My wife is the least audiophile person in the world. As long as she likes the song, she really doesn't care whether it's played on a kitchen radio or on a high-end system. I recorded a mix tape for her for Christmas. All songs came from my streaming service ... except for one that wasn't available online in the desired version. I recorded it from CD. My surprise was great when, while listening to the tape, she said: "That song sounds kind of different than the others. Somehow… better". What can I say?! If even my wife hears it, then there is definitely a difference in quality.

I truly enjoy your vids. Thanks for taking the time and energy to share. Here’s hoping ‘23 is a banner year for the McGowans.

Only speaking about Tidal, I turned off "normalization" and noticed significant improvement in overall quality of sound.

I have always enjoyed and learned much from your videos. I am 70 years old with Tinnitus and VOR…so as a person I can not be that discerning audiophile has long gone, but I still am a serious and discerning listener. . I started listening to music as a love and passion since I was five, my dad was really into it and thus I never lost that love. I am not going to come across as any expert here but the gentleman’s quandary can come from so many sources or combination of sources. I spent 40 years in IT and communications. Yes, a network, shoot your 110v power source, neighbors and your wall chargers, phones, washing machines, ceiling fans, LED lights etc can add significant noise to any signal. But to think todays high speed internet is 'the' culprit to adding a significant or even perceived degradation in quality is a stretch. Yes, in a way it can but it would not be in such a way that the fidelity has been compromised in any meaningful way. There are exceptions but modern technology has so many error corrections the actual loss of the bits/data along the way would be rare or make that difference be rare. Again, most interference after it has arrived to your streamer will most likely be local. As a long time HAM radio communicator I watch this stuff on my equipment RF signaling equipment. Today in the electronic world we are surrounded by unimaginable man made RF noise pollution. A $7,000 radio and $7,000 amplifier Ham radio quality is measured on its ability to detect and remove this garbage. I know when my neighbor three houses down turns on her cheap ceiling fan. I can tell when the relays in the washing machine turn on to squirt water in the washer. I have to unplug my wireless desk side phone charger. Just touching the surface here with the RF garage that can and if you have Amazon cables or noisy AC for power, it can truly add to the loss in fidelity of your sound system, much more so than the ‘Internet’. But just saying it’s the music being streamed over the Internet causing the problem, if you have a good high speed service, would be the last place to look. Someone commented on this vid about the source of the master or remastered. I personally feel that is one of the largest issues or maybe just differences between what is streamed compared to CDs or remastered LPs etc. I find and hear this difference (having CDs, LP and Quboz). Sometimes Quboz sounds better than an excellent condition original LP and vice versa. Comparing my Dark Side of the Moon album that I got in I think 1971 is superior to the the new remastered I got off Amazon last year. That is literally crap!!!! But Quboz Dark Side of the Moon is fine. But other original release LPs sound better than Quboz and again, some do not. So I think where the master or remaster came from plays a big roll here. Second, DACs… The things that turn our digital into analog audio. I know you have far more experience than I do for sure but I have three and what a massive difference they make on streaming from so called high fidelity digital streaming sources. I use a BluOS as the streamer, but I do NOT use their DAC. I bypass the BluOS DAC. I have a really nice DAC built into my Anthem preamp , I bypass that too. I go straight from the streamer to the REM DAC and analog from there to the preamp. This is like night and day compared to using the DAC on BluOS, I mean very large difference in fidelity. The Anthem DAC is superior to the BluOS DAC…actually propably good enough for the majority of us. But it was not until I listened and configured the REM for my ears. It is not massive but it surely made a difference. So , as you know DACS play a big roll here. Great topic but there is so much going on here from where did the master come from, what DAC are you using, how good is your cartridge, man made RF interference everywhere, hearing loss. So in conclusion for me, I can not say any one source is superior or less than the other. As long as you stick with a NON-WIRELESS streamer (yes that can add substantial noise to the fidelity) and your source is hardwired to your router, you stick to, pick your flavor (I use Quboz), a good streaming source. Sometimes my LPs are better, sometimes Quboz is better ( I honestly gave up on CDs though I own them).. I will say this for sure at 70 years old and listening to my $30,000 of stereo and custom acoustics installed (wow acoustics that made a Hugh difference more than anything) is that in my 20s with far less superior audio equipmnet , it just sounded better back then haha. Our most important ability to comment and make comparisons in fidelity comes down to preference and how good or bad your ears have/will become.

First KZfaq channel I'm watching in the New Year. Always worth it! :)

I agree with what you are saying here Paul, and I don’t have anything to add on that issue, but also I’d like to bring up the fact that you could have or anyone actually could have a particular music CD and depending on which version they have, an original, a remaster, or even which remaster, and when and where/how, they’re not always all the same in terms of sound quality and, in my experience, a lot of times they didn’t make it better .. that’s another annoying thing to think about.. it’s just sad that a lot of the people don’t have the equipment that allows them to hear the difference, but for the people that can, it’s a nightmare!

