IDAGIO - For Classical Music Lovers

[rodrigaj]

I don't know if this has been posted yet:

 

IDAGIO - Welcome to Classical Music

[rodrigaj]

Too bad it is not available in the USA. I did sign up for their newsletter though.

[rodrigaj]

I just received an email that IDAGIO is available in the USA. It appears that streaming is at 320kbps and redbook levels are at a premium price. BT, Airplay, Chromecast only.

 

Here is the link to the technical aspects of the service:

 

http://support.idagio.com/technical-questions

[rodrigaj]

12 minutes ago, Bob Stern said:

 

They have Mac and Windows desktop apps here:

https://www.idagio.com/download

 

Yes but BT, Airplay, or Chromcast is the only way to get it to my main system. I don't have a computer in my listening room. Perhaps I missed something, but I was hoping for something like Spotify Connect.

 

[rodrigaj]

I agree on Qobuz Sublime. Plus with integration in A+, Lumin App, you can't beat it.

 

Here in the USA, we're still waiting on Qobuz. Promises, of sorts, were made for this weekend's RMAF introduction but that does not appear to be taking place.

[rodrigaj]

No apologies necessary. Art house movies are of interest to me and I had never heard of Filmstruck. I usually get my movies from the local library system but people treat the DVD's so carelessly that I have been hunting for a streaming service. Netflix is great for what it is but limited.

 

Returning to Idagio, I can see myself keeping Spotify Premium / Connect for casual listening and Idagio for classical simply for the tagging value. Try searching for Mozart K504 on Spotify...what a mess. If Idagio can deal with that in a suitable manner I'm in.

 

Right now I'm trying to set aside a day when I can delve into Idagio uninterrupted.

[rodrigaj]

@mkozlows That Mozart KV 504 search looks awesome. Thank you for doing that.

 

If you sign up via the web for the lower red book price, you still can access the service via an iOS app or Android app? Correct?

 

My plan is to dust off my Airport Express, sign on to Idagio and Airplay via toslink. My only regret is that I sold my W4S Remedy Reclocker when I gave up my subscription to the BPO Digital Concert Hall.  Toslink sounded very good with the Remedy.

 

Just thought of this...I can also try the Shareport emulator on my uRendu. I forgot this comes with the SonicOrbiter OS. Hopefully tomorrow I can set aside some time for this.

[rodrigaj]

I signed up for the 14 day free trial and have been playing around with the desktop app and the iOS app. My playback is via Airplay to the uRendu Shareport app. I was able to listen for 4 hours without any skips, stops or stutters.

 

For me, Idagio is a keeper. Well worth the $10 per month for redbook access. If you are a classical music lover and have been frustrated by searches on other streaming services, you owe it to yourself to try Idagio. The effort that has gone into tagging their classical library leaves nothing wanting. Every possible combination of correlatable tags is presented in a manner that is intuitive.

 

Having said that, there are a few quirks:

1. Album artwork does not always "travel" with tracks. So for example, using Mozart KV504 will yield complete "recordings" by conductor, ensemble, etc... but they will all have a generic picture of Mozart as the artwork.
2. Nomenclature is odd. A complete symphony will be called a "recording". Albums can be "albums" or they can be "curated lists". For example, Tetzlaff's recent J.S. Bach Sonatas & Partitas (Odine) is saved as a "curated list" while Hahn's recent J.S. Bach's (Decca) is saved under "albums". Both travel with the album cover art.
3. There is no queue that I have been able to find. Tap on a track and the "curated list" or "album" begins to play. The track that is playing is not highlighted, Idagio has a small bar indicator along the left side that moves down the list as tracks are sequenced. It's not obvious at all.
4. The playback bar is white. But in the ios app the "album" playback screen is also white. Near the end of the track the playback bar tends to disappear. There was no way of changing the gui skin that I could find. Tapping on the horizontal bar along the bottom brings up the track, cover art and playback bar with a colored background that fixes this, but this is not an obvious alternative view. 

Once you begin to understand the logic of Idagio's system all of the pieces fall into place and you are left marveling at the tagging effort which makes comparative assessment of your favorite composers by your favorite ensembles and conductors an absolute breeze.

 

And...sound quality is outstanding. What's not to like - a few quirks but overall a fine effort.

[rodrigaj]

I sent IDAGIO a link to this thread. This is the reply I received:

 

Hi there,

thanks so much for giving IDAGIO a try and for your extensive feedback.
We highly appreciate your input and agree that your suggestions are important in order to improve IDAGIO.
Just some feedback on the points you mention:

1. Many of the tracks in our catalogue are currently connected to recordings. Since a recording might not have been released as an album necessarily, there are no artworks related to recordings. We are planning to integrate albums better in the future though and hope to be able to relate more tracks to albums and therefore also artworks.
2. Albums appearing as playlists is indeed pretty confusing - I guess that you mainly see this on the Discover page, which is simply a technical thing that our backend team is trying to solve at the moment. We hope to be able to streamline this in the near future.
3. You are right, a queue or waitlist has not been developed yet. However it is definitely plan to add this to our service in the future and I have marked your interest in this, so we can get back to you once we have more news about it.
4. I have passed this on to our iOS developers since it sounds like a bug or error in our app design. Thank you for sharing this with us!

I hope those answers give you some ideas on what to expect from IDAGIO in the future. If you have any further ideas, questions or feedback, feel free to get in touch with us anytime.

Happy listening and best regards
Lukas

[rodrigaj]

@nbpf 

I agree that connectivity is a challenge with IDAGIO - the only renderer they offer turnkey connectivity with is Sonos.

 

Fortunately, I live in a MAC ecosystem and my ultraRendu offers the Shareport emulator as part of the SonicOrbiter OS, so Airplay was an option.

 

Perhaps a reclocker would work for your optical SPDIF Chromcast solution? I could recommend the W4S Remedy reclocker. I used one for two years prior to the uR with an Airport Express Toslink connection and foolishly sold it. W4S will sometimes sell them as B stock. Otherwise the Remedy is $$$ at $400.

 

My ideal integration would be with Audirvana A+. @damien78 offers integration with Tidal and Qobuz and integration with IDAGIO would be awesome.

[rodrigaj]

4 hours ago, Hugo9000 said:

Well, I downloaded the app, and made an account from within it.  Without giving a credit card, it limits me to their basic lossy format, and won't even play an entire track, just previews.  That's not useful at all for a 24-hr preview of their service, in my book.  Also, Spotify has a lot more of the content that I'm interested in checking out for future purchases (that's mainly how I use streaming, to find things that are worth buying on CD or SACD).

 

So, I guess I'll revisit them in a while to see if things have changed.  Back to my own physical media again haha

Yes, the credit card is needed for redbook streaming with a 14 day trial period.

 

Spotify Premium / Connect has a lot more content than IDAGIO regardless of genre - including classical. Furthermore, the lack of cover art and album information that travels with tracks of "recordings" (i.e., individual symphonies, concertos, etc.) makes checking out for future purchases tiresome and quite frankly not worth the effort.

 

IDAGIO is not for purchase decision making, unless you happen to luck out and a particular album is on the discover page.

 

IDAGIO is different from other streaming services. It almost wants to be a closed ecosystem, with curated playlists by reviewers, and a tagging system that is excellent but does not allow insights outside of the closed ecosystem (i.e., album buying decisions).

 

As I see it, at least for now, IDAGIO is for audiophiles who want to support a streaming service that is dedicated to classical music. You will need to keep your Spotify Premium / Connect account or Qobuz account. IDAGIO has quite a bit of growing to do.

 

To end on a positive note, if you love classical music and if you want to grow your musical listening repertoire, expand your classical music horizons, IDAGIO's format, curated playlists, expert criticisms and discover options make for a wonderful experience. I really wish them success and will support them...and keep my Spotify subscription ?

[rodrigaj]

@Bob Stern

 

You are absolutely correct. I spent another 4 hours tonight getting familiar with the search function and found to my delight that if you search for "Artist" (as in performer) instead of "Composer/Composition" (as in Beethoven Sonatas) you hit the motherload.

 

For example, I was fretting about the Beethoven Sonatas, both by Paul Lewis and Annie Fischer only to find the complete sets on Harmonia Mundi and Hungaraton readily available if you search "Paul Lewis" and "Annie Fischer".

 

So I readily admit that I was wrong.. and glad that I was wrong.

 

OTOH, I do agree that opera appears to be lacking, but maybe that is another search function quirk. I think I only got 5 hits when I tried "La Boheme".

 

BTW, have you found that if you save favorites on say the iPad App that it does not appear on your desktop app? I don't seem to be getting a "Cloud" experience but rather just a "Local" experience.

