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Primephonic Becoming Apple Music: Alternatives?

Tangband

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Probably. I refuse to use Apple products because of their walled-garden lock-in and their monopolistic business practices.

Spotify is MUCH more open, with excellent APIs. The Concertmaster web app doesn't appear to support Spotify Connect at this time, but Spotify has a beta API for doing just that, so hopefully it will be integrated at some point. Spotify has promised a HiFi lossless tier sometime this year, so looks like the stars may be aligning for an excellent Primephonic alternative, including on a Mac.
You have to have an Apple device to stream high resolution. Spotify has apparently not delivered better sound yet, when comparing my Spotify premium to my Apple Music lossless, the quality is clearly better with Apple.
compairing Apple lossless with TIDAL, they sound the same, I cant hear any difference.
 

Atanasi

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You have to have an Apple device to stream high resolution.
The Apple Music Android app supports high resolution, but ultimately the support depends also on the Android implementation and device, which often support only 48 kHz.
 
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MRC01

MRC01

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The Apple Music Android app supports high resolution, but ultimately the support depends also on the Android implementation and device, which often support only 48 kHz.
My Android phone supports up to 192 kHz, but only through UAPP, because it bypasses the Android system behavior. The Android system resamples everything to 96 kHz and has no way to change that behavior. So all other music apps besides UAPP get resampled.

... Spotify has promised a HiFi lossless tier sometime this year, so looks like the stars may be aligning for an excellent Primephonic alternative, including on a Mac.
The problem with Spotify is their metadata doesn't work with classical music, as discussed earlier in this thread. This makes it difficult to browse, explore and search the catalog. Primephonic and Idagio are the only 2 companies I know of that solved this problem.
 

Ralph_Cramden

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My Android phone supports up to 192 kHz, but only through UAPP, because it bypasses the Android system behavior. The Android system resamples everything to 96 kHz and has no way to change that behavior. So all other music apps besides UAPP get resampled.


The problem with Spotify is their metadata doesn't work with classical music, as discussed earlier in this thread. This makes it difficult to browse, explore and search the catalog. Primephonic and Idagio are the only 2 companies I know of that solved this problem.
Which is why Concertmaster uses its own metadata. See post #38 above.

https://wiki.openopus.org/wiki/Open_Opus_Wiki
 
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MRC01

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Amazon music includes HD for many titles at no extra cost. However, my experience is that their browser player resamples everything to 44-16, even tracks marked as "HD". Same browser and machine I used to stream HD with Primephonic, so it's not a browser limitation.

Anyone have suggestions for getting Amazon Music to play each album at its native rate in a browser without resampling everything?
 

Atanasi

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Apple Music for Android should also support streaming Dolby Atmos, but it doesn't include a Dolby Atmos processor. Dolby Atmos for headphones is included with many Android phones and tablets. I think the only supported way to stream Dobly Atmos to home theatres is connecting an Apple TV 4K to an AVR with a Dolby Atmos processor.
 
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MRC01

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After trying Amazon and Apple music, being disappointed in both, I just started a free trial with Qobuz. So far it looks promising. Their browser player plays uncompressed at the recording's native rate (from 44.1 to 192), which neither Amazon nor Apple do. Also, USB Audio Player Pro can play Qobuz, which is great because it bypasses the Android system's always resampling. And Qobuz has a WIDE range of music, not just classical.

The only drawback is Qobuz seems to use standard ID3 metadata, which doesn't work well for classical music. However, when I know what I'm looking for I can always find it.
 

Jbrunwa

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Until now my favorite classical streaming service is Berlin Philharmonic Digital Orchestra. I for one am excited about the Apple Primephonic acquisition. The difference between high quality and lossless is not audible to me anyway, and I am planning to explore the new titles.
 
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VMAT4

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Any sign(s) of Primephonic in Apple Music yet?
 

Ata

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What do we expect to see, a new Music app for classic music, or just richer metadata in the existing one?
 

DeLub

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What do we expect to see, a new Music app for classic music, or just richer metadata in the existing one?
Both. At least the new app has been promised in about half a year's time after Primephonic closed. So around feb/march.
 
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