I like the little “Lossless” symbol in apple music. It’s a nice placebo that makes me feel like I’m not missing any information even though I know for a fact that I couldn’t tell the difference between an ALAC and an AAC file if I gun were pointed to my head.

As an album listener, Qobuz is really great. The true lossless and things like album info, articles, curated playlists on topics really make it stand out to me. It certainly isn't for the person who likes to put on a station though that's for sure. Luckily they are adding new tracks daily, and after switching from Amazon HD, I am certainly not looking back.

Considering KZfaq Music is included with a KZfaq Premium subscription I always wonder why many KZfaq creators, whom most likely have said subscription, ignore it when talking about music streaming services, like it or not.

Qobuz is the best way to find new music for me as I can filter out entire genres and they never try to force me to listen to pop or hip-hop.

Spotify has the best playlist, radio, and music recommendations system by a wide margin IMHO. Those keep me coming back to Spotify again and again. Apple Music would be second BUT they don't list songs you liked for some absolutely bizarre reason.

Thank you for this. I've been looking for this all over.

this is the best most detailed review i’ve came across, thank you so much!

A first class no nonsense practical guide that helps make sense of the minefield that is Streaming. It can be a real head scratcher for those starting out and not particularly tech savvy. It's very easy to make a lot of expensive mistakes! Thanks for the info.

What I like about YTM is you can get live versions of songs.

Grat vid! loved the detail, and that it wasnt negative to any of the services... they all have their strengths and weaknesses it just depends on what you as a user value more. Well done. Stay awesome.

Great overview! From my experience, Qobuz offers the best sound quality overall and the largest catalog of classical music, if that's your preferred category. But I had to cut down on subscriptions, so I am currently only using Tidal and Deezer (on Android devices). Between those two, Tidal offers slightly better sound, best user interface, and excellent playlists. Deezer also has a few features I love, such as a choice of radio stations (french radios "Fip" and "Station Simone" are wonderful), a built-in equalizer, and "adapt sound" settings to compensate personal hearing deficiencies.

As an electronic fan, DJ Mixes being treated as first-class citizens has led me to using Apple Music. It feels surreal that having a DJ set with proper IDs on a streaming service other than KZfaq and Apple Music is not a thing On another note, the short essays on albums and the "Essential Albums" feature have contributed to refining my taste and appreciation for all kinds of music.

For me Deezer (a European streaming service) is the best choice because I listen to music but also a lot of Audiobooks and Deezer hast the biggest library of Audiobooks (in German). And I really like the "Flow" algorithm that plays music you liked and stuff you might like with very accurate commendations. It needs a bit time to get on spot, but if you give it a bit of time, you never need to make playlists again cause you select your mood in the Flow and it just works.

Great video with EXCELLENT information (that isn't easy to find in one place). Thank you!

I used to daily drive Deezer because of a discount with carrier that basically made it free. I felt like DMS never actually used Deezer, after watching your review. First Recommended songs, Deezer has feature called flow based on your library that plays very good songs that you might like, I discovered 100+ songs because of that feature Its amazing. Second I am now using Tidal and the Deezer library is much much bigger with a lot of underground bands that I cannot find on tidal. I would say that Deezer has more obscure music than Spotify(my GF has Spotify rarely some Brazilian songs are not found there). The only problem with Deezer are the bugs that happened quite a lot. Leaving your review about Deezer without mentioning Flow has lead me to believe you never actually used it.

I've been a Tidal user for a while, been quite happy with it, although I agree about the artists getting thrown into the same listing if their names happen to be the same, I've had issues with that occasionally myself, but mostly Tidal has been great.. I also listen to Lorn myself by the way, love the dark electro vibe, also Dead Fader and Forest Swords, I'd highly recommend if you like Lorn..

Qobuz is my only choice here. The sound quality to me seems the purest. I also love that they are the only service that also offers purchasing individual songs and albums in a variety of formats, from CD quality to 192 KHz. And it should be noted that they already exist for quite a long time here in Europe, but are quite new in the US, so the limited library might be due to them not having secured all the streaming rights yet in the US. A few years ago at least the library here in Europe was way bigger than the one in the US: Finally, Qobuz is also great for Jazz and Classical music, and integrates perfectly with Roon.

Apple came to Windows 11 with it's native Apple Music app (so far in a beta version) that has lossless playback. It's weird that you didn't mention that in this relatively fresh video.

This is great content. Very useful, detailed and insightful.

On 2/8/2023 Tidal launch the HiRes FLAC audio quality.

The Apple Music recommendation system is pretty good, not sure what was happening when you were using it. I looked up Hendrix right now and the “you might also like” row was cream, the doors, Pink Floyd… all classic rock, no pop. Their “radio mode” got a lot better recently as well.

I think that pointing out the limitations of the systems one is going to play music on is one of the most important things this video does.

Qobuz has the best editorial service. It's like a music magazine. Regarding sound quality, Qobuz does have more high-res titles (above CD quality) than the rest, but what is more important is, that they have simply the best masters.Their standard CD-quality titles in general just sound better.

I used Spotify and Apple Music together for some months now on my iPhone 13 Pro Max with the Airpods Pro 2. I have to say that Spotify has the advantage in the UI/UX, Apple Music has the advantage in audio quality. I've had both services on the HipHop preset because I like my metal music a bit more punchy. On Apple Music it really hugged my ears and didn't feel "shy" like Spotify does. While on Apple Music the Mix already reached his supersayajin form, Spotify's mix is still developing. I chose Spotify for the easier use and friends integration, making it so absurdly easy to create playlists for myself and other people.

Qobuz is absolutely perfect for classical and jazz music, I use it since years ago and the sound is amazing (Golden Sound confirmed, it's the only one really providing lossless music to all platforms), the interface is decent and I never had issues honestly, I don't use the radio function because I know what I want to listen to :)

Thank you for such a great video

Why is KZfaq Music virtually ignored? Are people still salty about the conversion from Google Play Music and losing the ability to create curated libraries from uploaded and purchased music? For streaming the user interface is excellent and since it draws from the entire Google ecosystem, searches and KZfaq views included, the suggestions are on point and include what I may be interested in listening to regardless of genre. Additionally, the automatic downloads of my likes and personal and suggested playlists to my mobile devices are very appreciated and useful.

A very niche feature is the ability to upload your own library "to the cloud" and have acces to it anywhere. Apple Music, KZfaq Music and Deezer can do it, though will compress the file, no lossless in the cloud with these services.

a little surprised pricing was never talked about. I use tidal because it offers 50% off for students and 40% off for first responders. very competitive pricing all around, but this is the best i've seen it for what you're getting

The Lossless Switcher for Apple Music on the Mac is great! Thanks a lot for the tip. My experience in concern of recommendations on Apple Music is totally different. I have a wide range of musical taste and I think they are really good.

Very easy to understand. Very informative.

I think outside of the US unfortunately the choices are very limited. Here in Australia if you want to find the songs of local acts outside of the big names, Spotify and Apple, are the only options where you know they will have pretty much everything. I love different things about Deezer, Qobuz and Tidal but am constantly disappointed with Aussie music choices. I’m sure the same thing applies to many other smaller countries.

I’m a big fan of Qobuz. Simple interface which focuses purely on quality music (no videos!). Sound quality is wonderful imo.

Thanks for the link for the Lossless Autoswitcher. It works flawlessly for the Mac!

Golden Sounds walk through of the quality - brilliant stuff. Amazing how I've read many descriptions and no on, none, has made such nice straightforward coverage. Brilliant was also the test publishing of MQA. Love it, and it makes skip Tidal. Your UX walkthrough would be better with illustrations - showing the interfaces and giving examples. Else it assumes the user enters and uses the interface which sort of defeats the purpose of the review. UX also varies depending on platform, so there's a lot to cover. Library is more than size, genre, which was left out. Certain genres put different requirements on UX, too. Regardless, nice video, I learned something new.

