WSJ on Streaming. May 10. FYI

Posted by: Skip on 10 May 2018

Today WSJ rather matter of factly deals with streaming but I have never heard of these apps and have no opinion. Do you? Skip.

Streaming Music Sounds Terrible. These Apps Can Help

Convenient as it may be, streaming music can’t match the sound quality of CDs. But new apps are helping deliver audio that will truly wake up your ears

Jeff Slate

May 10, 2018 12:33 p.m. ET

13 COMMENTS

NO ONE DEBATES the impact of streaming music. Having virtually every song ever recorded just a few clicks or a shout to “Alexa” away has revolutionized the way we enjoy and interact with our favorite artists’ work.

Also beyond debate, sadly: how terrible most streaming music sounds, especially to generations weaned on the quality of CDs and the warm sound of vinyl. Worse, Spotify and Apple Music, the two streaming services that sport the greatest reach, lack intuitive interfaces and are by far the weakest.

It’s no surprise that brilliant, disappointed audiophiles have applied themselves to developing ways to manipulate music streams so they sound like original studio masters. The best platforms now available are Sonarworks’ True-Fi, the product of a Latvia-based company formed when “two music lovers met a scientist,” according to the brand ($79, sonarworks.com), and Dirac Live, a hi-fi package ingeniously developed by students at Uppsala University in Sweden ($450, dirac.com).

Both offer desktop apps that optimize the sounds pouring from your home stereo, computer’s or smartphone’s audio output, using algorithms to account for the quality of a stream’s transmission, the device you’re using to play the tunes and the specific headphones you’re listening on. These apps act as futuristic versions of the bass and treble knobs you fiddled with on your old stereo, precisely equalizing what’s missing to automatically make music warmer, more resonant and more immersive. Dirac also offers a mobile app, and Sonarworks will release its version in June.

The effect is sound that’s as close as possible to “what the artists heard in the recording studio,” said Janis Spogis, partner and VP of product at Sonarworks. “We want to make all speakers and headphones sound the same so that creators can create with confidence and so that listeners will hear the original beauty of the masterpiece.”

In our tests, whether we were listening to Sonny Rollins through Shure’s stylish SRH1840 hard-wired cans ($499, shure.com) or BlueTooth-enabled buds like Sennheiser’s HD1 Free wireless headphones ($200, sennheiser.com), the apps created rich mids, deep lows and highs that cut through without sounding shrill or tinny.

These apps are the best way to enjoy those indulgent listening sessions on long flights, or Sundays when you want to tune out the world and lose yourself in Pink Floyd.

Posted on: 10 May 2018 by Innocent Bystander

If you’re referring to Dirac Live as one of them, I tried getting on fot three years ago as a means of room correction - at that time it either didn’t have, or I wss unaware of, a streaming component: I used it as an extension to Audirvana.

To me, it killed the sound, even though I had followed the instructions to avoid over-compensating - but that was before I used REW to analyse my room and find that the optimum layout was completely different from the way I had planned the room, and it could have simply been that my room was so bad that Dirac was trying to do the impossible and working too hard, as a few others had reported positive results. (I think the key to rooms is fix with layout and room treatment first as far as possible, and only use tone controls - which after all is what digital room correction is, albeit very sophisticated - to correct minor issues that remain.)