Apple announces lossless Apple Music is coming in June at no added cost
- Thread starter pauldmps
- Start date
Can someone who is not a super picky audiophile tell me if buying hifiman deva and listening to lossless Apple Music songs using wired to iPhone is a good idea for a regular consumer who has only used AirPods Pro or Sony XMR type headphones? Will the listening experience be better enough to justify spending 20k just to experience this?
Thanks.
Thanks.
rdst_1
Innovator
You will never know until you try. The good thing about the Hifiman offerings is that they don't necessarily need an amp to shine. So I would say, only if you can afford, to go ahead and give it a try. Good thing about good audio hardware is that your music experience will change for the better, even if the source isn't totally lossless. For me, I am unable to go back to mediocre hardware, once I've heard better. My friends own the Senn PXC-550 and it is known to be one of the best wireless HPs out there and yet, I am unable to enjoy them because I own something which sounds better than to me.
Edit - Also wait for sales. Deva were 13.5k after card discount just a few weeks ago.
may I know where it was at 13.5k? Was it the wireless version or only wired?
It was on sale for 12k plus card discounts last month. That was a steal deal, some one from here bought it too. See if the price drops during prime day
What's gapless playback? Like no gap between tracks? Mine plays like that only. Also the app feels little snappy than before in android. For once it's loading playlists and tracks faster, it used to load for a while but now it's way better.
I'm testing tracks between tidal/Amazon music/Apple music. One clear difference that's very noticeable is in Apple music songs are little louder than tidal. Tamil songs feel slightly better in tidal.
Will update if I can hear any clear difference between them in others. My setup is LG G8x with Fiio A5 to Sundara.
Last edited:
In the last 4-5 seconds of a track, it fades away and a new track gradually overlaps with the track fading away. Thats gapless playback.
Like crossfade?
There's an option for that, can be manually set too
Edit : Also how to play explicit songs, no options to enable it in settings
Last edited:
serious audiophiles? if they are… they should have enough money to buy original records.
rdst_1
Innovator
I would love to buy original records if it was priced appropriately. I think these artists and labels missed something when they didn't make their music available for digital purchase at less pricing. I did buy a few of my favorite albums through iTunes back in the day, but unfortunately I am not someone who can afford to pay $10-15 for every album I listen to. Maybe that's why music-as-a-service is so much more popular and even I pay for it even though I don't use it that often due to the low quality of the music and patchy internet in India.
What is an original record? AFAIK SACDs are the closest thing to master tapes. Discogs used to sell them. Not the cheap hybrid SACDs but the "original" ones.
Not going into the details of the decoding process ( it's Sony's proprietary), obviously you can't rip them except in very limited systems.
And I can bet none of us has them (unless one has the one of the reasonably priced hardware, and to my knowledge only 3 of such systems exist) what we have are hybrid SACDs.
It's better not to go there.
If you meant Redbook CDs, think most audiophiles ( serious or not) already have their favourite few hundreds if not thousands. Since I'm poor, have exactly 105 of them.
Not going into the details of the decoding process ( it's Sony's proprietary), obviously you can't rip them except in very limited systems.
And I can bet none of us has them (unless one has the one of the reasonably priced hardware, and to my knowledge only 3 of such systems exist) what we have are hybrid SACDs.
It's better not to go there.
If you meant Redbook CDs, think most audiophiles ( serious or not) already have their favourite few hundreds if not thousands. Since I'm poor, have exactly 105 of them.
Last edited:
rdst_1
Innovator
I mean, buy a record instead of pirating it.
If it's a Redbook CD, they are not that expensive anymore. But few old CDs are not available anymore.
And CDs do hold pretty high resale value. I sold/ exchanged my Blue Oyester Cult's Secret Treaties CD for 5 Electric Light Orchestra's CDs ( though haven't receive them yet, but have full faith in the guy, typical old head fier like me)
rdst_1
Innovator
What's affordable for one, can be expensive for someone else. Like I said, I can't afford to pay $15-20 for every album I want to listen to. Plus CDs feel a waste to me in today's digital age. I have roughly 25 CDs and around 300-400 cassettes thanks to my father. But all of them have aged badly because they were used and not kept sealed pack for the future.
