[laurentlbm]

I switched to Tidal a few months ago after getting sick of them pushing podcasts non-stop and some other annoyances. Tidal is fine, but I do miss all the user-created playlists from Spotify.

I also still sometimes buy music through Bandcamp if it isn't available on Tidal or if I want to support the artist.

[tpmx]

Where is the Tidal 3rd party streaming API/SDK? Or any API at all, for that matter?

(Certainly not here: https://tidal.com/browse/artist/4481527)

[cyberpunk]

Tidal does seem to have some integrations (at least roon and volumio)

MQA is largely snake oil; they do have some nice sounding masters though.

Apple Music now has hires audio also. I’m yet to decide between the two. Apple Music is edging Tidal out for me due to the quality of their curated playlists

[tpmx]

Roon and Volumio both label themselves as audiophile audio players. I guess that's why I hadn't heard about any of them.

Also, the term audiophile has turned into a red flag, at least to me.

Isn't Apple Music hi-res/lossless audio (ALAC) also snake oil when compared to high bitrate psychoacoustic codecs such as those used by e.g. Spotify Premium?

https://www.macworld.com/article/346595/no-one-actually-need...

[cyberpunk]

Yeah, there’s a lot of nonsense around. I still really like the sound of my grados&tube amp though, even if a lot of that is a kind of self delusion ;)

A lot of the hires stuff around hasn’t just been ripped from CDs though, or is mastered differently and to my ears some tracks clearly sound better than from CD but it’s all subjective.

Audiophiles aren’t hurting anyone but their bank balances, and we get some nice headphones trickling down to those of us happy enough with <1k a set ;)

[jirf_dev]

I use Spotify Premium and Apple Music. I consistently find the audio quality of Apple Music to be miles ahead of Spotify. I don’t even use any audiophile-level gear.

[8ytecoder]

The article calls all lossless compression snake oil. Personally, I do like Dolby Atmos on Apple Music - especially for Classical.

[tpmx]

Personally I was convinced by double-blind tests done about 20 years ago. It's been a while, but I think it was by heise.de (with the c't magazine).

[cyberpunk]

I think if you have spent the time, money and research getting good sounding equipment that you like, it’s kinda automatic to also pick a streaming service which claims to offer higher quality even if you’re aware that you’re imagining it.

I have about 2000 gbp worth of headphone gear (I’m not an audiophile, but I do like good sound) and I managed to convince myself tidal sounds better than Spotify..

Is it bullshit? Probably but at the end of the day, there’s a tenner difference and meh, it’s far less important than my amp or cans.

[teawrecks]

FYI plex has tidal integration. I use it so my personal track library and tidal can be accessed from the same place.