Goodbye Groove, hello Tidal and HIFI audio

[offroad73]

Since Groove is going away I've been forced lately to look into other music services: iTunes, Google Music Play, Deezer, Spotify, Amazon and Tidal.

Formerly a Zune and then a Groove Music Pass customer, I wanted to share my experience.

After some installs and a few hours experimenting carefully with each of them I finally felt in total love with Tidal. Wow!

1- The sound quality is overwhelmingly good. Never heard of such sound quality on a streaming service.
2- I believe metadata is the most completed I've ever seen: artists, albums, songs. It is supported by the music industry and it shows.
3- I can save music locally on my Windows Phone (Tidal Unofficial).
4- For those speaking french, I'm totally surprised by the amount of French/Quebec artists.. in HIFI!
5 - The overall experience really feels premium and current. All the latest and greatest are there with tons of exclusives to top it off.

I used Soundiiz to copy my entire playlist collection to Tidal and besides a few tracks missing and a few mismatch (perhaps 10+ over more than 5000 songs in all my playlists) everything is there but.. in HIFI quality.

And this is where I got an unplanned side effect. As a big music lover I own 3000+ CD/digital albums and have a lifelong history of HIFI sound systems overspending (Linn and the likes). Unless I converted a CD in lossless format or plainly buy a FLAC album, there was no way I could get 96/24 quality audio from a streaming service. Thing is, my CD collection began in 1989 (I was 16) and I converted a great deal of them in the early 2000s as MP3/WMA @ 320 because of space. Long story short, since Tidal doesn't play local music and replaces my own tracks in my playlists by the one he's got in its catalog: most songs are of greater quality than my own ripped music!

Bottom line, I've subscribed to the Tidal HiFi for 20$ a month and am slowly scanning their catalog to add to my favorites all of my own albums... plus a few hundreds from the former Groove Music Pass.

Being a Microsoft Zune/Groove fan I never did really look at alternatives. With the latest announcement I've been forced into it. I never thought I would say that, but even without the Groove service coming to an end, I would have definitely made the move to Tidal.

In order to make the move it took:
- a trial Tidal account (free now, 20$ monthly starting in november)
- a Soundizz account (36$ one time)
- download of Tidal Unofficial on my 950

I'm simply rediscovering my own music collecting since I made the move. These guys have albums in full HIFI which I didn't.

 

[Bobvfr]

Glad you found what you were looking for.

For me I am still not sure what way to go, I just sold my house (Several hundred miles and two ferries away from where I actually have been living for the last 8 years) and have been re-united with my Tannoy's, Quad 33/405 pre and power amp and Philips CD101 (Yes the first CD player to come on the market in 1981 and yes all of my 1981 CD's still play as well as the day I bought them).

I have about 250 CD's 200 of which I just brought back from the house (I know, but there weren't many CD shops on the island I lived on) and have access to about 600 on my Groove music pass (Including the 250 CD's I actually own as I just downloaded Groove versions of them), I probably could easily just blow out streaming and buy maybe the 100 CD's I want to add to my collection. There are several used CD shops near where I live.

That way I have high fi sound quality and I can rip them to OneDrive, carry on using Groove (Just to **** off MS) and save spending XXX amount per month and use the money to buy CD's when I want them.

Really don't want to sign up with Spotify, I mean it's not a UWP.

I think I have actually missed browsing in CD racks and finding that missing gem, I searched for 10 years for a copy of Hawkwind's "Warrior on the edge of time" and it was such a pleasure when I found it, yet it was so easy to download it.

Yes sod it going back to the future and buying CD's and keeping my desktop to rip them, up yours MS.

 

[offroad73]

Wow! Philips CD101 is legendary stuff. Actualy listening to "Warrior on the edge of time" here...

After having read bits here and there on the Web, seems many people are doing more or less what I've been doing. Keeping their purchased music on a safe drive on the cloud and tagging their albums on Tidal one by one. Also, I realized I've a bit too enthusiastic... FLAC format is 16/44 (about 400 MB per album) and not 24/96. Still, fantastic sound!

 

[Bobvfr]

Slightly OT, I only got back with from the island with my stuff on Saturday, the 101, 33/405 and Tannoy's have basically been in a damp house with no one for company for 8 years (Ok the Tannoy's got used three times in those 8 years by plugging my Surface Pro 4 or phone and using a bog standard Aiwa amp a couple of times) but the 101 and Quad haven't been out of the boxes, so I left them a couple of days to dry out a bit, hooked the Tannoy's up to a Pioneer receiver and all well and good, not so with the 101, sounds like one of the boards may have been affected by damp as when I plug the right phono in only it crosses to both speakers and doesn't sound so hot, left channel is OK. Luckily I am only yards away from one of the best Hi-Fi service shop in the UK so 101 will pay him a visit soon.

Haven't tried the Quad yet as they run a lot of current and I want to make sure they are fully dry and I will set them up with some cheapy speakers when I do test them, maybe at the weekend.

So I wanted to give the speakers a full run out so I stuck a CD in the Xbox One, as mentioned running through the Pioneer, have to say the difference between a CD and Groove streaming is immense and also have to say the Xbox One CD player isn't half bad, and the Tannoy's well the best way to describe the sound is its like drowning in melted chocolate with the best firework display going off at the same time.

Back on topic, we aren't going to use a streaming service, will play CD's for Hi-Fi and then use OneDrive and Groove for music on the move etc.

CD used and playing now "David Bowie, Black tie White Noise" sounds superb ;-)