rain22

winstoner71 said:

rain22 said:

I've blind-tested AM vs Spotify with many people over the years on my desktop HiFi system. About 3/4 instantly said Spotify was better. The others said they were close - but would prefer listening to the Spotify stream. That's 100% for the higher bitrate stream. (Dragonfly Red / Arcam DAC's).
On my big Hi-Fi rig - it's not even a comparison... the 320 mp3 outshines the 256 AAC in detail and depth. (more information for the Chord DAC to upsample). 
Tidal lossless blows them both away on most things - Tidal MQA blows everything away. Anyone with decent gear will acknowledge this. 

If you are listening with Beats, AirPods or other lo-fi consumer products... sure, it doesn't matter - Lossless means nothing to you. 
If you are listing on prosumer gear like Marantz, Denon, Yamaha, Pioneer - with sub $2k speakers and Monster Cables... you will notice a small/moderate difference. More if you have a dedicated DAC.
If you are listening on HiFi gear... it's night and day. 

This move by Spotify will be huge - and threatens Tidal more than Apple. Spotify isn't even thinking about Apple with this move. 
If Spotify licenses MQA... look out! Spotify has far better curation and larger library than Tidal. 

Interesting. Have you tested TIDAL vs Qobuz? Just curious. I’m a huge fan of Qbz and you can definitely hear the difference compared to Spotify/Apple Music, but I haven’t done a deep dive comparison between Qbz/TIDAL even though I have both. Qbz begins at 320kbs (if you want to stream that quality), and gets up to 24-bit HiRes/192 kHz. Most of the content streams at least CD quality. The different from 320 to 196 is life-changing. 

Qbz is one of the few I haven't tested - as I'm in Canada. My audiophile buddy in Seattle had it and said it was similar to Tidal - the compression was slightly different and some things maybe sounded a bit better, some not so much. He stuck with Tidal as the catalogue was a bit better and it integrated with his Bluesound Node better.

I've blind-tested AM vs Spotify with many people over the years on my desktop HiFi system. About 3/4 instantly said Spotify was better. The others said they were close - but would prefer listening to the Spotify stream. That's 100% for the higher bitrate stream. (Dragonfly Red / Arcam DAC's).
On my big Hi-Fi rig - it's not even a comparison... the 320 mp3 outshines the 256 AAC in detail and depth. (more information for the Chord DAC to upsample). 
Tidal lossless blows them both away on most things - Tidal MQA blows everything away. Anyone with decent gear will acknowledge this. 

If you are listening with Beats, AirPods or other lo-fi consumer products... sure, it doesn't matter - Lossless means nothing to you. 
If you are listing on prosumer gear like Marantz, Denon, Yamaha, Pioneer - with sub $2k speakers and Monster Cables... you will notice a small/moderate difference. More if you have a dedicated DAC.
If you are listening on HiFi gear... it's night and day. 

This move by Spotify will be huge - and threatens Tidal more than Apple. Spotify isn't even thinking about Apple with this move. 
If Spotify licenses MQA... look out! Spotify has far better curation and larger library than Tidal. 

spheric said:

Well, since I was really rather surprised at how terrible Spotify sounds even at highest quality, this is...good news? 

You should try listening on speakers and gear worth more than an Oh'Henry bar. 

This isn't going to bode well for Apple. They just proved the case them for anti-competitive practices. 
Epic's strategy seems too well planned. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other financial and political supporters behind them. 
That or they are stupid. But I have a feeling Apple is getting gamed here somehow. 

flydog said:

tyler82 said:

Apple is on the wrong side of this battle. 

Exactly. I told my landlord I wasn't paying rent anymore because it was unreasonably high.  I'll show him!

That's why they have laws against opportunistic slumlords and rent control.