Who has a HiFi based around online streaming?

[MajorFubar]

With the various topics that have recently been discussed concerning LAN streaming of lossless files, I was wondering if anyone out there has built a HiFi entirely around online streaming, or is perhaps considering doing so with Apple now muscling-in on the act, five years late? I'm sure I've read a few posts on here from people who have built such a system, but possibly they don't post here regularly.

Sound-quality issues aside (which may or may not be important to you depending on your opinion, your expectations and your chosen service), the biggest problem I have is that they have the power to take your music away at any time, because it's not even strictly your music in so far as you having bought a copy, you're only renting the right to play it, and that right is transient. I already have various playlists on Spotify suffering suddenly from Greyed Out Track syndrome. These are all home-brewed playlists where all the tracks worked when I manually added them. So they have been removed since then, in the space of weeks or days sometimes, with no warning. That in itself is an absolute dealbreaker for me when it comes to using online streaming as a primary source.

 

[Anderson]

With the various topics that have recently been discussed concerning LAN streaming of lossless files, I was wondering if anyone out there has built a HiFi entirely around online streaming, or is perhaps considering doing so with Apple now muscling-in on the act, five years late? I'm sure I've read a few posts on here from people who have built such a system, but possibly they don't post here regularly.

Sound-quality issues aside (which may or may not be important to you depending on your opinion, your expectations and your chosen service), the biggest problem I have is that they have the power to take your music away at any time, because it's not even strictly your music in so far as you having bought a copy, you're only renting the right to play it, and that right is transient. I already have various playlists on Spotify suffering suddenly from Greyed Out Track syndrome. These are all home-brewed playlists where all the tracks worked when I manually added them. So they have been removed since then, in the space of weeks or days sometimes, with no warning. That in itself is an absolute dealbreaker for me when it comes to using online streaming as a primary source.

Reporting for duty.

In the dark days I used CD's. Once I purchased my first PC after mooving out from the parents I started ripping my own music, with that came headaches like tagging and backing all my files up. One day I was looking at offsite backup solutions, I tried one which I was happy with but obviously I had to pay a monthly sub.

Then I discovered Google Music which allowed me to back up and then stream all my music from Google Servers on any other device I owned. So it got me thinking, Google Music is free and it backs up my music I don't need to do backups anymore. BUt then I thought some more, I realised that I wasn't playing the files on my computer, I was streaming from Google to my phone and laptop so I figured that I didnt need to keep my local copies so I deleted those too.

I recently got a new phone which came with two years of Spotify, my amp has spotify connect so it seemed the perfect match. I've since moved back to a paid version of Google Music and I couldn't be happier.

Oh so yeah, in answer to your question my system is streaming only, it makes it super easy for the rest of the family to because all they need to do is pick up their phones/laptops/tablets and pick what they want and like magic it's playing.

Sound quality wise I cannot, Ive tested, tell the difference between 320Kbps music files and flac, all the various music streaming services support this so Im golden.

With regards to your issue and tracks disappearing then Google Music may be the answer for you. With Google Music you can upload your albums or songs to supliment what they have, this is perfect for me because I have some rare stuff that you cannot find in the online catologues, works for me anyway.

 

[Anderson]

Major, I hope you don't mind but I stole your thread idea for our WHat HiFi subreddit (trying to fill it with content and lure some fishes in

Also a link for Google Music, remember it's free to upload your own content.

http://music.google.com

 

[chebby]

Partly Spotify Premium, partly iPlayer Radio, partly my own content (most ripped from my CDs and a little bit of purchased 256K AAC where necessary) but all played via AirPlay.

I am not rigorous in using Spotify. My use is pretty random/haphazard and pretty casual rather than the strict order and care with which I keep my iTunes library.

I tend to use an eclectic bunch of Spotify radio streams and pick favourites or albums, as I go along, with whatever turns up. They end up in 'bins' full of French (or Brazilian, or Argentinian or whatever) favourites that I play in shuffle mode for 'mood' music. Preferably in foreign languages so I don't have to bother understanding all the #### lyrics!! One breathy female singer - with a guitar - per country is enough, the same as one old guy with an accordian singing about his goat. (I just imagine he sings about goats. I can't really tell.)

I am more likely nowadays to listen to an hour of samba or tango or Greek folk music than anything from US/British rock/pop of the last 50 years. (Almost sick of all that by now having heard it all so often!)

I haven't noticed any 'greyed out' choices or disappearances but I probably wouldn't notice anyway!

Quality is mostly 320K AAC VBR (CD rips for iTunes) or 320k Ogg (Spotify) and whatever is used by BBC's iPlayer Radio.

It all sounds superb to me.

 

[Oie]

All ripped to flac from my CD's etc. Also an increasing number of HD? Files downloaded from the usual places.

All files stored on my NAS and streamed to a little NUC where I run JRiver and connected to a DAC and amp.

I have not played a CD for ages.

Regards

 

[John Duncan]

Major, I hope you don't mind but I stole your thread idea for our WHat HiFi subreddit (trying to fill it with content and lure some fishes in

Also a link for Google Music, remember it's free to upload your own content.

http://music.google.com

Why would you create a subreddit to talk about what's being talked about on here? Why don't you just talk about it on here? Unless you make money from the advertising that is on the subreddit of course, which would be against house rules...

 

[jimm]

I use tidal and flac that i stream from my phone using Bluetooth Aptx.

 

[Anderson]

Major, I hope you don't mind but I stole your thread idea for our WHat HiFi subreddit (trying to fill it with content and lure some fishes in

Also a link for Google Music, remember it's free to upload your own content.

http://music.google.com

Why would you create a subreddit to talk about what's being talked about on here? Why don't you just talk about it on here? Unless you make money from the advertising that is on the subreddit of course, which would be against house rules...

The subreddit is an alternative to here, I made it in frustration because of some quirks of this place. I love the people I'm just not fond of the medium You cant make money on reddit, only the site owners can afaik.

 

[Infiniteloop]

With the various topics that have recently been discussed concerning LAN streaming of lossless files, I was wondering if anyone out there has built a HiFi entirely around online streaming, or is perhaps considering doing so with Apple now muscling-in on the act, five years late? I'm sure I've read a few posts on here from people who have built such a system, but possibly they don't post here regularly.

Sound-quality issues aside (which may or may not be important to you depending on your opinion, your expectations and your chosen service), the biggest problem I have is that they have the power to take your music away at any time, because it's not even strictly your music in so far as you having bought a copy, you're only renting the right to play it, and that right is transient. I already have various playlists on Spotify suffering suddenly from Greyed Out Track syndrome. These are all home-brewed playlists where all the tracks worked when I manually added them. So they have been removed since then, in the space of weeks or days sometimes, with no warning. That in itself is an absolute dealbreaker for me when it comes to using online streaming as a primary source.

Reporting for duty.

In the dark days I used CD's. Once I purchased my first PC after mooving out from the parents I started ripping my own music, with that came headaches like tagging and backing all my files up. One day I was looking at offsite backup solutions, I tried one which I was happy with but obviously I had to pay a monthly sub.

Then I discovered Google Music which allowed me to back up and then stream all my music from Google Servers on any other device I owned. So it got me thinking, Google Music is free and it backs up my music I don't need to do backups anymore. BUt then I thought some more, I realised that I wasn't playing the files on my computer, I was streaming from Google to my phone and laptop so I figured that I didnt need to keep my local copies so I deleted those too.

I recently got a new phone which came with two years of Spotify, my amp has spotify connect so it seemed the perfect match. I've since moved back to a paid version of Google Music and I couldn't be happier.

Oh so yeah, in answer to your question my system is streaming only, it makes it super easy for the rest of the family to because all they need to do is pick up their phones/laptops/tablets and pick what they want and like magic it's playing.

Sound quality wise I cannot, Ive tested, tell the difference between 320Kbps music files and flac, all the various music streaming services support this so Im golden.

With regards to your issue and tracks disappearing then Google Music may be the answer for you. With Google Music you can upload your albums or songs to supliment what they have, this is perfect for me because I have some rare stuff that you cannot find in the online catologues, works for me anyway.

Unfortunately Google pulls things at random if it no longer supports their advertising revenue stream. I'm not saying Google would do this, but they are far from reliable.

http://www.inc.com/articles/201110/google-cancelled-products-and-services-graveyard.html

A lot of people were pretty upset about this one:

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/07/02/google-reader-discontinued

 

[Anderson]

With the various topics that have recently been discussed concerning LAN streaming of lossless files, I was wondering if anyone out there has built a HiFi entirely around online streaming, or is perhaps considering doing so with Apple now muscling-in on the act, five years late? I'm sure I've read a few posts on here from people who have built such a system, but possibly they don't post here regularly.

Sound-quality issues aside (which may or may not be important to you depending on your opinion, your expectations and your chosen service), the biggest problem I have is that they have the power to take your music away at any time, because it's not even strictly your music in so far as you having bought a copy, you're only renting the right to play it, and that right is transient. I already have various playlists on Spotify suffering suddenly from Greyed Out Track syndrome. These are all home-brewed playlists where all the tracks worked when I manually added them. So they have been removed since then, in the space of weeks or days sometimes, with no warning. That in itself is an absolute dealbreaker for me when it comes to using online streaming as a primary source.