I think majority of people who consume music do so though their mobile devices. And perhaps what most people don't know is that if you play it via bluetooth, via any of these services from say an Iphone, you'll get it in AAC, which is 264kbs, similar to Spotifys quality. You'd need a wired headphone to be able to make use of those bitrates. And even if you did use a wire, you still get capped at a certain level due to the dongle from apple. So you'd need an additional external dac in order to get that lossless format.

Good job! Very comprehensive, you guys covered a ton. I went a little further myself back when Apple first released Apple Lossless and did a listening test, comparing Apple’s lossless to TIDAL top-tier and to Qobuz, with high-res files purchased from HD Tracks as the control. I used an iPad Pro to run all three apps, with an Audio Quest USB-C to USB-B cable to connect to three different DACs. I used the HD-800S, LCD-X 2021 and LCD-5, driven by a Phonitor-X and GSX-Mini, DACs were the Benchmark HGC-II and internal Phonitor-X DAC. (I also listened through B&W 802 speakers, but the headphones were quicker to review subtitles). Normalization and any other optional processing was turned off in the players. Short story, Qobuz clobbered Apple Lossless and TIDAL was a distant third place. Qobuz was the only player where the HD Tracks purchased lossless files were indistinguishable from the streamed file, which of course is the only way things should be.

"Very informative" is an understatement for this video. Kudos to you both. Clearly we need a way to kill the mixer/resample "man in the middle" and get our digital audio straight to the DAC. The next big thing will be whatever virtual-audio-out-bridge-patch software achieves this ... I'd buy it right now! Does it exist? BTW, I love your desktop lamp, where did you get it?

Lossless vs Lossy compression is different from sample rate conversion/mixing. There was some case to be made for exclusive mode on the desktop 20 years ago but Windows/Macos mixer has been transparent for many years now. Music goes through all kinds of digital mixing/sample rate conversion during production. It doesn't degrade the sound quality at all.

Update: TIDAL gets a green check for everything now.

I mostly stream classical, and for that purpose Qobuz is best in terms of track labeling and selection. I also found Tidal sometimes had sub-par sound quality on some classical albums (meaning the non-MQA albums; I heard distortion that wasn't present in the same tracks on other services).

I had Tidal for two years, but a lot of music were converted to MQA, and I did not like the sound of that, so I switched to Qubuz, which works beautifully with my system. I also have Spotify for the big library and great recommendations.

Thank you for the recommendation of Apple Music lossless switcher.👍

@the headphone show @goldensound Question for you, on mac can't you just set through the midi application your output to 24-32/192khz and not worry about the file type? I thought that oversampling was something considered to be advantageous, and, according to Archimago's blog on different players, Macs oversampling is actually quite competent and much better than windows or other players.

Two key Apple features you don't mention - iTunes Match or whatever it's now called which basically uploads your whole music library to Apple servers and then makes it available to stream on all other devices. I love that feature. And the other one - spatial audio/Dolby Atmos. I know it's a mixed bag, but you don't seem to ever mention it in your show's reviews and I think when it works it really adds to the experience of the music.

I use AM and am very happy with it. Yeah, I need to play through an Apple device (using a iPod Touch 2021 and my iPhone 11) as my source, but it works for me. I even think they're recommendations algorithm is pretty good and getting better.

Tidal has underseen some pretty mayor updates in the last month, specially regarding MQA. Compelling enough to revisit a video like this in the future

I am a primarily a DAP listener but I subscribe to Spotify for convenience and their gamechanger recommendations. That said Qobuz offers a tremendous selection available for download, albums and singles, without having to be a subscriber. Based on the titles I have researched there is not that much hi rez out there.

The lossless switcher on Apple Music has been a total godsend! Probably the first time I've TRULY heard lossless audio. I always thought if the device sample rate was higher, it automatically switches down to the source's sample rate. I've been enjoying my Clear MG Pro's with my ADI-2 DAC at 768 kHz, believing it was matching hi-res file sample rates on its own. I've experimented with hi-res files many times for years, switching between 44.1 and hi-res sample rates, never hearing much of a difference. I thought it was maybe time to give up on the idea of hi-res sounding better, keeping it on hi-res anyways just in case there was a difference on all sources possible. Now I realize the likely reason I didn't hear a difference in the past is probably because I never quite completed the chain to have actual hi-res music in my ears, since it actually is a very specific chain, on top of having less high-end gear in the past that would make differences less distinguishable. Once I downloaded this 3rd party program, it made all the difference! It's a night and day difference and really brings new life to my current setup! If you have a high-end chain with Apple Music on a Mac I highly recommend this!

