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Apple Music vs Tidal

Georgeadv

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Hello,

Am contemplating changing from tidal to Apple Music

Read a lot about Apple Music being better in terms of sound quality in comparison to Tidal.

Also i dont like tidal’s approach to mqa and their deceiving tactics.

Additionally is half the price where i live and it would integrate perfectly with my Apple products.

That being said, i have a hegel amp and I dont see a way to stream to it lossless…

Does anyone know a way?

If there is not, would it be worth to switch to apple
Music and stream to hegel via airplay considering that airplay is fairly good on hegel?

Is apple music lossless that much better to justify using airplay instead of tidal?
 

MaxBuck

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Hello,

Am contemplating changing from tidal to Apple Music

Read a lot about Apple Music being better in terms of sound quality in comparison to Tidal.

Also i dont like tidal’s approach to mqa and their deceiving tactics.

Additionally is half the price where i live and it would integrate perfectly with my Apple products.

That being said, i have a hegel amp and I dont see a way to stream to it lossless…

Does anyone know a way?

If there is not, would it be worth to switch to apple
Music and stream to hegel via airplay considering that airplay is fairly good on hegel?

Is apple music lossless that much better to justify using airplay instead of tidal?
I would be astonished if you could reliably distinguish Tidal from Apple Music in a blind test. But if Apple is really half as expensive, maybe you could pick up a used iPhone or iPod to use as your streamer.
 

steve59

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what version is your hegel? I thought tidal charged more for hi rez, but standard was$10? the latest hegel int's are mqa compatable so if you're paying for hi rez your able to resolve it. All the apple tunes I bought show up as 128 kbps which is low rez by most standards however IME more often the quality of the recording makes a bigger difference than the format with some exceptions.
 

Taddpole

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Can you not get a free trial?

Using Shazam over here atm gives between 2 months and 5 months of apple music trial.

Try it with the equipment you have, it may be that you don't feel need to spend more to upgrade it.
 
OP
G

Georgeadv

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I got my free trial before apple lossless

By using my iphne and that camera adaptor would i get bit perfect or is there any limitation or conversion downscaling etc?

I have hegel h190
 

Taddpole

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I got my free trial before apple lossless

By using my iphone and that camera adaptor would i get bit perfect or is there any limitation or conversion downscaling etc?

I have hegel h190
The shazam thing here is giving 2 months even if you've had apple music trial before.

That set up seems like it would give the desired effect if the settings in app are done correctly.
 

NiagaraPete

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Asuming you already have Apple products
Hello,

Am contemplating changing from tidal to Apple Music

Read a lot about Apple Music being better in terms of sound quality in comparison to Tidal.

Also i dont like tidal’s approach to mqa and their deceiving tactics.

Additionally is half the price where i live and it would integrate perfectly with my Apple products.

That being said, i have a hegel amp and I dont see a way to stream to it lossless…

Does anyone know a way?

If there is not, would it be worth to switch to apple
Music and stream to hegel via airplay considering that airplay is fairly good on hegel?

Is apple music lossless that much better to justify using airplay instead of tidal?
The simply thing to do is get a Apple Airport Express (2nd gen) off ebay. You can find them used for 30.00 to 50.00. Airplay 2 is quite good.
 

bevok

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I agree with others that there shouldn’t be a perceptible quality difference, the decision is more down to the hifi integration support, interface and editorial (which I personally find more interesting on Apple Music). I have noticed though that Tidal boosts the volume a little relative to other streaming apps.
Airplay isn’t officially supported for lossless although Airplay 1 does actually play CD quality so the Airport idea is sound. I think the Hegel has Airplay 2 so will be lossy AAC (which I personally think sounds excellent).
Hello,

Am contemplating changing from tidal to Apple Music

Read a lot about Apple Music being better in terms of sound quality in comparison to Tidal.

Also i dont like tidal’s approach to mqa and their deceiving tactics.

Additionally is half the price where i live and it would integrate perfectly with my Apple products.

That being said, i have a hegel amp and I dont see a way to stream to it lossless…

Does anyone know a way?

If there is not, would it be worth to switch to apple
Music and stream to hegel via airplay considering that airplay is fairly good on hegel?

Is apple music lossless that much better to justify using airplay instead of tidal?

I’ve seen elsewhere you can enjoy lossless by connecting your Android or iOS device via the appropriate usb cable to the Hegel as well, I believe this supports sampling up to 24/96.
 

elliott

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There shouldn't be a perceptible quality difference, but there will be a difference in source materials. I've had both and plenty of albums sounded different, but I think it's mostly because, AFAIK, Apple requires 24bit studio masters that they internally compress vs wherever Tidal gets source materials.
 

sarumbear

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what version is your hegel? I thought tidal charged more for hi rez, but standard was$10? the latest hegel int's are mqa compatable so if you're paying for hi rez your able to resolve it. All the apple tunes I bought show up as 128 kbps which is low rez by most standards however IME more often the quality of the recording makes a bigger difference than the format with some exceptions.
iTunes and Apple Music are not the same services. Former is download only.
 

