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Lossless Streaming Comparisons.....

NeilBEN said:
That was what my son suggested, a Raspberry Pi, mounted on a monitor
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You could do that, but there are plenty of 'media OS' packages for the RPi that operate 'headless', i.e. they don't need a monitor, since the UI is provided by a web-based interface, accessible through either a web browser or dedicated app on any smart device on the same local network.
 
I got a Raspberry Pi 4B and put it in a Flirc case (passively cooled) and I am running Volumio. The issue at the moment is the Qobuz player stopped working - it doesn't even show up. Their tech support has been a bit tepid.

It has a Radio Paradise plugin, so that is the only way I can use it, at the moment. The problem is with this is, you don't sign into RP, so you don't get to listen to your favorites; which you can do on a computer.

So far, the Pi sounds fine through my Bifrost 2, but it has not been smooth sailing.
 
I recently bought a Bluesound Node 2i, and have been using it to evaluate "high-res" music services. So far, I have done quite a bit of listening with AmazonHD, Tidal and Qobuz. My observations/opinions so far:

None of them rival Spotify from the standpoint of user interface, curation or "discovery" (the algorithms/logic that serves up other artists, songs and albums you might enjoy based on what you listen to). None of them rival Spotify from the standpoint of library size or search capability. But of course, Spotify does not offer high-res, or even CD quality.

Of the three high-res (CD and better) services I've been using, I would rank user interface/user experience as Tidal #1, Quobuz #2 and AmazonHD #3 (I would feel the same even if Amazon were better integrated with BluOS). Tidal and Quobuz are different, but interface and experience with both are pretty good. Amazon, not so much...it's fine, if you know what you want to listen to. But much of the fun with streaming is discovery. Amazon doesn't seem to realize this (or maybe just doesn't care).

In my system, to my ears, Amazon and Quobuz are so close in SQ as to be basically indistinguishable. Tidal Masters files have a noticeably different sound...a bit less detailed, and a bit mushy in the lower frequencies. As a result, I don't plan to keep Tidal after the end of my 3 month trial next month.

I don't have data to back this up, but it seems a greater portion of Quobuz's library is available in high-res than is the case with Amazon...but, Amazon seems to have a greater total library size (adding CD-quality and high-res together). I much more often fail to find a song or artist I'm searching for when using Qobuz than when using Amazon.​

I would really prefer to rely on Qobuz as my only music service. They (like Tidal) provide better compensation to the artists (as compared to Amazon)...and putting up at least some resistance to the Amazon Borg seems like a good thing. Also, as a Bluesound user, Quobuz is more appealing because of its much better integration with the Bluesound platform vs Amazon. But, having access to a much larger library is a big deal to me...so I will continue using both until I can determine if Quobuz's smaller inventory is a showstopper.

My system: Sansui AU-919 (fully rebuilt about six years ago), Snell JIIIs (new foam and new electrolytic caps three years ago), Vandersteen subwoofers (original condition). I was using a pair of Thiel CS2s in this system when I first got the Node streamer, but pulled them out while trying to determine if the overly forward presentation I was hearing with Amazon HD was a function of speakers or the Amazon data stream. With the Snells, both Amazon and Quobuz sound quite good, and their high-res files are pretty darned impressive. Of course, high-res cannot make up for poor engineering. In fact, it seems to me that recordings with heavy dynamic range compression are even more annoying with high-res files.

On that topic...I was hoping that as a part of the remastering required to produce high-res versions for the music services, the record companies would at the same time pull back on the heavy-handed use of compression and other effects applied to make the music sound better on earbuds, computer speakers and in higher-noise environments. I am somewhat concerned that high-res will become just another marketing shtick. While not always the case, most of the high-res downloads I've purchased in the past really did sound better than their CD counterpart, probably as much a function of mastering tailored more to "audiophile" listeners as the higher bitrate.

If the music services are successful at getting folks who listen primarily via smartphones and earbuds to buy high-res subscriptions, they might conclude that hey don't need to spend time and effort actually trying to improve sound quality of the recording when re-mastering...just grab the file used to dither down to CD and call it a day. If that happens, the potential for high-res recordings to be reliably better than their CD versions will have been lost.
 
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spark1 said:
I was hoping that as a part of the remastering required to produce high-res versions for the music services, the record companies would at the same time pull back on the heavy-handed use of compression and other effects applied to make the music sound better on earbuds
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Sadly, in my trials of Qobuz and AmazonHD, I found a lot of 'loudness wars' compression in the hi-res files. Admittedly, I never found any brickwall clipping, but it was obviously put though a soft compression algorithm, to bring all peaks up to FSD. Or, oddly, sometimes, all peaks up to some fixed value below FSD...
 
cpt_paranoia said:
Sadly, in my trials of Qobuz and AmazonHD, I found a lot of 'loudness wars' compression in the hi-res files. Admittedly, I never found any brickwall clipping, but it was obviously put though a soft compression algorithm, to bring all peaks up to FSD. Or, oddly, sometimes, all peaks up to some fixed value below FSD...
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What is "FSD"?
 
cpt_paranoia said:
Full Scale Deflection. i.e. peak amplitude of the twos complement number range.
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I don't understand this, even after some brief research.

Cutting to the chase, are you saying that you can tell, by analysis you have performed, that Qobuz and Amazon HD are applying another layer of DRC (above whatever is in the underlying recording) to their lossless content?
 
spark1 said:
are you saying that you can tell, by analysis you have performed, that Qobuz and Amazon HD are applying another layer of DRC (above whatever is in the underlying recording) to their lossless content?
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I don't really care who is doing it (dynamic range compression); probably the record companies (although it is noticeable that Amazon downloads sound louder than CD rips, even with volume levelling). Hence my comment from April about the music industry actively damaging music. I think I've even posted audacity plots to illustrate the problem. Maybe I hadn't. Here it is, though... upper trace is the CD, lower trace is the qobuz version.

FB_IMG_1608682093528.jpg
 
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NeilBEN said:
I got a Raspberry Pi 4B and put it in a Flirc case (passively cooled) and I am running Volumio. The issue at the moment is the Qobuz player stopped working - it doesn't even show up. Their tech support has been a bit tepid.

It has a Radio Paradise plugin, so that is the only way I can use it, at the moment. The problem is with this is, you don't sign into RP, so you don't get to listen to your favorites; which you can do on a computer.

So far, the Pi sounds fine through my Bifrost 2, but it has not been smooth sailing.
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That's strange. I also use Qobuz via a RPi4 running Volumio. Works great and never lost Qobuz. I've had to reimage and reinstall the OS a couple times when the power has gone out to get mine to work again, but not the issue you describe.

Really enjoy the combo, and it sounds much better than AMHD did via my windows laptop.
 
cpt_paranoia said:
I don't really care who is doing it (dynamic range compression); probably the record companies (although it is noticeable that Amazon downloads sound louder than CD rips, even with volume levelling). Hence my comment from April about the music industry actively damaging music. I think I've even posted audacity plots to illustrate the problem. Maybe I hadn't. Here it is, though... upper trace is the CD, lower trace is the qobuz version.

View attachment 2074006
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Like most here, I'm well aware of the music-damaging effects of widespread use of DRC in the engineering process, which I assume is driven by catering to the mass market. Boosting loudness is actually beneficial to perceived sound quality for much of this market

My point earlier was that the high-res music services have the chance to make recordings better as they are re-mastered. But of course it would be much easier to simply sell bitrate...and if the mass market is willing to pay the high-res premium to listen on earbuds, Bluetooth speakers, smartphones and car stereos (via which the benefit is most likely not perceptible) then there is no reason for the music services to put effort and $ into making the actual recording quality better; that is, into truly differentiating their product.

Simply put, a crappy recording (such as one with grossly-reduced dynamics) will not sound any better at 24/192 than 16/44...but if the music services see people willing to pay the premium for bit rate alone, vs bit rate plus better sound quality, they will have no motivation to deliver both.
 
spark1 said:
My point earlier was that the high-res music services have the chance to make recordings better as they are re-mastered.
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That's my point, too; I trialled Qobuz and AmazonHD, hoping to find better mastered works in their hi-res offerings. But I found that many of them were peak tagged to FSD, like the example above. A great disappointment, and, again, hence my comment in April.
 
spark1 said:
My point earlier was that the high-res music services have the chance to make recordings better as they are re-mastered.
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I'm not sure the music services can make the recordings that are available on their services better. I might be wrong about this, and If so please correct me. But, if a streaming service - maybe Tidal - receives music content / recordings from, say, Warner Brothers, Warner doesn't give Tidal the rights to alter or remaster that content.

Or were you suggesting that Tidal only offer remastered recordings for playback. Sometimes the remasters are the recordings that are “volume enhanced”.
 
I don't have a good understanding of the relationship between the content providers and the music services. Perhaps they have stored a version of the recording at a higher bit rate (pre-dithering), and simply provide that to the music services. In this case, all the other work done during the mastering process (including DRC tailored to lower fidelity playback devices and noisier listening environments) will be retained.

I was not necessarily suggesting that the music services do their own mastering, as this would require access to the pre-mastered version of the recording. I guess that they could pay for such access, and pay a mastering engineer to produce an audiophile version, or more likely just pay the content owner to do the same. Either way, it seems to me that for the music services to offer truly higher quality recordings - rather than just higher bit rate recordings - this work (and expense) would be required.

I guess I am just beginning to appreciate the fact that the "high-res" (ie higher bit rate) content from the music services is not necessarily any better sounding than CD. Technically, the higher bit rates should have better extension and quality in the higher frequencies and a wider dynamic range...but over-use of DRC probably negates any benefit of wider dynamic range.

Perhaps the real advantages of the high-res music services - at least for content that is not remastered - are simply 1) CD quality (lossless vs lossy), 2) convenience, and 3) access to huge libraries. I had hope for better sounding recordings as well, but it may be that there is just not enough of a market to support the expense of remastering for audiophile users.
 
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