@MRHifiReviews - since you even did a video on Amazon HD back in June, guessing you’re really liking Qobuz.
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Tell me Marcello, how does that suit you? Especially adding Qobuz to Tidal and Roon? Does it affect the writeups and selections in the ROON database? I’ve been on the point of making that leap several times.
I still have Apple Family because it integrates so well with the iPhone ecosystem. My wife still listens to much on just the iPhone (no earphones, headphones) and sometimes Airplays it to Sonos. She hates the Sonos interface, so I’m not going to even show ROON to her. Her idea of a good interface is a good tuner (FM/AM), integrated amp, CD player and turntable (preferably automatic, but she was fine with my all manual AR).
So my low res source is Apple Music, at least ROON reads the iTunes library when I RIP CDs.
Is it worth adding Qobuzz? and if so is it worth the $$$ level that @Torq uses. I don’t know if I want to permanently download, but it might be nice.
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I really like Amazon MusicHD too. I don’t want to keep all 3 though and what has become the deal breaker for me is Roon implementation. I had Qobuz this whole time along with Amazon, the biggest changes were adding Roon and Tidal. With that being said if Amazon music added bit perfect playback with Roon I would drop all Sevices and go with it. If I wasn’t using Roon then Qobuz and Amazon would still be a great solution for me.
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So far it’s been amazing. Roon with the two services implements extremely well so far but it’s only a couple days in so I will have to report back! 
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@MRHifiReviews - I’ve used the premium services from Tidal, Qobuz and Amazon at different times and think they’re all really good, but have been mainly using Qobuz now and hanging onto Tidal for the time being for occasional use. I use Spotify free for a larger catalog when needed. I’ve never gotten Roon - the whole another subscription thing - but know it’s extremely popular.
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Have you tried Roon? I had the same outlook about it, the moment I used it I realized what I was missing.
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@tjg that’s good, but qobuz is hanging onto whatever indie rock cred it has by a thread. They also have The Clientele’s library so we’re gonna date, but I don’t care how many times she went to sxsw before it sold out or if she has a signed Stephen Malkmus LP or even as a Redd Kross t-shirt, we have some issues to workout.
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I did a trial of Audirvana with Qobuz. I did like the integration with Qobuz and lots of features for local file playback.
At the time I was also researching crossfeed plugins and it did not go well. Most of them just didn’t work in Audirvana so I ended up not buying it.
If the Tidal app doesn’t work out then Audirvana might be a way to rescue using Tidal (or even go back to Qobuz).
Seems a shame to have to pay almost $100 for a decent UI when you already pay monthly for the streaming service.
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@PastorOfMuppets - What’s your favorite service right now for indie?
I use Qobuz for the quality and most listening, and free Spotify for a deeper catalog and Tidal when I remember I still have it - used to be my main service. (And even youtube for some harder to find stuff or discoveries)
I’ve been focused on semi-obscure 70s stuff lately myself, Qobuz seems to do ok there.
@MRHifiReviews - I see they have a black friday sale - looks like I might have to get it a try.
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Yeah I started my trial 2 days before they offered that 
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Oh I’m gonna indict myself now. Besides Bandcamp, before Spotify was in the us rhapsody was a thing and I subscribed and that service was pretty awesome. I never used Spotify much. I did miss the social features which weren’t as prominent with rhapsody (now Napster), and the ui for playlists sucks. But I’m an album listener and sometimes curated station listener (special shout out to Sonos radio and the Brittney Howard station - so good). But they had great, great stations. Amazon music hd is good for cd listening and bad for stations. Spotify was really bad too at first and I’m guessing this hasn’t changed. I miss playing “80s alt” or “college rock” and hearing moderate hits or album cuts regularly, like Mexican radio or Guadalcanal diary. If someone actually likes music to be curated for them, like when xm radio was good before Sirius bought them, Napster is worth considering. They also had a license to Entertainment! by Gang of Four which I’ve never seen elsewhere. Also, and this was key for me, squeezebox support was great over Spotify. But I’ve moved on from squeezebox and want better fidelity. Now that I’m writing this, I’d rather Napster back up qobuz than Spotify for missing content if I don’t feel like dealing with Amazon.
Biggest dings for Napster: super dated, even if you’ve downloaded stuff there’s a gap between songs which it’s 2020 there’s no excuse for that, and poor social media integration. Also they aren’t smart enough to know if an album is reissued so if it is, it gets removed from your library and you have to be smart enough to know it’s gone and track down the update.
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I used Rhapsody also. Was really good for hands-off background music where it learned your preferences and mostly avoided annoying tracks.
Around that time was another service - Beats maybe? - that I used. I was happy with it and then it got sold and predictably completely ruined.
The music industry is the poster child for greed and exploitation. I think all they need to do is provide products that meet an already existing demand and they would generate more income than the current mess of putting roadblocks everywhere.
Edit: I think the service I had and liked was MOG, which was acquired by Beats and then Beats by Apple.
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I’m thinking of dipping my toes in the streaming water (LOL, sounds like a Kohler spa commercial), but I’m not sure what the benefit is, especially while I’m stuck at home, so I’d love some insight from you all.
I have Gang of Four, Clientele, Stephen Malmus etc (and I’m guessing the rest of @PastorOfMuppets’ CD collection) stored on a hard drive in FLAC for home listening and on another hard drive in AAC for listening on the go on my ipod Touch/iphone. I have a huge collection of CDs from the 80s, 90s and 00s that I’ve converted into FLAC and AAC, and I also buy new digital albums from Bandcamp or Qobuz. And if I want to try something new, I order it from my local library.
Is there anything that streaming would give me? I suppose the best way to find out is to try it. I see that Amazon HD has a 3 month free trial so maybe I’ll just try that, even if it’s not the best service.
For me the benefit is immediate access to literally millions of tracks. I can pick random playlists, skip forward over songs I don’t like, and discover music that I never would if I had to go through a buying decision first.
Of course you don’t need a hi res service for that. Spotify is probably the king of discovery if you don’t mind the now-typical invasion of privacy where it wants access to your whole phone - location, camera, address book, etc. Maybe they have improved that lately.
Most of the streaming services have a free trial so you can easily see how you feel about them.
Fair warning about Amazon on Windows though - it won’t set your dac to the track format so your dac will stay at whatever settings you made in Windows.
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I signed up for Spotify three years ago for precisely this reason. Having made my discoveries, every two or three months I’d purchase the music I liked–ideally from bandcamp, if possible–and would fold it into my own library. I found, though, that I seldom used Spotify for proper, serious listening, so I recently started a Qobuz trial. There’s still quite a bit of music missing, as @PastorOfMuppets notes (we share similar tastes in music, I’ve been on a Sonic Youth kick again recently). I can live with the limited offerings on Qobuz, though, because I’m inclined to head over to bandcamp to buy new stuff (or get used CDs for those artists who don’t need the cash, as with Capt. Beefheart).
So, while I’ve not exactly had to go cold turkey with Spotify, I’ve found a decent enough substitute.
The nuisance is that a lot of music websites and radio stations that I rely on to find out about new indie/alternative rock and electronic music put out playlists only on Spotify, which makes for a bit more effort and hassle. Still, it beats listening to the radio, back in the day, with the finger hovering above the record button on my cassette deck…
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If you have a spare moment could you list some of your sources for electronic music? I’m doing a trial of Tidal now but so far the discovery seems weak, although I may not have found the magic wand yet.
When I read that I flashed back to a memory of exactly that, trying to time it to avoid recording the announcer’s lame lead-in without missing the start of the song.
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I’d be happy to. I’m afraid that most of my sources for electronic music are the same as for alternative rock, so you’d have to filter out the latter (sorry!):
BBC Radio 6 has recently become my go-to source (see also here for live broadcasts). Some Spotify users have created playlists culled from the BBC 6 lists. Here’s one example and here’s another. The latter is more comprehensive.
I also like Rough Trade Records as both a record store (it’s local to me here in NYC) and a source of information about new music, although there’s a good deal less electronic music than rock. They also have good annual lists of favorite releases. Here’s the Spotify playlist I rely on.
Surprisingly, NPR can be pretty good for electronic music (see here). They have a wide range of Spotify playlists, as listed here. And I had this one by Bob Boilen bookmarked on my old Spotify app, and while it leans more towards indie/alt rock, there’s still great electronic music on it.
I used to keep an eye on Resident Advisor but have lost track of it for a while now. They offer a bunch of Spotify playlists, such as this Best Electronic Music one.
I’ve all but given up on KEXP’s Spotify playlist since whoever is doing it now has a fairly narrow taste in music. It’s almost entirely indie rock, and a certain kind of insipid indie rock at that. The radio station more broadly, beyond the Spotify playlist, is still a treasure.
Beyond websites with Spotify playlists, Bleep is an invaluable source for electronic music (and for purchasing music). The featured releases are worth keeping an eye on, and they have a weekly roundup newsletter.
Pitchfork has gone steeply and irredeemably downhill since it was purchased by Condé Nast a few years ago. I barely bother visiting the site now. I used to catch up with the end of year lists, like this one, but I can’t recommend the site any more.
I’ve yet to go through it properly by Darko Audio’s “electronic for audiophiles” series looks highly promising, not least because he’s offering a playlist on Qobuz, one with a bunch of “classics” on it.
Finally, don’t forget bandcamp! The tags they use can be helpful but more so are the monthly Best Electronic album guides.
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