Happy New Year to you Paul and everybody ! That's why I keep collecting CD, SACDs, DVD-Audio, Blu-ray Audio ! Cheers !

Happy New Year to Paul and the PSA team 🎉

Thanks for the download your songs to get better quality suggestions below. I immediately tried that and compared the Tidal download vs the CD rip of the same CD I have. Previously the CD rip was audibly better. Now with the Tidal downloaded version they sound identical after I AB compared then. All this through Zenstream via Tidal connect. Quite a big improvement so thanks.

The streaming sevices are all about LUF's ( loudness units full scale), so the music is measured and altered for volume. There is no standard dB max or min across the services. In my view this is what people are perceiving as inferior sound quality as compared to their own CD because they are messing with the dynamic range of recorded music.

Followed Paul’s advice, I added a new CD transport to my high end DAC. The quality of my CD collection played on this is WAY better than any of my streaming services (TIDAL and Apple Music). The detail within the huge dynamic range is extraordinary.

Dear Paul, I am new to audiofile world; your videos provides a source of learning and valuable insight. Many thanks!

Paul, just thank you so much. For all you do, your stories keep me alive.

I have always wondered why even a basic cd player sounds better than my Tidal. Thanks for bringing this up

My system: Auralic Aries G1.1 streamer ; Chord M-Scaler - Chord TT2; Music First Audio V2 Classic preamp; March Audio P421 Purify monoblock power amps; Martin Logan ESL-X speakers. I had a Cambridge Audio CXC CD transport for a short while but sold it as it sounded worse than locally stored flac and wav files stored on a usb flash drive connected to the streamer. I just can't hear any difference between the locally stored wac and flac and streamed 44.1/16 CDs from Qobuz; streamed hires files (in general) have an uplift in SQ compared to the flac and wav files. Interestingly CDs ripped via EAC sound better compared to the Auralic inbuilt CD ripper. One other (very small) improvement resulted from the inclusion of a iFi iPurifier 3 connected from streamer to M-Scaler. I may consider trying a better CD transport on a home trial basis if there is a prospect of wringing out a bit more SQ from a digital source; however, until I can hear an appreciable improvement I'll eschew the claimed superiority of the silver discs for now.

I knew it!! Glad you're exploring this and great question posed by the viewer - I've exactly the same experience. All things being equal, playing via Tidal doesn't sound as good as playing my Flac's. I'm not disagreeing with anyone else's suggestions (I've tried download and normalisation off etc etc) - my experience is I can't get near my Flacs. My system isn't even particularly high end for the community. This isn't a question getting a better hardware, cables or room treatment - it's a question of 'What am I paying Tidal for' (library aside).

I think it does come down to the source material rather than streaming per se. I have some CDs that sound marginally better but with other titles the streaming sounds better. I always noticed a reduction in quality (usually soundstage and dynamics) if streaming without the Audirvāna program which talks straight to the external DAC without any computer OS port handling to get in the way. I find Audirvāna an essential piece of the streaming jigsaw.

Paul. Can you provide a link to your air lens. Thank you. Keep up that great work. Happy new yeR

I remember those albums of Nirvana on Qobuz. I own the original CDs and my GF the remastered versions. Some years ago Qobuz only had the remastered versions online. I compared them with my GFs ripped CDs and every single bit was identical. Later Qobuz added the original masters. I compared them with my ripped CDs and every single bit was exactly the same. If there's a difference, it's either - a different master (like mine and my GFs CDs) - played in non exclusive mode (on Windows the internal mixer resampling) - played over a different DAC (CD has to be played digitally to the same dac !) - played over a lossy transport (bluetooth, ...), or a noise transport (jitter, ...) I never experienced lower quality with Qobuz compared to my own collection and I consider my hifi system to be quite hi-end (focal sopra 2s here) Tidal (mqa) is something else. A 24 bit mqa is 15 bit audio (+1 bit mqa signal + 8 bit lossy compresse hi-res estimates). A 24/48k mqa decompressed to a lossy 15/96 max. The rest is upsampling to the maximum the dac can handle and adding nothing. The number on the dac display is meaningless too, as it shows what the master was BEFORE it was reduced to mqa. So if you hear mqa sounds worse, that's why. (But I don't have to tell you Paul, I saw your meaning about mqa 🙂)

Great topic 😊... luvit 👍

I'm currently investigating this. I had problems earlier with my stream and I started tinkering around. I ran direct connection from my modem/router as a bench. Then I tinkered around with an external USB post antenna replacing the wifi antenna with a bigger one I had laying around and that maxed out the signal. I had a solid 54 Mbps (former stream was 3 bars). From then on my stream from Apple and Amazon unlimited sound fantastic. I tested CD vs stream adjusting my volume with a DB meter to specific marked points in a song. After doing that output match I could not tell the difference in the stream and CD on two direct comparisons. More testing to do, but I could not really notice a difference running through my SMSL DAC.