Reporting for duty.

In the dark days I used CD's. Once I purchased my first PC after mooving out from the parents I started ripping my own music, with that came headaches like tagging and backing all my files up. One day I was looking at offsite backup solutions, I tried one which I was happy with but obviously I had to pay a monthly sub.

Then I discovered Google Music which allowed me to back up and then stream all my music from Google Servers on any other device I owned. So it got me thinking, Google Music is free and it backs up my music I don't need to do backups anymore. BUt then I thought some more, I realised that I wasn't playing the files on my computer, I was streaming from Google to my phone and laptop so I figured that I didnt need to keep my local copies so I deleted those too.

I recently got a new phone which came with two years of Spotify, my amp has spotify connect so it seemed the perfect match. I've since moved back to a paid version of Google Music and I couldn't be happier.

Oh so yeah, in answer to your question my system is streaming only, it makes it super easy for the rest of the family to because all they need to do is pick up their phones/laptops/tablets and pick what they want and like magic it's playing.

Sound quality wise I cannot, Ive tested, tell the difference between 320Kbps music files and flac, all the various music streaming services support this so Im golden.

With regards to your issue and tracks disappearing then Google Music may be the answer for you. With Google Music you can upload your albums or songs to supliment what they have, this is perfect for me because I have some rare stuff that you cannot find in the online catologues, works for me anyway.

Unfortunately Google pulls things at random if it no longer supports their advertising revenue stream. I'm not saying Google would do this, but they are far from reliable.

http://www.inc.com/articles/201110/google-cancelled-products-and-service...

A lot of people were pretty upset about this one:

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/07/02/google-reader-discontinued

Google won't pull anything that you've personally uploaded.

 

[Anderson]

With the various topics that have recently been discussed concerning LAN streaming of lossless files, I was wondering if anyone out there has built a HiFi entirely around online streaming, or is perhaps considering doing so with Apple now muscling-in on the act, five years late? I'm sure I've read a few posts on here from people who have built such a system, but possibly they don't post here regularly.

Sound-quality issues aside (which may or may not be important to you depending on your opinion, your expectations and your chosen service), the biggest problem I have is that they have the power to take your music away at any time, because it's not even strictly your music in so far as you having bought a copy, you're only renting the right to play it, and that right is transient. I already have various playlists on Spotify suffering suddenly from Greyed Out Track syndrome. These are all home-brewed playlists where all the tracks worked when I manually added them. So they have been removed since then, in the space of weeks or days sometimes, with no warning. That in itself is an absolute dealbreaker for me when it comes to using online streaming as a primary source.

Reporting for duty.

In the dark days I used CD's. Once I purchased my first PC after mooving out from the parents I started ripping my own music, with that came headaches like tagging and backing all my files up. One day I was looking at offsite backup solutions, I tried one which I was happy with but obviously I had to pay a monthly sub.

Then I discovered Google Music which allowed me to back up and then stream all my music from Google Servers on any other device I owned. So it got me thinking, Google Music is free and it backs up my music I don't need to do backups anymore. BUt then I thought some more, I realised that I wasn't playing the files on my computer, I was streaming from Google to my phone and laptop so I figured that I didnt need to keep my local copies so I deleted those too.

I recently got a new phone which came with two years of Spotify, my amp has spotify connect so it seemed the perfect match. I've since moved back to a paid version of Google Music and I couldn't be happier.

Oh so yeah, in answer to your question my system is streaming only, it makes it super easy for the rest of the family to because all they need to do is pick up their phones/laptops/tablets and pick what they want and like magic it's playing.

Sound quality wise I cannot, Ive tested, tell the difference between 320Kbps music files and flac, all the various music streaming services support this so Im golden.

With regards to your issue and tracks disappearing then Google Music may be the answer for you. With Google Music you can upload your albums or songs to supliment what they have, this is perfect for me because I have some rare stuff that you cannot find in the online catologues, works for me anyway.

Unfortunately Google pulls things at random if it no longer supports their advertising revenue stream. I'm not saying Google would do this, but they are far from reliable.

http://www.inc.com/articles/201110/google-cancelled-products-and-service...

A lot of people were pretty upset about this one:

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/07/02/google-reader-discontinued

Google won't pull anything that you've personally uploaded.

 

[steve_1979]

With the various topics that have recently been discussed concerning LAN streaming of lossless files, I was wondering if anyone out there has built a HiFi entirely around online streaming.

I use a PC as my only source playing a combination of Spotify Premium, CD rips from the hard drive and occasionally YouTube music. Does that count?

 

[Anderson]

My Mrs uses YouTube music a fair bit too.

