Jump to content
IGNORED

IDAGIO - For Classical Music Lovers


Recommended Posts

I was so happy to find this available in Canada and I signed up for the two week preview. My initial impression is very positive. The Android app could use some polish, but when you look at a full album the current track is definitely indicated - it's in a standard weight font while all the other track names are bold.

 

I have it streaming to a Chromecast Audio device, which sends a digital feed to my DAC's optical input. It sounds pretty good. I think I will end up subscribing to idagio, as I'd like to encourage the survival of at least one streaming service geared to classical music.

Link to comment
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 ?

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment
2 hours ago, rodrigaj said:

Spotify Premium / Connect has a lot more content than IDAGIO regardless of genre - including classical.

 

What are examples of albums on Spotify that are not on Idagio?

 

I find that for classical music out of the mainstream, Idagio has a surprisingly extensive library.

 

For example, compared with Spotify, Idagio has over twice as many works by composer David Diamond.  Spotify has none of his chamber works at all.

 

Hindemith's "Ludus Tonalis":  Spotify has 4 recordings, Idagio has 10.

 

Barber's "Knoxville":  Spotify 4, Idagio 11.

 

OTOH, Idagio has a minuscule selection of Italian opera.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

Link to comment

@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.

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment
1 hour ago, rodrigaj said:

have you found that if you save favorites on say the iPad App that it does not appear on your desktop app?

 

If you buy me an iPad, I'll test it!

 

I do find that favorites (what they call "collections") and playlists are properly saved and shared between the Mac desktop app and web browser.  

 

The confusing aspect is that your "Collection" is divided into 3 sub-groups for tracks, recordings and albums, respectively, and you cannot view all 3 sub-groups together.  That's dumb, but presumably easy for them to fix.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

Link to comment
1 hour ago, rodrigaj said:

if you search for "Artist" (as in performer) instead of "Composer/Composition" (as in Beethoven Sonatas) you hit the motherload.

 

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!

 

However, a serious problem is that the recording date usually is not specified, but rather a copyright date, and the latter is often bizarrely unrelated to the recording date, including very recent copyright dates for performers who are deceased or retired.  This is especially confusing for artists who recorded the same work multiple times over there careers.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

Link to comment

 

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.

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment
9 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!

 

However, a serious problem is that the recording date usually is not specified, but rather a copyright date, and the latter is often bizarrely unrelated to the recording date, including very recent copyright dates for performers who are deceased or retired.  This is especially confusing for artists who recorded the same work multiple times over there careers.

The problem is that most providers of streaming services use very poor indexing systems. I guess Idagio are moving in the right direction but having to search for works without a proper 'work' or 'composition' index is not very satisfactory. I have tagged all my music using, among others, 'composer', 'work', 'form', 'period', 'date', 'conductor' and 'ensemble' indexes. The entries in 'date' always denote the recording date. The entries in 'work' are also equipped with one or more dates. These describe when the work was composed and/or first performed. With MinimServer's intelligent browsing, it is very easy to select a composer, a work and then list the dates, the conductors, the ensembles and the performers of those recordings. I wish Idagio would implement a similar browsing engine for their databases. But, to be fair, even the search engine of the Digital Concert Hall is crap and they have been around for quite a while.  

Link to comment
6 hours ago, rodrigaj said:

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.

 

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.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

Link to comment
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)

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment
7 hours ago, rodrigaj said:

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.

 

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.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

Link to comment
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!

 

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment
On 10/18/2018 at 11:00 AM, Daccord said:

I have it streaming to a Chromecast Audio device, which sends a digital feed to my DAC's optical input. It sounds pretty good. I think I will end up subscribing to idagio, as I'd like to encourage the survival of at least one streaming service geared to classical music.

+1

Jim

 

Harlan Howard's definition of a great country song: "Three chords and the truth."

Link to comment

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.

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment
2 minutes ago, rodrigaj said:

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.

No, I hadn't listened to anything requiring gapless before I posted. I sent them an email about it, but haven't received a reply yet. For now I've switched to the desktop app on my main system, and I dug up the old iPad to use airplay to stream to my Naim Muso.

 

The Android app has a lot of trouble working with the Chromecast device anyway. I hate the way you have to start playback before you get to choose where to send it. I was hoping the iOS app would be better, but it does the same thing. But I'm still enjoying the service, despite the warts.

Link to comment
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.

 

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment
6 hours ago, rodrigaj said:

Dealbreaker.

 

I think that's an over-reaction.  The vast majority of non-operatic classical music has pauses between movements.  Even for the minority of music that is continuous between tracks — such as Petrushka mentioned above, Daphnis & Chloe, or Mahler's 8th — Idagio remains extremely useful to compare performances.

 

In any event, what is the alternative?  The other lossless classical streaming services, including Qobuz, have search functions that are just as frustrating as Idagio.

 

Since Idagio is half the price of Qobuz redbook streaming, it's a wonderful option.  I've enjoyed exploring music I've read positive reviews about but never heard before, such as Hindemith's "Ludus Tonalis".

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

Link to comment

Recording Dates:  I just poked around in the Qobuz app.  (I have an account but not an active subscription.)  Like Idagio, most albums in Qobuz only show the publication date of the latest reissue/repackaging, not the recording date, so it's often impossible to figure out which repackagings correspond to which of the multiple recordings made by an artist over their long career.

 

Search:  I tried searching for Beethoven's sonata 30, op 109, by Barenboim.  I couldn’t find it at all in the Qobuz Mac desktop app, although they must have it.  In Idagio I found two versions with copyright dates of 2006 and 2013.  The 2006 is his recent recording in the Beethoven for All series.  I have no idea when the 2013 version actually was recorded.  The timings are different from his 1984 complete sonatas on CD.

HQPlayer (on 3.8 GHz 8-core i7 iMac 2020) > NAA (on 2012 Mac Mini i7) > RME ADI-2 v2 > Benchmark AHB-2 > Thiel 3.7

Link to comment

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.

 

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment

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:

 

 

 

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought", Sir Thomas Beecham. 

 

 

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...