Hi Paul - wish you a happy new year and by the way: I am currently building a system that outputs all digital sources via just one DAC. I need this "standard" music source for a small development around a ClassD amplifier. Luckily, so far I have found that the sources, transport routes and compression methods have no influence on the sound if the file then got to me without any bit errors. To avoid jitter, etc., I use an old Intel server with 2 XEON CPUs and 138GB RAM, in which the music file has to be complete before I play it. The fact that CD players, streamers and whatever else sound different is due to the fact that different DACs and different electronics are used for playback. So it will be impossible to hear the same music with no audible differences between the CD and the sound card. 🙂 Andreas

I'm wondering if the loss in quality is during streaming from a service (qobuz), or is it in the files they storage itself? in the first case the sound quality would be good if you download/buy the musicfile from the service! anyone knows more about this?

Interconnect quality might also contribute to the problem. When I first got a streamer I connected it to my DAC using a generic USB cable I happened to have on hand. The result was not good. Suspecting the source of the problem, I replaced the generic USB cable with a fairly high-end one and the improvement was dramatic, almost but not quite as good as playing a CD or SACD.

With the advancement in the codecs BT is getting better... I can actually live with it now for casual listening

Happy new year Paul

A little fun with the KEF driver in the background since I watched a video from the Norwegian hifi magazine "Stereo+" youtube channel wisiting the KEF factory😝

I use Logitech Media Server + Squeezelite (running on PiCorePlayer) as my music streamer. I find that the settings of streaming buffer makes a hell of a difference to the resulting sound quality. I use 64000Kb stream and 192000Kb output and I find that the difference between locally stored flac files and tidal (non MQA) virtually vanished

I'd love to hear what others are doing. Here's my current set up. I started streaming and purchasing hi-res and CD quality music through Qobuz. I stored all of my CD's and purchases on a Bluesound Vault. I then purchased an NAD M10v2 to integrate with the Vault. I have nmy NAD CD player connected to the NAD M10 with RCA's and the Vault could be connected but it isn't because it's sending the music to the NAD through my home network. So far I can't hear a difference listening to a given album via the wireless Vault connection or the CD player. The biggest difference is how good/bad the recording is and again it sounds good/bad using either method I described.

Qobuz lets you download and store their files offline (Tidal as well, but in the mobile device app as far as I know) - when I playback these offline files, my DAC claims to be reading the same bit rate etc. off the file as advertised by Qobuz. I do this wired (on a short path) - of course, the files originally came to me from the Qobuz servers and data stream. Is my DAC being fooled when reading the resolution of the offline files? One thing I did notice, when I downloaded all my identical Qobuz and Tidal playlists as offline files (in the highest res offered) to my phone, the Qobuz library amounted to many, many more GB of storage. I don't know, maybe this is because Tidal hi-res is MQA and that packet is smaller than Qobuz FLAC? Either way, I thought it a bit suspicious as fair number of my playlists were at CD resolution only as hi-res was not available for some of the artists I like on either platform (or the original recordings were early digital at 16/44) .

In my streaming apps I go into the settings and tell it to always use highest possible quality. I think it does sound better than "standard quality" but idk if it's cd quality or better.

Paul, as I was listening to your explanation of storage and transmission, could this be the real reason behind MQA? I'm a Qobuz user, so I don't have a dog in this hunt, but it does raise an interesting idea that as time goes on and music services are pushed to store even more recordings.

Interesting video! not sure it would be ethical if streaming services that claim to offer cd quality cut costs in that manner. I lately put much of my music in lossless ALAC format on my iPhone, which I airplay to an old apple tv which feeds it into my amp's DAC. Don't have a CD player so this is the best digital experience I can get. Any thoughts on this method? Would going over wifi and through all these devices somehow deteriorate the quality of lossless audio and would a cd player improve my listening experience?

There has to be compression somewhere down the line. The data goes through so many servers with so many variables along the way. On top of that expense, and connection quality. Best just straight downloading the file, or buy physical media.

