Man Roon got you guys hooked.
There's loads of excellent media players for free.
Break away from the Roon cult.
There's loads of excellent media players for free.
Break away from the Roon cult.
I am sorry to say I also just started a trial of Spotify Premium and I'm already at a dead end. Their Sonos app is pathetic. No browsing of genres, not album oriented at all, no good unless you already know what you want to listen to. Maybe spotify connect would be better but that's not what I want. I like using the Sonos and BluOS controllers. So I guess I'll keep hoping that Qobuz and/or Deezer improve what I am finding lacking with those services, because I can just tell Spotify is not going to be for me.After paying for a month of Spotify today to reactivate my my account and take a look at their apps, etc., and canceling it all after about a half an hour, my conclusions are:
Spotify sound quality is sketchy, and won’t improve with lossless because of technical reasons and weirdness. Apps are a hot mess, and sort of incomprehensible. Their “AI” is better than all the rest for recommendations, discovery, playlists, etc., including Roon, but at what cost?
They are similar to Amazon. Just checking off a box, with no concept, care, or plan for catering to serious music listeners. They are all about earbuds, social features, memes and the like.
Roon+Qobuz is the best sound quality, and has adequate discovery if using Roon, (as long as you don’t use Roon Radio, which is fubar).
Tidal apps are way better than Spotify, and have adequate discovery/playlist features (better than Roon, actually).
So anyway, despite my initial interest in Spotify’s big announcement, I now conclude it’s a meh, or worse, a grift.
I just hope Roon, Qobuz and Tidal can survive. They probably will, at least in the short term, because your typical Spotify user doesn’t care about any of the above
No problem if you don't like Roon but there are literally no other media players that provide the combination of services that I need/want.Man Roon got you guys hooked.
There's loads of excellent media players for free.
Break away from the Roon cult.
How did you find that out in half an hour? What technical reasons and weirdness are you referring to?Spotify sound quality is sketchy, and won’t improve with lossless because of technical reasons and weirdness.
All music steaming platforms have bad copies of music because of the record labels. The quality is comparable to a cheap walmart cd box set or from the $5 walmart cd bin. Lossless or lossy, its gonna sound terrible either way.How did you find that out in half an hour? What technical reasons and weirdness are you referring to?
With walmart cd's, they are lazily put together. These cd's often have Terrible DR and/or Terrible sources. Most people including my father don't care about the terrible DR, they only if the original song and not some re-recording. I talk about DR because these companies claim that they care about audio and want you to hear the best but infact give you walmart cd quality instead.Could you explain to me what is different at the audio quality of a walmart cd box set?
Lots and lots of get released to walmart. Even if these cd's had good sources they'll still suffer from the loudness wars, just like my walmart johnny cash cd.Even assuming that's true, how many albums outside of billboard even make it to Walmart? Almost everything has to come from other sources and by default I would assume that people don't bother to do much of anything to them
Remaster is a bit of a stretch but yes. They still make regular albums like Aerosmith's but it still would sound terrible. Most people only care if it sounds like what they heard before regardless if the DR is worse. The most common reason why these record labels do this, is because average people have average audio gear.So the labels spend some money for remastering the recording badly just to sell it cheaper on samplers than the original cd? Even if most people won't notice a difference or even if - don't care?
Some must've done that. I only did testing of DR from multiple streaming platforms.I'm not talking about reduced DR because of general loudness war but of better and worse sounding versions of the same recording. Did someone verify this (for example with that Delta Wave software)?
I have bought several 16-44.1 albums (from Sony Classical, DG, Decca, Warner Classics) on qobuz, and they match perfectly (bit perfect) with my CD rip from newly bought CD (test with Pkane's DeltaWave software). Two albums do not match, and it is because my rips of those albums are from second-hand CD. One Decca album (Freire - Chopin Concerto) have watermarked. That's all
It doesn't make a lot of economic sense to me either. Then again the labels have shown weird view of economics repeatedly...So the labels spend some money for remastering the recording badly just to sell it cheaper on samplers than the original cd? Even if most people won't notice a difference or even if - don't care?
Just had a chat with guys from major label in local hifi shop few days ago. They talked about all the process, what they deliver, what specs Tidal/Qobuz wants etc. I remember they underlined the fact that - at least for their music - the track they send to Tidal/Qobuz for 16/44 is not the exact copy of the track they send for CD... I can try to reach them and verify what exactly the differences but I think it’s not really important anyway.
It doesn't make a lot of economic sense to me either. Then again the labels have shown weird view of economics repeatedly...