[rodrigaj]

 

8 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

 

I don’t think that's necessary.  I tried searching "Beethoven piano sonata".  I got a list of works, i.e., each individual sonata.  I then selected one of them, nr. 26 (op. 81).  This yielded a list of 60 soloists on the left.  That's a lot!

Hmmm...

When I type in "Beethoven piano sonata" on my iMac desktop app or the browser page, I don't get anywhere near the results you are getting. Specifically, 2 top results, 48 compositions, 30 albums, 1 playlist. More importantly, neither the Paul Lewis or Annie Fischer albums that I mentioned before are listed.

 

When I type in "Beethoven piano sonata" on my iPad App I get a different list, some overlap, but nonetheless different. Again, not anywhere near the results you are getting.

 

This is what led me to conclude initially that their offerings were substantially less than Spotify.

 

I'm not sure why we are getting such differing search results.

 

Edit: Never mind. I see how to get the soloists view. But no link to the albums from which they come from. The album list is totally not representative of what their library has to offer.

[rodrigaj]

8 minutes ago, Bob Stern said:

 

Did you skip the step of selecting ONE of the sonatas from the list of 48 compositions?  It won’t display all recordings until you select a single composition.

Yeah, I figured it out.

(See my edit)

[rodrigaj]

34 minutes ago, Bob Stern said:

 

Yes, the absence of album links is extremely frustrating.

 

Also, many works appear separately as "recordings" but not as part of their albums.  For example, the recent Gergiev album of Stravinsky's Petrushka and Fireworks on the Mariinsky label appears under its two compositions, but the album itself does not appear anywhere, no matter how you search.

 

That blows my theory that you only need the Artist name (i.e., Valery Gergiev) and the album should appear in the search. 

Frustrating indeed!

 

[rodrigaj]

@Bob Stern That Gergiev / Stravinsky / Marlinsky album in featured in the new releases section of Discover.

[rodrigaj]

To those folks using Chromecast, has the lack of gapless playback been fixed?

 

Airplay supports gapless playback as long as the iOS app will support it. I thought Chromecast did not.

[rodrigaj]

10 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

 

The Mac desktop app cannot play gaplessly either.

The iPad app cannot play gaplessly either.

 

Here is the reply I got from Lucas (IDAGIO):

Many thanks for your message and the feedback.
You are right, AirPlay supports gapless playback but unfortunately, IDAGIO does not yet at this point.
We realise that gapless playback is an essential part of listening to classical music and are planning to work on this feature. However, the integration of this feature requires quite some technical effort, which is why we do not yet have a specific date for its release.
We hope to make this feature available as soon as possible and are happy to get directly in touch with you, if there are any news related to this.

In order to reduce the gaps, we recommend to download as many tracks as possible in lossless quality and stream them via AirPlay.

Best regards
Lukas

 

A classical music streaming service that does not support gapless playback makes no sense to me. Since they have been around since 2015, I find it a strange omission. Spotify has had gapless since 2016.

 

[rodrigaj]

Dealbreaker.

[rodrigaj]

For me gapless playback is a dealbreaker, but I would never try to convince anyone that it should or should not be for them.

 

It totally destroys the music listening environment for me. It ruined it for me during the Mendelssohn / Faust "Discover" session last night and the Curated Playlist by music critic Seckerson when Bernstein's American in Paris ended. 

 

My wife can go to a movie and not be bothered by the folks sneaking peeks at their phones. It drives me crazy, to where I stopped going to movie theatres.

 

We are all different.

 

[rodrigaj]

I am in the process of evaluating via a 14 day free trial (no credit card needed) PRIMEPHONIC Streaming for Classical Music Lovers.

 

Some things about the PRIMEPHONIC service I can say right away:

1. Gapless playback is included.
2. The 14 day free trial includes hires - but you don't know what is hires and what is redbook before playback.
3. If you need recording dates of albums or release dates or copyright dates they are nonexistent in their library.
4. If you have been turned off by reviews from 2017 about the search function and library offerings, both have been vastly improved.
5. No desktop app and you must use Chrome for the browser experience.

