NAS or Tidal or both?

Hi Dave,

For me, online-only services (streaming) are not ready to be my sole source of high quality music for my home hi fi.  "Both" is my simple answer.

This may change over time.  If it gets to the right point, I will not lament the doing away with my home "collection" which is really just a hard drive and its backups.  But I feel as if it's not even close, for me, yet.

But the ability to add-on access to such services is relatively inexpensive.  If you really want a streaming service, or to at least try one, "why not??"

At the moment I am firmly in the NAS ripped collection camp.

I find new music by reading and listening to recommendations and radio listening.

None of the streaming services are anything like mature enough yet. 

I have just tried to look at the Tidal website to check out their service, and got nowhere. Their site crashed consistently whenever I tried to use it. Possibly teething problems, or a simple temporary glitch, but this has not left me with a positive impression.

However, the thing that has really made up my mind about sticking to the NAS ripped collection camp, is that once again, the service appears to be ripping off UK based subscribers. Their charges for the service appear to be $20 a month in the States and £20 in the UK. This is simply not acceptable in the modern world where distribution costs are no longer a factor.

I will not use the service out of principle, in much the same way that I abandoned HD Tracks when they blocked external customers and set up a UK based site at rip off prices.

I could possibly get around the UK based restrictions by using a Proxy server, but I have no desire to do this. Qobus appear to me to offer a much more honest approach in this respect, and so I will continue to download music from them and will continue to monitor their streaming service, although at the moment I am happy to continue to listen to digital music via my NAS or Internet Radio.   

Thanks for the replies Guys.  I'll continue with the NAS archive and monitor the streaming services a bit longer I think.

While the streaming services have a lot, they have far from everything. The idea of paying £20 a month and never having to pay for another cd or download again is hugely appealing but whether it's ever going to be practical I doubt. I hope you are enjoying your SuperUniti; they are great things. Don't forget to switch off the digital output and any unused inputs.

Hi HH, yes I'm loving the SU......hugely entertaining.  Er.....switch off digital out and unused ins.......does this make a difference?

It does.