Tidal or rip Cds to NAS

Why not start with Tidal and see if it suits your needs? I ripped 1000 cds a few years back and find I mostly listen from my own library. That said, my use of Tidal is increasing. I find the sq differences between the same releases marginal at worst but some things (like the MCLD Dan classics) are not available...and there are the very occasional drop-outs/bugs to contend with.

G 

I was most of the way through ripping my CDs when I got into Tidal. I found that the difference in SQ between Tidal and rips in my system was imperceptible so I stopped ripping, apart from the few cases when the CD isn't available on Tidal. I use Roon which makes a seamless integration between Tidal and your ripped library, also MQA encoded albums from Tidal actually sound better than rips (again to my ears in my system). I have had no drop outs,ever, not even when my broadband was <6MBps.

My CDs are in the loft and under the spare bed in case Armageddon happens and every streaming service ceases to exist - a circumstance which seems to be a big worry for some people, who believe it to be much more likely than I do.

Probably a bit of an edge case, but Asset UPNP has an Album Jukebox container which allows a random album choice from a particular genre. Neither Tidal nor Spotify offer a native "album shuffle" feature so I continue to buy downloads / CDs to feed my library just for this feature. For me it is streaming services for discovery, local file-based ( or vinyl ) for my library.

Why not Qobuz?

The other thing to consider when making your choice is that not all of your albums may be available on Tidal & Qobuz.

I don't think I've got an overly eclectic music taste but I've found it quite frustrating when I find that albums I own on CD aren't available when I'm listening to Tidal on the move.

I am a big fan of the CD, no surprise there. I like the idea of permanent ownership and the data the booklets give. I also download at higher resolutions and listen to Tidal. Of these, no one method is prefered, more an option depending on mood and content. 

Personally I find that streaming my own rIpped CD collection makes it much more accessible than playing CDs. A Tidal subscription then makes it easier to discover more music. Personally, I wouldn’t want to rely on a streaming subscription alone, but many are happy to do that. I would suggest you ask your dealer for a home demo of a streamer, take out a free trial sub. of Tidal and Qobuz, and see what you think. 

I still mainly buy CDs and yet my NDX and streaming is my only source. The benefit being that my own collection becomes so much more accessible. On a darker note, with the world the way it is, if the poop hits the proverbial fan, you can be sure internet connections will be disrupted and if so, I'd like to be able to hole up in the back of beyond with my family and library of my own ripped music (and their physical CD backups) until the dust settles.

Well on your darker note.. just remember the internet was specifically originally invented to survive nuclear holocoast.. and has proved me to be immensely robust... even to government censoring.. so yes if there was Nuclear holocoast I suspect your music streaming services will stop and even your local service provider as well as electricity supply  .. but almost certainly the internet would survive .... 

So load up the diesel for your generators, shield your house or bunker for EMP, stock up your supplies ... and indeed then go off grid.. I am not sure in such circumstances your mind will be focussed on the subtke nuances of sound quality however...

I have all my cds ripped to an Innuos but they’re mostly oldish and I find the majority have disappointing quality when listened to on my system, nice to have them there though. Tidal on the other hand I find is pretty good, the same albums that sound poor when ripped still sound poor on Tidal but having so much choice is fantastic, what’s not to like about having the entire ECM catalogue at your fingertips!

I still buy many CDs, as well as lossless stream... I have found luckily CD quality or probably more accurately mastering has generally improved in recent years... I have posted elsewhere on the likely reasons why, thank goodness the primitive loudness wars of yesteryear are (mostly) gone... so if I buy used, I do sometimes need to be careful around masters made in the 90s and early 00s as some where shocking

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Well on your darker note.. just remember the internet was specifically originally invented to survive nuclear holocoast.. and has proved me to be immensely robust... even to government censoring.. so yes if there was Nuclear holocoast I suspect your music streaming services will stop and even your local service provider as well as electricity supply  .. but almost certainly the internet would survive .... 

Survive and be practically usable as we know it are different things. You have read articles in the paper I am sure about monitoring devices found dropped by foreign submarines around undersea cables? 

Certainly in my line of work, we've seen network provider outages due to trans pacific cable breaks. Now the current levels or redundancy are very high - but this is peace time. I would expect deliberately targeting undersea cables or a specific country's backbone connection to be high priorities in any conflict. It wouldn't necessarily need to be in your country for something like Tidal to vanish for a long period of time (weeks, months).

And as for censorship, China is now marketing its filtering know-how to other nations. At one time it seemed like anything that was done to successfully censor the internet resulted in two effective countermeasures. But these days, it seems more like the censors are winning in some countries.

I completely agree with what you are saying. I just have a different level of optimism. I'd hate to be holed up awaiting nuclear Armageddon to blow over with nothing to listen to, read, or watch for years on end (assuming my generator didn't give out first).

feeling_zen posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Well on your darker note.. just remember the internet was specifically originally invented to survive nuclear holocoast.. and has proved me to be immensely robust... even to government censoring.. so yes if there was Nuclear holocoast I suspect your music streaming services will stop and even your local service provider as well as electricity supply  .. but almost certainly the internet would survive .... 

Survive and be practically usable as we know it are different things. You have read articles in the paper I am sure about monitoring devices found dropped by foreign submarines around undersea cables? 

Certainly in my line of work, we've seen network provider outages due to trans pacific cable breaks. Now the current levels or redundancy are very high - but this is peace time. I would expect deliberately targeting undersea cables or a specific country's backbone connection to be high priorities in any conflict. It wouldn't necessarily need to be in your country for something like Tidal to vanish for a long period of time (weeks, months).

