I have been playing around with AM Classical for a while now. Here are my first impressions. There’s good and there’s not so good.
Two BIG problems:
Only iPhone app – not great fun – for when the iPad app?
No booklets!!! that’s a major letdown. Especially for an app that’s supposed to make classical music recruit more listeners. Lots of classical music is vocal – so how shall a rookie hope to understand what is being sung? Think opera …
Let’s try now to find a particular piece by a particular composer. In this case, The First Cello Concerto in A Minor, Op. 33, by Camille Saint-Saëns. The particular recording I have in mind is the interpretation with Emmanuelle Bertrand (Harmonia Mundi, released 2017). (What is Sibelius doing there??? Does that sound remotely like Saint-Saëns? Weird and confusing.)
Nowhere! Bizarre! The album is in my library, but I would never hear of that interpretation by consulting the list of available recordings. Hmm…
I’ll stop here. Too long already. It seems to me that AMC is a work in progress. Not that many playlists, no integrated videos, no booklets, no iPad app (and desktop). Not a bad start, but there’s still work to do. My verdict: 3 stars out of 5.
Well, the idea was to let Roon users get a quick understanding of the new app. Not everyone is an Apple user after all, so they can’t determine the value of AMC for themselves. What is clear (to me at least) is that the new app offers many more possibilities for classical music users than Roon does (with Qobuz/ Tidal). So everyone can make their choice. Two big drawbacks of course: only iPhone app (so difficult to get the music playing on a good system, what with dongle and everything), and then the absence of booklets.
You can use the classical music app on the IPad. Working ok on my IPad. New app may still not be perfect but still much better suited to classical music than the old general app. I hope they can continue to improve the app in time. But a definite step forward. Unfortunately cannot see much hope of it being integrated with Roon.
Sure. Now, I may be biased as I’m fully integrated into the Apple ecosystem, and I’d imagine that those users who are are not may baulk at the new app (somewhat). And then there’s the price. I’ve subscribed to Apple One, so what I actually pay for the music part (divided by four as a family) is almost embarrassingly low. Compared to Roon’s 12.50 € a month (when paid on an annual basis), it’s a no-brainer from a financial point of view. And hey, with AMC you actually get music as well.
I will need to live with the app for a while before I can make a more definitive statement as to its usefulness and general ease of use.
What I’ve seen so far is promising, though not perfect (as I’ve pointed out).
Even by key! That’s great. Have never used that way of filtering, but for some composers this could be a useful tool. Think of Mozart’s relationship to the D Minor key.
One thing I forgot. It relates to Qobuz – regularly there are tracks that are unavailable. Very annoying and does’t happen with AM ()or any other streaming service for that matter).
And then there’s metadata. Try Immerseel’s Schubertiade on Roon. All the tracks are all over the place; nothing corresponds to what it says! And there are quite a few instances this happened to me.
Good point about that Immerseel/Schubert album - the metadata is a total mess in Roon. Interestingly, in the Qobuz app, everything is present and correct. I’ll report this in the #support:metadata category…
Another case of where de-duplication uses the messed-up Tidal metadata and affects the Qobuz version as seen in Roon. @joel the other day was looking for more examples, this seems to be one.
Thank you for sharing first impressions. Mine are roughly similar but I should had one: Apple Classical is very very poor compared to Primephonic. It is a nice upgrade to Apple Music and made this service better for Classical compared to Quobuz and Tidal (hence it is also superior to the Roon experience with Classical). However, Primephonic (bought and closed by Apple) was way better than this new App, with lots of info on the artists and the music, as well as a much nicer graphic interface. Maybe Presto Music will be the new Primephonic, who knows? Last but not the least, Primephonic prouded itself for paying the artists by time of listening (not by track), so does Presto Music. What about Apple?
I think you’re right. The Primephonic UI was nicer. They also had a feature called Maestro (I believe) – a running (written) comment on a piece, highlighting some main structural and compositional features (really great for someone new to classical music). What happened to it?
There’s lots of stuff to like about AMC, but all in all the experience is a bit underwhelming. I expected more. I don’t really understand why it took them two years to release this app. From a search perspective, Idagio is superior, and from an aesthetic perspective, Presto Music looks neater. And both have booklets and iPad apps.
If you could put the best bits of Idagio/Presto/AppleClassical together you might get the perfect classical streaming service but they all have their pro and cons. I am enjoying the new Presto service but they do need to improve the search engine. Does come up with some strange results with me sometimes. Let’s just hope that Apple Classical takes some of the best bits of Idagio and Presto and uses them. Fingers crossed !
My guess on why it took them two years[1] is that there’s no pressure from their major competitors (Spotify, Amazon, etc.) And because of that Apple probably thinks a dedicated Classical experience is nice to have, to differentiate them from other mainstream platforms, but not worth investing any more resource.
[1]: In its current status, the app is probably not even on a par with Primephonic.
I have tried Idagio, PrimePhonic over their life span and now Apple Classical for 1 day !!. It’s a mixed bag as someone above says take the best bits . All I can do is to compare against the classical setups I know which are …
Roon with Tidal (we don’t have Qobuz in South Africa but that may be a better base point) - all metadata provided by online db - ONE integrated UI (beat that)
JRiver with NO streaming service (and Tidal in a separate app). Unless JimH relents on streaming JRiver will eventually drift into a video player with Plex as a serious competitor. A sad business decision in my mind. No matter how configurable JRiver is it is still MANUAL.
The Naim/Focal app (and previously the CA Stream Magic app and others) with JRiver DNLA (or Minim or ANO DNLA) server and access to Tidal in app
As with any software there will be a learning curve and always a comparison to what you know.
I agree first impressions count but I for one intend to spend a bit of time fathoming the depths of Apple Classical
Of the 3 possible base lines at the moment there is no contest it’s Roon/Tidal, whilst I agree there is a different set of requirements for Classical and ANO Genre , having 2 apps instead of one will rapidly become a pain.
I am not a Classical ONLY listener in any session I may flit between any even all genres so swapping apps is not ideal. It’s the same with the 2 hardware Naim /CA apps where you have to swap internally between embedded players for the streamer and server.
The bottom line as far as I am concerned is whether the additional info , Work details, Composer and Artists Bio’s make it worth the effort. Roon’s inclusion of WikiPedia for background info has pushed the bar a bit higher on this front and I don’t see so far anything in AC so far that provides anything like the detail of WikiPedia . A bio of Beethoven to fit an iPhone screen size doesn’t really cut it compared with the Wiki article
It’s early days yet in terms of what AC can offer , but in my mind unless Apple provide a better and simple way to connect to DAC’s , Hi Fi systems in general they are unlikely to win the hearts and minds of the HiFi Classical Listener (even if that’s what they were trying to do). I for one am not going to sit with an iPad/iPhone with a string hanging out of it to use an application unless it gives me something I can’t get anywhere else. And even then I would resist. Apple Connect must come next
So, I can’t stream to a DAC connected to my stereo with a USB cable? What happened to the promise of Apple Silicon and running the same app across their product line? I was hoping to run this on a Mac Mini. I’m running Qobuz and Tidal under Roon on a Mac Mini.
