Most ARE NOT Lossless! What's the best music streaming service?

Apple Music bit perfect on astell&kern dap and qobuz/tidal

Please do an updated video. There's a lot of noise going around that Android 13 has fixed the downsampling on "newer" phones, but neither Google nor any Android manufacturer has come out and advertised/confirmed this. It seems like most people aren't aware of it yet, but apparently some have tested it to be true.

On the flip side, there's also rumours that AM lossless on Windows Apple Music Preview is a scam, and by clicking on "properties", you'll see the real bitrate.

Please confirm and do an updated video. 🙏

Tidal just updated the app to show you if a Max song is FLAC or MQA. Like, I watched this video earlier, and then tonight it updated when I opened it on my computer lol. I don't have HiFi Plus so I can't comment on it, though.

I ditched Spotify because recommendations were always the same songs and artists. How many categories dose Steve Wonder fit into?

I am very confused by change my DAC sample rate. My DAC always autp detect input sample rate. So unless windows is not outputting the correct sample rate. I don't see how could this be an issue at all

sep 23. qobuz still not available in my country

For me tidal hifi its only worth it to ear some hardstyle techno, give one awesome kick. If you hear frank sinatra aswell like i do, guess you wont notice difference. Just tried quobuz and it is not worth for not having much of my favourite songs, netheir tidal highest subscription, because not many songs use that quality... i guess just the newest pop crap

With all of the mish-mash of the streaming services it is difficult to get excited about any of it. MQA is dead and that could have been projected. It was a retirement revenue generation brainchild from Meridian. They were tired of the treadmill of developing and producing expensive, high end HiFi gear and the licensure route would have been a sweet way to go if you can wrangle it...ask Dolby or THX. Streaming, at this point, seems like a very complex solution for the convenience of listening to compressed files. No thank you...I have a large library of CD's and it is a much simpler and direct method of playback. I know that what I select is bit-perfect and not modified, truncated or compressed by a streaming service, server or computer. Then there is the whole issue of ethics and payment to the artist...I won't get started on that rabbit hole. I only use the streaming platform like I would FM radio in its day. It is a source to hear new music. For that I lean to a radio format like Radio Paradise. I want to be surprised and I want a non predictable situation with that source. It makes life interesting.

We live in a predictable, sound-bite world with our music these days. That is shallow and boring to me. If I like something on the air, I will buy the physical disc and have it to enjoy the entire album. That supports the artist, songwriter and all the people who help produce the music.

Qobuz always feel better sound than Tidal or Spotify even in my basic IEM connect to PC, but the annoying problem always about recommendation, I love listening or find new artist and Qobuz is worst for that, Tidal is my go to place while sometime having trouble to find small or local artist

Probably should pull this video and [optionally] refresh it since everything has changed since the brief 7 months ago that it came out.

Update: TIDAL gets a green check for everything now.

I think Apple music should win the sound quality category, because they are the only ones demanding a lossless file from artists. Resampling a mp3 doesn't make it a better file.

What mic / capsule did you use to record this? Apple let's you stream lossless on Windows now.

Apple Music algorhythm does not recommend pop music. Stop lying and being bias. I use it everyday and i’ve never gotten any random pop music after it finished playing an album I chose. Stop the bs and be honest.

this is interesting... is it still true that you cant stream lossless on windows? bc the option is there... and it sure makes it seem like it does something bc it will reload the whole song if you switch to lossless?

I went from tidal to qobuz and then got curious about tidal again tried the free trial... i canceled my free trial and stuck with qobuz. I cant stand how much tidal qualitys sounds so bad compared.

I use Apple Music, I discover music on my own, I don't let the service do it for me. I'm 49 and like classic rock so modern music isn't my thing.

here from crinacle

Amazon's offline playback mode does not work.
I've just left, probably to spotify

In my opinion apple music is the best.

BTW bit-perfect playback can be overrated, especially if your device isn't actually good at 44.1KHz playback. Also beware of intermodulation distortion introduced by ultrasonics in Hi-Res audio.

If lossless as in unaltered master is what you care, unfortunately you won't get that for most titles from any imprint under the Universal Music Group on any of the major services mentioned. Not Qobuz. Not TIDAL without MQA. Try to get the lossless files of the same spec from any two of them and compare their raw (decoded, or more precisely, decompressed) PCM streams (or their MD5 hash or so) and if they are not same, it means the masters you got (from both of the services) have been "watermarked". Tidal was also known to be serving some weirdly altered masters for quite some titles from the Warner Music Group. (I don't think it's about MQA because it happens on old titles that has only been released at CD-spec.) Sony titles are most if not all "lossless" on this aspect AFAIK.

If I could please get a response! Golden Sound said that Apple Music that IOS changes sample rate but MAC OS doesn’t, Is that true for IPad OS?

Doing qualitative comparisons is ok but you may want to consider a scoring framework so we can have a more valuable relative comparison.

