I think sound is a lot like colour. I never know if we all are seeing and hearing exactly the same thing exactly the same way. What I do appreciate is your honest and sincere opinions and observations. Take them or leave them, away better for them. Tks
Great topic Paul. Streaming has my concerns in that the file you receive may have been altered. Equalized, sped up, volume changed etc. I have more confidence in a production CD because at least you know it came from a controlled pressing from a proper mastering.
Cds always sound way better to me than streaming. If I had a better streamer, I don't doubt that the gulf would decrease to more of a gap. With less and less brick and mortar stores these days, you often have to take into consideration what your favorite audio reviewers say about it, and all my favorites say direct playing of cds sounds best. Who should your favorite audio reviewers be? Those that describe the sound of said items that after auditioning it, you might have used the exact same words to describe it yourself. Sometimes you hear it first and their review echoes your exact thoughts.Your favorite reviewers should be ones whose hearing seems to jibe with your ears. Even if you feel they overrate how good something is occasionally, you want someone whose hearing is similar to yours. Who can communicate what it's basic character sounds like. The subtleties you can work out when you go and hear it in person. We can put numbers aside when there are other important factors involved. Although I'm sure there are occasional bad apples or incompetents, I don't believe audio reviewers are telling you stuff that isn't so; for the sake of sales! For one thing I can't remember one magazine review of anything at all in Stereophile or The Absolute Sound.. EVER..where the reviewer didn't find multiple performance areas to criticize. If they were promoting it for sales; they WOULDN'T be putting it down in ANY way; that would hurt sales! It's weak performance areas that they point out, might be the deal breaker for a lot of potential buyers who value exceptional performance in those same performance areas. SORRY conspiracy theorists; it just wouldn't make sense. The old magazines like Stereo Review and Audio, where everything reviewed was "decent" probably were on the up and up too. I don't think their reviews went too wild over anything; even if the reviewed item was from a manufacturer whose ads frequented their back cover. These magazines were not out to lose their reader's trust either, which their circulation numbers depended on. And advertising rates are BASED ON CIRCULATION. I do think it's too bad though that in recent years, rarely is there something affordable, reviewed in many of these publications. They do want you to spend lots of money. But that they lie to you, is an inference that only wild inference people make without any real basis. Cds on my highly modded equipment sounds like analog without the noise. It sounds perfect until you switch to real analog, which sounds like it was built on a foundation of natural soundingness. But it's close enough that it's not very important and convenience usually wins out.
I feel the same way. Analog is better. Cd 2nd and streaming 3rd but look at the convenience factors...I believe they are situated in the opposite order. Frankly at the end of the day my day my girl doesn't care....and therein lies the real problem
Cds played through a player & into a tube preamp can analog the sound out a bit. For those whose cd players still have a vestige of digital about them. There is just something about analog though. Cd playback can sound like it is built on a treble foundation, where analog sounds like it's built from the bass or warmth region up. Same with solid state versus tubes. I couldn't imagine not having both a tube system and a solid state one.
Here's the problem with your position ... You are relying upon the *emotional* reaction of a total stranger to judge product quality. We already discussed the recent video from one reviewer who decided to trash low cost equipment in order to protect his revenue stream from higher priced gear that is, in fact, no better than the stuff he trashed. It doesn't matter if your favourite reviewers are on the up and up or not... they are, by and large, incapable of making the kind of judgement you are trusting them for. If a reviewer were to level match a pair of DACs and then compare them without knowing which one is playing at the moment, he might get closer to spotting audio anomalies or problems... but comparing today's DAC with one tested weeks or months ago is simply not possible. So many things affect both our current hearing and our memory of hearing that any non-objective or non-immediate evaluations are totally useless. I don't know how many times or how many ways I have to explain this to you, but the only true comparison is through objective means such as Blind A-B testing and the use of electrometry. I simply do not care how much you like your system, or what silly things you've done to it... if it makes you happy, then mission accomplished. But advocating subjective reviews as credible information is just a fools game from the get go. Stop and think about the problem... how do you describe the sound of a Saxophone? If you can't do that with a degree of accuracy that lets someone who's never heard one identify it... you have failed your task.
@Douglas Blake. That's not really correct at all. I would say that BY FAR r the most important thing when comparing equipment is FAMILIARITY. The only way to really intimately know something is living with it. For days, for weeks, for months. If after living with say a piece of equipment for half a year, and all of a sudden a new piece of equipment was substituted. I would personally have no difficulty in decribing how the sound had changed.playing familiar recordings I have heard many times before. No difficulty at all; and neither would a good audio reviewer. What would be much harder and hence less dependable and accurate, is if two unfamiliar pieces of equipment sounded similar and you had to pick out which one was which with a blindfold on. It would just be all too quick, all too unfamiliar, all too pressured and tense etc. If someone has committed a crime and are asked to recognize someone in a lineup, their accuracy is wholly dependent on how long they seen the perpetrator. If they seen his face for only a second or two; they often can't probably. If they seen his face for a minute or two; they often can. What makes you think that audio (hearing) would be any different? Switching from one thing to another. Unless there is a huge difference in the sound; intimate familiarity is needed to do good in an A/B comparison. If a reviewer actually reviews a piece of equipment he has owned for a year; I will give what he says about it much stronger creedence than if he just heard it for a short period of time, like in an A/B comparison. A/B blind testing just doesn't work too well. Listener's evaluation simply needs way more familiarity than that. PERIOD! Most people wouldn't even know what to listen for, or be able to discriminate well. That doesn't mean differences don't exist. It means said individual is not able to pick them out. The human ear/brain system at its best can discriminate between things better than measuring machines, for the most part. It's not just me; subjective evaluation is UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED to be the best thing to go by. Our ears. Remember, it is we that built the machines, not the other way around. AND your ridiculous statement implying lack of competence in describing how a sax sounds to someone who has never heard one. Words do have limitations.. don't they? Especially some people's words.
Douglas Blake finding fault where there isn't any, except with himself, is becoming a continual theme on here. He's trying to play genius or something. Finding fault over things that are not really possible, like describing what a saxophone sounds like so someone who's never heard one will know exactly how one sounds, would be like describing what the color red looks like to a blind man. No matter how hard you would try, the blind man is simply not going to be able to picture the color red; or any color. Another ridiculous argument put forth by him. Audio Reviewers do their best, with the best evaluative tools they have; and that is their ears and words describing their perception. How can someone be advocating subjective evaluation? Subjective evaluation is the only dependable evaluation we have. It's actually a coincidence when measured results match how something sounds. At the present point in time, the state of the art in audio equipment evaluation is: humans with human ears describing what they are hearing for other humans with human ears. What measuring machines hear are not that relevant; especially since they rarely jibe with what human ears hear. Subjective evaluation by humans, for humans, always has been given the highest priority and likely always will. Measurements are a secondary consideration and always have been.
Still buy CDs for my favorite albums, they sound much better than Tidal on my hifi-system. I also like the physical aspect; cover art, lyrics photos, liner notes.
@@dieseldust27 I do a little bit of streaming via TH-cam. It’s audio quality isn’t “audiophile,” but it’s still quite listenable to me for the most part.
Most here haven't heard that Tidal is converting to FLAC. People doing comparisons say it is indistinguishable from Qobuz. There is still a lot of MQA (which I don't mind) but it's gradually being replaced. I have both and still prefer the interface on Tidal and the extra features. Plus they pay artists better.
With many albums, there are different masters on Qobuz than say an old CD. I have several examples of this - take Toto IV -- new remastered version on Qobuz. Sounds a lot different compared to my CD which I bought in the early 2000s. Some masters are the very same - for instance Extreme's second album. And indeed they sound extremely close (ripped CD streamed locally vs. Qobuz streaming). I am not sure I could tell them apart in a blind test. I recorded a bit of a Qobuz stream digitally and compared it to the ripped track from CD -- no difference, it is the very same master and in the end the very same data.
Usually, the streaming companies state that it’s the music distributor who sends them the digital master. They can’t control or decide if it’s the same as other published versions, like the CD version.
@@ValdemarDeMatos I have no doubt this is true. Tidal/Qobuz/... don't rip CDs by themselves and stream them, but their data comes from huge back end distribution systems which in turn get their data from music companies. So - even if they wanted, Tidal/Qobuz/... could not serve us the good old original masters.
Exactly, this is all it is. Variations in the mastering being sent out to the subscriber along with some ReplayGain type volume normalization causing the difference in sound. I have tested this myself. Jitter, noise and other explanations audiophiles sometimes throw out there are simply not relevant to the discussion. Paul plays to the insecurities of these audiophiles. There's no mystery here - at. all.
The sound quality difference is likely due to different source files being used at each company. You can find the same songs, from the same recording sessions, on multiple albums (original release, greatest hits, anthology, one hit wonders, etc). Those should all sound the same, because they are the same songs from the same recording sessions. Alas, they usually have different sound quality. If you have "some-song.flac", and you send a copy to someone else, then their "some-song.flac" will be 100% the same as yours. Yet, when it comes to purchasing a digital song, it is a crap shoot. Clearly there are people that are tinkering with the files, before they add them to this CD or some other CD, or before they add them to one album's digital download service vs some other album on that same digital download service. And for Pat in Montreal's question, we are now talking about two different services. So who knows from where those services are sourcing their content? There are seemingly endless incompetent people involved in the music distribution industry. Nothing else explains how the same song, from the same recording session, has such obvious sound quality differences from album to album (not always -- but frequently). And we have not even touched on re-masters. All of the above is before anyone has done a re-master. We have yutz's that have access to the raw files, and those yutz's are clearly processing those files with some software (or some crude analog gear) before posting the albums to download (streaming) sites (same tinkering for CDs, too). Apparently, qobuz has competent people that has access to other competent people at the studios, and so they end up with better sounding copies of what was recorded in the studios. I wish a reputable source would come up with a database (or listing) of every popular song, every album on which that song resides, and the names of every person that had a hand in the process. Then we could rate the sound quality of each song on each album, and look to see a pattern of who was involved for every song that sounds bad, as well as a pattern of who was involved for songs that sound great. Pat in Montreal (and the rest of us) are not imagining the sound quality differences. They are real. And the people screwing things up remain anonymous. And the people getting it right get no recognition. I would love to know to avoid songs that involved some person, and to seek out songs that involved some other person. Ideally, the people screwing up the songs would get fired, or they would catch enough heat to wake up and learn from the people that do it right. When we watch movies, we see who did what. Yet, for songs, it remains a mystery.
The rights of use and access to the master recordings or the remastered recordings are probably one of the reasons why certain not companies distribute different versions. And some people do what they are told to do to earn their salaries at the end of the month… And I think in the movie’s’ credits we don’t see also who converted that movie to digital. Currently most of the movies copies are great, but during the first DVD years there were also big issues with that and the name of the one involved in the digitalization process was also unknown. The main difference is that the movies industry, for now, doesn’t make so much business with the master recording of that movie.
It would be very interesting to upload a sample to these services, then play it back from the service in a Null Test ... that would show us how much actual difference there is.
I rather stick with physical media such as cds and vinyl, nowadays a large majority of people are using air pods, almost everywhere i go, someone is wearing air pods. It's pointless with streaming when most people use airpods and are already sacrificing sound quality for convenience. Bluetooth headphones are like the equivalent of fast food places like mcdonalds and burger king, inferior quality for convenience. I listen to my sennheiser hd 600 when traveling by bus, when walking around in public and going to places. I use the fiio m11 android dap connected to my fiio k3 dac amp since I rip my cds with media monkey and store them locally on my micro sd cards since I don't stream my music. Whenever I'm not listening to music from my dap, I plug my sennheiser hd 600 into my sony xperia 1 iv android phone from it's headphone jack when I watch live tv or when watching youtube 4k videos from my sony phone 4k 120hz oled display.
The OLED display 4K HDR 120 are great for movies on phones and tablets, even black & white movies look great. The OLED blacks are very good for that. Once you have OLED on a phone, you never want to go back. 👍
@@Bob-Fields Use better quality wireless headphones for example like the focal bathys, they are better than air pods with usb c dac mode. I'm just going on based on my preference but everyone has there own preferences. I tried bluetooth for audio but it pales in comparison with wired headphones. I got tired of constantly charging bluetooth headphones when they died or when I forget to charge them, I ended up going back to use wired headphones since I missed using wired headphones plus the quality is superior and reliable just like using an ethernet cable when using the internet. My wired headphones even out lasted my bluetooth headphones plus bluetooth headphones are just another form of e-waste like laptops with soldered ssds when the ssds fail in them. I prefer using wired headphones with user removable cables since you can use the same pair of headphones long term since the removable cables are more affordable and more sustainable than constantly having to buy a new pair bluetooth headphones that you have to throw away when the batteries die and when the same pair of bluetooth headphones are already discontinued and no longer supported like laptops that fail with ssds and other components that fail so you end up throwing them away like bluetooth headphones. Nowadays more and more consumer products are being made to throw away instead of being long term. There are no wireless headphones that can you connect with the option to enable mobile data or switch to wifi like you can when you switch between mobile data in the settings on your smart phone instead of using bluetooth with bluetooth limited bandwidth even though wifi has limited range, there is more bandwidth for higher fidelity of audio with wifi compared to using bluetooth. I still have my google chrome cast audio device and it supports up to 24 bit 96khz lossless audio over a wifi connection.
Dear Rodrik! Ihave tried all sorts of streaming, and think they cannot beat the cd-sacd! The dutch engineers did a fantastic job! Greetings from geir Røssaak, jessheim Norway!
Like Paul said (or as I interpret it) its all about TIME: WHEN is there a 1 or a zero? And at what moment your player is listening to it? The less steps / listeners / senders of one's and zero's the better. So i like vinyl for real careful listening and my Naim CD5 for careful listening.
No. As Paul said, this is a case where time does NOT matter. In both cases they're going to the same DAC via the same delivery pipeline with same timing characteristics.
I got rid of Tidal within a month after purchasing a subscription when I realized that MQA sounded strange to me. At that time I was also subscribed to Qobuz which sounded much more realistic. I still believe that a quality recorded CD sounds more musical then its high quality Qobuz counterpart. Yesterday, while streaming on my PS Audio DSD DAC Streamer Mk I, I heard the most incredible Jazz recording by drummer Antonio Sanchez, "Three Times Three" which was to my ears and 57 year jazz listening history a most incredible jazz extravaganza so I purchased the CD for comparison and I'm expecting it to arrive today. I'm predicting that the CD will sound a bit warmer (musical) and somewhat less articulate as it has been my one-on-one comparison experience in the past with many other recordings like this that I've made. In any case, I suggest you stream this recording because it's so damn good (if this is your musical taste) especially Antonio Sanchez's remarkable drumming abilities. To my ears it's the best reproduced drumming I've ever heard and I mean EVER. There is an incredible amount of symbol and percussive play on the entire recording. It's just beyond belief. This post is being sent by the guy that introduced Paul to the album(s) Brian Bromberg, "Wood" and Alegri, "Miserere" and the TH-cam video of my favorite drummer Billy Kilson so Paul should have an understanding of my ability to pick quality music reproduction by incredible musicians.
Thanks for jazz album recommendation. Listening to it right now and it's a great record with fabulous musicians. Sounds great, even through free TH-cam streaming and TV-speakers! 😄
Many ways to enjoy the music depending on the circumstances and person. I live alone, rarely travel, and enjoy my records and cds and audio equipment. No streaming for me except for youtube. Maybe I'm the one who's crazy.
I enjoy Tidal and Spotify both because of the exploring of new artists it facilitates and the discovery of old titles that slipped through the cracks of my listening experience.
You state, or at least imply, that noise is not an issue until a clock is introduced. I've set up many systems and the noise can come from the network itself and can also be generated by data switches, etc. I've had issues over time with several very expensive automation systems as well. A little bit of noise doesn't affect a Word document, nor does jitter. Both affect digital sound quality.
Great video ( As always )... Is there a difference between streamers ( Only Streamers ) when using an external DAC ? Meaning : On a High End system , Is it wise to invest in a High end streamer with an external DAC or a basic streamer ? as it is only a streamer ... Thanks
Well, I'm just a pedestrian with relatively low end equipment. I can't hear the difference between Qobuz and Tidal (at 16/24 bit 44kHz) on my Klipsch RP400s connected to the PC. Neither can I detect the difference on my Snell speakers played through a Yamaha A8A AVR. And, I can't tell the difference, at those resolutions using a Denon Class A amp through a Cambridge Audio 851N player to Infinity Column II speakers. I can barely tell a difference at 24 bit 192 kHz on the Klipsch desk top speakers. I can definitely tell the difference at 24 bit/192kHz with the 851N connected to the Denon amp sent to the Infinitys. I wonder if there may be a misunderstanding between the two services. Tidal used to list the music only as high resolution, but 24 bit was the only constant; they didn't distinguish between 44 kHz, 88 kHz, 96 kHz, 176 kHz, and 192 kHz. Could this account for some of the difference?
The standards for mastering for streaming services is different than those for mastering for compact disc pressings which is different than those for mastering for vinyl. This is surely the reason for the difference.
IMHO, the quality difference is the bit rate the stream is coming at. Higher bandwidth, better sound. this is most obvious when comparing 15MBP (max) from netflix vs 30 MBP from AppleTv. the ladder is significantly better video quality but they are both marketed as 4K video.
They will be identical if the clock in the CD transport and streaming device are of the same quality, or if you go through a DDC, or your DAC can compensate for jitter.
It sounds like you just need a good fully automatic set up? I think the LP20 you mentioned or similar can be bought for a couple of hundred bucks, sound great and don't need all 5hat tweaking? You just put your record on and press go? Plus they have a built in preamp so active speakers are all you need? Cheers Ed
Interested in your comments about 2 things: 1. Just because a service says they "stream" hi-res, they are not saying what they are doing with the music before the stream, right? 2. All this talk about DACs in the streamer...don't most streamers just send the data straight through to the AVR (if that's what you are using) and it's the AVR that uses the DAC? Like with the WiiM streamer connected via Toslink?
