CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Music and Recordings => Topic started by: Valentin Hogea on October 14, 2013, 10:43:19 AM
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Oh.... I've been waiting sooooo long...
Been cursing Spotify for not having FLAC/ALAC, and then suddenly, their biggest competitor in Europe beats them to it.
For aprox 22-23€/month (the equivalent of 199 SEK)... You can.
Thank you WiMP. Finally. No more searching for obscure FLAC-tracks on different trackers and cursing not finding the rarer recording. Thank you.
Spotify-account.... closed.
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Somewhat limited European availability. How's the selection of artist?
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I'll be re-creating my playlists as soon as I'm done with your HD800-cable.. ;)
So for now... Either wait for me to check or buy a month and try yourself!
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I would happily pay extra for FLAC and/or WAV via Spotify.
Please keep us updated...
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So for now... Either wait for me to check or buy a month and try yourself!
Unless I'm missing something, there is no version for England or the USA so I'm a bit out of luck. Otherwise I would have signed up already!
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1) Only available for SE/DK/NO/DE/PL
2) Currently not available for PC/MAC (?!?!?!)
3) The albums available don't cover my rare 80's hard rock preferences
I'm keeping it for a month, but so far... Hmmm...
Happy I didn't close the the Spotify-account (as I had 20 more days on this months already paid fee)
/V
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Hopefully they can expand the library and the countries supported. It's something I'd like to see.
And hopefully Spotify and others are working on the similar high resolution streaming.
I read the web site and they explain that they had to source and encode their entire library again with lossless material. With a library as large as someone like Spotify that's got to be a huge undertaking if they were to consider it.
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Can any of our tech savvy guys give us some insite into this:
AUDIO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WiMP & SPOTIFY
We get asked this a lot, for natural reasons. Well, now we have WiMP HiFi and lossless audio. For the other formats, a lot of people are really hung up about just the bit rate. Yes, bit rate describes a little when it comes to compressed music, but there are also a lot of other factors. Spotify is running Ogg Vorbis, where Ogg is the container and Vorbis is the codec. WiMP is running MPEG-4 as the container and the codec is AAC. When you encode to higher bit rates such as 320 kbps, the difference between the codecs become smaller and smaller. On the standard format however, we really think AAC+ 96 kbps encoded from a lossless source really makes a difference. Most of our users still stream and offline in standard quality so this improves the experience for most people. Many credible sources rank Vorbis to be in-between AAC+ and AAC in quality, but we’ll be generous enough to say that at 320 kbps the difference is more dependent on the encoder in use and the quality of the source.
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AAC+ is half bandwith AAC with spectral band replication.
Basically you take your signal and only story half of the spectrum, but take a few metrics on the other half.
On decoding you then extrapolate the top half from the the bottom half's content, applying some filtering based on the metrics you took while encoding. The filter parameters take up little space, so you're now getting "full bandwidth" while only storing half of it.
Of course this means half the spectrum is fuxxored, but at low bitrates (<=96 kbps for 44/48kHz stereo) this is usually preferable to trying to fit the entire spectrum in.
AAC+ is more properly called "HE-AAC" and AAC is "LC-AAC". This means what is on the tin: HE is "High Efficiency" and LC is "Low Complexity". Notice the word "quality" is justifiably absent.
I would buy that at 96 kbps HE-AAC (assuming a good encoder such as Apple's ou NeroAAC, none of the early or open source crap) is indeed better than the alternatives. But 96 kbps is certainly not Hi-fi.
Using HE-AAC at anything above 96 kbps is idiotic and indeed I think the Nero encoder does not even allow that. I hope they're not using HE-AAC at 320 kbps...
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I stumbled across Quobuz tonight. I'm currently streaming FLAC 16/44.1. Sounds great! The catalog looks extensive.
I'm not sure it's available outside Europe?
Not cheap!! But interesting... still tinkering to see what it's all about.
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What about the royalty and the copy fees for off-line files?
Or are those fees included in your monthly subscription?
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As far as I can tell... I only spent a short time with it last night. I'm going to play a little more at work today. What I can say about last nights listen, the quality was really good.
I think the downloads are limited to the French site, not sure yet... but the streaming is working fine from a UK/English site.
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Still talking about Qobuz
Confirmed... offline fees are included in the monthly subscription.
So far...
- I don't like the interface as much as Spotify, but it's useable.
- The catalog is not as extensive as Spotify, but it's big, and growing.
- SQ when streaming hi-res is noticeable better.
Still need to mess around with using the app on my phone.
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On a related note re Qobuz.
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f13-audiophile-downloads/qobuz-when-24-96-guaranteed-studio-master-not-one-18995/ (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f13-audiophile-downloads/qobuz-when-24-96-guaranteed-studio-master-not-one-18995/)
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Honestly I'm not surprised at issues like this... Streaming services are growing fast and the libraries are huge. Unless there is a blatant attempt to duff off low-res stuff as high I'm not going to condemn anyone. Sure, I'd like to see the situation better, but I can have realistic expectations if it means the streaming quality is starting to improve in the industry.
Besides, if it's not DSD... )(
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Indeed. As far as streaming goes it's good to see more services and I don't mean Dr. Dre. I was just putting it out there for people, who like myself, will then get drawn into the 'dealers' other wares.