Shock, Horror! Companies being "loose" with the truth! So the essential end result here is that the consumer is being connned in to paying more for a level of service that doesn't actually provide the quality level they pay for. Of course the companies will say, our stream is lossess, the problem is ... <insert pathetic excuse here about your end device/client>. I have some sympathy with the excuse that the end device is at fault, but not when it's the companies very own client that is being used and there are technical ways to guarantee the output is truly lossless. To do otherwise is just laziness and a total disrespect of the paying customer. That said, these companies are fully aware of said limitations and yet they do not make you aware of them before you pay for the higher tier service. So they are lying by ommission, which is still a lie.
The bottom line is that there is simply no excuse for it today. Lossless Hi-Res audio has been technically possible in every audio hardware device available on the market (ok maybe barring your typical walmart childs toy) for well over a decade now (by which I mean the DAC chips in literally everything capable of audio can support hi-res conversion). The fact that we don't get hi-res (or lossless CD PCM) is down to lazy/poor software implimentations (or the streaming service bareface lying about serving a compressed audio format when the customer is paying for lossess).
I only found out after subscribing to Deezers hi-fi service (where they claim lossless CD PCM) that Deezer's app on Roku devices won't actually serve that quality to my DAC. Of course Deezer blame Roku, which is bull as clearly the Roku device has the capablity to support far higher quality audio streams.

All of this is just plain contempt for their paying customers, as it literally costs them nothing* to implement a client capable of supporting all the necessary bit rates their file library contains. It's the server storage and network bandwidth that costs them more for higher bit rate audio and that's the reason they charge more for it, but if they're already using the higher bit rate file and serving it over the network towards the client then they're not saving anything by not providing a compatible client to receive it.
*Ok it's not nothing, but it's a totally insignificant one off cost (and certainly no higher support cost than not doing so) in comparison to their compute and network costs.

Also airplay 2 is lossy and convertes to AAC. Airplay 1 is strangely lossless

Most music isn’t recording analog today anyways, making most modern lossless music pointless, because it’s still compressed even if you didn’t technically lose any quality

Gdggg

I use Amazon HD on my FIIO M11 Plus which runs on Android. As a certified high-res player I would expect the M11 to play high res material when it's fed to him. Am I wrong with this consumption? This would be such a shame! And if so: Does anyone know which streaming service runs as lossless as required in the M11 Plus? I would highly appreciate any recommendation. Thanks in advance!

potify is he OG everything else is copy and paste... just needs lossless and option to integrate with dj software...

LOVE to QOBUZ!!!!!! They give the most money per stream than any other platform!!!

They are convenient should be called. Circle K. 7-Eleven, AmPm. Corner Market.

Hate to watch these traffic polices doing videos

can apple music lossless be played bitperfect in android using a dac(i am thinking truthear shio) or not? I tried to do some research but there is a lot of confusion, some articles say we can use dac for lossless, bitperfect playback without re sampling while using a dac but some others say that you cannot listen to bitperfect lossless on android even with an external dec.?PS: i use oneplus 11r, if that matters.

Windows now has lossless on Apple Music

Spotify is my favorite cause of playlists

This is really a non-issue. The VAST MAJORITY of people will never be able to distinguish between a lossless WAV file and a high quality MP3, even with high quality equipment and headphones. And it only gets worse as you get older. Thinking that our ears are really that good and we need only the best quality files, devices and interconnects is just a placebo that makes us feel special or superior because we've spent more money for that .0001% THD setup. Take the NPR test on your best equipment and see for yourself: How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?

Would be nice if the Qobuz desktop client actually worked... Can't log into the account even. Only works on my phone.

I hope you will stay alive after this video 😂

Well, that explains a lot. Qobuz is my streaming service of choice, as the others never sound that great on my system. Now I know why. Thank you for the video sir!

Library size is useless if you are not able actually explore music I explain Dezeer for example you type for other nonmainstream music and the first letter of your search in usually the only results you will see , imposible to actually search for new music for example French music you’ll get french title everything results specially somebody’s else’s playlist the odds to be able to find a french artist are annoying you have to sit and scroll and scroll to actually be able to explore some names and discover new music I don’t care for other peoples playlists I think I should be able to search myself and if you don’t know the artist name good luck with the search . Spotify does the same thing I had them for a bit that is why I left them and as for Dezeer I already started looking for a replacement do you know a best runner up with a real love for music this is just nuts

Hey! We need a new video about Tidal!Tidal has updated (august 2023) their different sound quality indicators. The highest one now says "Max", and then is new mumbo jumbo on the homepage! It seems they changed like every description, so this video is more or less obsolete regarding Tidal. I think.

The only issue I have on my iphone and ipad is that while my dragonfly black changes lighting to Amber to indicate high res in Amazon HD, I am only seeing it light green (44.1) in Apple Music, although I have set quality to high-res lossless. I know that lossless does not mean 96khz but I tried to find songs in high-res and could not. Am I doing something wrong? I tried a couple of songs on both platforms and I can say the Amazon HD version does sound at least a bit better.

I just want a streaming service that has lossless or HD which is not lining the pockets of Apple or some Rapper.!

i just use ibroadcast and use my own files ❤