A Revolution in Music Appreciation

Unfortunately my habits have not changed (nor are they likely to for a while). No streaming service offers anywhere near 50% of my current collection. My habits took a big leap forward a few years ago when embracing ripping / downloading and streaming locally. Adding to this 'choice' by removing revenue destined to building my collection is not attractive. My internet connection buffers on youtube so breaks are inevitable for me it seems (spotify was not a guaranteed listen on lossy streams). There is also the matter of which version the provider is offering of a particular recording, with such variability I am not inclined to badger vendors for information they should be aware of and passing on as a matter of course.

I'm always ready to have a listen or take a punt, but one of the things about my personality is knowing some fantastic music and artists have taken sometimes a year for me to 'really dig'. I doubt I would be into a number of artists without having made a first, personal investment, and revisiting that investment. Ok I admit to buying a few duff albums too, but that risk/reward thing is missing in 'service' streaming for me.

Nigel

I echo everything you have said so eloquently.  I have been having the same thoughts and experiences since Tidal integration.

I am relatively new to all this streaming stuff and hadn’t even heard of upnp a year ago – I got ensnared into NAIM via a Muso last Christmas and also now a SU (via a brief dalliance with a Untilite – only to discover that I didn’t actually play CDs anymore).

The whole technology has been a total revelation to me (steepish learning curve !) and addition of integrated Tidal on top has just expanded everything vastly. Like you I have listened to more music in past couple of months than for years.  I liken it to being a kid locked in a sweet shop !  Although I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed by the stack of albums I have added for listening – could be overdosing slightly. Being easily able to “try before you buy” in near CD quality is a huge step forward – my Christmas CD wish list is overflowing. I appreciate that the choice on Tidal is limited in some areas (no ECM is big bugbear for me), however for £20/month I think it’s a no-brainer,  at least for me.  Drop outs are obviously an issue and hopefully this can be resolved soon.

BTW can I just say this forum is fantastic for newbies like me getting to grips with the technology and also as you say for picking up music recommendations from members (thanks to all).

Long may it continue !

My music listening experience dramatically changed with the introduction of streaming for me. The other things are just additions which I used to explore music. I have come at the point where my music collection is too big to oversee, but I still enjoy it a lot to switch around quickly...

Nigel, I completely agree with everything you've said, and have had a similar experience myself over the last year or so.  My musical horizons have broadened a lot since CD quality streaming came along.  And the reason I own a Naim system is, indirectly, a result of such of such services being available.  

I have noted that people prepared to spend Naim-type-money on a stereo (or mono) system, are well educated in music, and the music room forum has lead me to discover some wonderful stuff.  Sometimes, when I am not sure what to listen to, I head to the 'What are you listening to....' thread, and just pick something at random.  And some damn good stuff I have found by doing that.

The fact that you can receive a recommendation, and instantly enjoy it without compromise (if using Qobuz ;-) ), is a real luxury.  CD quality streaming is not something to be taken for granted, the problems at Qobuz are highlighting that.

Yes, it was the 'What Are You Listening to Now?' thread I was referring to in The Music Room section of the forum as my preferred source for discovering new music in my opening post.

A real treasure trove! 

Nigel,

You are absolutely right, it is the same paradigm shift when Google Earth and Streetview was introduced: suddenly you can see (almost) every city & street in the world!!Same for music now.

For classical music lovers it is also brilliant: on Spotify there are sometimes dozens of versions of the same piece (say a Mahler symphony). So once I discover a beautiful piece, I make a random Spotify playlist of various versions, listen to them blindly (so not knowing who is playing), make notes, and then select the best! A wonderful experience, never possible before.

A word of caution: you can scan over loads of music too quickly, just for the sake of hearing something new. Like a kid in a candy store. It does take time to appreciate and get to know new music. Anyway, enjoy your new horizons!

well said Nigel, couldn't agree with you more. I'm a qobuz subscriber, because I love classical music, and am in a musical paradise, overwhelmed with choice and overjoyed with my discoveries. My hunch is that these streaming services sort out music lovers from Hifi fans. The Hifi guys still want to go on listening  to Dark Side of the Moon over and over and over. The music lovers are thrilled with the possibility of listening to something new every night.

Spot on, Nigel.

I previously used Rhapsody, then Spotify, on my laptop with headphones to check out potential new music purchases.

Now, with my weeks-old NDS, I can do it in (almost) CD quality with Tidal via an iPad in my main system with real speakers. It's changing everything about the way I discover music and is going to prevent a lot of bad CD purchases. And the streaming quality is only going to get better...

Nice thread Nigel.  I agree it is great to check out new artists with Tidal.  I never really listened much to Spotify - I guess I am an anti-mp3 snob.   But, for me, this started with Pandora (I know, same mp3-type lossy compression) which could find music "similar" to what I already like.

Funny, but I never could rely on "reviews" of music.  Take a review in Stereophile or HiFiCritic of an album, or a catchy album cover in the Music Room thread, and I am just as likely to enjoy the music as if I were to pick any arbitrary album at random.  I guess I am saying there is zero correlation between my personal music taste and that of anyone else.  So it is imperative that I be able to listen to music before buying the CD.  For the last many years, I have sampled tracks in the 30 second segments available in 32Kbps low-fi on Amazon.  It is way better to hear the entire album on Tidal in CD resolution (almost).  And they have a music discovery mechanism, but I think Pandora's is better.

Cheers,

Charlie

Very interesting and well articulated. Some echoes of a thread from earlier in the year on media ownership vs. subscriptions.

For me, technology has made discovering music and broadening my tastes far easier but not via streaming. I've mentioned a while back that despite being a gen X/Y er (last year of one, first of the other), I just cannot make myself care about subscription streaming. It is like I am hardwired to not like it for no rational reason. But that aside, now that my collection is streamed at home, the fact that I can, at whim, find album info in the Naim app based on whatever pops into my head (checking if a keyboardist from group A ever went solo and what albums are available) means I can expand my collection by a series of, shall we say, well calculated punts.

It has always been possible to research and get this info but until the last couple decades, it was just so much darn effort. For that reason, my hat goes off to how music info has been integrated into what we play. I have albums that I treasure that got discovered from a long chain of tenuous connections maybe 10 album purchases back up the chain. For me, more than subscription streaming, that has blown the music world wide open for me and was nothing less of a revolution in music appreciation to me either.

Nick, I consider web service streaming not as a paradigm shift, but more as a new source. If I were to choose a replacement source I would say it has replaced my local library for music. In the past I could pay a small loan fee and borrow a CD for a couple of weeks and then return. If I liked the CD I bought it.

I use Tidal (and Qobuz) as that function now. It's immediate and OnDemand and a very much more satisfying experience. I can also listen to music as it should be, a bit like the library, and not some sort of fuzzy lossless rendition (such as with Spotify) which often limits much of the musicality for me.

So web streaming has become a great OnDemand source to explore and casually listen.. and if I discover something I like or want music that tis not on the web, I purchase the CD.. roughly 4 to 10 a month... 

in all it's great to have a new source.. and is great for the music appreciators... The only loser I can think of is my local library.. and I am sure they would prefer to focus on books anyway......

Simon

Spot on post Nigel.

I've only had my Tidal trial subscription running for a couple of weeks now, and over the last few days have been doing exactly the same as yourself, i.e. using the music room recommendations to investigate music which otherwise might have passed me by.

Previously, I was buying a handful of CD's each month, which would be ripped to my NAS, and then disappear to that great cardboard box in the loft, where they would forever remain, "just in case".

The Tidal thing seems much more satisfactory, in that the amount of music available out to me has vastly increased, and the monthly subscription will be more than covered by the figure I had been spending on CD's.

The Music Room has now become for me almost a group of friends sharing their music with each other, much as I remember so many years ago, when one would rush round after school to a mate's house, to hear his latest purchase.

I've not been having the problems with drop outs reported by others, and the gaps in the available library will disappear over time, I'm sure.

So, yes, your post echoes my own thoughts exactly.

Regards,

Dave.

Tidal files, files , if you select FLAC in 'settings' are exactly the same as Cd, same data, if ripped CDs and Tidal  sound different, there is a problem with your playback equipment.

H

I'd like to thank Nigel for a thoughtful reasoned posting which is close to my own thinking. To DHT, I'd say that quite a few posters have found some sound difference between Tidal, Qobuz and their own files. I think this is a case where bits ain't quite bits. I'll leave it to someone better qualified than me - Simon? - to explain why this is, but I think Nigel's 'Nearly CD quality' is about right.

I agree that bits are bits...

However, I and many others (including the engineers at Naim) believe that the way you process them can have an effect on sound quality.  Specifically, if you increase the load on the internal digital processing circuitry, then you'll increase the level of RFI in the box (particularly on power supplies) and that this can never be fully isolated from the other circuitry.  Hence a reduction in sound quality (even if it's a fairly small one).

DHT, my understanding is that FLAC is still compressed, albeit losslessly, so therefore it's uncompressed in real time based on some algorithm, which introduces the potential for introducing real time "interpretation" of the data upon playback. My rips are WAV, which is both lossless and uncompressed. This seems to explain my perceived SQ difference between FLAC, whether streamed rips or streamed from TIDAL, and WAV rips.

I can't comment on FLAC rips vs. FLAC-based TIDAL streams as I haven't tried the comparison. Huge's comments notwithstanding, theoretically it would seem that they should be the same? 

