Article: The Next Track: Episode 159 | Amazon Music HD

[Abstraction]

On 9/25/2019 at 9:50 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

over all though Qobuz is 100x better than Amazon. 

 

What is 100x better? 

Right now I have Tidal running with Roon,  a trial  subscription to Qobuz and to  Amazon HD.  I also have over 3tb of CDs ripped to a drive. I am not the kind of person to make my ear's bleed doing a-b comparisons, but it seems to me that the noticeable variation in sound quality is more from recording to recording than from service to service. I am more interested in the catalog offerings of relatively, what should I say, far out music-- jazz from small record companies, avant-garde contemporary classical music, and non-pop world music. This involves a very large amount of music, and I haven't scratched surface, but there is no question that Amazon on my measure--the offerings of the music that I listen to--is incomparably better.

[Abstraction]

On 9/26/2019 at 10:44 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

In just about every category of what makes me select a product, Qobuz wins. Sure Amazon beats everyone on price, but in the grand scheme of things the price difference between all the services doesn't even amount to the sales tax on a USB cable for some people.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I don't doubt that for most people who listen seriously to music Qobuz is a better product, but no stream is any good if it does not stream the music you want to hear. To be sure my interests in music are fringy, some might say weird.  The cutting edge of jazz is mostly to be heard in venues often with audiences less than fifty. These people are not being recorded by ECM.  I rarely use an audio service to discover music.  I search for new music on the NYC Jazz Record and the jazz blogs. It's a quandary. I retired and moved to an NYC apartment, so I could hear live music.  I sold my vinyl, but there is no place to store CDs.

 

 I don't know what I will do.  I still have free time left on Amazon.  Tidal is somewhat better for my musical interests than Qobuz.   The point is, I guess, that the problem of digital music distribution is still not solved. The musicians, especially the ones who are not big sellers, are being ripped off. I feel somewhat better about this because I hear and pay for a lot of live music, but that does not deal with the issue. I have Roon and Sonore rendus running on two systems. So, then what?