The streamer have a clock and a power supply. This combination of things can offer a better clock for dac or a weak one. Clock from stremer is the master or the first in the chain
I was waiting for the word Airlens through the video... received an email today (same time as this video) that PS Audio has the product in their lineup today 😉
2023 When it comes to Qobuz vs Tidal sound quality, both platforms will give you the FLAC lossless audio format, but only Tidal offers the Hi-Res FLAC format and MQA streaming option. Both of these music streaming services will deliver the sound quality that all you audiophiles seek.
love from pak ! my is why horn loud spaekers so expensive what makes them so costly and if those can only handle high frequency then whats hi fi about it and where are the lows!>?
Nice video and explanation. I did use to work for one of the bigger streaming services, so I might be biased, but: Even if you do hear a difference.. is it for the better or the worse?
I've tried it and they don't compare. If you have a 1500 dollar cd player it will blow any streaming service away. Start buying up cds before they become expensive.
Did the person do a real, blind, ABX test or did they do the switching themselves? Too much opportunity for selection bias in all this. There are differences in encoders for things like MP3/AAC but if it's done to FLAC, should not be a difference between the lossless services at least. In theory and assuming they are truly lossless.
A/B blind testing requires people to distinguish between music tracks they have no familiarity with, played on equip. they have no familiarity with in a pressured non relaxing situation. Having no long term familiarity with the equipment or the music, they usually fail. Which is what you would expect. Without sufficient familiarity; not. NOT SCIENTIFIC.
Are you forgetting: (1) Different master released to them, (2) Loudness normalization algorithm doing DSP in the software, (3) Other little DSP tricks going on in the player and OS (such as Window's CAudioLimiter APO?)
Could be a thousand variables. One of the players was in exclusive mode while the other was getting DSP and resampling from the OS. One of them had a different master. One of them was 24/192 and the other was a 16/44 or an MQA. One of them was using the balanced outs and the other was using single-ended RCA. Etc.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio I chose right then 😄 I don't really have gear that would let me hear the difference, or trained ears (I think, a USB multi track mixer, Creek headphone amp from the end of the 90s and V-Moda Crossfade M-100 Master), but I preferred using Qobus more than Tidal, and wanted to avoid the lossy quality from Spotify. I do plan on a DAC and an amp from Schiit, so it will get better.
When you hear a track on a streaming service that you happen to own that CD it’s from, you don’t know that it’s the same master that you have, regardless of anything else.
I remember my streaming really improved when I put something as simple as EVA anti-vibration pads under my dac and other equipment, It was surprising how much. I have a little PS Audio Duet that I've had for years and after putting one underneath it things then really improved, I don't know if it was a cumulative effect combined with all the other things or what but it was very noticeable.
I've done the super cheap man versions of this using craft foam pads, sometimes a paperweight on top to keep it all down 😂😂 It does make a difference especially on speakers. Raising your subwoofer off the floor a little bit makes a huge difference too
There's a clear difference between Tidal and MQA, and it isn't a secret. Tidal uses MQA processing for all files that they call "Master". They do not stream straight uncompressed audio for anything above 44.1 KHz. Qobuz streams lossless PCM files up to 192 KHz 24 bit. As a guy who's company makes a high performance streaming device, surely Paul is aware of this? The other problem that can happen when comparing files, is that it's often difficult if not impossible to differentiate between various masterings of the same album.
I wonder if your song plays at 48k and your d/a is set to 44, it will downsample and It's the worst thing you can do to your audio, so maybe you also need to take that into account when comparing
I remember using a phone on the Orange network some years ago, and they were doing horrible nasty things to the internet traffic going through their network. They it to graphics, they did it to video and I’m sure they did it to music too. They did it because they had a bandwidth problem, and they didn’t tell the customers the truth. It doesn’t even have to be the streaming service that’s doing it to you! I prefer locally stored media any day.
What you are suggesting is actually impossible. Internet traffic is encrypted these days, the ISP physically can't change it. They only power they have is to throttle the data which would make it arrive slower but it will still be the exact same data.
@@G3rain1 most internet traffic is encrypted, however, back in the day, more than half _wasn’t_ and I still wouldn’t trust an ISP not to do something bad.
Could also depend on how much the streaming service is paying the ISP’s to prioritize their data. For example Netflix is paying to have their streaming service prioritized.
@@RogierYou That's 150% BS. Audio, even 24-192 lossless, takes so little data it doesn't matter, and every single streamer or computer will buffer the data anyway. It's literally impossible for network quality or speed to effect the sound quality directly. The only possibility is if the streaming services decided to serve you a compressed copy.
@@G3rain1 Are you sure about trusting the streaming services that much? I’ve heard that most of them goes down in bit-rates if they have problems with capacity.
Tidals proprietary shenanigans with MQA has been fairly well documented at this point... They use lossy compresson, which in itself I don't think is that much of an issue, but they do tweaks to the audio to add in a little "EQ" as it were. The problem I have with Tidal is their outright lying about their lossless compression (which has been proven false), and their pushing of proprietary tech into the audio space with the MQA format. I will never support them because of this.
Master clocks have been in use in high-end audio for years. Google 'master clock' and you'll find a mix of 10M clocks intended for recording and playback. I just did this a few days ago.
Maybe not atomic clocks, but I've used alot of daps over the years and the way fiio uses their femtosecond crystal oscillators has always been mind-blowing, the extra accuracy makes a huge difference, and I love the fact that I'm using crystals to listen to music, its like alchemy :)
Temperature is literally thermal noise. It increases impedance in cables and so on. However, equipment can be 'tuned' for working best when its components are warm. So the answer is going to vary in every system. Generally the 'tuning' of the components in the system is going to be more important and stuff will sound better warmed up.
I’ve heard that some people think there is some kind of «watermark» in different streaming services. It is supposed to be one of the conditions for record companies who have contracts with competing streaming services, I’ve heard from people within the record companies. Anyone who knows what this kind of «watermark» actually is, or if it really excists at all? I can’t but notice that there is some kind of samenes to different albums streamed on the same service. Then playing those albums on my PS Audio dac and transport or my AMR CD-777, or the Electrocompaniet UP-1 mk.4, the «sameness» is gone, and there are huge differences between those albums, often resulting in the CDs sounding way better, even at that same bitrate as the streamer I’ve used.
i noticed these kinda same sound signatures too, for example 2 years ago tidal was more bright sounding and qobuz more emphasis on the low end, and low end wise deezer seems to take the cake
You can upload music to apple as a 24bit 192khz wav, and so long as the end listener pays for apple music, has the internet bandwidth, plays from their phone (if a windows/android user) and uses a sufficient quality external usb DAC (i use my focusrite interface), and has enabled such quality streams in their settings, then they will hear the streamed track at a true 24bit 192khz But if they only uploaded a wav in 44.1khz or 16 bit or something, then thats all youl hear it in. Most modern artists are uploading in 24 bit 44.1/48khz, and so long as youve enabled it in settings and met the mentioned conditions, you will hear the streamed audio in, IN-arguably, BETTER then CD quality, and my ears, to me, on my setup, confirm this. The new tesseract CD, quite frankly, is straight up DEMOLISHED by the apple music stream, 1 second of listening to their reverb trails is all it takes to notice the resolution difference. Same goes for essentially every modern artist i listen to (Mostly prog). I buy CD's to support the artist but thats about it, and i buy vinyl to do the same, but also marvel at how good that primitive technology can actually sound (And thanks to the loudness war, this primitive tech can still sound better then either CD or stream, but our stupidity causes this, not the technology) If i want the BEST quality audio i have access to, i hook up my focusrite DAC to my samsung phone, and bring up apple music with Hi-Res lossless enabled, and play from my downloads (im in the boonies, 4g and landline internet are both pretty meh, also what the hell is 5g? Seriously, a 24bit 192khz audio stream, even with the ALAC codec, seems to use more bandwidth then a 1080p youtube video, which to me, is pretty crazy, it fills up a 256gb sd shockingly quickly as well lol, will prob move to 1tb once reliable fast enough ones are somewhat affordable). These days, it's best at least 75% of the time, and once this damn loudness war ends, if it ever does, it'll be 100% of the time, because that other 25% currently belongs to vinyl and counter-intuitively it's inability to hold a super hot, super dynamically compressed mix.
@@G3rain1I totally agree. I started with a Bluesound node, went to an Aurender A30, then to the N20. The N20 has a much better word clock and lower noise flor and there's a night and day difference in favor of the N20.
@@G3rain1 Not at all true. Streaming is horrible, and you have zero control over the material BEING streamed, though that's another issue. When the record label reissues your favorite album compressed to 10 dB of dynamic range, the beautiful full dynamic range version you've listened to for the past several years? Gone forever unless you can find physical media. It's why I don't stream, period. Tried it, hated it.
Every DAC needs a clock. Or are you somehow listening digitally? SPDIF has clock embedded in the signal, just as AES, and any other digital interconnect.
@@charlienyc1 usb audio doesn't use source clock to determine sample rate. modern dacs have their own high precision one, they don't rely on the pc or streamer clock. This is audio electronics 101. The fact that you don't know it is one thing. If he doesn't it is a huge professional flaw.
