I hope you say that from a LAMP stack perspective, and not an adherent of the Microsoft ecosystem.
Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP !! (or Perl or Python…)
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I say that as neither a Microsoft, Google, Linux, or Apple adherent. Each has their use in enterprise and/or government. I have developed and deployed services and applications for all of the above professionally.
From that vantage point, it’s not hard to see when platforms and companies and their products get too proprietary, or too incompatible, or too restrictive functionally with the rest of the world and its requirements for it to be a viable option.
For example, if you can name off the top of your head a Fortune 500 company that uses MacOS as its primary / standard user and server OS, I’ll boil and eat a shoe.
Now… In the consumer space, all bets are off. It’s a free for all to grab customers, and if you can insidiously incentivize said users into only buying your products, that’s fair game. Some of us don’t appreciate that, and speak with our wallets when purchasing products.
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So you are knowingly and willfully ignorant of the subject, yet feel the need to express your opinion on it anyway and as a thinly veiled insult to me and every other Apple product user? I really expected better from a Core Team member here. How are you improving the conversation on music services?
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What’s there to know? Apple remasters songs, and brands them for their platform.
As for the insult, I didn’t intend to insult or piss anyone off, but you’re free to take it any way you want to.
As for my opinion’s value, consider it a data point that some people don’t care for Apple’s platform and business practices, just like how some people don’t like Tidal because of the shady practices they’ve been accused of doing - like overstating the number of subscribers they have, or inflating the number of plays of music from “Jay Z’s friends” are actually getting so they receive more royalties.
Wrong. And I’ve even stated as much above - twice. 
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ok. enojy being right. 
Do we need a timeout… 
How about agree to disagree and move on. No need to get upset here.
This looks to me like a classic difference of opinion, which we all have opinions…so no need to take it personally.
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I think one poster hit it right on the head " The music is the cheapest part of this thing we call a hobby". Agree , we buy expense headphones, amps, dacs, cables and also those of use that still do 2 chl, the speakers. The music we listen to be it, streaming, CD’s, LP’s downloads is pretty inexpensive and we all base our purchase power regardless what it is, on our budgets. No one is right or wrong, its really a personal thing and at least we all have a choice. .
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I use both Qobuz and YouTube Music. I like Qobuz’s layout and articles and artist write ups, as well as the fact that I don’t have to mess with MQA for max sound quality, which my DAC doesn’t support anyway. I have YouTube Music because I’m a YouTube Premium subscriber. I’m a YT Premium subscriber because I hate video ads and I find myself watching more and more video essays and funny sketch videos on YT recently. Plus it’s faster and easier to download a YT Music album for offline use during travel than it is to download a lossless FLAC album off Qobuz (yes I know Qobuz offers lossy compression too, I’m just used to YT Music while traveling)
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I use Roon for both streaming from Qobuz and playing my FLAC (or ALAC) files. Been using the combination for about a year now and it has been flawless. Although I am heavily invested in the Apple Eco system, I stopped using iTunes a long time ago
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So I’ve been going into these threads and reading. I finally got my set up. May or may not have mentioned that I do have a Sirius XM subscription. I do hear some form of difference between the regular and highest quality sound setting. But I don’t generally use it for my desktop.
I mean for me, which I’m sure is laughable or not, YouTube sounds amazing. Again for anyone that may not know, I just set up shop yesterday.
So I know these guys got free trials and all this, I mean I know they say trust your ears.
But I’m trying to go in the right direction even if it is trials.
It seems like Quboz and Amazon Ultra HD seem to be slugging it out.
I am a prime member so it seems to be 12.99 vs 14.99 for Quboz. I pay 20 for SiriusXM.
Just trying to see what seems best, kind of scared of Roon, so far my experience at Schittr and that obnoxious hissing got me kind of paranoid.
I see you guys were discussing Audirvana. Seems like that’s leaps and bounds ahead of where I’m at.
Any other suggestions? Your thoughts?
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I was an Amazon HD subscriber, moved to Qobuz.
The change was really driven by 2 things, support for qobuz from services like Roon and Volumio, and the reduction in the gap in content.
Qobuz PC software is also better.
These selections aren’t lifetime commitments, pick one try it, try another one.
Gap content? What is that
Qobuz is amazing sounding the best to me so maybe stick with that. I love the wasapi exclusive mode on it.
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Of Qobuz, Tidal, and Amazon HD I use Tidal and Qobuz.
I did take Amazon HD out for a test drive though.
Here’s what I noticed, and why I did not subscribe to Amazon HD. First, Amazon’s interface requires you to use their application or web interface. No way around it. The application also wasn’t that good. It had no exclusive mode at the time I tried it, and it was a little glitchy. I have heard however that things have gotten better. Music quality wasn’t bad, but since I couldn’t directly compare sources in Roon, I chalked it up as something that was too early for me to adopt. There was also no way for me to import playlists from Tidal or Qobuz, so I just gave up on it.
Tidal… I’ve had continual problems of Tidal taking down or making unavailable songs that are in my playlists, and generally I feel they have a shifting library that doesn’t seem very consistent. I use this as my backup source for artists or songs that may not be available on Qobuz.
