Best High Quality Music Streaming Apps

[Dipypang]

Hi guys,

 

Any experienced audiophiles here can recommend the best apps for music streaming? Like FLAC audio format.

 

Thanks.

[AngryBeaver]

Have you tried the free trial of the new Amazon Music HD  24bit/192khz

 

https://www.amazon.com/b?node=14063680011

[badreg]

Tidal and Qobuz both offer lossless CD quality streams. But this is placebo for the vast majority of people, especially in a casual listening setting. Lossless for archival is fine, but to pay extra for streaming is dumb.

[Dipypang]

8 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Have you tried the free trial of the new Amazon Music HD  24bit/192khz

 

https://www.amazon.com/b?node=14063680011

Haven't, will try later. Thanks!

[Dipypang]

7 minutes ago, badreg said:

Lossless for archival is fine, but to pay extra for streaming is dumb.

This is what i'm thinking. I found out those 2 companies have hi-res music but the price is just...

[GoldenSound]

So i've done quite extensive testing with various streaming apps and playback services.

TLDR: Tidal is probably the best overall. Especially if you're a student as you get 50% off. Just don't use their "Masters" option.
If you can afford it, get "Roon" and play tidal or qobuz through that

Main Post: 
Amazon, Tidal, and Qobuz all for the most part serve up the same FLAC as eachother. They're the same masters, and the FLAC itself is identical (I only know of a few tracks that differ depending on which service you use.).

So from that perspective, none of them are any "better" than eachother.
The main reasons in which they differ:

-Available Library
-Player quality
-Price

 

Price is entirely upto you. But for library, Amazon has the most music, though it varies in quality. Even within the same album. There may be tracks in an album available in some higher sample rates than some of the others, its weird. Also, amazon music's client currently has no WASAPI or ASIO output support, meaning you are forced to use the windows mixer. Therefore, no bit perfect output which for me rules it out as an option until that gets sorted.

Tidal also has an excellent selection, that has MASSIVELY improved over the last couple years. The only downside is that their super high quality stuff is served in "MQA" format, which is a rabbithole thats too long for this thread, but the TLDR is that its bad for all sorts of reasons and exists basically just to generate licensing fees. So I view it pretty much as just 16bit 44.1khz FLAC only. (Which is still excellent. There's serious diminishing returns with higher quality flac than that)

Qobuz has the smallest (though still a very good) selection. However it does have the most music available in high res FLAC. Formats such as 24bit 96khz or sometimes higher. And just straight FLAC, no need to bother with MQA or anything.

 

Overall I'd say Tidal is probably the best due to the excellent library. Unless you REALLY want access to 96khz 24 bit stuff. But seriously unless you have some very high end gear it won't be an audible improvement.

PLAYER:

 

Main thing that separates the services is their players. Unfortunately, all of them are pretty bad.
Amazon's doesn't even support exclusive mode output (WASAPI Exclusive or ASIO)
Tidal's is somewhat harsh.
Qobuz's is overall the best, but makes music sound warmer than it actually is. 

 

If you have $100 to spare, get Roon. Roon supports local files, as well as Tidal/Qobuz integration and is absolutely stellar.

 

https://old.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/c4ze3g/testing_to_see_if_tidal_uses_dspalters_their/

[rice guru]

Tidal is great but if you want to save money spotify premium is pretty great 

[xtroria]

I just use spotify for everything. File compression technology has gotten far enough that it's not discernable on a non-measured evaluation.

 

I'd just look for the service that provides the music that you want, and the other features that you'd use. If you have homepods, use apple music. Google music if you have a lot of Google home devices

[Derkoli]

20 hours ago, Dipypang said:

Hi guys,

 

Any experienced audiophiles here can recommend the best apps for music streaming? Like FLAC audio format.

 

Thanks.