 

[MajorFubar]

Google Music sounds a bit like iTunes (mis)Match but I don't know if it works precisely the same.

 

[Anderson]

One more thing that I like about streaming is that I can stuck on shuffle play and have a mixture of stuff I've previously liked played and some other stuff that I've never heard before.

When I used to exclusively use CD's or play stuff I'd downloaded I found that I was always listening to the same stuff. These days I'm listening to all sorts.

 

[Anderson]

Google Music sounds a bit like iTunes (mis)Match but I don't know if it works precisely the same.

From my understanding of how iTunes Match works it is exactly like that but it's free.

You can upload 50,000 of your own tracks for completely free and stream them anywhere

Or

Pay £9.99pm get the above & stream the rest of Googles catalogue.

 

[MajorFubar]

Bit different then. iTunes Match tries to match your library against its own content and if it finds a match then what you'll get as a stream is the iTunes library version. If it can't find a match it uploads your files as a 256k AAC (I think, but don't quote me; either way the SQ is easily adequate). The bit that fails is the matching process from your own ripped CDs. Songs can be mismatched to completely different masters of the same song from completely different albums, particularly if you've got something iTunes does not, so when you play a song or an album, you don't necessarily get 'your' song. The biggest impact of course is with compilation albums, the volume can be all over the place.

The most (in)famous mismatches of all time which Apple have consistently failed to fix is the Beatles mono albums. iTunes doesn't have the mono box and people with the mono box were finding iTunes had mismatched it against the stereo albums instead, either entirely or as a mishmash of matching and uploading.

 

[Anderson]

Bit different then. iTunes Match tries to match your library against its own content and if it finds a match then what you'll get as a stream is the iTunes library version. If it can't find a match it uploads your files as a 256k AAC (I think, but don't quote me; either way the SQ is easily adequate). The bit that fails is the matching process from your own ripped CDs. Songs can be mismatched to completely different masters of the same song from completely different albums, particularly if you've got something iTunes does not, so when you play a song or an album, you don't necessarily get 'your' song. The biggest impact of course is with compilation albums, the volume can be all over the place.

The most (in)famous mismatches of all time which Apple have consistently failed to fix is the Beatles mono albums. iTunes doesn't have the mono box and people with the mono box were finding iTunes had mismatched it against the stereo albums instead, either entirely or as a mishmash of matching and uploading.

Sorry Major, I'm crap at explaining. It works like iTunes Match, you point the Google Music Manager (installed programme) to your Music folder, it scans your all music and will match your music against whatever you have. If it can match something then no upload takes place, only when it can't match a song will it upload from your PC.

 

[Anderson]

Also, any music that Google Matches is treated like you uploaded it, so you can download it as MP3 from Google at anytime.

 

[Anderson]

Also also also lol

I don't know how Google handles different masters, I suspect you get whatever master Google happens to have just like Apple.

I've had a few mismatches myself in terms of say getting a censored song instead of the album explicit version, when this happens you can click a button on the song and Google will replace that particular song or album with the files from your PC.

Friend in work had a really weird mismatch with Google, he was uploading some kids songs for his son. Google matches this really weird VERY explicit song it was hilarious the way he told me.

 

[Anderson]

Also also also also

Just try it, I mean it's free.

Log into the Google Music with your gmail account, download the installer and point it at your music folder and you're done.

 

[MajorFubar]

I've had a few mismatches myself in terms of say getting a censored song instead of the album explicit version, when this happens you can click a button on the song and Google will replace that particular song or album with the files from your PC.

You will not be surprised to learn there is no such option with iTunes (mis)Match. Probably to disuade users from uploading every song they possess, resulting in the iTunes servers clogging-up with a million copies of the same song.

 

[Anderson]

I've had a few mismatches myself in terms of say getting a censored song instead of the album explicit version, when this happens you can click a button on the song and Google will replace that particular song or album with the files from your PC.

You will not be surprised to learn there is no such option with iTunes (mis)Match. Probably to disuade users from uploading every song they possess, resulting in the iTunes servers clogging-up with a million copies of the same song.

It's Apple iLogic ® give the users what we want them to want

 

[jarvis]

I don't suppose its the best source of music on the net although theres thousands of songs, albums, good and bad covers to listen to. I down load audio only at 256 and the quality is good enough for my old ears.

Not to keen on spotify after signing in and spending the next six months clearing emails out of my spam box.

 

[Anderson]

I don't suppose its the best source of music on the net although theres thousands of songs, albums, good and bad covers to listen to. I down load audio only at 256 and the quality is good enough for my old ears.

Not to keen on spotify after signing in and spending the next six months clearing emails out of my spam box.

Can YouTube do better than 256kbps or is that what you choose as the quality when downloading?