Good v evil digital

Docfoster

I’ve been listening to more streaming lately. A bit of Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube.
Tbh I’m not entirely sure how the music streams operate from the various apps or browsers and through windows.
My windows sound settings I’ve set to basic 44.1/16 as I think that sounds best. I also have ASIO4All offline settings on. I don’t know what that’s doing exactly; not as much (or little) as the ASIO setting in JRiver, but I think ASIO4All makes a positive difference to streaming through apps and browsers.
Anyway I’ve found that music sounds fine streamed in this way. Has allowed me to explore a few new avenues.
BUT whenever I return to my ripped CDs via JRiver the SQ difference is enormous. That old “shape of the percussive event” thing stands out by a mile. And my eyes look up more often from whatever I’m doing to visually place the sounds I’m hearing. Bass sounds have more texture within them.
I suppose I’m wondering what the differences are? But I don’t understand enough about the technical details of how audio is streamed over the internet and through the software on my laptop. JRiver has a closer relationship with my DAC certainly. The DACs “Bit perfect” light is always on when JRiver is playing. Bizarrely, the light only comes on occasionally if I’m streaming movies or music. And I am totally unable to fathom what conditions determine this. It seems random.
Probably I should experiment with streams that claim higher fidelity. But, I have a suspicion JRiver is playing a part. Certainly the direct streams that are available within JRiver sound better than those via browsers or streaming apps.

“Digital lies, digital damned lies, and digital statistics” maybe…?

cj66

Less digital lies more poor chosen source.

Digital files I have saved in at least Flac standard are excellent. If they were created from a good original CD, SACD, DVDA etc file they match and sometimes surpass a standard CD, that's through the same DAC.

YouTube is the equivalent of the old floppy singles in magazines being compared to LP.

If streaming from da web maybe try Tidal as that seems to get a huge thumbs up from most. Even Spotify high quality is flat and lifeless compared to CD.

Docfoster

Interesting to read your experience of Spotify HQ. I had been wondering about that.
Out of interest, what causes the difference in SQ between Spotify and Spotify HQ? Is it simply a better quality file? A quick Google suggests Spotify stores files as Ogg Vorbis…?
The audio on YouTube isn’t great, but I don’t mind that somehow…possibly as I accept its first and foremost a  video stream. And, I don’t know if it’s any or much worse than normal Spotify. 
And yes, I agree with the superiority of FLAC. As good as it gets imho.

A few years ago I did try the top Tidal service. It was good, the best I’ve heard, but iirc wasn’t as good as local files. But my PC wasn’t the best then. So, maybe I should give it another go.
Atm, I’m finding streaming is fine for exploring new music and for playing it in the background. Absolutely fine. But for serious listening I’m still wanting to buy and rip CDs. If Tidal can change that, it would be interesting.

AntiCrap

cj66, at last another "D.L.A.C. member (Digital Lies Are Crap) I have been trying to teach the fish heads on Pink Salmon about D.L.A.C.

https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/is-hifi-getting-better-or-stagnating.259271/

In the old D.L.A.C. day do you recall CD rating i.e.A.A.D to D.D.D. the last one being the nasty stuff. Well more and more studio's are doing all 3 D's and those are horrid.
The best I ever heard was a 64Bit MP3 version designed by Peter Wonfor in the U.S.A. one of the patents holder of MPEG.
Another version using a 16Bit colour encode Red, Green, Blue system i.e. 3 lots of Digital per block by me and Dr G. Vioka of UNIX fame in Scotland was good we called it O.S.D.U.C.
But these cheap nasty chips that do basically PCM is poor indeed, along with slow (below 100KHz) Class D (for Daft)

uglymusic

I've said before here how I've never been able to get streaming audio from the internet—even coming straight through LMS, without going via browsers or a mobile—to sound as good as files streamed from my local storage through the same server. I did read some technical reasons for this some time ago, but frankly, they went straight over my head. So I couldn't make a judgement if they were right or not.

That's why for serious listening—when I sit down in front of the big rig—it's always my own files. I continue to buy music for that reason (but not only that reason).

Since Tidal never lived up to its promise and Spotify is OK for my office rig and elsewhere, I only subscribe to Spotify.

So, I guess what I'm saying, Ben, is that your gear is too good for my shirt. No! I mean is that your gear is showing up what's lacking. One man's hi-fi is another man's earbuds. It's not digital that's lies, but the marketing

Docfoster

AntiCrap said:

cj66, at last another "D.L.A.C. member (Digital Lies Are Crap) I have been trying to teach the fish heads on Pink Salmon about D.L.A.C.

https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/is-hifi-getting-better-or-stagnating.259271/

In the old D.L.A.C. day do you recall CD rating i.e.A.A.D to D.D.D. the last one being the nasty stuff. Well more and more studio's are doing all 3 D's and those are horrid.
The best I ever heard was a 64Bit MP3 version designed by Peter Wonfor in the U.S.A. one of the patents holder of MPEG.
Another version using a 16Bit colour encode Red, Green, Blue system i.e. 3 lots of Digital per block by me and Dr G. Vioka of UNIX fame in Scotland was good we called it O.S.D.U.C.
But these cheap nasty chips that do basically PCM is poor indeed, along with slow (below 100KHz) Class D (for Daft)

"Peter Wonfor"...?
Interesting to read of these various different approaches.
And, by gum Colin writes "was good" in reference to (a specific) digital audio technology. :-D ... I have screen grabs!

Docfoster

uglymusic said:

I've said before here how I've never been able to get streaming audio from the internet—even coming straight through LMS, without going via browsers or a mobile—to sound as good as files streamed from my local storage through the same server. I did read some technical reasons for this some time ago, but frankly, they went straight over my head. So I couldn't make a judgement if they were right or not.

That's why for serious listening—when I sit down in front of the big rig—it's always my own files. I continue to buy music for that reason (but not only that reason).

Since Tidal never lived up to its promise and Spotify is OK for my office rig and elsewhere, I only subscribe to Spotify.

So, I guess what I'm saying, Ben, is that your gear is too good for my shirt. No! I mean is that your gear is showing up what's lacking. One man's hi-fi is another man's earbuds. It's not digital that's lies, but the marketing

Dave, it seems we are experiencing the same things in the same ways!

Docfoster

Had a little while this morning.

Found out that one can get a 3 month free trial of Tidal "Hifi" (their highest quality streaming service, normally £19.99 pcm).
The service offers 4 choices of stream, the top 2 being "Hifi" ("lossless CD quality") and "Master" ("Authenticated files from mastering process. Studio quality. Unrivalled quality and depth"). You can see the 4 options in the Tidal app's pop up window in the screen grab below.

Very important to point out that not all their music is available in these top 2 formats. I haven't checked to see what sort of proportion of their music collection is available up to "Master", but my first few attempts were available only up to "Hifi" or even only up to "normal".

The first I came to that had a "Master" stream was A Tribe Called Quest track "Electric Relaxation" from their 'Midnight Marauders' album. In the screen grab below you can see "Master" towards the bottom right of the screen showing that the album is indeed streaming from Tidal's "Master" file of the track. 



Behind the Tidal app, you can also see the same track playing in JRiver from my locally stored FLAC file (CD rip).
Obviously this is so I could compare.

I must say that I am quite impressed by the Tidal Master stream. Certainly the best stream I can remember hearing. The bass seems more impactful (deeper? louder?) than my local file. Yet overall, it's not as good as the local red book FLAC file. The local file has more air and smoothness. Weird.
As with other browsers and apps my ASUS DAC is not indicating a "bit perfect" transfer from my laptop in the way that JRiver provides, so again, I am wondering if that has something to do with it.

(The same track using Tidal's "Hifi" stream was OK, but nothing special.)

I will try Tidal's master setting for some other stuff for a while. Not sure if I'll continue after the 3 month free trial though.

Docfoster

OK. Playing around a bit with the Windows sound settings (sampling frequency and bit depth).

Docfoster

Hmmm. That's made a difference.

uglymusic

Docfoster said:

uglymusic said:

I've said before here how I've never been able to get streaming audio from the internet—even coming straight through LMS, without going via browsers or a mobile—to sound as good as files streamed from my local storage through the same server. I did read some technical reasons for this some time ago, but frankly, they went straight over my head. So I couldn't make a judgement if they were right or not.

That's why for serious listening—when I sit down in front of the big rig—it's always my own files. I continue to buy music for that reason (but not only that reason).

Since Tidal never lived up to its promise and Spotify is OK for my office rig and elsewhere, I only subscribe to Spotify.

So, I guess what I'm saying, Ben, is that your gear is too good for my shirt. No! I mean is that your gear is showing up what's lacking. One man's hi-fi is another man's earbuds. It's not digital that's lies, but the marketing

Dave, it seems we are experiencing the same things in the same ways!

Yeah!

uglymusic

Docfoster said:

Had a little while this morning.

Found out that one can get a 3 month free trial of Tidal "Hifi" (their highest quality streaming service, normally £19.99 pcm).
The service offers 4 choices of stream, the top 2 being "Hifi" ("lossless CD quality") and "Master" ("Authenticated files from mastering process. Studio quality. Unrivalled quality and depth"). You can see the 4 options in the Tidal app's pop up window in the screen grab below.

Very important to point out that not all their music is available in these top 2 formats. I haven't checked to see what sort of proportion of their music collection is available up to "Master", but my first few attempts were available only up to "Hifi" or even only up to "normal".

The first I came to that had a "Master" stream was A Tribe Called Quest track "Electric Relaxation" from their 'Midnight Marauders' album. In the screen grab below you can see "Master" towards the bottom right of the screen showing that the album is indeed streaming from Tidal's "Master" file of the track. 



Behind the Tidal app, you can also see the same track playing in JRiver from my locally stored FLAC file (CD rip).
Obviously this is so I could compare.

I must say that I am quite impressed by the Tidal Master stream. Certainly the best stream I can remember hearing. The bass seems more impactful (deeper? louder?) than my local file. Yet overall, it's not as good as the local red book FLAC file. The local file has more air and smoothness. Weird.
As with other browsers and apps my ASUS DAC is not indicating a "bit perfect" transfer from my laptop in the way that JRiver provides, so again, I am wondering if that has something to do with it.

(The same track using Tidal's "Hifi" stream was OK, but nothing special.)

I will try Tidal's master setting for some other stuff for a while. Not sure if I'll continue after the 3 month free trial though.

I may have a go at that 3-month freebie, but as a previous customer, they may not give me it. Depends on how much they want me back, I guess.

The Master level uses MQA if I remember correctly, so you'll need at least an MQA-compatible DAC to get the benefits—some say there are none, of course.

Docfoster

uglymusic said:

Docfoster said:

Had a little while this morning.

Found out that one can get a 3 month free trial of Tidal "Hifi" (their highest quality streaming service, normally £19.99 pcm).
The service offers 4 choices of stream, the top 2 being "Hifi" ("lossless CD quality") and "Master" ("Authenticated files from mastering process. Studio quality. Unrivalled quality and depth"). You can see the 4 options in the Tidal app's pop up window in the screen grab below.

Very important to point out that not all their music is available in these top 2 formats. I haven't checked to see what sort of proportion of their music collection is available up to "Master", but my first few attempts were available only up to "Hifi" or even only up to "normal".

The first I came to that had a "Master" stream was A Tribe Called Quest track "Electric Relaxation" from their 'Midnight Marauders' album. In the screen grab below you can see "Master" towards the bottom right of the screen showing that the album is indeed streaming from Tidal's "Master" file of the track. 



Behind the Tidal app, you can also see the same track playing in JRiver from my locally stored FLAC file (CD rip).
Obviously this is so I could compare.

I must say that I am quite impressed by the Tidal Master stream. Certainly the best stream I can remember hearing. The bass seems more impactful (deeper? louder?) than my local file. Yet overall, it's not as good as the local red book FLAC file. The local file has more air and smoothness. Weird.
As with other browsers and apps my ASUS DAC is not indicating a "bit perfect" transfer from my laptop in the way that JRiver provides, so again, I am wondering if that has something to do with it.

(The same track using Tidal's "Hifi" stream was OK, but nothing special.)

I will try Tidal's master setting for some other stuff for a while. Not sure if I'll continue after the 3 month free trial though.

I may have a go at that 3-month freebie, but as a previous customer, they may not give me it. Depends on how much they want me back, I guess.

The Master level uses MQA if I remember correctly, so you'll need at least an MQA-compatible DAC to get the benefits—some say there are none, of course.

Yes that will be an issue.
I just signed up with one of my other small addresses. Worked fine.

uglymusic

That's good. I have lots of email addresses. 

Docfoster

uglymusic said:

Docfoster said:

Had a little while this morning.

Found out that one can get a 3 month free trial of Tidal "Hifi" (their highest quality streaming service, normally £19.99 pcm).
The service offers 4 choices of stream, the top 2 being "Hifi" ("lossless CD quality") and "Master" ("Authenticated files from mastering process. Studio quality. Unrivalled quality and depth"). You can see the 4 options in the Tidal app's pop up window in the screen grab below.

Very important to point out that not all their music is available in these top 2 formats. I haven't checked to see what sort of proportion of their music collection is available up to "Master", but my first few attempts were available only up to "Hifi" or even only up to "normal".

The first I came to that had a "Master" stream was A Tribe Called Quest track "Electric Relaxation" from their 'Midnight Marauders' album. In the screen grab below you can see "Master" towards the bottom right of the screen showing that the album is indeed streaming from Tidal's "Master" file of the track. 



Behind the Tidal app, you can also see the same track playing in JRiver from my locally stored FLAC file (CD rip).
Obviously this is so I could compare.

I must say that I am quite impressed by the Tidal Master stream. Certainly the best stream I can remember hearing. The bass seems more impactful (deeper? louder?) than my local file. Yet overall, it's not as good as the local red book FLAC file. The local file has more air and smoothness. Weird.
As with other browsers and apps my ASUS DAC is not indicating a "bit perfect" transfer from my laptop in the way that JRiver provides, so again, I am wondering if that has something to do with it.

(The same track using Tidal's "Hifi" stream was OK, but nothing special.)

I will try Tidal's master setting for some other stuff for a while. Not sure if I'll continue after the 3 month free trial though.

I may have a go at that 3-month freebie, but as a previous customer, they may not give me it. Depends on how much they want me back, I guess.

The Master level uses MQA if I remember correctly, so you'll need at least an MQA-compatible DAC to get the benefits—some say there are none, of course.

You remember nearly correctly.
Looks like the app alone can deliver either 88.2 or 96 sampling rate from a Master file (ie “better” than CD). Possibly why my experimenting with the Windows sampling rate helped.

However if you have an MQA enabled DAC (mine isn’t afaik) then…yes…you do get the ultimate extra super duper quality from the Master file (maybe 192…?)

info here… https://www.mqa.co.uk/how-it-works

I have no idea how these two stages of uncompressing (or “unfolding” as they call it) work.

uglymusic

Remembering nearly correctly. The story of my life!

Thanks for the info!

Docfoster

uglymusic said:

Remembering nearly correctly. The story of my life!

Thanks for the info!

I dream of remembering nearly correctly.
In fact usually I am delighted with remembering not entirely wrongly.

(Edit: See my post yesterday where the entire purpose of my speaker tweak was to insert 1 new inductor and 2 new capacitors. I remembered to insert only 1 new capacitor on the initial attempt.)

uglymusic

And you so young!