Personally I use Tidal HIFI (master's version/tier), it's 20 dollar's a month, which is typically 96khz/24 bit, but some album's are in 192khz/24bit. But my system is ludicrously expensive (just over 170,000 dollars) so it kind of deserves it in my mind. I noticed a difference going from free spotify to spotify premium, then a similar quality increase between spotify premium to Tidal HIFI, but I wouldn't bother with Tidal HIFI unless you have a system that "deserves" it, otherwise put the money into better audio gear.

 

More info:

Tidal run's off my McIntosh MS500, which is a dedicated streamer. Use McIntosh Media Bridge to control it. It's similar to roon, just let's you control Tidal from your phone, iOS or Android (use android)

When my new DAC arrives, I'll see if i can see a difference between MQA and FLAC. I probably won't be able too. It should be here tomorrow, So I should be able to put my listening impressions on here.

 

 

EDIT: Here's some of the music that sound's really well mastered to me, an entire 20 hours of the stuff:

 

[Spuriae]

IMO Local files>Youtube>Qobuz>Tidal>Others, but every service has its own pros and cons. Really depends what your priorities are.

 

For price, Youtube is hands-down the winner.

 

For pure selection, Youtube also easily wins. There's so much music there (especially from smaller and non-US artists) that simply isn't available on most streaming services.

 

As far as sound quality goes, it's a bit more complicated. I still lean towards Youtube. Most streaming services have a good portion of their music watermarked in an unpleasantly audible way. Youtube usually has a version that isn't watermarked. The bitrate isn't super high, but the opus codec is very transparent; it's easier to tell the difference between watermarked and unwatermarked than even mid bitrate opus vs lossless. Meanwhile less of Qobuz's library is watermarked, so they come out ahead over Tidal in this respect.

 

Again, really depends on your priorities. I use local files most of the time and Youtube for everything else.

[Dipypang]

Thanks guys for all the information!

[GoldenSound]

15 hours ago, Nimrodor said:

IMO Local files>Youtube>Qobuz>Tidal>Others, but every service has its own pros and cons. Really depends what your priorities are.

 

For price, Youtube is hands-down the winner.

 

For pure selection, Youtube also easily wins. There's so much music there (especially from smaller and non-US artists) that simply isn't available on most streaming services.

 

As far as sound quality goes, it's a bit more complicated. I still lean towards Youtube. Most streaming services have a good portion of their music watermarked in an unpleasantly audible way. Youtube usually has a version that isn't watermarked. The bitrate isn't super high, but the opus codec is very transparent; it's easier to tell the difference between watermarked and unwatermarked than even mid bitrate opus vs lossless. Meanwhile less of Qobuz's library is watermarked, so they come out ahead over Tidal in this respect.

 

Again, really depends on your priorities. I use local files most of the time and Youtube for everything else.

Youtube's audio compression is really awful, Not sure why you would choose that over even spotify etc

[GoldenSound]

I would strongly suggest avoiding MQA (masters) on tidal.

MQA, despite what their marketing says is a LOSSY compression format.
And it is bad for all sorts of reasons.

The TLDR is that MQA essentially hides high frequency information inside other areas of the spectrum, which a MQA compatible player can "unfold" and a MQA certified hardware unit can unfold further.

But the reality is, the audio IS altered, it is lossy, and also, due to how it works things such as EQ and DSP volume control can be adversely affected

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/mqa-a-review-of-controversies-concerns-and-cautions-r701/

https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music

 

MQA should only be used in the situation where you NEED 96khz//24bit audio, but your internet connection is not fast enough to stream it.

If it is, then actual un-altered high res FLAC is a better (and actually lossless) option

[Derkoli]

1 hour ago, GoldenOne said:

I would strongly suggest avoiding MQA (masters) on tidal.

MQA, despite what their marketing says is a LOSSY compression format.
And it is bad for all sorts of reasons.

The TLDR is that MQA essentially hides high frequency information inside other areas of the spectrum, which a MQA compatible player can "unfold" and a MQA certified hardware unit can unfold further.

But the reality is, the audio IS altered, it is lossy, and also, due to how it works things such as EQ and DSP volume control can be adversely affected

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/mqa-a-review-of-controversies-concerns-and-cautions-r701/

https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music

 

MQA should only be used in the situation where you NEED 96khz//24bit audio, but your internet connection is not fast enough to stream it.

