I agree on the app, it just dumps an unholy mess in front of you, just one suggestion after an another after another you have to dig deep to find anything you might have added your self and it’s not organised in any decent way. I used it for communing mainly as its much better at caching ahead than the rest so good when you loose phone signal. But at home I never use it.
I was considering adding Tidal back as I am finding a lot missing from Qobuz but I might wait and try the lossless tier out as I am already paying for family account for Spotify. I imagine it will work like Amazons adaptive bitrate which is a bit hokey and won’t allow bit perfect or exclusive control via a pc, but if via connect to a piece of Hifi it might be.
Most of my friends & family use Spotify … As a life time subscriber it would definitely help in music interactions with all of them … would be highly appriciated
I am using Spotify and really happy with the announcement. The algorithm of Spotify to discover music is simply unmatched and I actually rely on discovery in Spotify and then transfer my playlists into Tidal/Roon. Whether one likes the app or doesn’t is a matter of personal taste (just look at the thread here re Roon 1.8 - it’s everything between hate and love) I personally am quite used to it and quite happy. Having said that, Spotify has no interest in providing integration further than Spotify Connect as I doubt they’ll be happy for someone to bypass their algorithms.
There’s probably quite a lot of AI and it tends to get better and better the more you use it. It’s quite a significant “barrier to entry” for the rest in my view and although quite a few people here raved about the new Roon discovery, it’s miles away from what Spotify is delivering. I still happily use Tidal and Spotify as they are different “use cases” for me, I don’t quite get the negativity and snobbery re Spotify going around here
Plus I can do this on a MAC, infact I can pick up a PC, MAC, iPhone or iPad and select and swap the current playing music to any other zone, just like Roon.
I do exactly the same thing , transfer playlists from Spotify to Tidal because no one is even close to the music discovery and algorithm capability of Spotify .
I mean select an output device on the PC. It uses the default Windows sound device and the Windows mixer. You can’t select a USB DAC unless you make it the default Windows sound device and you can’t set it for exclusive mode or bypass the Windows sound mixer.
The fact that you don’t know something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist yes, you can bypass the windows sound mixer, there’s probably more modern ways to do it, I’ve been using asio driver for quite a few years now and it works seamlessly
I primarily use Roon as a “Tidal Connect” so to speak.
This announcement changes everything.
I would no longer require Roon, as the Spotify app is perfect, and the AI engine is awesome.
Hopefully Spotify doesn’t adopt MQA.
That would really piss me off…
That’s good news! Spotify have largest database subscribers. Having lossless streaming; even CD quality for the start is much better than lossy MP3 and MQA😀
Spotify makes it very clear it is ‘lossless streaming’. Besides, it will take years to convert all the titles to MQA. Spotify simply take from music labels which already have lossless format, e.g. FLAC. Putting MQA will be a laughing stock😀
This seemed to happen to Qobuz too and limited to small label like 2L. Do you see any major labels like Sony, Universal or even Warner Bros that offer MQA to non MQA streaming platforms?
Would be worth having a look on Amazon Music HD, at some of the releases from the big Warner MQA-CD dump on Tidal the last months… where non-MQA releases were removed and replaced with MQA-CD…
The problem is that to test this properly with Amazon Music HD you need a Bluesound Node 2i… forget about trying to test with their desktop or mobile apps - they’re incapable of bit perfect playback.
I don’t have access to Amazon Music HD and a Bluesound Node 2i at the moment.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
256
For myself it might all depend on just how much extra they want to charge for the “new” Spotify tier.
IMHO right now $9.99 is too much for the present service as I am only interested in QUALITY and NOT QUANTITY, which is where Spotify is compared to Qobuz.
A lot of my fellow Audiogon members never agreed with me on this point either but… personally I find the Spotify interface quite tasteless and not appealing to use at all.
If only it were that clear. To me that’s IT lossless and the meanings unambiguous. Then there’s MQA’s “audibly lossless”
which feels ambiguous and provides no point of reference, who’s doing the listening?
Spotify will not allow commercial integrations at all, api or data driven. This is all them, not us. To do what Roon does, we need data dumps instead of apis, but in Spotify’s case, neither is an option for a commercial partner (with a few strategic exceptions like Sonos and Tesla).
I guess that depends on the definition of Quality.
Qobuz is fine if they happen to have the file you want to listen to.
However think of quality in terms of the functions provided for the cost and its a looser.
Poor playlist.
No radio or station functions.
CarPlay does not work as intended.
Poor support - even on the audiophile style podcast the Qobuz guys said they don’t know how the limited engineers keep it running.
Qobuz Connect - No such thing
In terms of value for money Qobuz is poor, for £9.99 Spotify offer far more functionality and at this minute even at 320K its sounding very listenable on my system, so much so its been playing all morning as I try it, the music output has been on point all day.
Thats why I listen to music, not for bit perfect, its such a resolution, its about the discovery and enjoyment of new music and right now Spotify is delivering.
Can Qobuz as a stand alone product deliver this - No.
yes, you can bypass the windows sound mixer, there’s probably more modern ways to do it, I’ve been using asio driver for quite a few years now and it works seamlessly