Tidal free for 6 months

Still too expensive.


J/K, this is great if you are interested. Spotify is my baby though.
 
Apparently you had to be on Sprint's data network aka a Sprint customer to get it to actually accept the code, but of course the deal now appears to be dead as well.

A music service that can use up to 10x more bandwidth to listen to the same songs meaning it'll use more data on your carrier that you may or may not have "unlimited" data on, I mean come on, honestly, if people don't understand by now that "high resolution audio" is nothing but a gimmick, geez. :)

But what do I know, listen to one of the most respected audio engineers in the world today who also happened to help create Ogg Vorbis and Opus, two of the very best lossless audio codecs in existence (big huge fan of Opus myself, that's all I use for portable audio now):

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
 
I got in on it when it was working, figure if I can get anything free from them I will. I would never pay for this. I don't have sprint either.
 
Tiberian said:
Apparently you had to be on Sprint's data network aka a Sprint customer to get it to actually accept the code, but of course the deal now appears to be dead as well.

A music service that can use up to 10x more bandwidth to listen to the same songs meaning it'll use more data on your carrier that you may or may not have "unlimited" data on, I mean come on, honestly, if people don't understand by now that "high resolution audio" is nothing but a gimmick, geez. :)

But what do I know, listen to one of the most respected audio engineers in the world today who also happened to help create Ogg Vorbis and Opus, two of the very best lossless audio codecs in existence (big huge fan of Opus myself, that's all I use for portable audio now):

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Click to expand...

The guy who wrote that article is not only deaf; I'd say he's deeef. :)

I can certainly tell the difference between a 192Kbps, 320Kbps, and FLAC. I have a 79 year old mother and she can tell the difference between a 192Kbps and 320Kbps track. I can tell the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit settings within Windows. Is there a big difference between a 320Kbps and FLAC? Not really, unless you are specifically listening for it with headphones on. Sometimes the lower bitrate track will blend subtle sounds together instead of you hearing the individual sounds. Sometimes it just cuts them out. Sometimes the stereo blends together on complex tracks like jazz passages when the drummer is making a drum bend to his will. Some of the little things get lost in the transitions.

I can also tell you that Bluetooth 4.1 sounds like crap. I tried a device after being told that I would be disappointed. Sure enough it sounded like someone was chopping up the music with a knife. This was while riding down the road in an old truck. I could tell the difference with wind noise, passenger talking, bumps in the road, engine revving, and who knows whatever else going on. The highs sound atrocious. The bass was fine I suppose. The vocals sounded like they were missing an important quality about them; not sure what is wrong with Bluetooth 4.1.
 
cageymaru said:
The guy who wrote that article is not only deaf; I'd say he's deeef. :)

I can certainly tell the difference between a 192Kbps, 320Kbps, and FLAC. I have a 79 year old mother and she can tell the difference between a 192Kbps and 320Kbps track. I can tell the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit settings within Windows. Is there a big difference between a 320Kbps and FLAC? Not really, unless you are specifically listening for it with headphones on. Sometimes the lower bitrate track will blend subtle sounds together instead of you hearing the individual sounds. Sometimes it just cuts them out. Sometimes the stereo blends together on complex tracks like jazz passages when the drummer is making a drum bend to his will. Some of the little things get lost in the transitions.

I can also tell you that Bluetooth 4.1 sounds like crap. I tried a device after being told that I would be disappointed. Sure enough it sounded like someone was chopping up the music with a knife. This was while riding down the road in an old truck. I could tell the difference with wind noise, passenger talking, bumps in the road, engine revving, and who knows whatever else going on. The highs sound atrocious. The bass was fine I suppose. The vocals sounded like they were missing an important quality about them; not sure what is wrong with Bluetooth 4.1.
Click to expand...

I'm just reading through this now, so I can't address everything you've written but there's one part of your argument that I think you might have reacted too quickly to. His article discuses that 192kHz, not 192Kbit is wasteful compares to 96kHz. I agree with you that the encoded bitrate makes a difference, 192 vs 320 vs flac sure. However that isn't what is on topic there, he's discussing frequency not bitrate. He does state that there are reasons to use 24 over 16 bit, but not for finished music tracks which should not contain any of the minute noise caught in 24.

Bluetooth is garbage and should have been left alone for wireless headsets for cell calls. It should have never been allowed to be used for music.

On topic? Yeah unless this company was on board with every cell provider to be free data, it's a non-start.
 
arnemetis said:
I'm just reading through this now, so I can't address everything you've written but there's one part of your argument that I think you might have reacted too quickly to. His article discuses that 192kHz, not 192Kbit is wasteful compares to 96kHz. I agree with you that the encoded bitrate makes a difference, 192 vs 320 vs flac sure. However that isn't what is on topic there, he's discussing frequency not bitrate. He does state that there are reasons to use 24 over 16 bit, but not for finished music tracks which should not contain any of the minute noise caught in 24.

Bluetooth is garbage and should have been left alone for wireless headsets for cell calls. It should have never been allowed to be used for music.

On topic? Yeah unless this company was on board with every cell provider to be free data, it's a non-start.
Click to expand...

I saw that after I posted, but I hate editing posts due to some others changing their posts when you are responding to them. I figured I'd take the stake to the heart for posting too fast. ;)

Tidal has a Masters category that can utilize 24 bit; you really have to concentrate to hear the difference in regular music. Remastered albums seem to sound slightly better than the originals, but the difference is too small for me. Only Jazz music with complex transitions seem to make a slight difference. And those Master files are larger than the FLAC files on Tidal. Tidal also has a 1/2 price 320Kbps streaming service that sounds better than Spotify Premium to me. I wasn't impressed with Spotify Premium other than the ability to share playlists on Reddit which all these music services need. Amazon Music isn't bad quality. I can live with that since it comes as an extra for my Prime subscription.

You can download music from Tidal onto your phone via WiFi and keep it there forever. I have albums on my phone that no longer exist on Tidal due to the ever changing licensing that companies do. My only regret is that my Nexus 6 doesn't have expandable memory like my old Samsung S4 has. I have 7GB of 32GB left on my phone and I haven't added in my Prince catalog. ;( I think I downloaded a few of the Masters albums. Going to fix that when I get time to.

The Tidal store is highway robbery as far as album pricing goes. It should be banned for the price gouging.
 
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