Streaming services

Spotify used to work with djay.
Now it’s Tidal and Apple Music and Soundcloud and beatport and…?
why not Qobuz? and/or YouTube (which would add video, which is of interest to some) Premium?
What else is out there for us to take a look at? Higher resolution preferred, of course.

Hi!
why not try Tidal ? it has great sound quality, you can add hifi option, and it also have videos :slight_smile:
and you could easily transfer your spotify playlists using TuneMyMusic free web site :wink:
just try it works just perfect !

1 Like

I have Tidal…I’m just wondering what else might be available/as good sounding IF they should happen to pull a Spotify and pull the ability to use their content from djay?

Beatport has also a great sound quality if you play electronic music #dnb #junglist :v:t5:
Regards

1 Like

Bandcamp does too.
It’s so gratifying to me that people actually DO care about sound quality

You got my hopes up for a second that Apple Music was added to DJay. I use Apple Music as my main consumer streaming service, and Soundcloud + Tidal (for stuff SC doesn’t have only) when jamming in DJay. I use this great website called Soundiiz to set up playlists from each platform to synchronize nightly. Worth every penny for the pro plan, which is cheap.

I highly doubt Apple Music will ever be available in DJ apps. Doesn’t seem like a very Apple thing to do considering their penchant for DRM. I could also see it being somewhat controversial, since Apple Music has some live mixes from various EDM DJs now, with a bunch of IDs in them as individual tracks. Hopefully Bandcamp support can happen eventually.

Apple is very much about taking care of those within their walled orchard, so if any service and app are meant to pair, it’ll be djay with their Music service IMHO. That’s one for the lawyers to work out first, though. (What artist doesn’t want another outlet for their music, especially in clubs, where people are much more likely to hear stuff they want to listen to on their own devices outside of clubs? it’s a no-brainer from where I sit)

Thanks for the Soundiiz recommendation…I’m headed there now to check them out!

Hi @heysoundude,

Thanks for starting this discussion, and to everyone who built upon OP’s post.

We’ve gone ahead and shared all of your valuable streaming service feedback with our teams for further consideration.

Have a great day!

Well, Beatport’s audio quality specs are not so great if you compare with Tidal HIFI.

Beatport’s “Advanced” tier is $14.99, with 128 Kbps AAC.
Beatport’s “Pro” tier is $29.99, with 256 Kbps AAC.

For comparison, Tidal’s “HIFI” tier is $9.99, and streams FLAC, often at 900+ Kbps.

So, IMO, for the price Beatport should offer better quality.

hi nso
well these are data numbers but not all tracks are encoded with these quality :slight_smile:
when you listen to some tracks they appeared much more compressed on Tidal compared to Beatport. it’s easy to try : you listen to the same track on Tidal and Beatport and you’ll hear the difference.
Regards

@JPenade, please post the name of a track where you can hear that the Tidal version is encoded at a lower resolution than the same track on Beatport.

try this one :
Skepsis - Mosh Pit
i’ve just choosed it randomly from my playlist and the difference can be heard with no doubt

That particular track is a “Master” on Tidal. This means that Tidal gets the track in high res from the record label. So it is not encoded in low resolution.

I have the “HiFi” subscription, and I tried streaming it on Virtual DJ, which shows you the bit rate. It streamed in FLAC @ 1.111 Kbps. This is lossless CD quality.

This is clearly better than the 128 Kbps AAC lossy compression that you get from Beatport.

Now, if you like the sound of the Beatport stream better, then that’s fine. It all depends on the equipment you use to reproduce the audio.

PS: does Algoriddim even support lossless Tidal streaming? If not, then this discussion probably doesn’t make sense… :slight_smile:

I think you might mean FLAC @ 1.411 Mbps - MEGAbits per second, 1.411 million bits per second rather than kbps, kilobits or thousands of bits per second.

FLAC is an algorithm that encodes/decodes files in that format in a bit-perfect, lossless way, and what I think you’re talking about is Tidal Master quality files, encoded using another technique called MQA. It’s my supposition that djay CAN play/mix MQA files IF end-users have the appropriate external hardware DAC to do so, but algoriddim hasn’t confirmed that, and I don’t have the appropriate interface to test it on my own.

For a deeper dive into that, also look at Direct Stream Digital (DSD- there’s a link on that wiki page) - to my ear, this pair is what the recording industry should’ve adopted instead of WAV files; if that had transpired, we wouldn’t be having this discussion now.

DSD files are significantly bigger, which is why FLAC was necessary. With readily available 1Gbps internet and very fast multi-core CPUs today, streaming services can bring life-like audio sound quality to consumers in real time, and DSD-FLAC was built for today’s technology and its capabilities a quarter century ago.

MQA is a commercial venture that attempted to do this

No, I actually do mean FLAC @ 1111 Kbps. That’s the compressed bitrate of that particular track before decoding. As a side note, the 1411 Kbps that you refer to is the bitrate of uncompressed CD quality audio (16 bit, 44.1 KHz).

And I know very well what FLAC is — thank you…! :slight_smile:

What we were discussing was whether or not Tidal is using lower quality in their HIFI streams. I asked for an example track, and the one given is clearly a high resolution audio file. It is a “Master” which means that Tidial got the track in high resolution from the record label. It seems very unlikely to me that Tidal would then do a lossy compression of it and masquerade as a lossless file.

I am still convinced Tidal’s lossless streams on the HIFI tier in general (for newer releases) are superior to Beatport’s 128 Kbps lossy compressed streams.

Whether or not you can actually hear the difference is another story. Your ears and the dac/amp/speakers are the deciding factors. I’m guessing that on a high end system, you will hear the difference in a blind A/B test.

Ah, you’re right…I hadn’t caffeinated adequately when I typed that…apologies.
But people should follow those links and learn up some on the technologies and techniques involved. everything comes together when you’ve a broader personal knowledgebase.
But also - not everyone hears the same way, just like not everyone listens the same way.
My ears and yours seem to be more in agreement about Tidal, which leads me to believe we listen similarly.

1 Like