Yes! Loving the Qobuz love!

One of the best and "exact" comparisons of the big streaming services, well done by your buddy "Golden Sound". Btw lossless or at least CD quality (mainly 16 bit / 44,1 kHz) is clearly audible on the first seconds if you use some good gear focussing on high quality audio reproduction ;-) Never want to hear less quality than CD. The real sweetspot of audio quality you, were can really hear the difference in sound quality.

I love Tidal but it is still not available in Japan(?). Spotify consistently has any track no matter how obscure that I might be looking for but for some reason changed something where my Amazing Slowdowner music app no longer works with their library. Apple is ok but seems somewhat clunky and often turns up empty searches when I’m looking for a rare track.

Just here to say fudge tidal & fudge MQA. Qobuz is the best here along with apple music (but no matter what streaming service I use I can never get 30-40% of my collection, so I am one of those who has a massive offline stock)

Nice! Good stuff on audio quality. I’m glad I’m with Apple Music on an apple device. I also have Spotify to find new music because Apple Music doesn’t have great discoverability tools. Also it would have been cool to talk about some other points such as price, bonus features (lyrics/karaoke mode (i know this is on Apple Music), and shown the UI differences.

This was an excellent summary guys, although, I feel you missed the mention of Dolby Atmos/Audio, which is becoming quite prevalent in many music services, and I'm sure will be even more in the coming future, and you are after all a headphone channel (?). In my experience Amazon has tweaked the Atmos codec to suit better a full-size headphone listening experience whilst Apple's implementation seems to be focused on 5.1.4 systems (and above) at home and their AirPods (to an extent). Also, no mention about the display of Lyrics which is what made me stay on Apple Music. Great video still!

I feel like you guys missed the biggest Qobuz advantage which is the up to 60% discount for their store with the highest tier plan. So you can listen to streaming and still choose to permanently own music in whatever format/quality you want.

I really did like Qobuz (except you cannot search for playlists - is that still the case?) - but I "had" to return to Tidal because Qobuz was not woking for me on the go/in the car. Qobuz wanted to fix this issue but did not manage to do so.

Thank you so much for this!!! I was trying to decide between spotify or Amazon music. Sound quality vs algorithm. I'll lean towards algorithm

Crazy, just picked up Qobuz last week. Was clearly more consistent but... It's not cheap

I think it would have been worth the time to mention Roon. Personally, I believe Roon's metadata is incredible.

Id love to see an update on this with Spotify's abhorrent newest update that turns the experience into straight frustration. It is literally unusable and I'm watching this video to see what provider i should switch too.

6:19 I use an RME HDSPe Aio sound card for my PC to listen to Apple Music lossless. (RME now makes the same soundcard for apple computers as well). I changed the bitrate in both Apple Music preferences and my HDSPe bitrate to 192hz. It sounds wonderful, better than the tv's "bitperfect" Apple play going into to my amp. Qobuz is pretty darn good too. And the cool thing is you can change the bitrate in the middle of the track to actually hear the difference when you have a capable DAC.

Fantastic advice about USB Audio Pro.

I will probably keep Spotify because of its Connect option, which allows to using its own app without gaps between songs. But i don't like a lot of Spotify's features anymore, such as its plugging of podcasts on its homescreen. I am not into podcasts at all, so that gets annoying quickly. YT music is really nice, the YT playlists are actually pretty nicely build up. A big bonus is that it includes a lot of user uploads, which are not officially published to streaming services. Such as a lot of house music from the 90s.

If YT Music were included, I would probably rank it quite up there for discoverability. It has around a decade of my watch history to pull from. I mainly use it to run my car stereo on the way to and from work, discovering music in the meantime.

Big Qobuz fan here, really easy to use for making playlists and organizing the library.

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!

