Web Rip vs CD Rip

[One and a half]

One of the many reasons not listening to Tidal was that the music sounded different compared to the Cd rip and played locally.

 

I came across a Web rip of a very familiar album that I've owned since 1987, it's Thom Rotella Band self titled CD on DMP. DMP were pioneers of digital recordings back in the day, the Roon DR range on this particular album is 18. Tracks feature percussion with all kinds of hidden triangles, shakers, and the drum kicks are as about 'real' as there is. The album comes out when there's a new piece of equipment, or experimenting with interconnects to reset the reference and to find any new gems.

 

The Web Rip when listened to on speakers, strange, something was missing and something added.  The attack of the drums is missing, and sounds mush. The analyze audio from Jriver was not that conclusive, since the playback volumes were different. Opened sound forge and measured the frequency analysis, without tinkering with too many settings.

Well, there's some differences.

 

Web Rip, Patti Cake 30s sample

 

 

CD Rip Patti Cake 30s sample

 

On the web rip is DC? Going years back now, Audacity had a habit of creating oddities, was this one of them? Being that as it may, the upper ranges below 22kHz are very different, with 19k has little worth. Either the source or audacity (?) aren't working to the full fidelity, vindicating my view streaming media is great for cars, background listening and exploring new music but for critical listening, not to be taken seriously.

01 Patti Cake CD Rip 30s.wav 01 Patti Cake Web Rip 30s.wav

[One and a half]

15 hours ago, opus101 said:

Just from a quick eyeballing in Audacity - the channels are swapped and one of the two is phase inverted.

The phase to inversion was me, it was a few days in between checking, and I normally don’t save any changes, maybe SF14 does. When I’m back home can redo. 
the channel swap is the web rip.

 

found another will transmit

[One and a half]

Update

 

Extracted an original Web rip FLAC converted to WAV for analysis of the same Patti Cake track. I thought I'd saved a null exercise by mistake, but under audacity and with an expanded zoom, (should have used this originally), the phase inversion and channel swap is clearly evident, thanks to @opus101 for pointing this out.

 

Web Rip

 

 

CD Rip

 

 

The differences are clear in the first 1.5s when the music starts.

[One and a half]

22 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

With a sample size of one, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss streaming. 
 

That said, very interesting details. Thanks for sharing. 

I've tried Tidal for a few weeks, Qobuz regional restrictions and billing prevent listening and found something 'missing' compare to a local CD, rotating or from a digital file.  Drums sounded like a paper bag being hit as an extreme illustration, but there was no life. 

Perhaps locally, there's too much noise on the network, and/or I could (at the time) use chrome to browse and select music. I do have Roon that can play Tidal, from what I read on the Roon forums, all is not that well either, mainly from a management type of view, data downloads, playback as examples.

 

I will keep looking for more samples like the one above.