Qobuz seems pretty stable for library content, and I’ve been pretty happy with them. A lot of rock, EDM and metal I listen to is out of Europe (like Porcupine Tree, the Pineapple Thief, Riverside, Opeth, etc.) so their library fits in perfectly with the stuff I like.
The service no one seems to mention is Google Play Music (now YouTube music). I subscribe to that as well, but only because I pay for YouTube premium. It’s not bad, but it’s not lossless. I actually prefer this one over Spotify. I had my entire library uploaded to them at one point, and I was quite happy listening to it while I was at work (because they network blocked Tidal/Spotify/Qobuz, but not YouTube, those stingy bastards) where lossless was not really needed anyway as I was always focused on doing my job.
As for players, stay away from foobar. Yes it’s free, but it sounds like a recently used dog’s sphincter. (Enjoy that mental image. You’re welcome.) Audirvarkana isn’t bad, and offers integrations others don’t. (Besides Roon, that is.) It’s not a bad place to start, even though I don’t like it personally, but the audio quality is ok.
Roon is my favorite, but I can understand if people don’t like the cost of entry. Roon is NOT a music player. It is an album-centric database that feeds endpoints, that also has a really good media player built in. It’s meant to provide a centralized whole home music playback solution. I think that’s what people don’t really consider when they consider the cost of Roon. It also takes quite a while to completely figure out. I’ve been using it for over a year, and I just recently learned about the tagging feature. Why anyone would want to use simple playlists after they used Roon Tags and Roon Focus is beyond me. Anyway…
I actually haven’t tried many other players other than J River Media Center. J River is actually really good, but they offer no integrations at all. They are staunchly opposed to the idea. I used to use it, but only playing my local files gets boring when I want to try new stuff. It will, however, play movies and all other sorts of media, so it’s focus is beyond just music.
So, that kind of leaves Audirvarkana as the only affordable integration ready music player. To their credit, they’ve been improving their software, so many of the glitches I ran into may no longer be a problem. I don’t know. Might be worth a trial period to find out.
Hope that helps
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Yea, think I’m thinking this over too much lol. Just like everything else. I’m just confused with Quboz, the only difference between studio premiere and sublime+ is cheaper downloads?
Not really understanding the precise difference. Was reading an article on it. I don’t plan on downloading.
Website says premiere is studio quality flac 24/192 but sublime plus doesn’t mention flac. Just says studio quality. Any thoughts?
Second, as I always rush in full speed like a bullet train. If I find a suitable service, they were saying you can upgrade or convert songs into DSD, not sure if you can modify any song into DSD. But my computer is really fast, probably could render a full song in under a min give or take. Is that just making an extra unnecessary step and killing simplicity or ease of use?
Edit: Yes also mentioned on the website integration or some other option, not sure what that’s going by either. Like adding it Audirvana?
I haven’t looked it up in a while, but I basically took Qobuz’s sublime+ option as kind of like Amazon Prime for the free 2 day shipping.
Only instead of free shipping, it’s just a discount.
And instead of shipping, it’s downloadable music files.
And with those files, some have DSD versions you can get instead, which requires your dac to be DSD compatible, else the software has to convert it to PCM on the fly for it to play, and it’s usually just a pain in the ass so why bother…
In other words, if you want to buy a lot of music at a discount, get sublime+. If not, premier is super fine.
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I currently have Amazon HD and Google (Youtube Premium) audio – but rarely use Google for audio these days. In the recent past I had both Tidal and Qobuz.
I’ve never had Roon or Audirvana and probably never will. I try so much new content that I don’t put much energy into curation, integration, or library management. To me, they’d just be another layer of complexity and cost. A given release is great while I’m interested, but then becomes a good memory that is RARELY accessed. I generally play 50 to 100 albums during any period, with new content constantly displacing the old (or other old content comes back).
With good hardware one can often hear the differences between compressed and uncompressed sources. Even if you cannot identify the uncompressed source with an AB test, uncompressed generally results in less fatigue over longer sessions. In a different fashion, Tidal’s practice of cutting off the high end smooths the delivery but loses brightness and details too.
My subscriptions to Qobuz and Amazon HD overlapped – they sounded identical to my ears. I concluded both services likely leased the same files from commercial music libraries and just wrapped the sources in their own software. Each interface has different strengths and weaknesses. On my Mac, Qobuz tended to quit suddenly and frequently dropped back to the lowest DAC quality. Amazon HD now has exclusive mode, and song popularity ratings to direct one to hits and learn about the history of an artist.
Try for yourself. The services offer 30 day free or discounted trials – your personal preferences may make the choice obvious.
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Youtube sound quality can be surprisingly good, I agree.
Tidal is all over the place. As @ProfFalkin stated they change up their library and they push hip hop pretty hard, which is fine, but I’m no longer really on to hip hop. MQA gimmick is just that.
Primephonic, strictly classical, but awesome if you are big into classical.
Why care about DSD, avoid it, just eats up space or bandwidth and 24\192 is way more than you will ever need. Mastering is more important than format and bitrate in general.
If I could I would dump tidal for Qobuz.
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Amazon just has a bigger library, about a year ago, there were obvious things I listened to that were not available on Qobuz, but were on Amazon.
That’s much less true today.
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