Docfoster

Been trying Tidal again this morning.
The Abbey Road "Master" stream.
Some things I think are better than my FLAC file CD rip of the album. The Tidal stream might have better dynamics, and more heft to the bass. So it's a more visceral experience.
There's an odd mush to the presentation though. High hat and snare especially have an untidy hash about them. And overall the imaging and presentation aren't quite as clear.
I can't quite get my head around my saying that the Tidal stream has better dynamics and murkier presentation, as a combination of those two seems counter intuitive to me. But I can't think of a better way of communicating what I'm trying  to say....

uglymusic

MQA is messing with things? Different masters?

uglymusic

So I get my three months' free Tidal and find that it no longer works directly with LMS. There are long threads about making Tidal work with LMS, but I haven't the will to read them.

I'm wondering if I only had Tidal running through my previous Minimserver setup. Although there's something about Tidal changing things in 2020, so I may have had Tidal working with LMS before then.

Apparently, Tidal Connect works with Volumio, but that's only the subscription Volumio. So not only does streaming CD and higher quality from Tidal involve two subscriptions, but I don't like the sound of Volumio!

Oh, FFS! No wonder I buy most of my music from Bandcamp and be done with it!

AntiCrap

Try the Antique market in Battles Bridge they sale proper analogue music and still on 78RPM, and none of this digital lies muck.

AntiCrap

Having listen to some of the garbage these streaming thing put out the poor quality is a bonus make you want hear the cock up they make, and thank god there music is crap.

uglymusic

It's a long time since I had anything that would play 78. Do you have your HMV doggie gear, Col?

Docfoster

uglymusic said:

So I get my three months' free Tidal and find that it no longer works directly with LMS. There are long threads about making Tidal work with LMS, but I haven't the will to read them.

I'm wondering if I only had Tidal running through my previous Minimserver setup. Although there's something about Tidal changing things in 2020, so I may have had Tidal working with LMS before then.

Apparently, Tidal Connect works with Volumio, but that's only the subscription Volumio. So not only does streaming CD and higher quality from Tidal involve two subscriptions, but I don't like the sound of Volumio!

Oh, FFS! No wonder I buy most of my music from Bandcamp and be done with it!

Dave is not happy with Tidal.

Docfoster

AntiCrap said:

Try the Antique market in Battles Bridge they sale proper analogue music and still on 78RPM, and none of this digital lies muck.

It's OK, your cocoa will be along soon Grandpa.

AntiCrap

Docfoster said:

AntiCrap said:

Try the Antique market in Battles Bridge they sale proper analogue music and still on 78RPM, and none of this digital lies muck.

It's OK, your cocoa will be along soon Grandpa.

Thank you wiper snapper , em what's your name again sonny? 

https://www.battlesbridge.com/

Now little un, go visit or I can take you when you visit us again, it is good there Ben.

uglymusic

Docfoster said:

uglymusic said:

So I get my three months' free Tidal and find that it no longer works directly with LMS. There are long threads about making Tidal work with LMS, but I haven't the will to read them.

I'm wondering if I only had Tidal running through my previous Minimserver setup. Although there's something about Tidal changing things in 2020, so I may have had Tidal working with LMS before then.

Apparently, Tidal Connect works with Volumio, but that's only the subscription Volumio. So not only does streaming CD and higher quality from Tidal involve two subscriptions, but I don't like the sound of Volumio!

Oh, FFS! No wonder I buy most of my music from Bandcamp and be done with it!

Dave is not happy with Tidal.

You got me on a good day, by the look of it.

And, nope, I can't see any reason to keep my Tidal subscription past the end of the free period. What's the point, when as before, its sound quality is significantly below local files on the big rig and Spotify is fine for non-critical listening elsewhere?

They could make it all nice if they allowed the LMS guys access to the code that allows them to set up Tidal Connect (like Spotify Connect, but for Tidal), but the last I saw, Tidal were only interested in working with bigger audio brands. Blinkered thinking of the highest order, and proof—as if we needed it—that they don't understand the marketplace for their high-quality streaming products.

Now I'm going back to strangling that guy from Tidal.