sarumbear

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I agree with others that there shouldn’t be a perceptible quality difference, the decision is more down to the hifi integration support, interface and editorial (which I personally find more interesting on Apple Music). I have noticed though that Tidal boosts the volume a little relative to other streaming apps.
Airplay isn’t officially supported for lossless although Airplay 1 does actually play CD quality so the Airport idea is sound. I think the Hegel has Airplay 2 so will be lossy AAC (which I personally think sounds excellent).
You are mistaken. Both Airplay versions has always been lossless.
 

jhaider

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I switched from Tidal to Apple, but not because of any imagined sound quality differences on 2ch music. Rather, Apple seemed to have all of the immersive content Tidal does, and more. IMO otherwise it depends on how deeply you used Tidal. If you have a lot of playlists etc switching may not make sense
 

bevok

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You are mistaken. Both Airplay versions has always been lossless.
For Apple Music? One of the developers at Naim has stated with evidence from debug that it is sending AAC, see Stevesky's post from June 9 on this page: https://community.naimaudio.com/t/apple-music-hifi-tier-incoming/16445/436. The exception to this would be the Apple Homepod (although we're talking about the Hegel here so not relevant).

You are correct though that Airplay 2 is capable of sending ALAC/CD quality audio. I haven't seen any clarification for why Apple Music doesn't send ALAC via Airplay 2 (as I said Airplay isn't an officially supported mechanism for Lossless on the Apple support articles aside from the Homepod) but my guess is that they're not happy with performance particularly in multi-speaker scenarios.

The Homepod is probably a special case anyway as I think it works like the Apple TV and initiates the stream internally rather than from the source device (e.g. phone).
 

Longshan

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Hello,

Am contemplating changing from tidal to Apple Music

Read a lot about Apple Music being better in terms of sound quality in comparison to Tidal.

Also i dont like tidal’s approach to mqa and their deceiving tactics.

Additionally is half the price where i live and it would integrate perfectly with my Apple products.

That being said, i have a hegel amp and I dont see a way to stream to it lossless…

Does anyone know a way?

If there is not, would it be worth to switch to apple
Music and stream to hegel via airplay considering that airplay is fairly good on hegel?

Is apple music lossless that much better to justify using airplay instead of tidal?
I use Apple Music, and I think it's great. But when you airplay your music it isn't lossless.
 

anchan

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The problem with AirPlay is the attenuation. My understanding is that the attenuation is all done at 16bits, so you lose a lot of resolution as you go down in volume when controlling with a phone.

Streamers usually resample at 24 bits, so instead of 65k lines of resolution to scale volume, you then have millions.

If your using Apple Music from a laptop wired to an amp and not streaming, then there shouldn’t be any issue.

Please correct me if this is not correct
 

sarumbear

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For Apple Music? One of the developers at Naim has stated with evidence from debug that it is sending AAC, see Stevesky's post from June 9 on this page: https://community.naimaudio.com/t/apple-music-hifi-tier-incoming/16445/436. The exception to this would be the Apple Homepod (although we're talking about the Hegel here so not relevant).

You are correct though that Airplay 2 is capable of sending ALAC/CD quality audio. I haven't seen any clarification for why Apple Music doesn't send ALAC via Airplay 2 (as I said Airplay isn't an officially supported mechanism for Lossless on the Apple support articles aside from the Homepod) but my guess is that they're not happy with performance particularly in multi-speaker scenarios.

The Homepod is probably a special case anyway as I think it works like the Apple TV and initiates the stream internally rather than from the source device (e.g. phone).
You and Naim forum users are confused.

Apple Music is managing the audio stream between Apple servers and your device. The stream quality is variable and displayed on the track selected. Not all devices can accept every format.

Airplay on the other hand is managing the audio stream between your device and amplifier or active speaker. It always use Apple lossless codec called ALAC and for music it is always at 16-bit 44.1kHz CD quality. This is explained on Apple developer documents and verified by 3rd parties.

That Naim engineer is talking about the hires tracks which are 24-bit 48kHz to be converted to CD quality in order to be streamed by Airplay. Not lossy AAC, but lossless ALAC.
 
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sarumbear

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The problem with AirPlay is the attenuation. My understanding is that the attenuation is all done at 16bits, so you lose a lot of resolution as you go down in volume when controlling with a phone.

Streamers usually resample at 24 bits, so instead of 65k lines of resolution to scale volume, you then have millions.

If your using Apple Music from a laptop wired to an amp and not streaming, then there shouldn’t be any issue.

Please correct me if this is not correct
You are confused. The attenuation or volume control is done after the decoding.

Which streamers you know that resamples to 24-bit?
 

sarumbear

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A draw back with apple music at least with iphones is the inability to eq your headphones as far as I know.

@sarumbear you seem very versed on things apple, In my listening room I am using a mac mini as a source to an external dac and eq'ing with sound source. I like the headphone specific presets they provide. But on my office setup is just an iphone with no ability for installing on a work computer. Are you aware of any parametric eq software for iphones that aren't jailbroken?
 
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