TIDAL

[Bellend Sebastian]

Any fellow sad audiophiles on here use it?

 

Currently £3 for a 3 month trial.

 

I'm a Spotify man at the moment but TIDAL do a 24bit 'HiFi' option and I have a network player that will actually play it.

 

It's £20 a month usually though. Worth it?

[Spudulike]

15 hours ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

Any fellow sad audiophiles on here use it?

 

Currently £3 for a 3 month trial.

 

I'm a Spotify man at the moment but TIDAL do a 24bit 'HiFi' option and I have a network player that will actually play it.

 

It's £20 a month usually though. Worth it?

I considered it for my Naim Muso Qb. However, I now prefer to buy cd's off ebay/charity shops (when open!) for £2-£3 each, rip them in Flac format to a Nas and play back in Wav full cd sound. Bit of a faff but it works well. 

[Basingstoke Fox]

Also considered it for a Naim Muso, but haven't signed up. I don't want to sign up for an attractive starter deal and then find myself spending approx $20 per month on it if I find it very good.

[RoboFox]

I wasn't aware it still exists. Right from the outset I kinda figured it was overestimating the average listener. Sounds a bit snobbish, but most people lack the necessary equipment (or ears) to be able to distinguish between lossy and lossless audio.

 

I consider myself an audiophile, but the price point was always pretty absurd for uncompressed file streaming so I never bothered.

 

Edited 10 July 2020 by RoboFox

[Bellend Sebastian]

3 hours ago, Spudulike said:

I considered it for my Naim Muso Qb. However, I now prefer to buy cd's off ebay/charity shops (when open!) for £2-£3 each, rip them in Flac format to a Nas and play back in Wav full cd sound. Bit of a faff but it works well. 

I cannot tell you how pleased I am to hear that I'm not the only person that still does exactly this. Music Magpie via eBay has been my go to in recent years, although I still buy CDs new sometimes.

 

I was very happy to buy the new British Sea Power soundtrack album already in FLAC from Bandcamp. Sounds ace

 

2 hours ago, Basingstoke Fox said:

Also considered it for a Naim Muso, but haven't signed up. I don't want to sign up for an attractive starter deal and then find myself spending approx $20 per month on it if I find it very good.

Yeah, one of the reasons it's putting me off is if it sounds brilliant I'll 1) be tempted to start an expensive subscription 2) it'll undermine my enjoyment of all my other stuff that's not that high quality

 

1 hour ago, RoboFox said:

I wasn't aware it still exists. Right from the outset I kinda figured it was overestimating the average listener. Sounds a bit snobbish, but most people lack the necessary equipment (or ears) to be able to distinguish between lossy and lossless audio.

 

I consider myself an audiophile, but the price point was always pretty absurd for uncompressed file streaming so I never bothered.

 

I've always been keen to squeeze out the best sound quality where practical, as I can genuinely say it increases my enjoyment. I can certainly tell the difference between Spotify and my FLAC collection, both on my HiFi set up and my Sonos, although I'd be lying if I said there was that much in it.

 

I genuinely don't know what the 24 bit stuff sounds like, whether it's the same sort of difference or a bigger jump

[Spudulike]

On 10/07/2020 at 10:19, Basingstoke Fox said:

Also considered it for a Naim Muso, but haven't signed up. I don't want to sign up for an attractive starter deal and then find myself spending approx $20 per month on it if I find it very good.

Is that a full size Muso or the QB? How do you get on with it? I'm really impressed with my QB, fantastic bit of kit, but I find it slightly directional and miss the stereo separation. Not surprising as it's a single box. 

 

I've not been tempted (yet) to upgrade to the 2nd generation release, especially at £749! eventhough the reviews are raving about it. 

[Basingstoke Fox]

22 hours ago, Spudulike said:

Is that a full size Muso or the QB? How do you get on with it? I'm really impressed with my QB, fantastic bit of kit, but I find it slightly directional and miss the stereo separation. Not surprising as it's a single box. 

 

I've not been tempted (yet) to upgrade to the 2nd generation release, especially at £749! eventhough the reviews are raving about it. 

 

It's a full size, first gen model. They can be pricey but I got it at a good price via a staff purchase scheme a few years ago. Overall I absolutely love it! It's switched on while I'm working, cooking, basically whenever I'm awake, especially during lockdown & it fills my apartment with great sound, even at 50% volume. I also use it for my TV audio atm. It's a fairly large unit, but not having separates is much easier for me as I've had to move apartments a few times during the last couple of years. Quite like the range of radio available via the app too.

 

My only gripes with it were that it would sometimes switch off randomly while playing a song (due to a bug with the auto-standby setting), it could be a little finicky for playing Spotify directly through the speaker and that you can't control it from a Windows / Mac. I got around the first two by extending the auto standby setting to 24 hours and I tend to play Spotify through my PS4 during the day now anyway.

[Spudulike]

I never use Spotify but can't you control it through a smartphone using the Naim app? I use the app on my Android phone (but not Spotify) and it does the other stuff OK (upnp, iradio, playlists etc).