Me too. It's a big difference for me as an audiophile, when i play dvd format and swapping it with streaming serv. (both use rca) there's something missing, the dynamics, the lowest and the highest frequency. The bass in dvd format is more ample, and in the high frequencies you can really the ping in hi hats and it's more life like

This video has been a real discovery, especially because you can get the metadata of the discs you want to copy. I downloaded Exact Audio Copy, paid the 7 dollars for the alternate database for the metadata, and was quite surprised: the difference in sound between these wav files extracted from a Deutsche Grammophon CD and the "lossless" version, especially the higher resolution ones, offered by the streaming services is pronounced. They resuscitated my thousands of CDs with extraordinary versions I have been collecting for years. The same happened to friends with very large and respectable classical and jazz collections. In a while, streaming services will probably catch up with what I listen to now; however, in the meantime, many records that I didn't even listen to will come back to me, among other things, because I don't even have a decent CD player.

Happy New Year to everyone at PS Audio. This was an interesting question you answered today. I recently switched from using my IFI Go Blue from exclusively in Bluetooth mode ( Apple iPhone using Amazon Music HD) ..and it’s nice . I recently switched from Bluetooth to directly wired from the iPhone ( with the abomination of Apple connectors) and WOW…is it a night and day difference..nope ..but there’s more space , more dynamics and a sense of it just bringing more to my ears . Take care and may ‘23 be a good one for all.

I use a Naim Uniti Atom to stream Tidal and my local FLACS. and can't say I notice any real drop off between the two or the CD played through a transport. Although I don't get too hung up about ultimate SQ, I'm more of a music first listener. When I want the best SQ I play Vinyl.

I often find albums on Qobuz that have been remastered and sounds much better than my original CD, a good example would L.A. Woman or Monty Alexander live in Montreux (1976) very well recorded maybe I should purchase the download to compare but my current set-up (no hard drive server does not allow this test). I understand this is mostly due to earlier CD not so great quality rather than answering the question yet I’m really happy with the overall Qobuz sound quality (Wilson speakers, Moon Audio streamer dac)

Happy New year Paul

Nowadays you can stream CD quality or better with lossless FLAC. Technically a 192kHz 24 bits track via modern streaming (such as Amazon Music HD) is much superior to CD or DSD quality. If it sounds inferior it’s because the source track is inferior. MQA, MP3 or other lossy formats of course will be inferior. Perhaps the truth is a combination of streaming providers still haven’t cleaned up some of their music repository to CD files and some files intentionally being optimized to mobile devices with more compression for better per device revenue (more clicks). The notion that there are data errors, jitter or processing noise involved was valid 2 decades ago but not nowadays where DACs can manage the flow asynchronously and ‘modern processors crunch FLAC files as a tiny effort. We gotta talk about today.

"I'm not gonna start..." *immediately starts*

The problem is always the same. Jitter and electrical noise. I used filters, audiophile switches with clk and in the most cases they clean the sound, better silences, better dynamic but always seamed to be lost some naturally, musicality, until i hookup my server directly by optical fiber the sound it started to have a much greater cleanliness with some silences like black holes. With this experience, I came to the conclusion that I was doing bandages before and now I have treated the disease. The optical fiber, being immune to RFI and EMI, is not affected, taking the signal directly to the server always clean. Today is very difficult to me distinguish the streaming from flacs or wav.

Great Paul...thank you, George Romania

Hi Paul, love your videos. I have a really dumb question. Since FLAC and .wav seem to have the same specs (44.1/16 bit), will there be a quality difference if I have enough space to rip to .wav instead of FLAC? Thanks!

I have a substantial vinyl collection and an even more substantial -CD collection, vut, these days I stream the vast majority of my music, it’s just so damned convenient. I have a highly resolving system incorporating a premium, state of the art independent DAC. I subscribe to multiple streaming services but, Apple seems to be the favourite when my streamer is searching for tracks, albums or play lists. Yes, I have had friends and family round to help me do a blind test between a track played from a CD and that same track streamed from Apple. If I listen intensely, I occasionally hear minuscule differences. That doesn’t make one format better than the other, it just means they are different. I do however find that if my streamer is connected via my home broadband network, there is a notable deterioration in sound quality compared with using a mobile router. There could be 101 explanations for that phenomena. By the way Paul, I can’t speak for other streaming services, but I do know that Apple has a library in excess of 76 million tracks. Just as an aside, I’ve also blind tested friends and family, playing the same track on vinyl and CD. The majority preferred vinyl. That doesn’t make vinyl better, it just means that on my system, the majority of friends and family would choose vinyl.

What you said is what I've heard for years about streamed music. It makes sense as portability dealt music fidelity a serious blow years ago and settling for less became the norm.....till the young folk brought vintage equipment back.

