What streaming service do you use?

[Albert Dagger]

I've been using Tidal with a family subscription for the past six years. I generally buy physical or digital copies of the albums I like, but having Tidal is great to be able to sample different masterings of my preferred music before committing to a purchase. It's also great that I can listen to Atmos mixes using the Tidal app on my LG TV. Even if atmos mixes are encoded in a lossy e-ac3 format, it's still a good way to enjoy surround music. Many of these releases will never get a physical release, and some that get released on disc are just too expensive. For me and my partner, Tidal it is, and we love it, at home and on the go.

 

[pseudoid]

Few days ago, our Spectrum ISP had over a 4 hour local outage << This; from a company who prides itself (in ads) that their networks have near 99% up-time reliability.
In network outage cases like this, those who rely on an ISP streaming (over-and-above a phone connection) would be SOL.

I have hardened my networking for such outages, because my NAS and my whole house network (LAN) is a bridged connection to a second server' RJ45 (WAN) on the same PC/server for ISP connectivity. If the ISP goes DOA, I can still 'stream' over the local LAN (w/my NAS library) to continue my music enjoyment.
My other music 'stream' - which is via satellite (SiriusXM) - is a backup to my LAN back-up, in cases where my whole PC (home server) crashes and burns!

I practice what SteelPulse preaches in their song "Life... Life without music, I can't go on!"

 

[CleanSound]

I have hardened my networking for such outages, because my NAS and my whole house network (LAN) is a bridged connection to a second server' RJ45 (WAN) on the same PC/server for ISP connectivity. If the ISP goes DOA, I can still 'stream' over the local LAN (w/my NAS library) to continue my music enjoyment.
My other music 'stream' - which is via satellite (SiriusXM) - is a backup to my LAN back-up, in cases where my whole PC (home server) crashes and burns!

I have a similar setup. My entire house is wired in CAT6 and I have a media server with 4TB of SSD storage, it contains over 1.3TB of CD and SACD ripped FLAC and dsd files where it is network shared in the entire house. This collection of CDs and SACDs is what I have purchased mostly used from a local record store over the years.

Now that I am on Spotify, when I want to listen to non lossy music or music not available on streaming or when the internet goes down, I tap into this collection that I personally own, which is about 25%-35% of the time. But I do not consider this as streaming, it's simply files on network share.

 

[pseudoid]

I have a similar setup.

We could be brothers from different mothers, but only if you also use AES-67 audio dongles on your LAN.
I pretend I am faking streaming...

 

[BigFKahuna]

Deezer for now, still streams lossless on Airplay 1.

 

[CleanSound]

We could be brothers from different mothers, but only if you also use AES-67 audio dongles on your LAN.
I pretend I am faking streaming...

No, just standard TCP/IP packets. Any benefits with AES-67?

 

[valerianf]

I am using Amazon Music HD.
With just a Fire Stick 4K plugged into the AVR I can got up to 24bits/192 khz.
TV user interface is bad but Android tablet or phone is better.
It is the cheapest way to get HD music.

 

[Ken1951]

Pandora during the day for my Thievery Corporation and Snatam Kaur channels, and Spotify at night for Ambient/Sleep selections. Everything sounds good to me/us.

 

[Anton D]

Well, this is a crazy question, apologies for how rudimentary it is: is their higher rez Atmos streaming lossless, or is it all so lossy?

The Beatles' Last Stand

On September 27, 2023, executives from Apple Corps and Universal Music Group held a press event at the Dolby Theater in Manhattan. The event included Dolby Atmos demos of forthcoming Beatles releases. It included some big newsalthough the biggest news wasn't obvious at first.

www.stereophile.com

 

[CleanSound]

So, I try to post this review on one of Danny's videos asking him to comment on it, since he at the very least owe a thoughtful comment to his customers, potential customers and the audio industry as a whole. As soon as I post a comment, apparently Danny has an army of drones to delete any negative comments.

This is how Danny conduct businesses, heck this is how all snake oil salesmen conduct businesses, to silence any scientific inquiries and critique. Crazy.

 

[MaxBuck]

I guess I'm an oddball. I subscribe to Qobuz for jazz and pop, and Idagio for classical. Love 'em both.

 

[Middle Earth]

YouTube and Band Camp (I know BC is technically not a streaming service but they have what I like and I stream from it)

 

[Steve Dallas]

Amazon music HD and my own library. I still buy anything I would want with me after the coming apocalypse.

 

[MKR]

Qobuz and Apple Music via WiiM Pro

 

[Jimbob54]

Amazon music HD and my own library. I still buy anything I would want with me after the coming apocalypse.

Have you tried to integrate your local library and the AHD library? It is kind of possible by telling the AHD windows app to look at the folder your local files are in. The results for me (in terms of picking out duplicates etc) werent too bad but far from perfect - my merged library still has lots of duplicates and poorly labelled local files . Maybe that was due to how badly my local files were labelled and meta data though.

 

[Steve Dallas]

Have you tried to integrate your local library and the AHD library? It is kind of possible by telling the AHD windows app to look at the folder your local files are in. The results for me (in terms of picking out duplicates etc) werent too bad but far from perfect - my merged library still has lots of duplicates and poorly labelled local files . Maybe that was due to how badly my local files were labelled and meta data though.

I tried it and didn't really like it. You can filter to show only your files, but it is not intuitive. I like to be able to browse my own library to be reminded of things I haven't heard in a while. So, I mostly use Heos or a PC player to play my own library.

Here are my two home listening setups. Both have PCs with Dirac and Amazon Music and Foobar and Music Bee.

Media room:

Home office:

 

[Dogen]

I’m using Apple Music, often from my Apple TV through my HT system. The Dolby Atmos surround often sounds awesome, and it seamlessly integrates my local music files.

 

[Alb_listens]

Mostly Spotify, it was the one allowing a student subscription!
Now I'm considering sharing a Qobuz/Tidal family account, but I don't know if I'll be able to hear any difference

 

[Timcognito]

Mostly Spotify, it was the one allowing a student subscription!
Now I'm considering sharing a Qobuz/Tidal family account, but I don't know if I'll be able to hear any difference

You will on some songs especially with headphones. I did with Qobuz, not so much with rock and electric instruments.

 

[Chrispy]

I started with just Pandora several years back then after a while added a spotify premium subscription. Then I tried a few years later to see if Tidal's buzz was worth it, found that it didn't make any particular difference, and was more limited in selection and a crappy UI and the MQA nonsense on top was just another reason to leave it behind. I did also try Qobuz, found it a bit better on selection than Tidal but confirmed lossless didn't bring any particular advantages for me so just went back to Spotify. I had filled out my preferences fairly well on both Pandora and Spotify, which definitely helps on new suggestions....I didn't spend as much time doing that on Tidal or Qobuz fwiw.

Typically I use my own library streamed over my network in various ways to various setups as a primary source, tho. I do tend to buy the stuff I like on cd and rip it rather than just rely on a subscription streaming service.....altho the cost of a streaming service is fairly negligible.