How do you listen to music?

[Mr. Widget]

Roon with Qobuz and Tidal have permanently changed the way I listen, CD/album collection are in the back room gathering dust.

Exactly my situation. The evening I set up Roon I couldn't stop playing the damned thing until 3 in the morning... their reviews and suggestions simply kept me exploring.

I use a dedicated streaming DAC and a NAS... CDs are boxed up in the basement, but I can rip new ones to the NAS pretty easily.

 

[Midwest Blade]

I listen three ways:

1. Iphone/ Amazon Music HD/ Headphones

2. iPad Mini/ Amazon Music HD/ Amazon Echo Link/ Amp/ Speakers

3. CD Player/ PreAmp, Amp/ Speakers

16/44 is good enough for me, Prime member so Amazon Music HD was sort of a no brainer, have a decent collection of cd’s (today, cd prices are a real steal provided you check on the actual recording quality), have to admit most of my listening is centering on Amazon.

 

[ernestcarl]

A cloud?

 

[walt99]

Exactly my situation. The evening I set up Roon I couldn't stop playing the damned thing until 3 in the morning... their reviews and suggestions simply kept me exploring.

I use a dedicated streaming DAC and a NAS... CDs are boxed up in the basement, but I can rip new ones to the NAS pretty easily.

I purchased the CD ripper everyone recommends, my whole collection now resides on a SSD attached to the roon NUC.
Don’t think I’ll ever rip the vinyls.

 

[TSB]

I just look at ASR graphs of expensive speakers.

 

[Mr. Widget]

I just look at ASR graphs of expensive speakers.

Apparently you are in good company!

 

[Jimbob54]

Amazon HD (there is no CD quality only, its either HD or lossy) on pc to dac for lounge listening. Equalised for headphones using eapo

Qobuz into USB audio player Pro (with equaliser) on android into dac /amp for desk listening. Same got car.

 

[Steve Dallas]

I have a large library of flac and mp3 (VBR0) files on my NAS and Amazon HD streaming.

In my office, I use my PC running Dirac Live Standalone and use Amazon's player or foobar2000.

In my media room, I either use my laptop in the same manner as above, or use Heos on my Denon AVR to play my library and Amazon music. Heos normally gets the nod, because it is so easy to use.

I do not seek out hi-res music, as I find it to be mostly pointless.

 

[Doodski]

I have a large library of flac and mp3 (VBR0) files on my NAS and Amazon HD streaming.

In my office, I use my PC running Dirac Live Standalone and use Amazon's player or foobar2000.

In my media room, I either use my laptop in the same manner as above, or use Heos on my Denon AVR to play my library and Amazon music. Heos normally gets the nod, because it is so easy to use.

I do not seek out hi-res music, as I find it to be mostly pointless.

I have a 2666 kbps flac file of Pink Floyd and one must listen to hear a difference. There must be 2 files being compared directly a la YouTube and the flac file to differentiate the two.

 

[Steve Dallas]

I have a 2666 kbps flac file of Pink Floyd and one must listen to hear a difference. There must be 2 files being compared directly a la YouTube and the flac file to differentiate the two.

I am not sure I understand your meaning.

I guess I should add... I have a very large CD library. All of those are ripped to flac if worthy of the disk space (Pink Floyd), or mp3 if not (Def Leppard). Sometimes, I enjoy taking a CD into the media room and playing it on the player and reading the liner notes as a ritual to remind me of the "old" way of listening. (I grew up with vinyl, 8 track, and cassette. CD is as far back as I want to go.)

I was coaxed onto the hi-res bandwagon and have purchased several albums from the likes of HD Tracks. I stopped when I realized I honestly cannot hear a difference other than the re-mix and/or re-master differences. The extra resolution is inaudible to me, so not worth the cost in dollars nor disk space.

 

[Doodski]

I am not sure I understand your meaning.

I guess I should add... I have a very large CD library. All of those are ripped to flac if worthy of the disk space (Pink Floyd), or mp3 if not (Def Leppard). Sometimes, I enjoy taking a CD into the media room and playing it on the player and reading the liner notes as a ritual to remind me of the "old" way of listening. (I grew up with vinyl, 8 track, and cassette. CD is as far back as I want to go.)

I was coaxed onto the hi-res bandwagon and have purchased several albums from the likes of HD Tracks. I stopped when I realized I honestly cannot hear a difference other than the re-mix and/or re-master differences. The extra resolution is inaudible to me, so not worth the cost in dollars nor disk space.

The recording format technology has become pretty accurate.

 

[DavidMcRoy]

Apple Music, YouTube Music and Amazon Music.

Why so many? We happen to have a lot of Apple hardware including iPhones, several iPads, a Mac Mini and an Apple TV4K. Husband wanted the Apple TV programming streaming app along with YouTube TV (instead of cable or satellite) and YouTube Premium, so bundling both of their music services seemed cheap to do. I got Amazon Prime for discounts and expedited "free" (ha!) shipping and Amazon just throws in Amazon Music and Prime Video. It all just sort of "happened." I mostly just use Apple Music for convenience and familiarity with the UI.

As for HiRes, I can't hear a "significant, repeatable" difference and I suspect there might be an "emperor's new clothes" effect going on with the hype. I think it's the CB radio of the 2020s.

 

[davidebond]

Yes. It is correct. But it is problematic to take the dac, the amp, the headphone, the cables and connect them more time in a day. I cannot take on my desk all this stuff. For this reason, I limit myself to only one listening pro day.

 

[izeek]

im definitely low brow streaming from spotify. im satisfied with whatever format im getting from it.

i can tell the difference between spotify and the hd services, tidal and such. it just wasnt enough for me to chase it. if for no other reason than spotify's ui which works very well for me. i found others clunky.

i download tunes i really, really like but just tune in for most.

 

[davidebond]

Honestly, I used csound for a while to write music. As a matter of fact, a bass tune need more acustic pressure than a High One. Then, a hi res file, having more information than a lossy one, permit to grasp any detail. It Is not Easy to listen to the introduction of Bruckner's five, because the pizzicato of celli and basses Is difficult to hear. You can rise the volume, but It Is always difficult. This does not happen with a hi res file, since the latter has enough space to store the necessary information. This Is my personal experience, but I can make a mistake.

 

[ernestcarl]

pizzicato of celli and basses Is difficult to hear. You can rise the volume, but It Is always difficult. This does not happen with a hi res file

Could be the sound coming in one’s ears isn’t as pristinely linear as one thinks.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Honestly, I used csound for a while to write music. As a matter of fact, a bass tune need more acustic pressure than a High One. Then, a hi res file, having more information than a lossy one, permit to grasp any detail. It Is not Easy to listen to the introduction of Bruckner's five, because the pizzicato of celli and basses Is difficult to hear. You can rise the volume, but It Is always difficult. This does not happen with a hi res file, since the latter has enough space to store the necessary information. This Is my personal experience, but I can make a mistake.

By "hi res," do you mean above 16/44.1, or do you mean non-compressed, i.e. better than mp3?

If the former, how do you explain those differences when the additional dynamic range is not utilized, and the additional information is above the threshold of hearing in frequency? Also, most commercial DACs struggle to reach 16 bits, and the vast majority of amplifiers struggle to reach 14 bits. How is 24 bit or 32 bit an advantage in the real world? In files above 44.1 or 48, any legitimate sound is ultrasonic to humans or, as shown in spectral analysis by Amir and other researchers, just useless noise. Why should we care about it?

If the latter, you make a good point for music that extends below 40Hz. Or contains a lot of stereo information, depending upon the bitrate used during encoding.

But, for a large majority of music, I cannot hear a difference between lossless and well-encoded lossy, such as VBR0 mp3.

 

[davidebond]

What I dislike Is the difference of formats. For example, what Is mqa? I cannot spend the Money which I don't have to decode any type of file, or purchasing a turnable for the discs. It is a mess. I cannot change dac only to listen to mqa files.

You are more Expert than me, but It seems to me to perceive a difference between a CD and a 24bit FLAC. More sound and Power and any detail Is clear. I think to the last two bars of the second mouvement of Nielsen' 2.

 

[ernestcarl]

By "hi res," do you mean above 16/44.1, or do you mean non-compressed, i.e. better than mp3?

If the former, how do you explain those differences when the additional dynamic range is not utilized, and the additional information is above the threshold of hearing in frequency? Also no, most commercial DACs struggle to reach 16 bits, and the vast majority of amplifiers struggle to reach 14 bits. How is 24 bit or 32 bit an advantage in the real world? In files above 44.1 or 48, any legitimate sound is ultrasonic to humans or, as shown in spectral analysis by Amir and other researchers, just useless noise. Why should we care about it?

If the latter, you make a good point for music that extends below 40Hz. Or contains a lot of stereo information, depending upon the bitrate used during encoding.

But, for a large majority of music, I cannot hear a difference between lossless and well-encoded lossy, such as VBR0 mp3.

I would probably just conduct my own ABX test using foobar2000 if curious.

Actually, did it years ago with 256kbps m4a and 320kbps mp3 compressing from the same hi-res files to be later compared with. Subtle differences were heard on occasion, however, IMO, it was absolutely not worth the bother unless it was for archival purposes — as I already do with some of my blu-ray discs. Hi-res, to me, for the most part is “meh”. If one likes to spend money on it because they think it’s better, I honestly don’t care anymore, but they really need to try harder to convince the rest of us skeptics who are willing to undergo more rigorous testing.

 

[Killingbeans]

For example, what Is mqa?