Streaming services. Can you actually hear a difference? What do you listen for?

[Sal1950]

Spotify appears to be highly incentivised NOT to go lossless... they own the largest market share. I'm sure they probably look at it as "if it ain't broke, don't rush to fix it!"

Naw, what they're doing is lying to everyone asking for lossless, saying that it's "just around the corner, any day now" for over 3 years now. They're trying to hang onto their old customer base without spending anything to keep them, but if you think about it, it's not working too well. Just a few years ago they dominated the market but millions and millions of new customers have come online and gone with the newer services like Tidal, Quboz, Amazon, Apple, more, offering not only lossless but multich and Atmos, etc. These are numbers they "might" have had if they had got off their butts and produced what they promised. A pox on Spotify for lying and deceiving the good people who have waited for them, I was one for years. That is until Apple brought me Atmos, and for less money even. Bye Bye, Spotify.

 

[ddude003]

I have done some comparisons between Tidal and Idagio, both nominally at CD quality. Tidal sounds slightly better to me, maybe because
it streams directly to my Yamaha receiver, while Idagio goes through my laptop and streams to the Yamaha receiver through Airplay. Perhaps there
are buffering issues with the multi-hop route.

I bet Airplay is your bandwidth bottleneck...

 

[AustinJerry]

This has been an interesting thread. I spent some time this evening trying to see if I can hear differences in the streaming services that I subscribe to. I currently subscribe to Pandora Premium, Deezer HiFi, Apple Music, and Amazon Prime Music. My streamer is a Sonos Port (with the Wyred4Sound Mod https://wyred4sound.com/products/sonos-port-modified). The rest of the audio chain is reasonably good—a Monoprice HTP-1 with Dirac Live room correction driving PSB Synchrony One speakers.

The Sonos app allows my to select the same song from each of the streaming services, place them in the music queue, and then click back and forth among the song versions to get an almost immediate comparison. To be honest, it is difficult for me to hear any obvious differences among the services. Perhaps my ears are not well trained, or perhaps something in my playback system is masking any differences, but I would be hard pressed to choose one service over the other. On the positive side, all sound very good to me and continue to provide listening pleasure.

 

[ddude003]

This has been an interesting thread. I spent some time this evening trying to see if I can hear differences in the streaming services that I subscribe to. I currently subscribe to Pandora Premium, Deezer HiFi, Apple Music, and Amazon Prime Music. My streamer is a Sonos Port (with the Wyred4Sound Mod https://wyred4sound.com/products/sonos-port-modified). The rest of the audio chain is reasonably good—a Monoprice HTP-1 with Dirac Live room correction driving PSB Synchrony One speakers.

The Sonos app allows my to select the same song from each of the streaming services, place them in the music queue, and then click back and forth among the song versions to get an almost immediate comparison. To be honest, it is difficult for me to hear any obvious differences among the services. Perhaps my ears are not well trained, or perhaps something in my playback system is masking any differences, but I would be hard pressed to choose one service over the other. On the positive side, all sound very good to me and continue to provide listening pleasure.

Wondering if the Sonos app does level matching of each streaming platform as each streaming platform masters to a different Loudness Units Full Scale (LUFS)...

 

[jschwender]

The quality of the sound is not only related to transmission parameters. On Spotify, the soundquality is extremely different: from telephone sound to good. Even my (pretty old) ears can tell the difference!

 

[AustinJerry]

Sorry, no disrespect meant, but what does this discussion have to do with “Streaming services—can you actually hear a difference?” That was a far more interesting discussion.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

Sorry, no disrespect meant, but what does this discussion have to do with “Streaming services—can you actually hear a difference?” That was a far more interesting discussion.

Yeah... I was just thinking we have gotten a bit off-topic. We need a separate thread about what artists are paid for streaming services.

I have moved those posts to a separate thread: What artists are paid for streaming services.