I personally use Spotify, and I pay for Premium. When I buy music, I often buy it on CD if possible. Then rip it to my machine using EAC. I play my local files using foobar2k on Windows, and Clementine on Lubuntu 18.04.2 LTS. Some stuff sounds fine on Spotify, but I’ve noticed a lot of Rammstein’s albums sound lackluster on it. Not sure why.
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I don’t meant to rain on anyone’s streaming parade (I also stream) but I came across a Rolling Stone magazine piece about a University of Glasgow study on the unintended environmental and economic costs of music consumption. According to the study, while the amount of plastic used in music consumption has gone down dramatically since the advent of streaming, up to 2.5 times more greenhouse gas equivalents (GHGs) are produced to store and transmit digital audio files than to produce and play CDs and vinyl. According to the study: " The research shows GHGs of 140 million kilograms in 1977, 136 million kilograms in 1988, and 157 million in 2000. But by 2016 the generation of GHGs by storing and transmitting digital files for those listening to music online is estimated to be between 200 million kilograms and over 350 million kilograms in the US alone."
Another interesting aspect of the study shows that: “when plotted against the changing average salary of a US citizen over history, consumers were willing to pay roughly 4.83% of an average weekly salary in vinyl’s peak year of production in 1977, a price which slips down to roughly 1.22% of an average weekly salary in 2013, the peak of digital album sales.”
You can read more about it here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_643297_en.html
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I only have known Tidal recently. I prefer Spotify to Apple Music because of the compatibility on any device (PC, browser, mobile - app from apknite…)
I currently use Spotify premium for music discovery, Qobuz studio for lossless Awesomeness! I think I might grab Tidal Hi-Fi again but we shall see…Tidal kind of splits the difference between Spotify and Qobuz. Tidal has more tracks and better UI than Qobuz, and better quality over Spotify, but has less tracks and not as easy of a UI compared to Spotify, and quality isn’t as good as Qobuz. =) Also it is easy to create and share playlists with friends with Spotify (and a lot of my non audiophile friends and family use it so it is easier to share tracks with them there).
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Back when I owned a Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ I subscribed to Tidal. There was an intermittent, persistent problem with dropouts when decoding MQA titles. I sent the Brooklyn back to Mytek for a bench test and they swore it was Tidal’s problem but I eventually lost interest in MQA and the Brooklyn, switched to Qobuz and a Yggy A2 then sold the Brooklyn. I really try to steer friends away from Mytek DACs to Yggdrasil or Gungnir instead.
The Windows Qobuz app was buggy from the start with intermittent distortion on playback. Using Audirvana+ as the player for Qobuz completely fixed the problem. The latest updates on the desktop Qobuz app are better but there are still problems on playback on occasion. Why Qobuz can’t make a stable player for Windows and Audirvana can is a mystery to me.
IMO Qobuz is a better choice than Tidal just be prepared to spend $75 for Audirvana+ if you are on Windows. If you are already using Roon you should also be good to go. I have read no complaints of problems using Qobuz with Roon.
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First a big welcome to @leosherwin
Recently I’ve been using Tidal more by itself than with ROON, in part because of the Droid and iOS players that handle MQA pretty well with the help of a Dragonfly or the iFi xDSD.
While it may have been flaky in the early days, my experience has been that it is solid now.
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Does anyone have intel on the Spotify lossless rollout? I’d heard there was a beta for some users in 2017-- but it’s been radio silence since then.
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Has anyone done a blind a/b to see which sounds best?
You’ll find a bunch of discussion about this in the earlier posts in this very thread.
I’ve done blind tests with the major music streaming services. More than once, in fact, both with groups and just with an assistant. My personal findings, using a very high-end chain, have been pretty consistent:
TIDAL HiFi > Tidal Premium = Apple Music > Spotify >= Google Play Music > Amazon Prime Music
While I personally find Spotify to get fatiguing faster than the other lossy options here (regardless of relative quality vs. Google or Amazon), most people don’t.
