions and have limited caching in the stream...
I have thousands of cds and downloads, but for example, if I want to listen to the entire Rush catalog, I’m in for like $500. Or $14.95. On a disability budget, Qobuz is perfect.
$500 = ~3 years of a subscription.
If you plunk down $500 on software, at least you own it and can listen to it.
If you stop paying after 3 years you spent the same money but have nothing.
I have 4+tb of lossless music. I do have to replace a hard drive every now and again. But at least I own the data....
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I have 10 TB of live music plus thousands of discs and dats. At 56 I don't need more. And to me a stream is just as accessible as a downloaded hi-res album.
To a large degree, we're talking about stuff I wouldn't purchase. I don't need to spend $500 so I can Rush binge. and I may never go there again. Or every Dylan record. I want to hear them, not own them. YMMV.
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I have 10 TB of live music plus thousands of discs and dats. At 56 I don't need more. And to me a stream is just as accessible as a downloaded hi-res album.
To a large degree, we're talking about stuff I wouldn't purchase. I don't need to spend $500 so I can Rush binge. and I may never go there again. Or every Dylan record. I want to hear them, not own them. YMMV.
I don't think it is one or the other. People can buy content and also stream. Marc makes some good points here.
Personally I am subscribing to three streaming services. Extravagant! Like the cost of going to one concert a month! I am cutting back on purchases for this year (after many many years of actively buying physical objects which contain sonic information) so I have the time to listen to some of the many boxes of LPs and CDs I own.
Anyway, I use Spotify because they have some labels the others don't, Qobuz because it sounds great, and Idagio because I like Classical and no other streaming service can compete when it comes to classical.
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I'm definitely in the buy and stream category. There is a lot of utility to the current crop of streaming services, particularly for anyone who might just want to listen to something once or twice before moving on to something else. At that point, why buy it if realistically they may never listen to it again?
Personally, I like having the music I enjoy available offline so I buy a lot...even though I know that I've already got more than I could ever truly listen to thoroughly. At the same time I stream a lot on Spotify as well. But if I was realistic about things there's a significant amount of music that I probably should stream instead of buy because I may actually only listen to it a handful of times.
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$500 = ~3 years of a subscription.
That's not a great comparison though because if you spend that $500 on Rush CDs you can only listen to Rush (granted, that's not such a bad fate). If you spend it on a streaming service, though, you're listening to not only Rush but also everything else the service has available.
If you stop paying after 3 years you spent the same money but have nothing.
True enough in the literal sense of not having anything tangible, but that money has bought many hours of listening pleasure which isn't nothing. Everyone values things differently, and some may place more value on those listening sessions than having something tangible. And vice versa.
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+T
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Streaming services = about the cost of 2 releases a month and nothing to keep at the end...
(Unless you re-record the stuff you like, although that is against user agreement and law)
If you have use of all of the content, it's probably well worth it.
About quality, it will always vary due to the nature of streaming, and I do not believe any service will guarantee bit rate/depth.
Like cell carriers, they always fallback based on conditions and have limited caching in the stream...
do personal plex setups provision like that?
That's a great question
In short, no.
There's so much bandwidth and caching ability entire songs are ready as playback starts.
It is likely configurable, so dig in to the software that you're using.
Extending that, GB to the home would mean fallback bitrates are much less likely.
But satellite and slower DSL users, and in offices with very contained bandwidth, I think it is likely.
Personally, I do not use Wi-Fi for audio on fixed devices, just my phone and mobile players.
From TIDAL:
https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002599997-What-Audio-Quality-Does-TIDAL-HiFi-Offer-