![]() ![]() Tidal & Sonos is unstable for large (greater than 3 Zone set ups)Īs a result of point three above, and the fact that it only offered an advantage in 1/8th of my set up I shall not be renewing my Tidal subscription as it does not offer (me) sufficient value for money.Ĩ Sonos Zones on S2 consisting of: Play:1, 2x One SL (paired), One (2nd Gen), Play:3, Five, Move, Amp, Port with a Boost connected to my router and NAS box.Arcam’s 15 year old DACs are noticeably better than the DAC in Sonos’ Port.Tidal HiFi > FLAC > Spotify Premium but only on high-end set ups.To save you reading all of the below, my conclusions and findings are as follows: My initial findings are below and I’d be very interested if anyone else has carried out a similar exercise. The problem is they place a higher priority on ease-of-use than raw quality, should be equal IMO.Having had a Spotify Premium account for many years now and never been entirely happy that I was getting the most out of the speakers in my listening room I took advantage of the Tidal subscription offer and did a month’s trial of their HiFi subscription over Christmas. Overall Apple has some very talented people working on their audio products. I did feel quality took a massive upswing when lossless was implemented but I'm in the camp of redbook music being good enough so I haven't stressed the hi-rez requiring an external USB DAC. Most of my use of the service is exploratory or for what is essentially background music so I'm not as likely to be picky. ![]() I can upload my files if the music isn't on streaming and play on the go without hogging device storage. Honestly Apple Music works well for me, I actually have a family plan so my parents and sister can bark at their Alexa with ad free music and my GF can play music in the car. I have yet to try a newer Airplay 2 enabled streamer as all signs seem to indicate they are essentially third party Airport Express devices. IIRC the Apple TV will still resample everything to 48kHz PCM but using both the Gen 2 and Gen 1 ATV4K as a "streamer" has been a bit more successful for me than the aging Airport Express Gen2's I have that drop signal like crazy in my place. Maybe Android or desktop apps are better.Ĭlick to expand.I do think you can actually do something more like the latter solution with use of the Apple TV for Apple Music, either as the direct player with it's remote or using your phone to control it. But good god the app is garbage on my iPhone. Qobuz does seem to have the biggest collection of 24/192 tracks. If I had to rank the apps based on the app itself, user interface, search, discovering new music, etc, I’d rank them this way, best to worst: But I do really enjoy the full hi-res Apple Music when my iPhone is connected directly to my portable DAC, and over headphones can absolutely hear an enjoyable difference between the hi-res services and Spotify. On the AirPort Express, I can’t really tell much of a difference between Apple Music and Spotify. The only drawback for me is that Airplay2 can’t take advantage of Apple Music’s full hi-res, which seems like an odd choice. And a good and growing collection of multichannel audio, which I like using on my Apple TV connected to my Sonos surround system.īut I listen to stereo music on my proper stereo, streaming via AirPort Express. App about as good as Spotify’s, and sound quality as good as the others. I think Apple Music is the best of all worlds. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |