Needles & Grooves

Are you using the Tidal master quality streams? They're pretty fantastic.

So, forgive me for being an idiot to the ways of digital, but this thing just acts as in intermediary to your phone app and your amp? Where do the music files actually reside?

@folsom_lives they can be on your phone, computer, streamed through Tidal or Spotify or any streaming service. But it has the capability to stream high res files which means it's very close to vinyl quality in terms of the fidelity.

@Mather Thanks. That's what I always thought. I was also just thinking wouldn't it be cheaper to just run a cable to my phone (or computer) from my amp... I must be missing something here... I have to be missing something...

Yeah it's the DAC that converts the digital to analog and the ability to decode the various types of high res files. There's a lot of different ways to do it, you can get your own DAC and do it that way too.

So I'm guessing the price of this is associated with higher quality DAC and interconnects plus the app and decoding? I'm really just here because someone said I could cut my vinyl spending in half

Yeah I mean it's overpriced if you have the ability to build your own. Which you absolutely can. But it's a nice clean routinely updated platform that is also ROON ready and just works. And it sounds really good on high res files. Like, really good. It sounds great on regular res stuff as well.

I'd love to see someone compare these to the hifberry or other pi based DACs. Admittedly, building and maintaining your own is a bit of a pill. Seems like it never works when I try to demo it for someone, haha.

@folsom_lives if you want a much more in depth explanation of what it and other options can do, head to the Dark Side of Digital thread. Everyone on there knows way more about it than I do, and what other options there are. But it's definitely handy when I want to hear what a new remaster of something like Nevermind sounds like, so instead of buying I just head to Tidal and stream it vs the old Master.

The actual DAC in this thing has some issues, but at least it can connect to an external.

I am buying fewer records since getting the BlueSound last year, but I am buying more expensive pressings so the total cost is still the same

@kvetcha what issues are you having with the DAC?

It’s mostly that it measures poorly in terms of distortion and SNR, if you’re the sort of nerd who idolizes Audio Science Review.

I'm sure it's a situation of, it's the best I've heard digital sound so I don't notice it. But perhaps if I had a comparison to something that measures better I'd be able to tell. But as it is it's a notch below vinyl which is way higher than I expected it to be. So I'm cool with it.

i personally find the master quality a little suspicious.. many mentioned how its actually lossy and paying 10 extra bucks when you can get full CD lossless for half is perfectly good, and most of the files are 16/44 batched transferred to MQA anyway

also @kvetcha I've been trying to convince everyone that amirM is a robot but no one believes me

@duke86fan I'm just going by what my ears tell me. I've compared quite a few "hifi" masters vs the "MQA" masters on Tidal and it's night and day. I'm sure they're fudging the data but they definitely sound better.

Yeah! Mainly all through Tidal @Mather , actually just got my new laptop so I'm transferring all my digital files over and going to be using Roon as well here shortly. But I agree, its just a notch below my best vinyl pressings, but leagues beyond all the crappy pressings in my collection (anything from Secretly Society, I'm talking to you).

@Mather eh you do you.. i just haven't had any better with MQA than CD quality.. maybe i don't have a big setup with my 100 dollar headphones and dac.. but if you enjoy it its nice (some do enjoy the minor distortion of it too), but i both enjoy collecting records and enjoy not paying double compared to other popular services too much to go with hifi premium

You hear distortion listening to MQA files? @duke86fan