Ok another takeaway is how ageless Carly Simon is.
Qobuz did lower their prices in conjunction with the official U.S. roll-out, so your sneaky U.K. subscription was definitely more expensive than what you can now get on the U.S. plan, however I don't think it was any more expensive than TIDAL was, just more expensive than it is now here in the U.S.read this entire thread and have decided to go back to qobuz. i did the free trial in 2018 (sneakily i signed up for an UK account, though i live stateside) and liked it, though there were a few glitches. i forget why i ended up with tidal. i liked the music selection and playlists a bit better and, i think, there was a price advantage. i don't have any MQA compatible DACs and haven't noticed any better sound from MQA selections on tidal. the snake oil element definitely creeps me out so voting w my $.
TAS is not what they were when they were the little booklet type of 'zine. They're even more enamored with the difference spending money makes than Stereophile is.I haven't read audio magazines for years. Never did care for Stereophile, but enjoyed TAS back in the late 70's through late 80's. Sounds like they must have got the advertiser praise bug too? I went with Tidal because it was available and I'm too lazy to change. I will make it a point to try Qobuz soon.
"In almost 40 years of attending audio press events, only rarely have I come away feeling that I was present at the birth of a new world."Sounds like they must have got the advertiser praise bug too?
I'm gonna guess a whole bunch of people would take them up on the CD-quality plan at lesser cost, and I guess this is price posturing too, with the likes of Spotify set to roll out their CD-quality service soon.Interesting. If offered in all regions it would be especially interesting to see how many subscribers (percentage) would pay for the HiFi Plus tier.
Tidal forks MQA | Darko.Audio
The streaming service is soft-launching a CD-quality-*only* subscription tier.darko.audio
The soft launch of a new pricing structure for Tidal is upon us, starting in Australia. From Tidal’s own support pages we find details of a new set of ‘Subscription Types’:
- Premium – $11.99 AUD a month with standard sound quality (320 Kbps)
- HiFi – $17.99 AUD a month with lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps)
- HiFi Plus – $23.99 AUD a month with lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps), MasterQuality audio (up to 9216 Kbps), and immersive audio – 360 Reality Audio, Dolby Atmos Music
am i the only one who does NOT want to see the price of streaming drop? i want there to be money to pay artists. and for sound quality. and for depth of catalog. as one who is accustomed to buying cds and lps, the price of all streaming seems dirt cheap to me already.I'd love it if Spotify blew up the world and offered CD-quality at $9.99/mo. as that would probably result in game/set/match, unfortunately for Qobuz too, unless they can figure out how to make serving the niche hi-res crowd at all profitable.
Shit it's already match point if you look at Spotify's paid subscriber numbers, so they'll probably just leave their price at $14.99/mo. and increase the quality to that of CD, they don't really need to do anything else as they are already winning big, Apple Music is the only real thorn in their side at this point.
I think you are right and it is very dirt cheap for what we are getting. I guess I should amend my statement above and say I'd love it if Spotify blew up TIDAL and MQA's world at $9.99/mo.am i the only one who does NOT want to see the price of streaming drop? i want there to be money to pay artists. and for sound quality. and for depth of catalog. as one who is accustomed to buying cds and lps, the price of all streaming seems dirt cheap to me already.
If I can make another scandalous statement, I don't know if I'm particularly bothered by whether something is lossy or not. I just care if it sounds good. As the best digital recording I ever heard was from an honest to goodness, old fashioned CD, while admittedly a very good one, from great mid 50s sources, it does get hard to wrap your head around what actually matters.
I wondered if there is a business model in there? After reading this and Dming with @MikeyFresh I thought about how people like us might pay to have access to a database that tracks and indexes all the well mastered/well engineered recordings that also have all the actual highest bitrates available on the market.+1 A well mastered/engineered recording just sounds great. Unfortunately, many recordings are not.
That would be great, although the full picture could only be painted with cooperation of the record labels, on the issue of provenance.I wondered if there is a business model in there? After reading this and Dming with @MikeyFresh I thought about how people like us might pay to have access to a database that tracks and indexes all the well mastered/well engineered recordings that also have all the actual highest bitrates available on the market.
They seem to like money, so if it was a serviced that was paid for, why wouldn't they want you to know?Unfortunately that is very unlikely to ever happen, because they just don't want you to know.
Because they sell multiple different versions culled from multiple different sources and transferred at sometimes more than one sample rate. They'd like it if no one knew anything and they could just keep you guessing, and employ the FOMO to make you think you need to buy the most expensive "highest-res" version, or alternatively, buy the same thing more than once.They seem to like money, so if it was a serviced that was paid for, why wouldn't they want you to know?
Would you care to elaborate on that?It’d be really fun to watch if it did happen.