What are you listening to... RIGHT NOW!? | Brave Enough by...

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Brave Enough by Lindsey Stirling. Listening on my brandy new Fostex Purplehearts, on a Woo Audio WA3 and Fostex HPA4 DAC. Its being streamed from my Amazon Prime Music on my desktop PC.

Heefty1119Follow

WildChinoise

Ugh! You had me jealous until you got to the Amazon Prime Music streaming... I've not encountered a worse streaming service for compressed horrible audio quality... But then I haven't dared try it in about a year so maybe it's much better now... I guess I better go see if I need to put my foot in my mouth yet since I can't believe that someone who has invested as much in their rig as you have could stand to listen through a full song. Might save me my $120/yr on Spotify.
Update: Nope, it's still awful. You should at least try the free versions of Pandora or Spotify for a little bit of an upgrade if you're not interested to spend some money for decent sound quality.

WildChinoise196Follow

Heefty

My stack has a ways to go. Time to study up on DACs and see what might go well with my gear.
A year ago I would have to agree with you on Prime Music streaming. But its hard to beat free, since I already get Amazon Prime for free shipping, as well as Amazon Video, & Amazon Lending library services. BTW, you can choose between Amazon music quality lvl of low, medium & high. High = 320kps MP3. I use Prime music to explore what's out there and sample new releases.
I have tried Pandora and Spotify. Have you tried Tidal, I think that offers some high quality music streaming and very usable phone and pc apps. But's it kinda pricey.
I generally listen to CDs ripped to FLAC and sometime I buy albums downloaded from HDtracks.
I can say the remastered and more carefully mastered albums offered on HDtracks, Acousticsounds do sound better. Especially old rock and pop that has been remastered, I find very enojoyable.

Heefty1119Follow

WildChinoise

I didn't realize you could change the quality on Amazon. That's good to know though, thanks for the tip. I'll have to look into it to see if I can figure it out since I'm also already paying for Prime. Their site is not exactly the most user friendly ever for options like that though.
I've heard a lot about Tidal but never personally given it a go because for a couple reasons. It used to be absurdly expensive (probably in its infancy). It looks like the monthly rate has come down a bit now though and they have separated between the premium and HiFi options, so that's something to consider. I've also seen that some reviewers suggest that it comes across a bit bass heavy, whereas Spotify is more balanced. Not sure if there's any truth to that though since I've never tried it. Between those two, no compelling reason for me to make the switch.
Couldn't agree more on the CDs/FLACs/HDtracks route though! HDtracks really does a stellar job with what they offer. It's the easiest way for me to get my hands on HD (better than CD quality) audio as well. I do appreciate the higher sample rate options.

ElectronicVices1119Follow

Heefty

I gave Tidal a try shortly after launch and liked it initially. Eventually decided its library had a ways to go and the initial pricing was off-putting. As far as the "bassy" part... I've always felt frequency response extension on the high and low ends was more greatly affected by lossy compression. No measurements to back this up but I have always noticed a cleaner and deeper low end with lossless vs lossy compression (with material that contains info in those bands). From a pragmatic standpoint it would make sense to remove more bits from the frequency extremes vs the mid-bass through lower treble. The vast majority of consumer reproduction equipment falls quite short in these frequency ranges. Variable bit rate mp3's alleviated some of extension issues of prior generations of the codec but I feel it still has a way to go.
On topic portion: "Conscious" (Full Album) - Broods in 96kHz/24bit via Jriver MC>X-USB>XDA-1>AVR-2808>XPA-100 (x2)>ERT-8 Tower Speakers
HDtracks is great... those coupon emails get me in trouble however!

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