Nice video, got Apple Music based on this. As a heads-up: there's a beta Windows app now that features a Lossless toggle. However, in my experience it sounds worse than Apple Music over Android or on my MacBook (both of which sound identical with my Focal Bathys), so something's not right with that Beta app.

I actually moved from spotify to apple music, simply because iTunes can play local music natively and streaming is kind of a second feature to it Spotify had "local music" that just took all the mp3s on my computer, couldn't be sorted into playlists, and was super buggy Dunno if it's still like that

Very helpful ❤️❤️❤️

Interesting video, and I agree with Golden's assessment of Qobuz. I think Qobuz has been helped a great deal by AUDIRVĀNA STUDIO. Their interface is great and the fact that I can access their software from a phone or table is wonderful. I'm running Studio on an older Win10 Pentium-based (fanless) laptop with 4GB of ram and it runs quite well. In the car, I'm fine with using the standard Qobuz app and don't care about the limitation imposed by Android on sampling. I also, have USB Audio Player Pro, which works fine if I want to drive the DAC with bit-perfect audio when I'm traveling.

I use Deezer and have no issues with the sound quality. If anything, I guess this video proved to me that "lossless" and "bit perfect" doesn't really mean much of anything to me.

I use Tidal and have had doubts about the user experience. That I might be missing out on something far better. This has reenforced that I'm fine with my choice.

Apple for me using my iPhone, the necessarily lightening to camera cable, an iFi Zen DAC v2 all into a Marantz 8006 analogue amp, MA Radius 90s each with a RELnT Zero sub bass. It’s astonishing on the full digital master quality. You can also do the singalong lyric thing…….including the new option of sending the singer into the background so we can all channel our Elvis or Taylor S😂

Amazing video. Thanks

I find Amazon HD music streaming markedly inferior sounding to my local flac files even with exclusive mode on. I think there is something we are missing here. Any idea why?

Just for some perspective, I'll point out that the air thru which sound is propagated, is not lossless. Your eardrums are not lossless. The mics that recorded your music are not lossless. Your speakers & headphones are not lossless. A lot of my favorite music was recorded in an era when analog electronics (including the tape decks and record pressing gear) were extremely variable. Music can suffer a _lot_ of 'loss', and still be perfectly enjoyable! This may explain why few musicians are particularly concerned with high end audio. (Even that famous audio critic Neil Young recently recorded to digital! - lossy by definition.)

I have not had recommendations issue you mention in Apple Music, I mostly listen to Rock across its sub genres and Have got great recommendations over the last decade I have been using.

Thanks for the info. I've tried all of them at the same time and it's the same thoughts. Of course, Roon and UAPP makes a lot of difference, because of the quality, search motor improvement and discovery new music. It be interesting for a video. Also Audirvana, why not?

Tip: on Qobuz, on an iPad, selecting the view to be track-specific AND turning the iPad to Portrait orientation gives a nearly full-size album art image. As a guy who once bought my “let’s take a chance” vinyl based solely on album art, this was a nice surprise to stumble upon. Happy listening folks!

I tried them all at least two times. They all sound great. Apple only plays lossless in Apple ecosystem (Apple also plays a few db louder to fake sound better). Amazon UI is a huge mess, and Qobuz is not far behind. Both are weak in library and new music compared to Apple and Tidal. Tidal has best UI by far. MQA devices are price matched very well with non-MQA devices now so that's a wash. For me, Tidal library is great, but they shine best for new music of all genres and their algorithm makes the best suggestions for my liking. For all my use cases (2.1 room, office, portable and auto) Tidal is the most seamless. Note: lossless is not always best, and sometimes it is very poor sounding.

As someone who still listens to LPs and CDs through a nice system, I found this video unhelpful in learning about lossless streaming. I recently put a DAC in the system, but the info presented here just went over my head. I think I need to find an introduction to high quality music streaming video. (I've been a Spotify subscriber for a few years, but streaming to earbuds via Bluetooth doesn't really help in understanding how to get the best resolution through the two channel system)

I love the relay in the Schiit Bifrost 2 that makes an audible click whenever it switches between sample rates. It's like an audio lie detector.