In any case, I wanted to keep this thread for IDAGIO so I will continue my PRIMEPHONIC experience here:

 

 

[rodrigaj]

2 hours ago, nbpf said:

After having cancelled my Qobuz Sublime subscription, I am now testing Idagio. I very much like the lean app but, as already pointed out, there are unacceptable limitations: streaming through a ChromeCast Audio connected via optical S/PDIF to a Naim DAC yields a sound quality that is by no means comparable to what I get from a DigiOne Signature connected via electrical S/PDIF (BNC-BNC) to the same DAC. Gapless replay does not appear to work which, especially for opera, is a deal breaker. Is Idagio working on these issue and when can we expect tangible improvements?  

AFAIK, no one from Idagio visits these forums.

 

Back in October this was the response they gave regarding gapless:

Here is the reply I got from Lucas (IDAGIO):

Many thanks for your message and the feedback.
You are right, AirPlay supports gapless playback but unfortunately, IDAGIO does not yet at this point.
We realise that gapless playback is an essential part of listening to classical music and are planning to work on this feature. However, the integration of this feature requires quite some technical effort, which is why we do not yet have a specific date for its release.
We hope to make this feature available as soon as possible and are happy to get directly in touch with you, if there are any news related to this.

In order to reduce the gaps, we recommend to download as many tracks as possible in lossless quality and stream them via AirPlay.

Best regards
Lukas

 

Within the past week they have released an iOS update which now tracks "Recordings" to "Albums". This permits you to see (and access) the original album from where the "Recording" comes from. A "Recording" in IDAGIO's vocabulary is a piece of music. That was a major improvement to the UX.

 

But...still no gapless and no DLNA support and no Play Queue. Their library is also limited in artists availability. For example, no Quatuor Hermes...had to switch to Spotify Premium for that. 

 

OTOH, since they are only classical genre, finding a work of a composer is a breeze. I support them because of this.

 

FWIW, I was hanging out over on the Talk Classical forums and there is very little support for IDAGIO (or any other streaming service) over there - They like their 10,000 CD collections, LOL. So... if IDAGIO can't get those folks excited about their service, they are doomed. 

 

 

[rodrigaj]

9 hours ago, Hugo9000 said:

@rodrigaj  Any updates on the state of IDAGIO?  I've been using the U.S. Beta of Qobuz, and while the sound quality is wonderful, it's too frustrating finding albums, even worse than Spotify.  I'm not sure why people talk of Qobuz being geared in any way toward classical music listeners, as they just don't seem to get the concept of multiple soloists, composer, composition, ensemble, etc in their tagging and search.  It's a complete mess.  You have to try searching by composer, but that may not work, so try the name of the composition, conductor, or perhaps one of the singers, or the orchestra.  Eventually, it turns out the recording is on Qobuz, but it's listed with one of the comprimario singers, rather than the prima donna.  WTF lmao!

 

Whenever I remember that IDAGIO exists, I come back to the warnings that they don't have gapless playback.  I listen to too many operas for lack of gapless to be remotely acceptable.  I hope they will fix it, and have no clue why they wouldn't have had gapless playback from the beginning, since all they do is classical.

 

I'm a member of Talk Classical, but I don't post or read there too much as I'm not an acolyte of either the Mozart Cult or the Callas Cult, so the experience there can be unpleasant haha!  What I do have in common with others on that forum, apparently, is my love of physical media.  I only own around 3,000 CDs, however (but I don't think I could even come up with a wish-list that would take me to 10k!).

I gave up on Qobuz and signed on to IDAGIO and Spotify Premium as my streaming compromise.

 

Idagio still does not have gapless but their tagging is outstanding and ease of finding composers works is superb. By comparison to Spotify Premium their library is lacking but overall not bad.

 

Still, no one service does it all. If the primary focus of your listening is Italian opera, you will be disappointed with Idagio.

 

I quit going to Talk Classical. LOL, their endless lists of composers and their works baffle me.

[rodrigaj]

I'm not sure about their present format since I dropped their service several months ago. I still follow this topic in the hopes that one day Idagio will develop a DLNA app similar to Spotify Connect, with gapless playback. Airplay did not work out for me.

[rodrigaj]

@Jim Sylva

@Bob Stern

I totally agree that Idagio is a wonderful search and choice experience. I discovered many new interpretations as well as many new works.

 

I really wanted to keep my Idagio subscription going, but after going round and round with their technical support staff for 8 months trying to get Airplay to work seamlessly, I gave up. I tried with my Sonore uR and my Airport express (via Toslink) and I always had one or two episodes of unexplained dropouts during listening sessions.

 

@Hugo9000 When I left about 3 months ago, gapless was still unavailable. That was another reason why stopped the subscription.