Bits are not bits. It‘s all analog technique. Read and write are analog electronic processes. Memory are digital from a high-level perspective but in micro-view it‘s analog storage technology. It is a fact that you can copy files from SSD to other SSD to MVRAM to whatever and suddenly, after just 3 copies and 1-2 years aging on a digital system of highest market quality you can‘t read that file anymore, just like that, even though it‘s presented on the list „is right there“. Read-error - done, lost. Adding Load-Balancers, Servers, networks, gateways, routers, switches and transport issues of the anyway further emptied file to a lossy compression with a still hi-res sold air-filled stream of remastered compressed and loudness hacked files will not improve this. And yes, your music can get lost on cassette, tape, vinyl, too and some of it‘s degradation can be experienced The throtteling for data management of the streaming networks, the Geo-fencing of licenses, the cheaper network procuring via cost-free tier-3 peering vs. Costly tier-1 internet transport, additional security systems throttling the service, all that helps not to improve sound on streaming. Thus a solid static original medium is preferable, SACD, CD, Vinyl, Tape. I do not listen to streaming aside from a quick song-check of a snippet of a song to understand what kind of music is presented or offered.
I did a trial of both Tidal and Qobuz and landed with Qobuz about 3 years ago. There was clearly a difference. I enjoy it but still my analogue blows it away
FLAC is a form of compression that all "CD quality" streaming services do. As for lossy vs lossless, that's a huge can of worms. You see, ultimately, everything is lossy, it's just how much and where it goes lossy that matters.
@@PartyMusic775 Yes, true, and what really matters is if you like what you hear. I used Tidal for a period and I was convinced that there is a problem with the room acoustics. … until I tried Qobuz. I prefer Qobuz. It just sounds better for me on my equipment.
First you need Audio fest system glass system to cut a bevel on the edge. Then ink this and all clear middle with black felt pen. Then use an anti static spray and polish off both sides of a disc. Then use a Marigo Audio Aida CD mat on CD. Then use a carbon fibre disk and central round area of dodo mar on CD puck. Then I use a later of rubber mat on CD puck. All these help extract the most from a CD. No matter how good your system, data lost here is unrecoverable. I have a Jays Audio cdt3 mk2 and an Audio Music DAC/1.
cd sounds better, and will always do, period! if you have a good transport - dac nothing can match it. digital services will always serve you compressed audio, no matter what they say... is that difference big? depends... in real life hifi systems yes it is. A cheap streamer will always sound worse than the same category cd player. at hiend audio the gap is narrower but in my experience it never betters the transport - dac combination.
Bits are bits so no. As soon as streaming achieves the point of getting those same bits equalized in timing and noise floor, it will be equal. That's 3 goals to achieve: "those same bits", timing, and same noise performance.
@@PartyMusic775 yes i agree 👍. but in this scenario bits served to us, as compressed audio, so no, it's not the same! If they manage to serve the same (cd) quality,then yes it's the same... but unfortunately the don't, no matter what they say. it's just compressed audio...
For some of yall, you dont know how to activate 'exclusive mode' and increase the bit-rate on your streaming app. Hit that switch...thats where the real money is when you stream. Night and day difference in quality of listening
yeah, usually this is the problem, people do not activate "Exclusive Mode" in their audio streaming client app, which, in exclusive mode, presents a bit perfect audio stream to the DAC. it is as simple as that and the difference is night and day.
Absolutely ... in Windows, at least, the difference is night and day. If not in Exclusive (WASAPI) mode windows will re-sample all of your audio to whatever is set in control panel's sound api.
Ripping a CD on my PC in wav format then burning that ripped album back onto a decent quality blank CD,there IS a difference. The copy lacks impact and if anything sounds just different?????
My youtube music app bluetoothed to my receiver even sounds better than a CD. Ya'll on crack with this CD shit. You're just justifying it because the truth is, lossless is better in every way other than not having anything physical. The science and sound backs this up. Buy the CD, and enjoy the liner notes when popping on the lossless album. Anything other than that is a lie with CD's. If you don't care about sound as much, and love physical, then CD's and records made after 1980 are for you. Any record made before 80 has that natural analog sound that CD's or most post 1980 records and streaming cannot provide.
Paul, . . i'm sorry but no bits are not just bits its much more complicated than that. for example take two or more decoding pieces of software even that process the same piece of music they will each sound different. and that's just the digital side not taking in count the analog processing side. same goes for the chip sets in DAC's. sorry Paul have to disagree with you here.
CD and Cassette are RIP. Nobody walks around with CD or cassette players and I'm sure new cards don't even have cd players. Everything now is digital. Digital is just keeps getting better. EX. with Netflix you get atmos video and audio in 4k just like you would watching a 4k blu ray disc. Everything is internet and digital these days and technology is keeping getting better. So at the end no CD won't give you a better quality of sound as Tidal or QUOBOZ.when you have a great Dad, preamp, and headphone amp.
Streaming services like Apple Music provide (objectively) better quality lossless files than CD. Not that I care about that much of a difference tho. LOL.
Apple Music receives the data losslessly to the device, but then doesn't send it lossless to the DAC. It goes through resampling, loudness normalization, and other DSP before arrival.
Yeah it's lossy in the extra information that a CD can't even encode. Such as the ultrasonic frequencies beyond 20kHz that a CD can't even capture at all. But if you look at it that way, CD is totally lossy there as it just cuts it out totally. Kind of a moot point since most tracks on Tidal are FLAC and not MQA.
I think sound is a lot like colour. I never know if we all are seeing and hearing exactly the same thing exactly the same way. What I do appreciate is your honest and sincere opinions and observations. Take them or leave them, away better for them. Tks
Great topic Paul. Streaming has my concerns in that the file you receive may have been altered. Equalized, sped up, volume changed etc. I have more confidence in a production CD because at least you know it came from a controlled pressing from a proper mastering.
Some CDs are digitized differently at different plants or in different releases.
Cds always sound way better to me than streaming. If I had a better streamer, I don't doubt that the gulf would decrease to more of a gap. With less and less brick and mortar stores these days, you often have to take into consideration what your favorite audio reviewers say about it, and all my favorites say direct playing of cds sounds best. Who should your favorite audio reviewers be? Those that describe the sound of said items that after auditioning it, you might have used the exact same words to describe it yourself. Sometimes you hear it first and their review echoes your exact thoughts.Your favorite reviewers should be ones whose hearing seems to jibe with your ears. Even if you feel they overrate how good something is occasionally, you want someone whose hearing is similar to yours. Who can communicate what it's basic character sounds like. The subtleties you can work out when you go and hear it in person. We can put numbers aside when there are other important factors involved.
Although I'm sure there are occasional bad apples or incompetents, I don't believe audio reviewers are telling you stuff that isn't so; for the sake of sales! For one thing I can't remember one magazine review of anything at all in Stereophile or The Absolute Sound.. EVER..where the reviewer didn't find multiple performance areas to criticize. If they were promoting it for sales; they WOULDN'T be putting it down in ANY way; that would hurt sales! It's weak performance areas that they point out, might be the deal breaker for a lot of potential buyers who value exceptional performance in those same performance areas. SORRY conspiracy theorists; it just wouldn't make sense. The old magazines like Stereo Review and Audio, where everything reviewed was "decent" probably were on the up and up too. I don't think their reviews went too wild over anything; even if the reviewed item was from a manufacturer whose ads frequented their back cover. These magazines were not out to lose their reader's trust either, which their circulation numbers depended on. And advertising rates are BASED ON CIRCULATION. I do think it's too bad though that in recent years, rarely is there something affordable, reviewed in many of these publications. They do want you to spend lots of money. But that they lie to you, is an inference that only wild inference people make without any real basis.
Cds on my highly modded equipment sounds like analog without the noise. It sounds perfect until you switch to real analog, which sounds like it was built on a foundation of natural soundingness. But it's close enough that it's not very important and convenience usually wins out.
I feel the same way. Analog is better. Cd 2nd and streaming 3rd but look at the convenience factors...I believe they are situated in the opposite order. Frankly at the end of the day my day my girl doesn't care....and therein lies the real problem
Cds played through a player & into a tube preamp can analog the sound out a bit. For those whose cd players still have a vestige of digital about them. There is just something about analog though. Cd playback can sound like it is built on a treble foundation, where analog sounds like it's built from the bass or warmth region up. Same with solid state versus tubes. I couldn't imagine not having both a tube system and a solid state one.
Here's the problem with your position ... You are relying upon the *emotional* reaction of a total stranger to judge product quality.
We already discussed the recent video from one reviewer who decided to trash low cost equipment in order to protect his revenue stream from higher priced gear that is, in fact, no better than the stuff he trashed.
It doesn't matter if your favourite reviewers are on the up and up or not... they are, by and large, incapable of making the kind of judgement you are trusting them for.
If a reviewer were to level match a pair of DACs and then compare them without knowing which one is playing at the moment, he might get closer to spotting audio anomalies or problems... but comparing today's DAC with one tested weeks or months ago is simply not possible. So many things affect both our current hearing and our memory of hearing that any non-objective or non-immediate evaluations are totally useless.