And as for censorship, China is now marketing its filtering know-how to other nations. At one time it seemed like anything that was done to successfully censor the internet resulted in two effective countermeasures. But these days, it seems more like the censors are winning in some countries.

I completely agree with what you are saying. I just have a different level of optimism. I'd hate to be holed up awaiting nuclear Armageddon to blow over with nothing to listen to, read, or watch for years on end (assuming my generator didn't give out first).

An economic correction may be enough to knock out Tidal and Qobuz. And Roon.

I still buy&rip mostly CD, but not so much because I expect armageddon. It’s just easier to find the recordings I look for.

I think the sustainability of Tidal and Qobuz is a major question here. If Apple or Amazon decide to get into streaming in a big way then they may crush the smaller players whose financial strength may not be up to that level of competition. We are then reliant on the big boys providing premium level streaming which they may not do - see Spotify.

As I have said elsewhere on the Forum the price of second hand CDs, particularly classical, constitute an absolute bargain at present and I continue to buy and rip regularly whilst still using Qobuz for high res streaming and Tidal for discovery purposes.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Well on your darker note.. just remember the internet was specifically originally invented to survive nuclear holocoast.. and has proved me to be immensely robust...

Are you a cockroach? 

Rip to UnitiServe and backup to NAS everytime! I use the free version of Spotify to occasionally check out new bands or recommendations I see in the Music threads on this forum. I’ve tried Tidal, and simply cannot connect with the way it’s curated. Don’t ask me why, I just don’t like it! For me choosing from my own, catalogued collection which is at my fingertips via iPad is just terrific. Like many others, my CDs are consigned to storage, never again (hopefully) to see the light of day after ripping. I very occasionally download an album, but even then I feel no sense of ‘ownership’, similar to playing an album from a streaming service. Millennial or Generation Z I am definitely not!

feeling_zen posted:

Certainly in my line of work, we've seen network provider outages due to trans pacific cable breaks. Now the current levels or redundancy are very high - but this is peace time. I would expect deliberately targeting undersea cables or a specific country's backbone connection to be high priorities in any conflict. It wouldn't necessarily need to be in your country for something like Tidal to vanish for a long period of time (weeks, months).

 

And absolutely my line of work as well

But much effort goes to successfully providing robustness through different peering routes. I have a map here that alas could not possibly post here that shows the global mesh of international and intercontinental fibre routes - and that is excluding radio/satellite. On the whole these days sabotage doesn't happen too frequently as far as I am aware  but regional wars/instability can take their tolls -  along with damage from undersea seismic activity - although careful routing is undertaken to minimise this - but in Asia Pacific it can be quite a challenge - not so much for the internet for the above stated reasons - but more so for private network providers.

I do find this area immensely interesting - and if you look back to the first intercontinental / international networks in the late 19th and early 20th century with the then very politically unstable and war ridden world these cable networks and their repeater stations became prime targets as you say. There then came an interesting market in 'neutrality' where certain states encouraged routing through them as it was more safe from sabotage. Additionally advances in radio technology meant less reliance on wired connected networks and a degree of resilience to sabotage

However the downside was anyone could eavesdrop, - specifically waring states - and so the development of telegraphic encryption - the precursor to modern day data encryption. And of course where message were encrypted the other guys need to decrypt the messages covertly - and so led the development of statistical cracking methods - which in time needed to be increasingly automated for speed and the volume of messages and so the development in the 1940s of the Robinson digital computer and then Colossus programmable digital computer - the latter was the first programmable digital computer series in the world, based on early prototype telephone exchange automatic switching technology thanks to Mr Flowers,  which paved the way for the programmable digital computers we have today... 

Anyway back to streaming and CDs...............

Another vote for the Tidal streaming experience. I don't have a CD player directly in the audio chain but do have all our CDs ripped to a Mac mini running as a UPnP server. However, I can't tell any/significant difference between Tidal and the Mac mini so it (Mac mini) is generally not powered up anymore. We have very few dropouts and they are outweighed by the convenience of Tidal.

I ripped my existing CD collection long before I subscribed to Tidal, but I find my self using Tidalmuch more now, probably 90% of the time these days. If i find something I like, I sometimes buy the CD, and very occasionally vinyl.

Thanks for all the comments.

I have been searching Tidal and not found one or two albums that I have on CD (nowhere near checked them all ).  So maybe its a case of ripping CDs  plus subscribing to Tidal or another service.

Not really what I wanted to do as it increases cost and complexity :-(

The Naim's Dave posted:

So maybe its a case of ripping CDs  plus subscribing to Tidal or another service.

Not really what I wanted to do as it increases cost and complexity :-(

 

 

Not if you have Roon! It seamlessly integrates Tidal and your rips into a single virtual library. You can just rip the few CDs not on Tidal (or Quobuz after it is ready for Roon early next year). Much less faff than obsessively ripping your whole collection. If you are anything like me you will spend much more time listening to new music than replaying your own stuff anyway.

The Naim's Dave posted:

Thanks for all the comments.

I have been searching Tidal and not found one or two albums that I have on CD (nowhere near checked them all ).  So maybe its a case of ripping CDs  plus subscribing to Tidal or another service.

Not really what I wanted to do as it increases cost and complexity :-(

 

 

If you want to keep it as simple as possible while using both a local library of CD rips and a web streaming subscription, an Innuos server might be worth a look. This will do both from a single small box if you go for their entry level Zen Mini. You will still need a DAC though.