Apple Music suggests, eventually, based on what you listen to. It takes some time. Maybe months. Weeks for sure. Depending on how much you listen to and like and if your genre tastes are narrow (less options) or wide (any genre at all!) So, as it being pop centric, it probably is still learning. However, I find the marketing AI will always overpower our interests no matter the platform. Frustrating on all platforms that act this way. Making Deezer's simplicity appealing. (You made it sound bad but, if less is more and just want to search and play with lossless, it is a good pick, but costs more.) However, I'm an all Apple home so, AM works best and, with AM Classical and Atmos for my surround setup using an ATV4K, it is a no brainer.

Qobuz for me by far. They are lossless and / or Hi-Res. And, maybe the most important, they pay the artists a lot more!

I use Qobuz for max sound quality. Blessing 2 dusk and hidsz S9 pro. I subscribe to tidal when I get ridiculous low offers like 3 months for $2. I like to look around what's changed and new. It's too rap focused. I always keep Qobuz.

Qobuz would be the best if only it was available in more than select few countries. Until then I will stick to deezer since it is the only losless service that is usable on Windows. Or until (eventually) spotify goes lossless.

Once you’ve been with Apple Music for a while it starts getting pretty damn good at suggesting songs. Now I’ve got the iPhone 14 with 256gb storage, I can store a thousand odd songs easily in lossless or hi-res lossless. I use a ddhifi lightning to usb c to hook up to the dac, and am very impressed with the sound quality. Blows my $1000 plus Yamaha cd player out of the park.

I think and I choose the couple of Spotify and Apple Music regarding to huge music library and new music discovering (Spotify) and simple sound quality (Apple Music). For me these two are the best used in cooperation.

Very Well Done, thank you

KZfaq music algorithm is comparable (if not better) to spotify and it is not even in this comparison.. plus YTM has the largest library.. I am still using Spotify premium right now but i m planning to switch to YTM in next few months because of what i have seen

I just went on a CD buying splurge after ripping a couple of harder-to-find/not-on-streaming soundtracks. I thought "hey.. these sound different.. why?". So I bought a couple of my favorite albums on CD, ripped them using EAC, and decided to just give them a listen against the same records offered by both Qobuz and Amazon. To my surprise I greatly preferred the ripped CD. I didn't expect there to be any difference. What I am hearing is a "cleaner", fuller sound with more depth in the presentation of space with the CD rips. Things I thought were attributed to sample rates but now I'm wondering if it's a dynamic range thing. Even against 192/24 in Qobuz through Roon.. no contest, I prefer ripped CD files. I haven't found 1 example to the contrary. And I don't know if any of this is real or just a product of me knowing which is which and somehow having a bias (though streaming is a lot more convenient). I don't know if I could pick out which is which blind. However I also don't care at this point. I'm going to continue to collect my favorites on CD, cancel Qobuz, and likely keep Amazon music as a discovery tool for new music and artists. I do now believe that the sound quality of hi-res streaming is overstated. If I didn't carry Amazon I might just go with Spotify for convenience listening.

I swiched from Tidal to Qbuz purely because if MQA. I use Roon as the front end though, so UI not really worried. Still use Apples music too with the switch, wish they would get that dedicated mode sorted though on Mac OS

I use Roon - hooked up with Tidal, Qobuz, and my own digital music library. Best of all worlds.

I just like Deezer's Flow. Endless music and you can change your vibe as you need, thats pretty neat. Hopefully they fix the bit-perfect issue sometime soon

I very much appreciate the Qobuz weekly “New Releases”. I consistently want to try the majority of those, unlike Tidal’s.

As long as the sample rate is matched and the volume is maxed, I doubt WASAPI is messing with the sound nowadays, even in shared mode. Do you still need exclusive mode to achieve bitperfect under these conditions?

What a great Spotify ad to watch.

Would be great to also touch on how much musicians make from plays on each service.

I don’t have to ever change my sample rate on Amazon music HD for desktop? Once you set your preference to hd/ultra hd, it shows which sample rate my device is capable of and then the sample rate it’s playing at. Exclusive mode on, of course.