(I'm so pissed, I wrote a huge draft and lost everything because I had to reboot and didn't think about saving it
)
Yeah these are some very good points, I've been searching for "the best" quality while not knowing any technical stuff and I've beed losing myself a bit, while slowly realising that I probably can't spot major differences between most different type of quality modes out there, although I don't have any high end hifi material, I'm listening to music on my recently acquired AKG K702 (EQ'ed to Harman Curve, poke
@Robbo99999) and Steljes NS3 speakers. I've been using Deezer Family for years, and I've been recently looking into getting more high quality streaming, and started looking into all the different offers out there (except Amazon HD, I don't know anything about it except some mixed feedback I read). I'd like to give you why I retained in the case you have any advices or remarks, again I have really no knowledge at all, it's purely subjective.
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Deezer HiFi
I've been using Deezer for a long time and I'm quite please with it, it has many small features that I enjoy, it's rather user friendly while having some nice functionnalities in my opinion. I also enjoy their catalogue, even if it's technically smaller than other services, it seems to match what I listen to the most, as shown by the transfers I made through soundiiz and the tracks I liked that couldn't be found elsewhere. Also it has a cool feature (to me at least) which I don't see everywhere, it is the possibility to add personal mp3 files. As I listen to some specific stuff sometimes it's a really nice addition. Deezer HiFi seemed like the next logical step, but I feel like it's not really liked or popular compared to other services, even though I'm not sure why. If you guys have any input on this I would be interested to hear it. Oh and it's a french service, as a french person myself I'm keen on supporting "local" stuff to a certain degree.
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Spotify
I don't have much to say about Spotify as I've not really tried it. I know it has much more compatibilities/integrations with other platforms than Deezer does, but apart from that their basic offer seem quite similar to me, and Spotify doesn't have any HiFi offer (even if they apparently announced one recently) so I don't see any clear reason to switch to it. According to some people ogg would seem to be a bit better than mp3 but it's not a sufficient argument for me since I want to step up to FLAC anyway.
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Tidal
I only knew Tidal by name, and to me it was a bit associated to people focusing on listening to HiFi music. I'm currently on a one month trial, and it seems pretty nice, the app is fluid, pretty, it seems practical. I didn't lose too many favorite tracks from Deezer after the transfer although I did lose some of the most "indie" artists/tracks I like but I guess if I switched to it I would survive, even if I would miss the personal mp3 feature, which I believe it not present in the app. In terms of quality, I'm a bit ashamed to admit it but I honestly hear very little improvement going from 320 kbps mp3 to "HIFI" (which is FLAC, if I'm not mistaking ?) I guess it I somehow sounds a bit better to me, but I really need to focus on it and at a certain volume to perceive any difference. I've tried some "Master" quality tracks that I knew, and it seemed about the same quality as Hifi to me, if not even worse in some cases. Is my hearing that bad or is it actually possible ? Most of my favorite tracks are not available in Master quality anyway, so it's not much of a big deal.
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Qobuz
Well I find this one to be a piece of its own ! I never heard of it until I started researching streaming services. It had multiple things that caught my attention : Premium HiFi audio streaming, it's a french company (yeah I know), it does have some recognition worldwide... Thought I'd give it a try. To reduce the size of this already too long post, I was a bit disapointed. Again I didn't really notice any sound quality improvement as most of the stuff I listen is on 16b/44.1 anyway (I mean compared to the possible 24b/44.1 and above), the base volume sound a bit higher than Tidal I believe but other than it sounded ok. The catalogue is poorer than other services, although I've understood that some music types like classical music are more complete. But none of this doesn't really matter, what REALLY repelled me is the slooowness of the app. Honestly I found it shameful, it takes about 5 sec for a song to start playing, sometimes even more, either it be on the desktop app or the web app. I've not seen this feedback anywhere else so I don't know if something's wrong with me, I believe most people listen to it through other integrations like Roon (?) and maybe that's why I haven't read it elsewhere, but for me it's a big no-no. I really wanted to like it but no matter how hard I will try I know I won't be able to get used to it.
So here's basically what I've gathered, don't hesitate to tell me anything you can think of, I'm opened to remarks and critics
Again I don't know anything about the world Hifi, I'm trying to get into but really appears technical and difficult for me. Most of the time I don't understand anything you're talking about here
Finally sorry for my english and if I made any mistakes