7 ms·

A lot of the draw for Tidal is the lossless streams. That is a big deal for audiophile people, which you and your friends are not a part of.

DonbunEf7 8y ago
Serious audiophiles are all pirates at this point if they aren't into diving for vinyl. A losslessly-encoded stream is near-worthless compared to a lossless rip, which is actually useful as archival material. My friends, especially my musician friends, are all pirates. It's by far the most practical way to do music. I might change my tune if Tidal's streams are easy to save, but I haven't seen any technology for doing that.
- overcast 8y ago
  The stream is LOSSLESS.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > The stream is LOSSLESS. I think the word 'archival' is the key word in this sentence: >> A losslessly-encoded stream is near-worthless compared to a lossless rip, which is actually useful as archival material. GP isn't comparing on the basis of quality; rather, GP is pointing out that streaming services don't function as an "archive". It's a reasonable point. Modulo reasonable backup procedure, owning a copy of the track is a more robust as an "archive" than a streaming service that might stop serving the track at any moment. However, I'm confused by the rest of GP's post. First, I'm not sure why pirating is necessary to get a lossless rip. Second, and perhaps tangentially, I've never understood collectors (of cards, or of coins, or of music tracks).
    - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
      > First, I'm not sure why pirating is necessary to get a lossless rip. To rip an SACD, you either need a hacked PS3, or you need to download the rip through a torrent kindly provided by a pirate community member who does have a hacked PS3. If you signed up for a pirate community to download those SACD rips, you might as well stick around and torrent lots of ordinary CD rips so that you don’t actually have to buy those CDs. > Second, and perhaps tangentially, I've never understood collectors I travel a lot, including in countries where mobile data is not cheap and wifi is thin on the ground. It’s nice to have my entire music collection with me on a small portable hard drive. Secondly, film collectors are inclined to collect, not stream, because they have been bitten by films disappearing from release due to rights issues. Look at how many Criterion Collection releases are no longer available to purchase or stream, for instance, but it’s nice to have your own copy saved on a disk.
      - pucke 8y ago
        Artists upload lossless audio to the internet all the time. I don't understand how anybody can even be bothered to argue their opinion on this matter. A lot of you guys sound like jerks though.
        Mediterraneo10 8y ago
        > Artists upload lossless audio to the internet all the time. It can, in fact, be quite difficult to obtain the 5.1 surround sound layer of an SACD as a digital download for many releases. That is why people are inclined to rip the SACD or torrent someone else’s rip.
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
I second what the other poster said. Audiophiles are either pirates torrenting FLAC for archival purposes, or (if they are classical or jazz fans) they are still buying SACD physical media. I don't doubt that a few people have been attracted to Tidal for lossless streaming, but you can see for yourself just how little Tidal is discussed on audiophile forums, so just saying "audiophiles" doesn't explain where Tidal is actually a thing.
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  I dunno; I see Tidal discussed on Audiophile forums a lot, in no small part because they've worked out deals to be integrated with commercial lossless/"hi res" players like Roon and Audirvana. Tidal supports both lossless streaming and MQA streaming. (MQA being a kind of weird and controversial lossy-but-high-res audio format, whose biggest difference in practice is probably using different psychoacoustic models and theoretically accounting for theoretically audible timing differences. I've listened to it on good equipment and can't say that I really hear a difference between it and lossless recording.) In any case, not even audiophiles are buying physical SACDs. There are digital downloads in DSD format, though.
- jrace 8y ago
  Actually you find that Tidal is the recommended streaming site on most Audiophile forums. Roon was marketed heavily to Audiophiles and the addition of Tidal was long sought-after. https://community.roonlabs.com/c/roon/tidal https://community.roonlabs.com/c/roon/tidal
- meowface 8y ago
  I'd consider myself an audiophile and I exclusively use Tidal for all music-listening nowadays. I know lots of others who use it for the same purposes. Shady business dealings aside, Tidal is the best and best-looking music streaming service I've used.
thrillgore 8y ago
Actual audiophiles are going to moan about lossless, because its still PCM audio at its core, and not analog.
- coldtea 8y ago
  The source material is not analog either ever since 1995 or so -- 99% of recordings are into digital DAWs, not tape.
  - fenwick67 8y ago
    One of the funniest things to me in the prosumer audio world is NES sountracks or EDM released on vinyl.
    - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
      Many if not most of the consumers of that music will never actually listen to the vinyl. They might not even own a turntable. Instead, they purchase the vinyl for music that they listen to elsewhere in order to have full-size artwork and use it as room decoration.
      - monocasa 8y ago
        And until recently (and painting with a very wide stroke), the percentage that goes back to the band tended to be better for vinyl than the other formats. Since the record companies saw it as a dead medium, it wasn't really high on their list for negotiations. I've bought vinyl that I never intended to play for that reason.
    - empath75 8y ago
      Well edm was/is released on vinyl for djing purposes although these days most club djs use cds or usb or ableton.
      - Avery3R 8y ago
dfaigonio 8y ago
It's a big draw for clueless people. It would take Superman to tell the difference between lossless audio and a modern codec with a decent bitrate. I would be surprised if you can prove that a single person has ever done so on an ABX test. The only reason to use lossless audio is for archival. Obviously streams are useless for that.
- qwerty_0010 8y ago
  I know 100% that you're wrong, but I don't blame you for making that statement. The problem with "can't hear the difference" statements is that they're highly dependent on the system you're listening to. The vast majority of systems are not resolving to a degree that there is an audible difference between AAC or a lossless format. On my system, there is a profound difference between FLAC (at any bitrate) and higher rate DSD. Is DSD magically better? Not necessarily, but in my case my DAC bypasses its internal filtering for DSD playback, which means I can move the interpolation filter over to my CPU, which, running at 4GHz, is better at it than a (SOTA) DAC chip running at a few MHz. It's a complicated topic, and the only people I personally discuss it with are professional audio engineers or serious hobbyists. No one else cares. On topic, TIDAL is great in the sense that it's not US-centric for billing (just take my money please) and streams lossless. It's like a CD store for ~$20 a month (the max they'll take from me). I'd gladly pay a lot more and given the economics of it I'm worried it will go out of business at some point. If you're interested in the topic you can check out the Roon community, "minimum vs linear phase interpolation filters", "DSD upsampling" or check out the work of Ted Smith (MIT / software guy turned DAC designer).
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    You've got a 1-bit DAC at the end of the chain regardless. Making it sound "better" by filtering in a 4GHz processor is golden ear nonsense.
firstplacelast 8y ago
I'm a bit of an audiophile and for that reason I do not use ANY music streaming services. None of them have all of the music I want. I have a wide range of high-quality audio and for some artists I have very particular versions/performances of certain tracks that are my favorite. I've tried streaming services, but it ends up over complicating my experience because I still have to rely on my own hard copies to complete my collection. Further, I am extremely wary of my library up and disappearing. I like to have full control over all of my tracks, meta-data, playlist organization, etc. I won't even buy from iTunes anymore because it's too restricted. Only online music broker I use is Bandcamp because they give me full control of the music I purchased. Even among my hard-core audiophile friends, admittedly a very small sample, none of them use Tidal.
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ryan-allen 8y ago
It's not fair you're being down voted, because you're absolutely right. I subscribe to both Tidal and Spotify, and Tidal has vastly better quality music (plus a bunch of artists that are not on Spotify...). If people are listening through some 'Beats by Dr Dre', or Airpods ,or linking to a bluetooth speaker, Spotify is fine. If someone has a DAC and some decent headphones, or a decent hifi, you can notice the different easily, especially for certain genres. Not all music compresses well.

DonbunEf7 8y ago

Serious audiophiles are all pirates at this point if they aren't into diving for vinyl. A losslessly-encoded stream is near-worthless compared to a lossless rip, which is actually useful as archival material. My friends, especially my musician friends, are all pirates. It's by far the most practical way to do music. I might change my tune if Tidal's streams are easy to save, but I haven't seen any technology for doing that.

overcast 8y ago
The stream is LOSSLESS.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > The stream is LOSSLESS. I think the word 'archival' is the key word in this sentence: >> A losslessly-encoded stream is near-worthless compared to a lossless rip, which is actually useful as archival material. GP isn't comparing on the basis of quality; rather, GP is pointing out that streaming services don't function as an "archive". It's a reasonable point. Modulo reasonable backup procedure, owning a copy of the track is a more robust as an "archive" than a streaming service that might stop serving the track at any moment. However, I'm confused by the rest of GP's post. First, I'm not sure why pirating is necessary to get a lossless rip. Second, and perhaps tangentially, I've never understood collectors (of cards, or of coins, or of music tracks).
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    > First, I'm not sure why pirating is necessary to get a lossless rip. To rip an SACD, you either need a hacked PS3, or you need to download the rip through a torrent kindly provided by a pirate community member who does have a hacked PS3. If you signed up for a pirate community to download those SACD rips, you might as well stick around and torrent lots of ordinary CD rips so that you don’t actually have to buy those CDs. > Second, and perhaps tangentially, I've never understood collectors I travel a lot, including in countries where mobile data is not cheap and wifi is thin on the ground. It’s nice to have my entire music collection with me on a small portable hard drive. Secondly, film collectors are inclined to collect, not stream, because they have been bitten by films disappearing from release due to rights issues. Look at how many Criterion Collection releases are no longer available to purchase or stream, for instance, but it’s nice to have your own copy saved on a disk.
    - pucke 8y ago
      Artists upload lossless audio to the internet all the time. I don't understand how anybody can even be bothered to argue their opinion on this matter. A lot of you guys sound like jerks though.
      - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
        > Artists upload lossless audio to the internet all the time. It can, in fact, be quite difficult to obtain the 5.1 surround sound layer of an SACD as a digital download for many releases. That is why people are inclined to rip the SACD or torrent someone else’s rip.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago

I second what the other poster said. Audiophiles are either pirates torrenting FLAC for archival purposes, or (if they are classical or jazz fans) they are still buying SACD physical media. I don't doubt that a few people have been attracted to Tidal for lossless streaming, but you can see for yourself just how little Tidal is discussed on audiophile forums, so just saying "audiophiles" doesn't explain where Tidal is actually a thing.

chipotle_coyote 8y ago
I dunno; I see Tidal discussed on Audiophile forums a lot, in no small part because they've worked out deals to be integrated with commercial lossless/"hi res" players like Roon and Audirvana. Tidal supports both lossless streaming and MQA streaming. (MQA being a kind of weird and controversial lossy-but-high-res audio format, whose biggest difference in practice is probably using different psychoacoustic models and theoretically accounting for theoretically audible timing differences. I've listened to it on good equipment and can't say that I really hear a difference between it and lossless recording.) In any case, not even audiophiles are buying physical SACDs. There are digital downloads in DSD format, though.
jrace 8y ago
Actually you find that Tidal is the recommended streaming site on most Audiophile forums. Roon was marketed heavily to Audiophiles and the addition of Tidal was long sought-after. https://community.roonlabs.com/c/roon/tidal https://community.roonlabs.com/c/roon/tidal
meowface 8y ago
I'd consider myself an audiophile and I exclusively use Tidal for all music-listening nowadays. I know lots of others who use it for the same purposes. Shady business dealings aside, Tidal is the best and best-looking music streaming service I've used.

thrillgore 8y ago

Actual audiophiles are going to moan about lossless, because its still PCM audio at its core, and not analog.

coldtea 8y ago
The source material is not analog either ever since 1995 or so -- 99% of recordings are into digital DAWs, not tape.
- fenwick67 8y ago
  One of the funniest things to me in the prosumer audio world is NES sountracks or EDM released on vinyl.
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    Many if not most of the consumers of that music will never actually listen to the vinyl. They might not even own a turntable. Instead, they purchase the vinyl for music that they listen to elsewhere in order to have full-size artwork and use it as room decoration.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      And until recently (and painting with a very wide stroke), the percentage that goes back to the band tended to be better for vinyl than the other formats. Since the record companies saw it as a dead medium, it wasn't really high on their list for negotiations. I've bought vinyl that I never intended to play for that reason.
  - empath75 8y ago
    Well edm was/is released on vinyl for djing purposes although these days most club djs use cds or usb or ableton.
    - Avery3R 8y ago

dfaigonio 8y ago

It's a big draw for clueless people. It would take Superman to tell the difference between lossless audio and a modern codec with a decent bitrate. I would be surprised if you can prove that a single person has ever done so on an ABX test. The only reason to use lossless audio is for archival. Obviously streams are useless for that.

qwerty_0010 8y ago
I know 100% that you're wrong, but I don't blame you for making that statement. The problem with "can't hear the difference" statements is that they're highly dependent on the system you're listening to. The vast majority of systems are not resolving to a degree that there is an audible difference between AAC or a lossless format. On my system, there is a profound difference between FLAC (at any bitrate) and higher rate DSD. Is DSD magically better? Not necessarily, but in my case my DAC bypasses its internal filtering for DSD playback, which means I can move the interpolation filter over to my CPU, which, running at 4GHz, is better at it than a (SOTA) DAC chip running at a few MHz. It's a complicated topic, and the only people I personally discuss it with are professional audio engineers or serious hobbyists. No one else cares. On topic, TIDAL is great in the sense that it's not US-centric for billing (just take my money please) and streams lossless. It's like a CD store for ~$20 a month (the max they'll take from me). I'd gladly pay a lot more and given the economics of it I'm worried it will go out of business at some point. If you're interested in the topic you can check out the Roon community, "minimum vs linear phase interpolation filters", "DSD upsampling" or check out the work of Ted Smith (MIT / software guy turned DAC designer).
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  You've got a 1-bit DAC at the end of the chain regardless. Making it sound "better" by filtering in a 4GHz processor is golden ear nonsense.

firstplacelast 8y ago

I'm a bit of an audiophile and for that reason I do not use ANY music streaming services. None of them have all of the music I want. I have a wide range of high-quality audio and for some artists I have very particular versions/performances of certain tracks that are my favorite. I've tried streaming services, but it ends up over complicating my experience because I still have to rely on my own hard copies to complete my collection. Further, I am extremely wary of my library up and disappearing. I like to have full control over all of my tracks, meta-data, playlist organization, etc. I won't even buy from iTunes anymore because it's too restricted. Only online music broker I use is Bandcamp because they give me full control of the music I purchased. Even among my hard-core audiophile friends, admittedly a very small sample, none of them use Tidal.

deleted 8y ago

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ryan-allen 8y ago

It's not fair you're being down voted, because you're absolutely right. I subscribe to both Tidal and Spotify, and Tidal has vastly better quality music (plus a bunch of artists that are not on Spotify...). If people are listening through some 'Beats by Dr Dre', or Airpods ,or linking to a bluetooth speaker, Spotify is fine. If someone has a DAC and some decent headphones, or a decent hifi, you can notice the different easily, especially for certain genres. Not all music compresses well.