So, if I am supposed to pay for the music at present prices, I'd rather have lossless digital files instead of CDs or other formats. I just registered on Bandcamp today and have already bought 5 albums because they were priced between $1-5 and I could listen to the songs before buying.
superczar
Juggernaut
The joy of collection aside - and it is indeed a legitimate hobby by itself…
But why would a Redbook CD sound any better than 44.1/16 lossless stream ?
and if that is the case then why even bother about 96/192 at 24 bit considering 44.1/24 is readily available on both Tidal and Apple Music without even going through any extra hardware hoops
PS: I am absolutely fine with the readily available bit rate on AM (or tidal) - in fact it even streams at the same rate to any airplay 1 speakers (e.g. anything hooked to a cheap airport express)
But why would a Redbook CD sound any better than 44.1/16 lossless stream ?
and if that is the case then why even bother about 96/192 at 24 bit considering 44.1/24 is readily available on both Tidal and Apple Music without even going through any extra hardware hoops
PS: I am absolutely fine with the readily available bit rate on AM (or tidal) - in fact it even streams at the same rate to any airplay 1 speakers (e.g. anything hooked to a cheap airport express)
Ios 14
Settings - screen time - content and privacy restrictions
also, yes kind of like crossfade just a bit less aggressive so that only the silent period is removed.
That's the mysterious part, almost everyone who has the Redbook CD rips of same album can hear the clear difference. I would call it different, neither better or worse.
We checked with our own music ( checked and corrected to avoid any penalty) with Amazon HD, it also sounds different. Not necessarily worse, but different ( sounds like a plate reverb applied with a gate to cut the tail short)
Will mail Amazon ( they are the only streaming service who actually replies to such queries..Tidal sends an automated reply but never follows up...Apple : radio silence)
It was Misha from Periphery, who first noticed this months ago but never got any meaningful reply.
If Misha doesn't get a response, who are we!!?? Nothing...
I will try to mention something very technical in simple words, only this explanation kind of seems logical.
We all know the audio is stored digitally on a CD via a technique known as PCM (Pulse Code Modulation). PCM data consists of snapshots of an audio waveform’s amplitude measured at specific and regular intervals of time. The CD format consists of 44,100 measurements of the waveform’s amplitude per second, so is said to have a sample rate or sampling frequency of 44.1kHz. This is important, because the Nyquist Theorem states that the high-frequency limit of a PCM digital audio system is dictated by the sample rate, and that the sample rate must be at least double the highest frequency that will be recorded. So a 44.1kHz sample rate can theoretically store frequencies up to just above 20kHz, approximating the theoretical upper limit of the best human hearing.
Nyquist Theorem is something beyond scope of this discussion, but it's not very complicated.
In simpler words lossless doesn't mean non compressed, it's possibly the compression process itself that differs from one streaming service to another. If some company starts streaming wave files, there wouldn't be such differences. Plus the streaming services should come clean about their DSP chains.
Last edited:
Update My bad, my post, my app was misbehaving. Force closed the app and after reopening now it is playing in lossless
Hope apple music can improve their lossless to actually cover more songs and albums. The collection of lossless is much lesser compared to tidal... Even "famous" songs for masses aren't in lossless on apple music while they are available in multiple version on tidal in master
Attached screenshot for those who don't believe it. One is from tidal with version master showing on top right. apple music playing low quality audio as lossless isn't available
Hope apple music can improve their lossless to actually cover more songs and albums. The collection of lossless is much lesser compared to tidal... Even "famous" songs for masses aren't in lossless on apple music while they are available in multiple version on tidal in master
Attached screenshot for those who don't believe it. One is from tidal with version master showing on top right. apple music playing low quality audio as lossless isn't available
Attachments
Last edited:
^^ Are you paying for both services? I unsubscribed from Apple music, lack of gapless playback is a complete no go for me.
Have already paid enough money to Apple for hardware.
I will unsubscribe from Tidal too. I'm too old for streaming services and Amazon HD is more than enough.
Have already paid enough money to Apple for hardware.
I will unsubscribe from Tidal too. I'm too old for streaming services and Amazon HD is more than enough.
Synth-Pop
Guide
44.1/16 lossless stream and Redbook CD are absolutely same thing but not always identical.
Not always but Redbook CD may sound better than 44.1/16 lossless stream as we're not sure of the 44.1 stream origin or source.
When we rip CDs on our own, Technically we're sure alteast on the paper as we've log file and we've used own settings for the rip, can also verify CRC etc. with accurate rip database.
A single album CD releases with many different catalog numbers worldwide, In the audiophiles kingdom generally Japan releases are considered as the best specially those 1st press and SHM remasters/reissues.
Same is with 96/192 at 24 bit or higher samplings, it may've been digitized from audio tapes or HQ Vinyls but we're not sure. When some rare album is missing or tape isn't in a good condition, companies remaster it digitally and sometimes even upscales it from standard CD faking as Hi-res. (part of greedy business).Best option is to trust your ears.
Ah should've mentioned it's for Android, hope they actually spend some time to develop the app for Android instead of copy paste.
It's actually available in lossless, try playing some other song and playing that song again. Android app is very glitchy right now, it happened to me too in some songs
Last edited: