Streaming services?

Also what fully featured streamer would you recommend under £1k. High level of sound quality is essential? More than happy to buy a secondhand one.

DMP-A6 probably.

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I’ve been using QOBUZ (courtesy of Marks free trail) and I like it a lot, works well in the car too.
Spotify has the better GUI.

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Qobuz here, after Spotify.
Very happy.

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The user experience is all down to the app and I prefer the Auralic app over all the others I have used, mainly because it seems to be the only one* that seems to ignore the ‘The’ in band names when listing them alphabetically- i.e. The Cure is listed under C, The Smiths under S etc, rather than them all coming under T.
*Maybe I am missing something in the settings/options with the other apps?

If I could afford it I’d buy this.

I’m sure Chris will do it for a grand for you.:wink:

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:grin:

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SNAP​:+1::ok_hand:

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I’ve been really impressed with the sound from a Cambridge CXN I bought recently.
Mines an older V1 but a current V2 can be had for about £500 used.

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I’m using a LUMIN D1, which I’ve had for about six years now. There is a D2 for sale on PFM for about £1K. The app is great but I use it with Roon via an Aesthetix Pandora DAC.

I bought my youngest a Wiim Mini Pro for about £150 on Amacuntz about six months ago. Its app is superb, it sounds great, and it is upgradable with an external DAC.

I would worry more about the app, usability and future proofing as the streamers all seem to sound pretty good these days. Digital output allows you to upgrade with the DAC of your choice.

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I use Qobuz via Roon, very happy with it. I pay an annual sub for Qobuz, I think it is 150 euros.

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Tidal here. Been using it for a few years now with no issues.

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try a free trial and have a play is the best option.

I’ve had Google Play/Youtube Music for 8 years and I’ve always kept it as the catalogue always filled the gaps the hi-res services missed and I watch a lot of Youtube so a Youtube premium subscription pulls that and the music service altogether under one roof and I don’t get adverts on the video side.

I’ve been running that with a hi-res service for about 5 years, Amazon first then Tidal then Qobuz.

I would dismiss Amazon, both the other services are far better. I could never hear much of a difference between Qobuz and Tidal and I actually found Tidal’s recs much better than Qobuz which seem to me generic by genre and only updated weekly. This doesn’t matter if you run under Roon as I think that does it for you.

I ditched Qobuz recently due to financial reasons and I didn’t need to run two music services and Youtube won because of the video side. My biggest gripe with Qobuz was the gaps in the catalogue and even though some still exist it is much better than when I started the subscription.

Another service I tried for a month was Presto Classical, which is hires and if you only listen to classical and jazz has by far the best search engine, recommendations and how to store your library. None of the main services do classical that well when it comes to searching or storing it in an obvious way and the recs were very good but again I couldn’t justify the cost. Presto also allows you in many cases to read the actual booklet that comes with the physical release which I found very useful for classical.

If I had to choose a hires service and classical wasn’t my first interest then I would be happy with either Tidal or Qobuz.

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Apple Music has both a standard music app and a dedicated classical one. You get both under the one subscription and high res up to 192 on a fair bit of material. My main gripe is the lack of a connect app which means you can only get CD quality out of it unless you faff about with an adapter.

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Yes Apple bought Primephonic which was a classical specialist service. It was an excellent service and I’m sure with Apple’s clout it’ll get better.

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Streamer or dac/streamer. I have a rather nice auralic streamer for sale that supports all the usual services :slight_smile: you can also just strap a usb HD to it for local listening

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This is also a good shout if you need it all in one box and don’t already have a DAC

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I keep forgetting Apple Music has a classical version. I love Apple Music, find the user interface very easy to use. The lack of a connect type function doesn’t bother me, whenever I’ve compared hi-res and the same file downsampled I’ve never heard any difference. If I’m using my phone to control a streamer I figure I may as well just airplay it to my system from my phone.

Edit. Should say almost everything I play says Mastered for Apple on it, don’t know if that means it sounds different to other streaming services but I have no complaints about the sound quality at all.

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Yip I agree the user interface is great. You need to be careful with Airplay though, Apple is very cagey and doesn’t release a lot of info. My understanding is Airplay 1 streams lossless 16-bit/44.1 kHz but Airplay 2 down samples to 256 AAC. I’ve been listening wired to access 24-bit/192 kHz and it sounds fantastic but it could be me imagining it sounds better than streamed. My streaming receiver is Airplay 1 so I’m unable to compare the Airplay 2 to Airplay 2 lossy stream.

If you are interested what Airplay is doing this is worth a read.

Apple AirPlay isn’t always lossless. Sometimes it’s lossy — but why? | Darko.Audio

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Ha, we read the same article, we must’ve watched the same Darko vid on YouTube.:grin: I have an original AEX which I think is AirPlay 1. It’s been at least 10 years since I tested myself but I did a bit of a blind test and found I couldn’t tell the difference between alac and aac 256 through my Mac mini or mbp. I’m not much of a critical listener these days though, 90% of the time I just let Apple Music play what it thinks I’ll like and enjoy it. I avoid other forums because I don’t want them setting me off again! :exploding_head:
I haven’t compared with most the other streaming platforms, I had a brief flirtation with Spotify but just didn’t warm to it.

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I was hoping that by installing the apple music on the eversolo and setting the macbook to hires it would use Airplay 2 at ALAC 24/48

Weirdly I didn’t think eversolo supported Airplay 2 yet though :man_shrugging:

Unfortunately it still uses AAC :frowning:

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