Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

It's out of shot, but you need to top up the vitamin C tablets.

Tough crowd

hehe, indeed

Just tidied it after handing my dissertation in yesterday!

It won't stay this way sadly....

Rug really ties it together.

Thanks.

I think.

It's now on eBay, but would be happy to take a lower offer and shut down the listing.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F163408212039

Now I'm on the audiophile path again, I am considering moving away from Google Play music to something FLAC based for my streaming music source.

I currently have 30day free trials running for Deezer and Tidal.

I am leaning toward Deezer over Tidal because:

1) Google assistant voice support
2) The business seems healthier and less likely to fold.
3) The flow recommendation service seems possibly useful.

Tidal seems to have the following going for it:

1) Better audiophile credentials
2) Can use the Tidal app to play straight to Sonos, not having to use the Sonos controller app.

Does anyone else have any insights into choosing one over the other?

Whichever one has a better music selection.

You could buy a Mac mini, mini PC or a NAS, a Plex Pass (£4 / month, £95 / lifetime) and build your own library. Plex has a feature to automatically create playlists from genres or moods, has Sonos support and Alexa voice control (google assistant is being developed).

Roon is another product like Plex - i.e. an unbundled Tidal/Sonos/Google Play, no music but beautiful and powerful UI.

I have a NAS of my own music (sadly VBR not lossless) which Sonos indexes and dear he's just fine.

But, I no longer buy music; I am fully bought into subscription streaming services. Not least because I have kids. I will NOT be buying One Direction etc.

I took out a sub to spotify last night, I would love some lossless streaming but most of the stuff I want I can rip or vinyl anyway. The rest of it comes through spotify, which plays really, really well with the numerous amps around our house.

Lol! Ok then Qobuz is supposed to be really good and generating a lot of attention. What client are you proposing to use for decoding? The Sonos connect?

Yep Sonos connect for decoding and streaming. Definitely. Don't forget that I have 5 Sonos room zones in the house. (2 of them in the same place now, ha!)

All three will play with Sonos. Do you hear much difference listening to high res vs. Spotify premium? Is there any lock-in like playlists etc to prevent you switching later? Is MQA a benefit for you? For me the benefit of streaming is being exposed to new music so I’d select the one that allowed you to do that best

I have tried every single one of the streaming services above. Quite frankly, they are just not as 'good' as Spotify. Spotify's recommendations, library size, uniformity between apps on different OS's/devices is unparalleled. The difference between most of the music on Spotify at 320kbps and Tidal is negligible in my opinion or at least none of the equipment I've used over the years is good enough to show the difference. Obviously if you have a ten grand hifi, don't use Spotify, but then I wouldn't stream from the internet to a ten grand system anyway.

In hindsight I do remember Qobuz sounding pretty good but there was so much missing music that it just wasn't worth it. Apps would constantly crash and had bad UIs too. This may have changed as it was a couple of years ago.

I'm never going to use Spotify again.

I used to be a customer until my account was hacked three times in 18 months. Password changed, all my playlists deleted and new ones made, full of teen pop.

This was whilst using strong passwords that were unique to Spotify. I am quite well educated on online security technology and implementation.

No company that can be compromised like that again and again will get more of my money, I'm afraid.

Hmmm that's interesting - I've had mine hacked as well recently, thought it was me being slack with my own security but not reassuring to hear that others have had problems!

Wow, that's crazy. Sorry to hear that. I don't blame you at all - if that had happened to me I would feel the same way.

If you have £10k plus of hi fi then Roon + Tidal is pretty decent. The metadata Roon provides plus the ability to see exactly how it's handling the signal path is worthwhile if you have a system that resolves enough for you to hear the difference between 320kps and 96/24 WAV. Roon also has a very good radio feature playing tracks from your library, I think that includes tracks you have added to your library from Tidal. I'm not on the MQA bus yet but the comparison tracks I've heard are very good.

If you are not bothered about the mastering quality of the version of the track you're listening to then it might be an unnecessary expense.

Completely agree re spotify. Simply put for streaming it's the best option for me, also never mind the fact it works brilliantly across our multiple devices.

Also you can share a spotify account with friends (family) for the same price as a pint of beer a month. No brainer IMO.

If passwords are being reset, isn’t that likely to be someone with access to your email account?!

Had mine hacked a while back, didn't realise till I found out they had changed my account type to the family one and linked more accounts to mine.

I only noticed as it costs more for the family account. Thought they had just upped their prices at first.

Same thing happened to me.