I don't know how many times or how many ways I have to explain this to you, but the only true comparison is through objective means such as Blind A-B testing and the use of electrometry.
I simply do not care how much you like your system, or what silly things you've done to it... if it makes you happy, then mission accomplished. But advocating subjective reviews as credible information is just a fools game from the get go.
Stop and think about the problem... how do you describe the sound of a Saxophone? If you can't do that with a degree of accuracy that lets someone who's never heard one identify it... you have failed your task.
@Douglas Blake. That's not really correct at all. I would say that BY FAR r the most important thing when comparing equipment is FAMILIARITY. The only way to really intimately know something is living with it. For days, for weeks, for months. If after living with say a piece of equipment for half a year, and all of a sudden a new piece of equipment was substituted. I would personally have no difficulty in decribing how the sound had changed.playing familiar recordings I have heard many times before. No difficulty at all; and neither would a good audio reviewer. What would be much harder and hence less dependable and accurate, is if two unfamiliar pieces of equipment sounded similar and you had to pick out which one was which with a blindfold on. It would just be all too quick, all too unfamiliar, all too pressured and tense etc. If someone has committed a crime and are asked to recognize someone in a lineup, their accuracy is wholly dependent on how long they seen the perpetrator. If they seen his face for only a second or two; they often can't probably. If they seen his face for a minute or two; they often can. What makes you think that audio (hearing) would be any different? Switching from one thing to another. Unless there is a huge difference in the sound; intimate familiarity is needed to do good in an A/B comparison. If a reviewer actually reviews a piece of equipment he has owned for a year; I will give what he says about it much stronger creedence than if he just heard it for a short period of time, like in an A/B comparison. A/B blind testing just doesn't work too well. Listener's evaluation simply needs way more familiarity than that. PERIOD!
Most people wouldn't even know what to listen for, or be able to discriminate well. That doesn't mean differences don't exist. It means said individual is not able to pick them out. The human ear/brain system at its best can discriminate between things better than measuring machines, for the most part. It's not just me; subjective evaluation is UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED to be the best thing to go by. Our ears. Remember, it is we that built the machines, not the other way around. AND your ridiculous statement implying lack of competence in describing how a sax sounds to someone who has never heard one. Words do have limitations.. don't they? Especially some people's words.
Douglas Blake finding fault where there isn't any, except with himself, is becoming a continual theme on here. He's trying to play genius or something. Finding fault over things that are not really possible, like describing what a saxophone sounds like so someone who's never heard one will know exactly how one sounds, would be like describing what the color red looks like to a blind man. No matter how hard you would try, the blind man is simply not going to be able to picture the color red; or any color. Another ridiculous argument put forth by him. Audio Reviewers do their best, with the best evaluative tools they have; and that is their ears and words describing their perception. How can someone be advocating subjective evaluation? Subjective evaluation is the only dependable evaluation we have. It's actually a coincidence when measured results match how something sounds. At the present point in time, the state of the art in audio equipment evaluation is: humans with human ears describing what they are hearing for other humans with human ears. What measuring machines hear are not that relevant; especially since they rarely jibe with what human ears hear. Subjective evaluation by humans, for humans, always has been given the highest priority and likely always will. Measurements are a secondary consideration and always have been.
Still buy CDs for my favorite albums, they sound much better than Tidal on my hifi-system. I also like the physical aspect; cover art, lyrics photos, liner notes.
The issue that I have is reliability. With me, 💿 CD playback is more reliable.
You mean internet connection? I sometimes experience Tidal crashing tho, more than spotify back when I used that.@@bikdav
Correct. I can't stand streaming
@@dieseldust27 I do a little bit of streaming via TH-cam. It’s audio quality isn’t “audiophile,” but it’s still quite listenable to me for the most part.
@@bikdav I just use it for discovering new music 😉
Most here haven't heard that Tidal is converting to FLAC. People doing comparisons say it is indistinguishable from Qobuz. There is still a lot of MQA (which I don't mind) but it's gradually being replaced. I have both and still prefer the interface on Tidal and the extra features. Plus they pay artists better.
With many albums, there are different masters on Qobuz than say an old CD.
I have several examples of this - take Toto IV -- new remastered version on Qobuz. Sounds a lot different compared to my CD which I bought in the early 2000s.
Some masters are the very same - for instance Extreme's second album. And indeed they sound extremely close (ripped CD streamed locally vs. Qobuz streaming). I am not sure I could tell them apart in a blind test. I recorded a bit of a Qobuz stream digitally and compared it to the ripped track from CD -- no difference, it is the very same master and in the end the very same data.
Usually, the streaming companies state that it’s the music distributor who sends them the digital master. They can’t control or decide if it’s the same as other published versions, like the CD version.
@@ValdemarDeMatos I have no doubt this is true.
Tidal/Qobuz/... don't rip CDs by themselves and stream them, but their data comes from huge back end distribution systems which in turn get their data from music companies.
So - even if they wanted, Tidal/Qobuz/... could not serve us the good old original masters.
Exactly, this is all it is. Variations in the mastering being sent out to the subscriber along with some ReplayGain type volume normalization causing the difference in sound. I have tested this myself.
Jitter, noise and other explanations audiophiles sometimes throw out there are simply not relevant to the discussion. Paul plays to the insecurities of these audiophiles. There's no mystery here - at. all.
@@Hi-EndAudioGuycould you please elaborate a little bit for my sake? I'd like to hear more.
🙋♂️THANKS AGAIN PAUL, FOR REMINDING US…THIS IS THE BEST TIME TO BE AN AUDIOPHILE 🤗👍💚💚💚
As always, very objective and guiding. Thank you Paul!
The sound quality difference is likely due to different source files being used at each company.
You can find the same songs, from the same recording sessions, on multiple albums (original release, greatest hits, anthology, one hit wonders, etc). Those should all sound the same, because they are the same songs from the same recording sessions. Alas, they usually have different sound quality.
If you have "some-song.flac", and you send a copy to someone else, then their "some-song.flac" will be 100% the same as yours.
Yet, when it comes to purchasing a digital song, it is a crap shoot.
Clearly there are people that are tinkering with the files, before they add them to this CD or some other CD, or before they add them to one album's digital download service vs some other album on that same digital download service.
And for Pat in Montreal's question, we are now talking about two different services. So who knows from where those services are sourcing their content?
There are seemingly endless incompetent people involved in the music distribution industry. Nothing else explains how the same song, from the same recording session, has such obvious sound quality differences from album to album (not always -- but frequently).
And we have not even touched on re-masters. All of the above is before anyone has done a re-master.
We have yutz's that have access to the raw files, and those yutz's are clearly processing those files with some software (or some crude analog gear) before posting the albums to download (streaming) sites (same tinkering for CDs, too).
Apparently, qobuz has competent people that has access to other competent people at the studios, and so they end up with better sounding copies of what was recorded in the studios.
I wish a reputable source would come up with a database (or listing) of every popular song, every album on which that song resides, and the names of every person that had a hand in the process. Then we could rate the sound quality of each song on each album, and look to see a pattern of who was involved for every song that sounds bad, as well as a pattern of who was involved for songs that sound great.
Pat in Montreal (and the rest of us) are not imagining the sound quality differences. They are real. And the people screwing things up remain anonymous. And the people getting it right get no recognition.
I would love to know to avoid songs that involved some person, and to seek out songs that involved some other person.
Ideally, the people screwing up the songs would get fired, or they would catch enough heat to wake up and learn from the people that do it right.
When we watch movies, we see who did what. Yet, for songs, it remains a mystery.
The rights of use and access to the master recordings or the remastered recordings are probably one of the reasons why certain not companies distribute different versions.
And some people do what they are told to do to earn their salaries at the end of the month…
And I think in the movie’s’ credits we don’t see also who converted that movie to digital. Currently most of the movies copies are great, but during the first DVD years there were also big issues with that and the name of the one involved in the digitalization process was also unknown. The main difference is that the movies industry, for now, doesn’t make so much business with the master recording of that movie.
It would be very interesting to upload a sample to these services, then play it back from the service in a Null Test ... that would show us how much actual difference there is.
I am happy with my PS audio digital link 3 DAC on Tidal.
One question:
Is there any info available on how different sound level normalization standards on Qobuz vs Tidal impact sound quality?
No i try to find.
It's easy enough to find out just by turning it off and AB testing.
Bits are bits but what you do with those bits makes more than a bit of difference 😅😂😂😂😂
💯
I rather stick with physical media such as cds and vinyl, nowadays a large majority of people are using air pods, almost everywhere i go, someone is wearing air pods. It's pointless with streaming when most people use airpods and are already sacrificing sound quality for convenience. Bluetooth headphones are like the equivalent of fast food places like mcdonalds and burger king, inferior quality for convenience. I listen to my sennheiser hd 600 when traveling by bus, when walking around in public and going to places. I use the fiio m11 android dap connected to my fiio k3 dac amp since I rip my cds with media monkey and store them locally on my micro sd cards since I don't stream my music. Whenever I'm not listening to music from my dap, I plug my sennheiser hd 600 into my sony xperia 1 iv android phone from it's headphone jack when I watch live tv or when watching youtube 4k videos from my sony phone 4k 120hz oled display.