If it is, then actual un-altered high res FLAC is a better (and actually lossless) option

It's gonna be really interesting to see if i can tell a difference, My dac also accept's 768khz DSD so i'll see if i can get my hand's on some music that is that high sample rate.

[GoldenSound]

On 10/21/2019 at 5:42 PM, Derkoli said:

It's gonna be really interesting to see if i can tell a difference, My dac also accept's 768khz DSD so i'll see if i can get my hand's on some music that is that high sample rate.

The thing people often forget is, music in a high bitrate/format does not automatically make it sound great.
The mastering of a song makes MUCH more of a difference than the file format or bitrate.

In fact, most of the tracks that I have in my "mastering perfection" playlist are "only" 16/44.1khz.
There's only a couple that are higher.

[Derkoli]

1 minute ago, GoldenOne said:

The thing people often forget is, music in a high bitrate/format does not automatically make it sound great.
The mastering of a song makes MUCH more of a difference than the file format or bitrate.

In fact, most of the tracks that I have in my "mastering perfection" playlist are "only" 16/44.1khz.
There's only a couple that are higher.

Very true, I have a couple thousand song's in 24bit/44.1khz (all CD rips, sound really nice)

[GoldenSound]

49 minutes ago, Derkoli said:

Very true, I have a couple thousand song's in 24bit/44.1khz (all CD rips, sound really nice)

Same here
Managed to get my entire library onto google drive for access anywhere too which is nice (thanks linus for showing us how to abuse G-Suite :P)

157 albums in 24 bit, 585 in 16bit

 

Tracks:

1772 in 24 bit, 4671 in 16 bit

[Derkoli]

1 hour ago, GoldenOne said:

Same here
Managed to get my entire library onto google drive for access anywhere too which is nice (thanks linus for showing us how to abuse G-Suite :P)

157 albums in 24 bit, 585 in 16bit

 

Tracks:

1772 in 24 bit, 4671 in 16 bit

I've just got mine all on a NAS so i can plug it into my PC and chuck all my music on it then plug it back into my McIntosh MS500 to play it back through my main system. Work's pretty damn well.

[Dipypang]

11 hours ago, Derkoli said:

Very true, I have a couple thousand song's in 24bit/44.1khz (all CD rips, sound really nice)

Where do you get those songs sir?

[Dipypang]

10 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

Same here
Managed to get my entire library onto google drive for access anywhere too which is nice (thanks linus for showing us how to abuse G-Suite :P)

157 albums in 24 bit, 585 in 16bit

 

Tracks:

1772 in 24 bit, 4671 in 16 bit

Where do you get those songs sir?

[Derkoli]

8 hours ago, Dipypang said:

Where do you get those songs sir?

CD's my family had, ripped them all onto my NAS with a laptop. Simple to do.

[GoldenSound]

11 hours ago, Dipypang said:

Where do you get those songs sir?

7digital and HDTracks usually.
About a quarter of them are from my Tidal/Qobuz library (Roon allows you to add songs from Tidal and Qobuz as well as local files)

[Dipypang]

15 hours ago, Derkoli said:

CD's my family had, ripped them all onto my NAS with a laptop. Simple to do.

Its good you have the physical product

 

12 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

7digital and HDTracks usually.
About a quarter of them are from my Tidal/Qobuz library (Roon allows you to add songs from Tidal and Qobuz as well as local files)

7digital, hdtracks and roon all subscriptions? Or pay/music?

Just ask, is it possible any free FLAC file to try them out haha 

[GoldenSound]

13 hours ago, Dipypang said:

Its good you have the physical product

 

7digital, hdtracks and roon all subscriptions? Or pay/music?

Just ask, is it possible any free FLAC file to try them out haha 

7digital and HDtracks are music stores.

You pay for the music and its yours to keep (7digital is normally cheaper)

Roon is either $100 annually or $500 for lifetime