FLAC is a lossless compression, there is no 'interpretation' when the data are unpacked, the mathematical algorithm ensures that you get back exactly the same numbers that you had before the compression - i.e. no information is changed in the compression / decompression cycle.

The slight reduction in sound quality that can (sometimes, depending on the system) occur when comparing FLAC to WAVE is not related to the data; rather it's due to other factors, such as RFI produced by the greater processing load.

Hi - I agree with Huge - the bits are bits - and the FLAC file from Tidal is almost certainly the same, assuming the same master, as locally streamed copy.

However that good old variable, the Ethernet connection, when in operation produces noise. This noise can be audible in the same ways as FLAC creates more or at least different noise to WAV when it is being processes.

Now as I have looked at the network traces the network behaviour and pattern with Tidal can vary a lot - where as with home wired streaming it has always been consistent with me.

Therefore this network behaviour coupled with the FLAC decoding can produce noise that detracts from the overall SQ - hence the feeling that it is not quite CD quality - even though, assuming same master, it is the same data as CD.

Naim are working with Tidal to provide a more consistent network behaviour, possibly by increasing TCP window/buffer sizes and other changes further up the stack.

Therefore we me be able to hear a new firmware before too long that is hugely closer to local streaming - and if you stream FLAC locally possibly, depending on your web access environment, identical.

Simon

There are strong arguments that, in fact, the bits from Tidal are not the same as on the cd. It seems quite likely that many tracks on streaming services have been subject to digital watermarking, and this digital watermarking is audible. If you google "universals audible watermark matt montag" you should get some fairly persuasive evidence, and a test that you can take yourselves. Does anyone here have the technical competence to capture a Tidal bitstream and compare it to the cd?

I get the bits are bits argument until i listen to different digital transports and different cables and find that they all sound different.  Otherwise surely no one would bother buying high end streamers and running them into dacs when a ten pound streamer would do the same thing?  

Isn't that the same argument that a ten pound turntable is as good as a high-end turntable? The squiggle on the record remains immutable, only the 'conversion' to electricity is at variance. Streamers convert one specification of data (which itself could be one of many digital formats 'in disguise') into a format the d to a can use. It's digital manipulation. Now cables are another matter entirely!

Dayjay.. Bits are indeed bits.. But of course as so many forget just as crucial as the bits in the sample word is the timing of the sample word.. The analogue signal can only be reconstructed by a intricate combination of timing between the discrete samples.

Now timing is derived from digital clocks, as as many know who work with such things the precision of these clocks is critical, and to keep the clocks stable great effort is required for powersupply stability and protection from EM noise. (Amongst other things) However in the real world these clocks are slightly modulated through environmental perturbations, this adjusts the timing to a small degree, which has the effect of changing the effective values of the sample words... thereby causing noise in the analogue domain.  To create highly stable and precise clocks is not cheap... so to some extent that is what you are paying your money for in streamers and DACs.

In addition EM noise can couple into analogue circuitry as well. 

So bits are indeed bits, but it is hardly telling all the story....

Simon

PS Sometimes clock modulation is required, and in effect this is how FM radio works.. The Audio modulates a precision clock which is the RF carrier.. and then reconstructed by the radio receiver.. I mention this as an example of how clock modulation affects a carrier in this case a set of sample words all of the same value to produce a different reconstructed sound.

Ah, but everyone accepts that different decks and arms etc sound different but as soon as you talk digital you get people saying bits are bits etc.  I know Simon can explain why that both is and isn't the case but I just know when I listen with the same cables different transports are very different and, with the same transport cables can sound different.  Its all the same bits but they are delivered in a different way it woudl seem

Chaps,

Far be it from me to stifle debate on this forum. I did however spend quite a bit of time exploring the role that streaming services and The Music Room (on this forum) have played in my exploration of new music and how these have revolutionised both what I listen to now (and in the future) and how these have modified my listening habits. This is a big deal for me and I wanted to share this with the forum but more importantly hear others' experiences on this topic. It now seem to have morphed into another debate about 'bit are bits' albeit relating to streaming.

I really don't mind discussion around the topic in question but this recent discussion is far removed from it and it seems to have stopped discussion about the original subject of the thread.

If the discussion about the subject of this thread had come to a natural conclusion then fine. If not, I would really appreciate sticking to (or near to) the subject.

Please feel free to open another thread if you would like to explore if one bit is the same as another bit or how one bit might vary from another bit or how the inter-arrival times of bits vary from one stream to another. All very interesting but not here please.

Apologies nigelb, did not mean to hijack your thread.  I will consider myself properly chastised and will no doubt be driven to alcohol to deal with the shame.   Best wishes