How about being present in your environment while walking and listen to real life happening around you.
The OLED display 4K HDR 120 are great for movies on phones and tablets, even black & white movies look great. The OLED blacks are very good for that. Once you have OLED on a phone, you never want to go back. 👍
"almost everywhere i go, someone is wearing air pods"
People cant really take their home systems on the metro. What do you propose they do instead?
@@davidfromamerica1871They also save a lot of battery in dark mode compared to regular screens
@@Bob-Fields Use better quality wireless headphones for example like the focal bathys, they are better than air pods with usb c dac mode. I'm just going on based on my preference but everyone has there own preferences. I tried bluetooth for audio but it pales in comparison with wired headphones. I got tired of constantly charging bluetooth headphones when they died or when I forget to charge them, I ended up going back to use wired headphones since I missed using wired headphones plus the quality is superior and reliable just like using an ethernet cable when using the internet. My wired headphones even out lasted my bluetooth headphones plus bluetooth headphones are just another form of e-waste like laptops with soldered ssds when the ssds fail in them. I prefer using wired headphones with user removable cables since you can use the same pair of headphones long term since the removable cables are more affordable and more sustainable than constantly having to buy a new pair bluetooth headphones that you have to throw away when the batteries die and when the same pair of bluetooth headphones are already discontinued and no longer supported like laptops that fail with ssds and other components that fail so you end up throwing them away like bluetooth headphones. Nowadays more and more consumer products are being made to throw away instead of being long term. There are no wireless headphones that can you connect with the option to enable mobile data or switch to wifi like you can when you switch between mobile data in the settings on your smart phone instead of using bluetooth with bluetooth limited bandwidth even though wifi has limited range, there is more bandwidth for higher fidelity of audio with wifi compared to using bluetooth. I still have my google chrome cast audio device and it supports up to 24 bit 96khz lossless audio over a wifi connection.
Not bad for technology from the late 70's early 80's..The CD is an amazing Dutch invention from Philips completed in the end with Sony.
If you want CD quality, why not buy CDs and leave all this compressed music to the kids.
Dear Rodrik! Ihave tried all sorts of streaming, and think they cannot beat the cd-sacd! The dutch engineers did a fantastic job! Greetings from geir Røssaak, jessheim Norway!
Like Paul said (or as I interpret it) its all about TIME: WHEN is there a 1 or a zero? And at what moment your player is listening to it? The less steps / listeners / senders of one's and zero's the better. So i like vinyl for real careful listening and my Naim CD5 for careful listening.
No. As Paul said, this is a case where time does NOT matter. In both cases they're going to the same DAC via the same delivery pipeline with same timing characteristics.
I got rid of Tidal within a month after purchasing a subscription when I realized that MQA sounded strange to me. At that time I was also subscribed to Qobuz which sounded much more realistic.
I still believe that a quality recorded CD sounds more musical then its high quality Qobuz counterpart.
Yesterday, while streaming on my PS Audio DSD DAC Streamer Mk I, I heard the most incredible Jazz recording by drummer Antonio Sanchez, "Three Times Three" which was to my ears and 57 year jazz listening history a most incredible jazz extravaganza so I purchased the CD for comparison and I'm expecting it to arrive today. I'm predicting that the CD will sound a bit warmer (musical) and somewhat less articulate as it has been my one-on-one comparison experience in the past with many other recordings like this that I've made. In any case, I suggest you stream this recording because it's so damn good (if this is your musical taste) especially Antonio Sanchez's remarkable drumming abilities. To my ears it's the best reproduced drumming I've ever heard and I mean EVER. There is an incredible amount of symbol and percussive play on the entire recording. It's just beyond belief.
This post is being sent by the guy that introduced Paul to the album(s) Brian Bromberg, "Wood" and Alegri, "Miserere" and the TH-cam video of my favorite drummer Billy Kilson so Paul should have an understanding of my ability to pick quality music reproduction by incredible musicians.
Any update?
Thanks for jazz album recommendation. Listening to it right now and it's a great record with fabulous musicians. Sounds great, even through free TH-cam streaming and TV-speakers! 😄
Many ways to enjoy the music depending on the circumstances and person. I live alone, rarely travel, and enjoy my records and cds and audio equipment. No streaming for me except for youtube. Maybe I'm the one who's crazy.
I enjoy Tidal and Spotify both because of the exploring of new artists it facilitates and the discovery of old titles that slipped through the cracks of my listening experience.
You state, or at least imply, that noise is not an issue until a clock is introduced. I've set up many systems and the noise can come from the network itself and can also be generated by data switches, etc. I've had issues over time with several very expensive automation systems as well. A little bit of noise doesn't affect a Word document, nor does jitter. Both affect digital sound quality.
Great video ( As always )... Is there a difference between streamers ( Only Streamers ) when using an external DAC ? Meaning : On a High End system , Is it wise to invest in a High end streamer with an external DAC or a basic streamer ? as it is only a streamer ... Thanks
People say so but I haven't tested it myself.
Speaking of the AirLens when will it be available. I thought it was going to be in May.
Waiting anxiously😄
It’s released already…
Well, I'm just a pedestrian with relatively low end equipment. I can't hear the difference between Qobuz and Tidal (at 16/24 bit 44kHz) on my Klipsch RP400s connected to the PC. Neither can I detect the difference on my Snell speakers played through a Yamaha A8A AVR. And, I can't tell the difference, at those resolutions using a Denon Class A amp through a Cambridge Audio 851N player to Infinity Column II speakers. I can barely tell a difference at 24 bit 192 kHz on the Klipsch desk top speakers. I can definitely tell the difference at 24 bit/192kHz with the 851N connected to the Denon amp sent to the Infinitys.
I wonder if there may be a misunderstanding between the two services. Tidal used to list the music only as high resolution, but 24 bit was the only constant; they didn't distinguish between 44 kHz, 88 kHz, 96 kHz, 176 kHz, and 192 kHz. Could this account for some of the difference?
The standards for mastering for streaming services is different than those for mastering for compact disc pressings which is different than those for mastering for vinyl. This is surely the reason for the difference.
Thanks Paul fir this information
IMHO, the quality difference is the bit rate the stream is coming at. Higher bandwidth, better sound. this is most obvious when comparing 15MBP (max) from netflix vs 30 MBP from AppleTv. the ladder is significantly better video quality but they are both marketed as 4K video.
So in the end which one sounds better: the cd or the streaming service?
They will be identical if the clock in the CD transport and streaming device are of the same quality, or if you go through a DDC, or your DAC can compensate for jitter.
Cd sound better even with excellent streaming devices
It sounds like you just need a good fully automatic set up? I think the LP20 you mentioned or similar can be bought for a couple of hundred bucks, sound great and don't need all 5hat tweaking? You just put your record on and press go? Plus they have a built in preamp so active speakers are all you need? Cheers Ed
If your system doesn't sound good when streaming, I would suggest getting different equipment or a different streaming service.
A similar mystery applies to Spotify which, according to some, sounds worse than it should just based on the lossy format they use.
Interested in your comments about 2 things: 1. Just because a service says they "stream" hi-res, they are not saying what they are doing with the music before the stream, right? 2. All this talk about DACs in the streamer...don't most streamers just send the data straight through to the AVR (if that's what you are using) and it's the AVR that uses the DAC? Like with the WiiM streamer connected via Toslink?
By "streamer master clock", do you mean the cpu in like an iPhone or the "clock" in the DAC?
The streamer have a clock and a power supply. This combination of things can offer a better clock for dac or a weak one.
Clock from stremer is the master or the first in the chain
I was waiting for the word Airlens through the video... received an email today (same time as this video) that PS Audio has the product in their lineup today 😉
Can the stream be higher quality vs CD? I mean ripping and format vs stream...?? What is the highest format for either?
Is a quality streamer important if I'm using an external dac?
It will affect sound quality. The two key areas are timing and noise isolation.
2023
When it comes to Qobuz vs Tidal sound quality, both platforms will give you the FLAC lossless audio format, but only Tidal offers the Hi-Res FLAC format and MQA streaming option. Both of these music streaming services will deliver the sound quality that all you audiophiles seek.
MQA is not lossless, and contains too much modification from the original to be audiophile.
love from pak !
my is why horn loud spaekers so expensive what makes them so costly
and if those can only handle high frequency then whats hi fi about it and where are the lows!>?
You could almost hear Paul's disgust in his voice as he had to read "sonus faber"
Nice video and explanation.
I did use to work for one of the bigger streaming services, so I might be biased, but:
Even if you do hear a difference.. is it for the better or the worse?
I've tried it and they don't compare. If you have a 1500 dollar cd player it will blow any streaming service away. Start buying up cds before they become expensive.
Streamer clock, got it. Great video!
Favourite client quote from a couple of years ago... "I don't use none of that digital streaming crap. I listen to CDs instead"
Ummmm......
Did the person do a real, blind, ABX test or did they do the switching themselves?
Too much opportunity for selection bias in all this.
There are differences in encoders for things like MP3/AAC but if it's done to FLAC, should not be a difference between the lossless services at least. In theory and assuming they are truly lossless.
A/B blind testing requires people to distinguish between music tracks they have no familiarity with, played on equip. they have no familiarity with in a pressured non relaxing situation. Having no long term familiarity with the equipment or the music, they usually fail. Which is what you would expect. Without sufficient familiarity; not. NOT SCIENTIFIC.
Are you forgetting: (1) Different master released to them, (2) Loudness normalization algorithm doing DSP in the software, (3) Other little DSP tricks going on in the player and OS (such as Window's CAudioLimiter APO?)
Did that he tested hq streaming vs CD on the $100k system? I go for physical media for critical listening. I stream while on the move or work
Could be a thousand variables. One of the players was in exclusive mode while the other was getting DSP and resampling from the OS. One of them had a different master. One of them was 24/192 and the other was a 16/44 or an MQA. One of them was using the balanced outs and the other was using single-ended RCA. Etc.
When saying Tidal and Qobuz sound different. Am I understanding it correctly that Qobuz is the better-sounding one?
Correct.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio I chose right then 😄 I don't really have gear that would let me hear the difference, or trained ears (I think, a USB multi track mixer, Creek headphone amp from the end of the 90s and V-Moda Crossfade M-100 Master), but I preferred using Qobus more than Tidal, and wanted to avoid the lossy quality from Spotify.
I do plan on a DAC and an amp from Schiit, so it will get better.
When you hear a track on a streaming service that you happen to own that CD it’s from, you don’t know that it’s the same master that you have, regardless of anything else.
So I guess using my iPhone is probably the less desirable streamer to use for Tidal/QOBUZ to my Chord dac to my main system...🤔
It's not good but hey, if you're on the go it's better than nothing, right?
I remember my streaming really improved when I put something as simple as EVA anti-vibration pads under my dac and other equipment, It was surprising how much. I have a little PS Audio Duet that I've had for years and after putting one underneath it things then really improved, I don't know if it was a cumulative effect combined with all the other things or what but it was very noticeable.
I've done the super cheap man versions of this using craft foam pads, sometimes a paperweight on top to keep it all down 😂😂
It does make a difference especially on speakers. Raising your subwoofer off the floor a little bit makes a huge difference too
Kibbles and Bits not Quibbles and Bits. Streaming music is a mystery for me but I enjoy it for convenience. Big Time! Technology is a good thing 💯👍🎶
There's a clear difference between Tidal and MQA, and it isn't a secret. Tidal uses MQA processing for all files that they call "Master". They do not stream straight uncompressed audio for anything above 44.1 KHz. Qobuz streams lossless PCM files up to 192 KHz 24 bit. As a guy who's company makes a high performance streaming device, surely Paul is aware of this?
The other problem that can happen when comparing files, is that it's often difficult if not impossible to differentiate between various masterings of the same album.
I wonder if your song plays at 48k and your d/a is set to 44, it will downsample and It's the worst thing you can do to your audio, so maybe you also need to take that into account when comparing
Tidal uses now lossless Flac
The Tidal lossless that are not marked as MQA have been converted from a lossy format. All tidal files have been messed with.
@@peterlarkin762 As i know this are now untouched 44.1 16 Bit Files.Non MQA
@@ronnyreiss7743 Yes, but they are using FLAC to send you a MQA processed file.
I remember using a phone on the Orange network some years ago, and they were doing horrible nasty things to the internet traffic going through their network. They it to graphics, they did it to video and I’m sure they did it to music too. They did it because they had a bandwidth problem, and they didn’t tell the customers the truth.
It doesn’t even have to be the streaming service that’s doing it to you!
I prefer locally stored media any day.
What you are suggesting is actually impossible. Internet traffic is encrypted these days, the ISP physically can't change it. They only power they have is to throttle the data which would make it arrive slower but it will still be the exact same data.
@@G3rain1 most internet traffic is encrypted, however, back in the day, more than half _wasn’t_ and I still wouldn’t trust an ISP not to do something bad.
@@Jenny_Digital You don't have to trust them. That's the point of encryption.
Is Pandora a very good source for clean quality playback?
It’s AAC at 64kpbs, it’s not CD quality.
It never ceases to amaze me just how anoraky some audiophiles are.
Heavy coat-y? 😂
"anoracky" .... good word! Added to my vocabulary.
Could also depend on how much the streaming service is paying the ISP’s to prioritize their data. For example Netflix is paying to have their streaming service prioritized.
Very good point! 👍🏻
No. There's no clock involved yet. If the data isn't there, playback will cut out. It's also a minimal amount of data compared with video.
For example when I upgraded my friends network to 2.5GB with a better router he instantly noticed the improvement of audio quality from his roon.
@@RogierYou That's 150% BS. Audio, even 24-192 lossless, takes so little data it doesn't matter, and every single streamer or computer will buffer the data anyway. It's literally impossible for network quality or speed to effect the sound quality directly. The only possibility is if the streaming services decided to serve you a compressed copy.
@@G3rain1 Are you sure about trusting the streaming services that much? I’ve heard that most of them goes down in bit-rates if they have problems with capacity.
Tidals proprietary shenanigans with MQA has been fairly well documented at this point... They use lossy compresson, which in itself I don't think is that much of an issue, but they do tweaks to the audio to add in a little "EQ" as it were. The problem I have with Tidal is their outright lying about their lossless compression (which has been proven false), and their pushing of proprietary tech into the audio space with the MQA format. I will never support them because of this.
They're FLAC now, calm down.
Wonder if we’ll ever see atomic clocks used in HIFI, or if we ever did? Would the help with streaming / processing?
Would love to see it!
Master clocks have been in use in high-end audio for years. Google 'master clock' and you'll find a mix of 10M clocks intended for recording and playback. I just did this a few days ago.
Maybe not atomic clocks, but I've used alot of daps over the years and the way fiio uses their femtosecond crystal oscillators has always been mind-blowing, the extra accuracy makes a huge difference, and I love the fact that I'm using crystals to listen to music, its like alchemy :)
Pink Crystals from the Himalayas give a tube-like sound while maintaining most of the clarity,@@POPDELUSION
How does room temperature affect the sound. That PV/T thing
Temperature is literally thermal noise. It increases impedance in cables and so on. However, equipment can be 'tuned' for working best when its components are warm. So the answer is going to vary in every system. Generally the 'tuning' of the components in the system is going to be more important and stuff will sound better warmed up.
I’ve heard that some people think there is some kind of «watermark» in different streaming services. It is supposed to be one of the conditions for record companies who have contracts with competing streaming services, I’ve heard from people within the record companies. Anyone who knows what this kind of «watermark» actually is, or if it really excists at all? I can’t but notice that there is some kind of samenes to different albums streamed on the same service. Then playing those albums on my PS Audio dac and transport or my AMR CD-777, or the Electrocompaniet UP-1 mk.4, the «sameness» is gone, and there are huge differences between those albums, often resulting in the CDs sounding way better, even at that same bitrate as the streamer I’ve used.
i noticed these kinda same sound signatures too, for example 2 years ago tidal was more bright sounding and qobuz more emphasis on the low end, and low end wise deezer seems to take the cake
@@dornauge1995 That sounds very much like the same impressions I’ve got. - How are the differences with you comparing streaming with CDs?
There's a little DSP goin' on in the kitchen !
You can upload music to apple as a 24bit 192khz wav, and so long as the end listener pays for apple music, has the internet bandwidth, plays from their phone (if a windows/android user) and uses a sufficient quality external usb DAC (i use my focusrite interface), and has enabled such quality streams in their settings, then they will hear the streamed track at a true 24bit 192khz
But if they only uploaded a wav in 44.1khz or 16 bit or something, then thats all youl hear it in. Most modern artists are uploading in 24 bit 44.1/48khz, and so long as youve enabled it in settings and met the mentioned conditions, you will hear the streamed audio in, IN-arguably, BETTER then CD quality, and my ears, to me, on my setup, confirm this.
The new tesseract CD, quite frankly, is straight up DEMOLISHED by the apple music stream, 1 second of listening to their reverb trails is all it takes to notice the resolution difference. Same goes for essentially every modern artist i listen to (Mostly prog). I buy CD's to support the artist but thats about it, and i buy vinyl to do the same, but also marvel at how good that primitive technology can actually sound (And thanks to the loudness war, this primitive tech can still sound better then either CD or stream, but our stupidity causes this, not the technology)
If i want the BEST quality audio i have access to, i hook up my focusrite DAC to my samsung phone, and bring up apple music with Hi-Res lossless enabled, and play from my downloads (im in the boonies, 4g and landline internet are both pretty meh, also what the hell is 5g? Seriously, a 24bit 192khz audio stream, even with the ALAC codec, seems to use more bandwidth then a 1080p youtube video, which to me, is pretty crazy, it fills up a 256gb sd shockingly quickly as well lol, will prob move to 1tb once reliable fast enough ones are somewhat affordable). These days, it's best at least 75% of the time, and once this damn loudness war ends, if it ever does, it'll be 100% of the time, because that other 25% currently belongs to vinyl and counter-intuitively it's inability to hold a super hot, super dynamically compressed mix.