Paul, like alway, thanks for the discussion stage you provide. So, Qobuz or Tidal on simple master CD quality comparison. no MQA no “salt added”. Over a wireless Roon transport “jitterless” endpoint. To a not expensive but capable modem DAC via I2S. Plus any resolving sound chain. I will “decree” that is imposible to distinguish for any human alive!. I have done my own ripping in the past and found those differences. That ignite my quest to get the simplest and more “transparent” way to reproduce from these services as there is no hidden or cutting corners agenda, is as always the need to understand the technology and its application. This has been my recent experience as a seasoned audiophile with the appearance of these services, comparing Vinyl, CDs, Rips, data transports etc over 35 years. Thanks to all

I bought a cd from yatao and a wav download from the same album of them. I burn a cd with the downloaded songs and then when I received the original CD compare both.... The original CD was better sounding than the downloaded versión. Streaming and download music are practical. But with time I became aware the sound quality is relative. And most of the time depend of so many factors in the audio chain. From the recording to the final system that will play the song.

Paul, you just explained why MQA is used by Tidal (besides being a copyright-protection-system which only works with expensive DACs)! 😉

Like any system you hear the weakest link. If you download the steamed files for offline use, they often sound heaps better. The internet itself (as a live stream to your modem is often the weak link.

1) Similar to a vinyl rig, IME it takes care to get streaming to be on par with local file playback. Your modem, router, switch, streamer and all their power supplies' quality (or lack thereof) matter. Cable and unit isolation also matters. 2) Can local file playback equal CD playback? Yes, but it depends on the quality of your DAC versus your CD/SACD player. This is my experience with a very resolving system and much experimentation. 3) Most people don't perform equal caliber CD player to streamer comparisons, with many folks assuming their CD player's USB input (using the internal DAC) is as good as the CD player's primary (more sonically optimized) playback stacking the odds against streaming.

The largest incremental improvement in what I hear in my music from all my individual equipment investments came from taking my favorite streaming music on Qobuz and buying the files from Qobuz and putting them on my server and playing them wired directly end-to-end (without WiFi, Bluetooth, IP, LAN, WAN, Internet, etc.). Further, as a former top exec at a global publically traded data company, I share your view that if it saves storage or bandwidth costs, it happens, no matter how well hidden or adamant the claims are to the contrary.

I have very little interest in streaming. As someone that has accumulated a vast library that I keep on my hard drives, I would, in a minute, go for an integrated with DAC that takes input from a dedicated SSD to feed my speakers. Two things have kept me from doing that. 1) It seems the industry, for some reason, does not want us to, so finding the components is ridiculously difficult (Lumin M1?, Innuos Pulse?). 2) There doesn't seem to be an interface solution, except to use a spare laptop or your phone and a ridiculously expensive service like Roon. In my case, I think it would be nice to navigate my library on my TV.

What if we rip the CDs? And we “stream” them from our NAS or from an attached hard drive? Does it still have noise? Is so, how do we play music files for the best sound? Maybe using something like the Eversolo dump a8. It can have an internal M2 NVMe SSD… would that be better than any thing that is using Ethernet and/or usb connections?

If you have RCA inputs in your amp ( main in) which is direct amp signal , you can put outputs 6.3 mm banana from sound card which already have DAC preamp into that rca main in amp inputs and you WILL get better sound quality from spotify or youtube .

The stramer is more important than many people belive, I just upgraded my pi hifiberry digi+ pro to a Ian Canada Pi build, and the difference is night and day. I spoke with a friend about it and we made an anlogy to turntable, where the streamer is the pickup, and dac is the deck/pickup amp. The streamer I build is battery and supercapacitor based in powersupply, reclocker and transport and it is not a small defference, it's actually quite huge both with streaming and local files.

In the early days of computer audio, there was a holy grail of Pure Music version. It only ran on an older version of Mac OS and if you upgraded the Mac OS, it broke that particular release of Pure Music. That version sounded amazing. I stuck with that version of MacOS (not upgrading/updating) for as long as I could. The developer of Pure Music was asked about what he did - and from memory, he said he worked on power optimisation - reducing power spikes. It was a monumental effort and I don't think he ever tried doing that again. Coincidentally, when the CTO of ESS was talking about how his company transitioned from computer audio (with great SNR) to audiophile audio, he found that in the blind tests he conducted with various engineering samples, the audiophile designers always chose the versions where the various states in the digital-audio conversion had minimal power spikes as it transitioned from different states - and not how quickly it reached the final state. On my own testing, many years ago, I had a Wadia iTransport that you could dock an iPhone (then a 3GS or 4?) to, and it would output the digital audio files through a SPDIF output that you could send to any DAC. At that time, my DAC of choice was the Ayon CD-5S which coincidentally had a built in CD transport (I2S). I played the same file (ripped from a CD) through an iPhone on the iTransport and also directly through the built in CD player. The CD player won. But on the advice of a friend, he asked me to rip it in WAV. I had previously used Apple Lossless. This time, the WAV version got me a lot closer to the CD. Everyone told me that converting from FLAC to WAV in real time took so little CPU cycles that it couldn't possibly affect the sound - but maybe there was just those transient power spikes, however short, that made a difference. I remember the original Digital Lens on the old PerfectWave Bridge used to implement something similar, didn't it Decode to WAV ahead of time and put it in a buffer to be sent out. Is something like that in the new Air Lens?