If you’re looking at the TIDAL HiFi tier then it’s provably better than Spotify, quality wise, on a technical level, though not everyone hears the difference.
Most people are probably better served by Spotify if they’re comparing against TIDAL’s Premium option, however, just on the basis of music selection and available ways to play it*.
Since doing those blind tests, I’ve done blind comparisons with Qobuz vs. TIDAL HiFi. Even without using a Hi-Res master from Qobuz, in general I find that sounds a bit better than TIDAL. May be slightly different masters, may be watermarks vs. none, maybe something else entirely. Both were tested using Roon and Audirvana so the playback chain was the same for both sources.
*I see a lot of people say they prefer the Spotify UX over the other options too. I’m in the minority there; I think the Spotify UX is just as poor as the others, it’s just poor in different ways.
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Interesting. Do any of these services tell you what master the files are pulled from?
It varies, sometimes there’s enough information available to be able to tell definitively, sometimes you have to combine that with good knowledge of the artist, and their release, and do a bit of research.
I only generally bothered to do that for the purposes of selecting the albums in each service to compare between. For normal listening, I’ve likely already got the one I want added to my Roon library.
Teal is for your stock car audio system
In case any other Canuck’s were wondering, Quboz is only interested in your IP during signup. 
I’ve noticed some weird catalogue holes, and the UI and search is infuriating, but it sounds awesome.
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Yes, I was using it up in Vancouver during the meet-up!
After reading a few comments from @torq about Spotify over in the D50 review thread, I thought I would make my comment here rather than continue off topic like I usually do.
@Torq was commenting on how fatiguing he finds Spotify and possible causes for this, and my post is probably not related at all, but anyway…
Lately, I have been noticing distortion in certain tracks on Spotify. Not all the time, just certain points in certain tracks. The first one I noticed was the Madonna song I mentioned in the ZS10 Pro review. (Madonna - Dark Ballet).
At first I thought it was the ZS10, then I tried other headphones (DT1990, HD6XX, Beyer CS, etc.) and it is present in all of them, just far more noticeable on some than other. I checked with @Torq, who had recently been listening to this album, and he did not have this distortion.
Since then, I have also been noticing distortion in various tracks from one of my acoustic/female playlists that I listen to a lot at work. At first I thought I was imagining it but it has been happening more and more. Unfortunately I usually notice it while doing something important that I just can’t drop and make a note of it.
These are tracks that I have listened to hundreds of times and I don’t remember hearing it in the past. I have checked it using various devices to rule out my computer and I am hearing it on all of them (more or less noticeably depending on headphones/IEMs being used.
I will try to keep a pen handy (in the age of a keyboard?) and jot down the tracks and times if I get chance so people can tell me if I am going crazy or not 
In the mean time, if any of you Spotifiers would like to try the Madonna track I mentioned and let me know if you hear it also?
During the piano solo, left channel, times 1:44, 1:56, 1:57 and 1:58 (you may need to increase volume and actually listen for it depending on your set up)
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I just tried this with Spotify (and Apple Music, TIDAL, Qobuz and my local FLAC copy for good measure) and I don’t hear distortion at those points from any of them.
Have you tried a different source than Spotify to see if it occurs for you elsewhere?
And if you’re running from a Windows source, have you made sure that you don’t have any system/driver level effects enabled (some settings are enabled by default in some cases)?
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Thanks for checking @Torq
I have tried windows 7, windows 10, android and raspotify and it is present on all of them (using multiple combinations of dac/amps).
I’m afraid I don’t own this album and don’t have other streaming services so I don’t have any other source to try it from other than Spotify.
When I get chance I will jot down other songs that I notice this distortion in and then I can compare to other formats/sources (that I own).
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Here’s a stupid 2¢ worth. I don’t know enough about streaming, but is there any time code data in the stream, like SMPTE? (They were a client ages ago). If so, it might at least let you identify exactly where you hear it.
I’ll crawl back in my burrow now…
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