Streaming has always sounded inferior to me, even high resolution streaming.
You likely have a streamer with poor quality clock. It's not the service, it's your equipment. (unless you have the service improperly configured)
@@G3rain1I totally agree. I started with a Bluesound node, went to an Aurender A30, then to the N20. The N20 has a much better word clock and lower noise flor and there's a night and day difference in favor of the N20.
@@G3rain1 Not at all true.
Streaming is horrible, and you have zero control over the material BEING streamed, though that's another issue.
When the record label reissues your favorite album compressed to 10 dB of dynamic range, the beautiful full dynamic range version you've listened to for the past several years? Gone forever unless you can find physical media.
It's why I don't stream, period. Tried it, hated it.
Streaming sounds like s*** compared to a CD.
3:51 Unless you are using S/PDIF, there's no master clock. The streamer contributes nothing in terms of jitter.
Every DAC needs a clock. Or are you somehow listening digitally? SPDIF has clock embedded in the signal, just as AES, and any other digital interconnect.
@@charlienyc1 usb audio doesn't use source clock to determine sample rate. modern dacs have their own high precision one, they don't rely on the pc or streamer clock. This is audio electronics 101. The fact that you don't know it is one thing. If he doesn't it is a huge professional flaw.
streaming without a proper buffer or local temporary saving will result in timing issues. any live streamed signal over the internet has a ping.
Bits are not bits. It‘s all analog technique. Read and write are analog electronic processes. Memory are digital from a high-level perspective but in micro-view it‘s analog storage technology. It is a fact that you can copy files from SSD to other SSD to MVRAM to whatever and suddenly, after just 3 copies and 1-2 years aging on a digital system of highest market quality you can‘t read that file anymore, just like that, even though it‘s presented on the list „is right there“. Read-error - done, lost.
Adding Load-Balancers, Servers, networks, gateways, routers, switches and transport issues of the anyway further emptied file to a lossy compression with a still hi-res sold air-filled stream of remastered compressed and loudness hacked files will not improve this.
And yes, your music can get lost on cassette, tape, vinyl, too and some of it‘s degradation can be experienced
The throtteling for data management of the streaming networks, the Geo-fencing of licenses, the cheaper network procuring via cost-free tier-3 peering vs. Costly tier-1 internet transport, additional security systems throttling the service, all that helps not to improve sound on streaming.
Thus a solid static original medium is preferable, SACD, CD, Vinyl, Tape. I do not listen to streaming aside from a quick song-check of a snippet of a song to understand what kind of music is presented or offered.
I did a trial of both Tidal and Qobuz and landed with Qobuz about 3 years ago. There was clearly a difference.
I enjoy it but still my analogue blows it away
Tidal is the one doing the funny stuff (compression).
Yes, but not just compression, but LOSSY compression. MQA is lossy.
FLAC is a form of compression that all "CD quality" streaming services do. As for lossy vs lossless, that's a huge can of worms. You see, ultimately, everything is lossy, it's just how much and where it goes lossy that matters.
@@PartyMusic775 Yes, true, and what really matters is if you like what you hear. I used Tidal for a period and I was convinced that there is a problem with the room acoustics. … until I tried Qobuz. I prefer Qobuz. It just sounds better for me on my equipment.
No CD player reads discs perfectly. I’ve made several improvements to my hi end Jays Audio CD transport, proving it is usually less than perfect.
Try Luxmans D-10X. It's phenomenal at CD play back.I think Steve Gutenberg compared it to the Jays Audio transport.
First you need Audio fest system glass system to cut a bevel on the edge. Then ink this and all clear middle with black felt pen. Then use an anti static spray and polish off both sides of a disc. Then use a Marigo Audio Aida CD mat on CD. Then use a carbon fibre disk and central round area of dodo mar on CD puck. Then I use a later of rubber mat on CD puck. All these help extract the most from a CD. No matter how good your system, data lost here is unrecoverable.
I have a Jays Audio cdt3 mk2 and an Audio Music DAC/1.
@@Coneman3
Ignoring, of course, that CD readers have re-try provisions for bad data.
But it’s imperfect and can’t help jitter (bad timing of data).
Your implication is all CD transports sound the same, when they don’t. So you are arguing against reality 😂
I find Tidal MQA sounds obviously cleaner and more spacious than Quobuz or ripped CD on a streamer optimized system.
I'm so confused.
We can tell that people who work at Tidal, Qobuz, and etc aren't audiophiles because when this topic comes up they never chime in.
More likely they're told not to get into the typical audiophile pissing contests.
@@Douglas_Blake_579 Good point. It's probably in their policy. Lol
@@LuxAudio389
Terms of employment, most likely.
Tidal sounds bad. Qobuz sound same whit cd
Did you turn off all DSP in your comparison and make sure you're getting bitperfect out of both before saying that?
it's strange that you are always more concerned with technique than enjoying music.
Or, it’s fun for him to do both.
cd sounds better, and will always do, period! if you have a good transport - dac nothing can match it. digital services will always serve you compressed audio, no matter what they say... is that difference big? depends... in real life hifi systems yes it is. A cheap streamer will always sound worse than the same category cd player. at hiend audio the gap is narrower but in my experience it never betters the transport - dac combination.
Bits are bits so no. As soon as streaming achieves the point of getting those same bits equalized in timing and noise floor, it will be equal. That's 3 goals to achieve: "those same bits", timing, and same noise performance.
@@PartyMusic775
yes i agree 👍. but in this scenario bits served to us, as compressed audio, so no, it's not the same! If they manage to serve the same (cd) quality,then yes it's the same... but unfortunately the don't, no matter what they say. it's just compressed audio...
You are so right! I have tried all sorts of streaming, also high resolution, but it never outperform the cd-sacd!
@@GeirRssaak exactly, that's my point...
There's something spiritually empty about streaming. But it has its place in a world of corporate nomads and oddly enough, perhaps, the 3rd world too.
I tried them both and I like tidal better on my system
For some of yall, you dont know how to activate 'exclusive mode' and increase the bit-rate on your streaming app. Hit that switch...thats where the real money is when you stream. Night and day difference in quality of listening
yeah, usually this is the problem, people do not activate "Exclusive Mode" in their audio streaming client app, which, in exclusive mode, presents a bit perfect audio stream to the DAC. it is as simple as that and the difference is night and day.
Absolutely ... in Windows, at least, the difference is night and day.
If not in Exclusive (WASAPI) mode windows will re-sample all of your audio to whatever is set in control panel's sound api.
@@Douglas_Blake_579 and not only that, you'll get "Microsoft Audiophiles" doing other DSP such as CAudioLimiter APO.
1
Ripping a CD on my PC in wav format then burning that ripped album back onto a decent quality blank CD,there IS a difference. The copy lacks impact and if anything sounds just different?????
jaa las altallantas de paul. jaa
Listen to both if you want to be an Audiophile Hero.
Don’t listen to CD and Streaming at the same time..😀😀 That would be dorky.
My thoughts it's psychological to be honest
Hard wired fiber optic is superior.
My youtube music app bluetoothed to my receiver even sounds better than a CD. Ya'll on crack with this CD shit. You're just justifying it because the truth is, lossless is better in every way other than not having anything physical. The science and sound backs this up. Buy the CD, and enjoy the liner notes when popping on the lossless album. Anything other than that is a lie with CD's. If you don't care about sound as much, and love physical, then CD's and records made after 1980 are for you. Any record made before 80 has that natural analog sound that CD's or most post 1980 records and streaming cannot provide.
Paul, . . i'm sorry but no bits are not just bits its much more complicated than that. for example take two or more decoding pieces of software even that process the same piece of music they will each sound different. and that's just the digital side not taking in count the analog processing side. same goes for the chip sets in DAC's. sorry Paul have to disagree with you here.
I find digital music is as good as CD if not better.
Lol ppl in the comment R hilarious! you buy A CD for every song u wanna hear? yah right La La Land
CD and Cassette are RIP. Nobody walks around with CD or cassette players and I'm sure new cards don't even have cd players. Everything now is digital. Digital is just keeps getting better. EX. with Netflix you get atmos video and audio in 4k just like you would watching a 4k blu ray disc. Everything is internet and digital these days and technology is keeping getting better. So at the end no CD won't give you a better quality of sound as Tidal or QUOBOZ.when you have a great Dad, preamp, and headphone amp.
Streaming services like Apple Music provide (objectively) better quality lossless files than CD. Not that I care about that much of a difference tho. LOL.
Apple Music receives the data losslessly to the device, but then doesn't send it lossless to the DAC. It goes through resampling, loudness normalization, and other DSP before arrival.
don't some (higher) levels of tidal use MQA? and MQA is lossy... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated
Yeah it's lossy in the extra information that a CD can't even encode. Such as the ultrasonic frequencies beyond 20kHz that a CD can't even capture at all. But if you look at it that way, CD is totally lossy there as it just cuts it out totally. Kind of a moot point since most tracks on Tidal are FLAC and not MQA.