Hi Paul, you just hitting the nail, let saying there is B3 CD player and Ripping, WiFi, etc. This B3 engineering and manufactured in UK by Martin Brennan. Should you be able to give more information about this B3 CD player. Are they compression file as well? Compression is the files we compressed to smaller size which we lost the original size- as well sound quality lost.

Let's assume for a minute that you're using a computer, the stream is bit-for-bit the same as a CD rip, and it still sounds different. We have to ask what else is different? Is there two different pieces of software you are using to play the FLAC vs the stream? If so, are they using the same driver stack to communicate with the DAC? (WASAPI exclusive, ASIO, kernel streaming, DirectSound) Are they resampling to the DAC's sample rate using different methods? When I used Tidal, there was definitely a difference between the CD rip and the stream. And not just the mqa files, as those we know are not bit-for-bit. I have since switched to Qobuz, (I will hold my tongue about Tidal for now) and, after making sure Qobuz and Foobar were both using ASIO, I could no longer hear a difference. I suppose there should be should have been some difference as Foobar was set up to do its own resampling, but it wasn't big enough to notice right away so I did not do any further testing.

One thing I notice is that any song I 'stream' has a particular quality but when I download that same exact song and play it from the download it sounds noticeably a lot better. All my settings are set to stream and download at the highest quality available and I have very fast internet. Not sure why there is such a noticeable difference but it seems to have to be in the 'streaming' process itself.

Equipment differences, streamers vs cd players, internal power supplies, caps etc, then DAC’s internal vs external are among the first layer of controllable differences, so it is hard to compare apples and oranges. I find even if I stream and upsample to 192Khz using the dac inside my cd player - an ARC Ref CD9 - the cd sound’s obviously better in every way. I’ve enjoyed streaming well recorded tracks and they sound good but cd’s sound so much more dynamic.

One extreme example I've experienced; streaming Gowan's album Strange Animal via Tidal to a Naim streamer. In the Naim App it displays the stream as flac, but under Roon (same album/tidal/steamer) it's signal path states the source as mp3. Under normal circumstances, I would assume aggressive Flac compression to the original content, adaptive compression in the delivery, and higher processing workload unpacking in the streamer degrading replay. Just rip CDs or buy Wav/Aiff downloads instead!

Hi, Paul. Your channel is amazing. I have a question regarding this topic: does streaming data have the clock data encompassed? Or each streamer has its own clock to do the CDR? It can be a sensible source of jitter, I guess.

There are 2 factors to consider. 1. The fidelity of the data. Is it bit perfect from cd transport, a network device or a commercial streaming service. The first two are identical. The streamer may be using a lossy compression or volume leveling 2. The quality of the 'transport' which determines timing jitter and noise levels that accompany the data. The 'AirLens' or other devices will supply the data with less noise and a given phase noise. Given a bit perfect data stream, the data stream should be better than from a conventional CD Transport given your DAC doesn't have the same function. I rip cds to a network hdd and play using a streamer with very good galvanic isolation and a SOTA clock. Playback is far better than from a CD player or transport. If I access a streaming service and find inferior sound quality, then it is the fidelity of the data that has been impacted. AirLens as Paul describes it would be similar. But it cannot correct a data stream that is not bit perfect as supplied from a streaming service.

A couple of controlled tests: 1) The Tidal app for Android has a download feature, where one may download the particular music for later offline playing. One can then do listening tests streaming it vesus not streaming of the exact music track. 2) I have also done direct A to B comparisons of TIDAL streaming vs CD files that had been copied to my local laptop. I could not tell the difference for this particular music, but I will try additional tests.

Is it possible that there is a hum or a noise that can be picked up during transmission that can be permanently imprinted even if it's not recorded? Or could that noise be coming from the server it's stored on?

One of the things that was touched on was the hostile environment an stream has to traverse in order to reach your system. There are many outside factors that can affect it through all that copper/fiber it has to travel through. That being said, I listen to rips (FLAC) off a music server, CD, and stream. To be honest to my ear the sound quality seem to be on equal footing. The only time I hear something that has a noticeable improvement is contrasting a well engineered SACD versus a High Res stream from Tidal and the like. When listening to the same album from the SACD. The sound is cleaner, faster, and having more detail than the high bit Stream version of that album. As mentioned at the beginning, my theory is that the signal has a far shorter path and there is less chance of grunge from things like routers and switches getting introduced.

When I was rebuilding a new system from scratch cheaply, I didn't have a streamer, straight from computer to DAC. The difference in sound quality between streaming and local files was big. Streaming sounded awful. I added a streamer= computer-streamer-DAC and it made a huge difference, now the difference in audio between streaming and local files is, small enough that I often can't tell the difference to be quite honest. Your mileage may vary, but I learnt a while ago that if your source is a computer, you really should think about a streamer, sound quality difference is not small and there's some great streamers for affordable amounts of money.

The only thing I have found to help ....is an iFi SPDIF iPurifier, but obviously that only works if your streamer is hardwired.

I use a copper/fiber/copper conversion just before my DAC. It's cheap and the next best after the PS Audio direct stream :)

This video is via hexibase. He is educated on this and many other topics. A Great video I think you will find useful

GET ON WITH IT MAN!

I also find that if you download the songs that they do sound a little bit better than streamed

Is Paul saying that a high rez file from Qobuz is still compressed when stored and when streamed? If does this mean if you want the best sound you need to have the CD or SACD locally either on a physical disc or a file in your NAS?

It depends on the songs....some songs sound great...some sound noisy....it all depends on the original studio recording quality I guess....and adding a DAC in between the phone and your output will bring the audio quality the to the next level.

Hey Paul I tried Qobuz streaming on a 7 day trial period after my son was raving about it and compared it to my CD copies and I was extremely disappointed to the point where I was questioning my own hearing. The streaming sounded flat and less dynamic than my CDs. It was obvious to the point of not even attempting to listen for subtle differences. I won't be subscribing to any streaming services anytime soon, I love my CD collection and I'm sticking with it.

Paul, one question: what is the setup of the sound equipment installed in your car? Is it a High-End system? I'm curious to know what system (equipment) you use in your car...

The “hi Rez” streaming services just have the mastering the record company provides to them that is part of the problem. Then the streaming methods has to accommodate for data read ahead etc and essentially parsing a file playing on your device. Those services are ok for “just ok” quality. I just suggest for on the go use Apple Music…and they have spatial audio/Dolby atmos. Unfortunately the only way to get good streaming is to have your own NAS with your own preferred masterings etc

I had been using roon for over three years. I compared CD vs. Roon and roon always beat the CD version. I normally download the Tidal music to my local HDD through the roon core. I'm not sure if this is the reason that I do not see any down side in streaming.

Wouldn't it depend partly on bandwidth and signal processing? A cable modem works a lot harder with more losses than a fiber optic connection. Hence the fiber will sound better?

This may be subjective, but I don't think streaming service matters. It may have more to do with implementation. For example, SACD/DSD on a locally implemented hardware based system should be the choice for all. To test streaming,I directly compared Qubuz to Tidal and found MQA was more to my taste. I got a similar level of the thing audiophiles would look for: soundstage and imaging and details never heard before, but my implementation is specific to me. To lean in more on this topic, I would like to take Paul's suggestion on using a hardware cd player and compare that to local file storage and retrieval methods using network and computers (which is what I suspect maybe the limitting factor) to see if there are differences. Update a/b direct CD transport to streamed local file via Roon. No noticeable SQ difference (good for me as I can be happy with my method of storage). However, a/b/c test cd player vs 44.1/16 bit hifi vs tidal Master 44.1/16 bit. Master had the best SQ, 2nd best was cd player, and the tidal hifi quality track sounds the worst. As always, I'm never really done, but there seem to be many dynamics when comparing.

I think his audio quality is being automatically adjusted when his Internet connection has a poor bandwidth. That option is usually turned on by default but you can turn it off but then you'd have your music buffering in between if your connection drops.

FLAC (8) level lossless compression should be fine. I did hear of one musical artist who used Deezer. He uploaded his songs and then later downloaded them and found them to be perfectly identical. What other services are using is up for question but many think Qobuz sounds best. Tidal and Apple Music are ranked about the same. This is one reason many "audiophiles" say you have to spend $$$ on your digital front end to get the same sound quality you can get from a $500 (and up) CD player. Some even go as far as saying you need a better router too, use wired Ethernet if you can, and add better, quieter power supplies to all your "digital front end" devices. Jitter should be taken care of by any quality DAC with a buffer and its own internal reclocking, so that isn't (or shouldn't be) the cause for any sonic differences you hear. It is an interesting observation though, that many people make. Streaming sounds "good", but a local CD played on your own player going through the same DAC can sound a touch better. Hopefully all that will be better ironed out in the next few years as streaming becomes the de facto method of music listening, except for dyed-in-the-wool audiophiles who insist on CD and vinyl albums. (I like both just fine - and the great music discovery you can get from streaming). Heck, I still play many cassettes and love them.

Hey Paul. Do you have a good LPS (and good power cord) on your modem/router? It makes a big difference as far as streaming is concerned.

Audiophile switches definitely matter. I was sceptical about it at first (bits are bits) but then I got a Sotm switch and was pleased by sonic improvements even with a stock ethernet cable.

It’s simple. On Apple Music turn off sound check. On other streaming services you are out of luck. I believe they do sound check on the server side

A solution that I use is a Rasberry Pi device that I built , It Breaks the direct chain of Computer to Dac. My chain is Internet ,Pi , DAC. I'm using Roon and Qobuz. And I feel like i'm getting the advertised sample rates

While I don't really consider myself a true audiophile (my systems are resolving, but not to the point where I can discern huge differences), I can definitely tell a difference between listening to my original Brothers In Arms CD on my 90's Denon versus a 320kb version of that album streamed. Granted, I don't have the best D/A, but you can tell that there is a lack of dynamics with the streamed version versus the CD, no doubt about it. This example is only one of many. As I said, there is not a HUGE difference, but if I am in a "listening" mood, it is CD every time without question.

I'm fairly certain that services like Tidal and Qobuz don't rip their own content from CD, at least not for their entire libraries; I suspect they get digital files from the music labels then process and encode several copies at various bitrates and formats. Assuming I'm correct, It's obvious that the digital files aren't what's on a CD because both services have 24/96 streams of many of their songs. It wouldn't surprise me at all if one or more steps in the processing and conversion pipeline are impacting the sound, maybe even deliberately.

You didn’t mention the software used to play it… the differences are often the apps or software used. If u use something like roon it will play local or tidal or qobuz with the “same” software removing this. The main reason I see for differences is their original copies of albums are different to yours. You may have a cd from one country that’s different from another and the one on streaming was from a diff master etc. Storage is cheap these days. That’s really not an issue it’s just a cost of doing business like anything. 5 bucks per terabyte per month isn’t expensive when revenue is in the millions per month Think about it. 50 million albums if on average 1 gigabyte per album is 50,000 terabytes which is 250k a month storage costs. If they have 5 million subscribers at 20 bucks a pop like qobuz pricing that’s 100 million a month revenue

The thing that drives me bonkers is relying on what sites like Tidal and Qobuz say about the bit-rate and quality without being able to easily check it. To take an audiophile classic, Michael Rabin's The Magic Bow, as released by EMI on CD (whether as Strings by Starlight or in their box sets of his recordings) has a sample rate that is not full CD quality. I can rip my CD and look at the spectrum analysis and readily see that. With a streaming service, it's nowhere near that easy.

Whether wireless or cable you will rarely get uniform speed and bandwidth as there are many components and processes along the way. When you measure it you are only getting an average speed and bandwidth. Actual performance will be changing by tue second for uneven periods of time.

Is there a streaming movie service that reaches bluray quality? I feel frequencies below 30Hz is totally missing. And I can "hear" down to 10hz.

I just stream KZfaq Music (the paid / not free service) from my iPhone / iPad into one of my nice vintage systems and I'm a very happy guy. I have zero interest in chasing a better sound. To me, it's all about the emotional connection to the music. To each their own.

I don't know the answer, but my guess is that it has something to do with jitter, and the way a computer's OS mixes sound from different sources during playback. I never know if this stuff is a placebo effect, but I feel like I can hear a big difference when I use Audirvana (with my Sprout100!). So I suspect the problem is coming from something that Audirvana fixes.

Hello, I master records for a living. Files digitally captured during playback from Tidal of masters that I've done have nulled perfectly against my house archives of the same masters. So, AFAIK, the data is the same as my source. Any differences in sound would have to be dependent on the end-user's system or network.

We trade off some sound quality for access to millions of songs. Ripping off a CD sounds better than streaming.

My history is both my brother and I with typical old guy hearing loss noticed Qobuz sounded better than Tidal. I then with a moneyback warranty purchased an Etherregen network switch and only had to listen for a few minutes to finalize the purchase. So whatever isolation they are doing helps quite a bit. I was surprised that the bass improved! I also notice my ripped CDs sound noticeably better than almost any Qobuz streaming file, but not a huge difference. I could sell high end equipment using Qobuz. A lot of people do use it for demos. Most recently I tried playing back my old vinyl with nice SME based turntable and can't get satisfactory results. Perhaps it is the hassle of getting up and down to change music? The results I get sitting in my chair surfing every song ever recorded is a real treat compared to the old days of runnning to the store to buy new music.

Przykra prawda. Dlatego kupuję stare uzywane CD. Pozdrawiam z Polski