Streaming Hi-Res?

With Qobuz, to stream (without purchasing) HD you need to take a Sublime + subscription which is around £350 per annum - many HD titles available but not all.

Sublime subscription lets you stream most titles in CD quality (some rights owners do not allow this unless purchased) and is around £219 per annum.

The iOS Qobuz app can use Chromecast to send HD audio to devices but gapless playback fails.  Works pretty well apart from gapless.

You don't necessarily need a subscription and could just buy ad hoc HD titles to download to USB or NAS (and also stream via iOS if purchased).

Sublime and Sublime+ offer a significant (30% or so) discount on many, not all, HD titles making them often cheaper than a CD (e.g. Tori Amos 'Native Invaders (Deluxe)' is £12.99 for CD on Amazon, but £11.46 in HD with a Sublime subscription).

HD downloads seem limited in UK to some Linn/Naim titles and some on 7 digital.  HD Tracks offer some content.  Constantly changing ecosystem.  I wonder if Apple might spring HD audio on the public with Airplay 2 but suspect not as hey could have done this years ago had they been interested in better quality.

There will be 3rd party apps and devices allowing Qobuz and other HD service streaming to our components which I have little experience of.

Thank you Alley cat for your reply!

Do you know if album art works with Qobuz?

Best regards 

Leon

Qobuz isn't directly integrated into the Naim app in iOS as such but Naim app launches it to play tracks.  The Qobuz app displays artwork but as far as I can tell Chromecast does not support artwork so you get a pair of quavers showing on the Atom indicating no artwork which I don't like and would prefer if you could set a custom image when no artwork present streaming via Chromecasr or from a NAS/USB device if no artwork available..

FWIW, Tidal master tracks play on an Atom (and should also on Star/Nova) with 48 kHz/24 bit (at least this is what the Now playing display says, for instance for Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly album). Only caveat is that there is a small delay before the Atom starts playing a master track. You might miss the first few seconds - bug reported to Naim support. Noticed that when the first track starts, don't remember if this is for each track on a master album though.

Thanks again Alley Cat for another comprehensive reply! Im on the fence at £350, if it gets integrated into the Naim app I might be swayed...

SCHUHMAB how are you streaming Tidal Masters? I only get it on the desktop app which cant be cast as there doesnt appear to be a way to do that!?

Leon

Leon Wadsworth posted:

how are you streaming Tidal Masters? I only get it on the desktop app which cant be cast as there doesnt appear to be a way to do that!?

Hi Leon,

I'm playing Tidal master tracks from within the Naim app (Naim's Tidal integration). And I'm using Tidal's iOS or macOS desktop app to identify master tracks (as the Naim app doesn't show which tracks are actually master). As mentioned above, the Now playing screen shows the higher resolution compared to 44.1/16 normal Tidal HIFI resolution. Note that the Now Playing screen only shows the resolution for the first track, or if the resolution changes.

Trick to get the Now playing screen to display the current resolution: pause the current track and then start playing again. Also note, in previous versions of the iOS app/firmware, the Atom actually stopped playing when it hit a master track. I had to pause and restart playing again to convince the Atom to play the master track. 

SCHUHMAB, thanks for the heads up. I can see it too!

Average choice on Tidal at the moment. I'm sure the library will expand in time.

schuhmab posted:

Leon Wadsworth posted:

how are you streaming Tidal Masters? I only get it on the desktop app which cant be cast as there doesnt appear to be a way to do that!?

Hi Leon,

I'm playing Tidal master tracks from within the Naim app (Naim's Tidal integration). And I'm using Tidal's iOS or macOS desktop app to identify master tracks (as the Naim app doesn't show which tracks are actually master). As mentioned above, the Now playing screen shows the higher resolution compared to 44.1/16 normal Tidal HIFI resolution. Note that the Now Playing screen only shows the resolution for the first track, or if the resolution changes.

Trick to get the Now playing screen to display the current resolution: pause the current track and then start playing again. Also note, in previous versions of the iOS app/firmware, the Atom actually stopped playing when it hit a master track. I had to pause and restart playing again to convince the Atom to play the master track. 

Ooooh...Gorgeous, thanks!

G

I wonder if this is only a recent possibility as I thought that you can only play a partial unfolding of MQA with the desktop app only and then would require an MQA enabled DAC for the full MQA.

So your saying that you can identify Masters /MQA on the desktop app, save it to your favorites then play the saved album through Tidal on the Naim app and it plays it back in 24 bit?

jsaudio posted:

So your saying that you can identify Masters /MQA on the desktop app, save it to your favorites then play the saved album through Tidal on the Naim app and it plays it back in 24 bit?

IIRC not even necessary to save as favourite. Once you have found a master track/album in Tidal's app, go to naim app and select the track/album then hit play. naim app plays the track/album in master resolution. As mentioned above, the Now playing screen displays the higher resolution. Assuming the Atom gets the resolution from the audio data received from Tidal server and displays that. Seems Tidal delivers master tracks not only in MQA.

schuhmab posted:

jsaudio posted:

So your saying that you can identify Masters /MQA on the desktop app, save it to your favorites then play the saved album through Tidal on the Naim app and it plays it back in 24 bit?

IIRC not even necessary to save as favourite. Once you have found a master track/album in Tidal's app, go to naim app and select the track/album then hit play. naim app plays the track/album in master resolution. As mentioned above, the Now playing screen displays the higher resolution. Assuming the Atom gets the resolution from the audio data received from Tidal server and displays that. Seems Tidal delivers master tracks not only in MQA.

If you don't save it as a favourite, you won't know if the version you are selecting in the Naim app is MQA or not.

Even if the stream is 24bit, are the data being decoded at MQA pseudo 24 bit, or using the non-MQA 14bit data?

Huge posted:

Even if the stream is 24bit, are the data being decoded at MQA pseudo 24 bit, or using the non-MQA 14bit data?

You mean 16 bit?

Assuming Atom doesn't support MQA the stream from Tidal must be in a different format. Wondering which input parameter Tidal uses to decide which content format to stream? Maybe Tidal's master content is in (uncompressed) 96/24 and they only use MQA to compress the data to require less bandwidth for a stream? And for streaming clients that don't support MQA they deliver the content in reduced resolution (48/24)? Would be great if someone from naim could clarify?

No I don't mean 16 bit.  From the research I have read, MQA played back on a non-MQA DAC is 14 bit + a number of bits of uncorrelated data (this behaves as a dither signal).

Huge posted:

No I don't mean 16 bit.  From the research I have read, MQA played back on a non-MQA DAC is 14 bit + a number of bits of uncorrelated data (this behaves as a dither signal).

Ah, thanks for the pointer. Wasn't aware that MQA can be decoded by devices like the Atom which don't support MQA. So it might be 14 bit then (BTW, Wikipedia says it's even only 13 bit, see [1]). And since the stream claims it's 48/24 (see [2]), this seems to be what the naim app reports. Bummer!

[1] Wikipedia
[2] parttimeaudiophile.com, "...because what it initially sees is a 24/48 stream..."