[Ghoostknight]

Hello,

i just checked out old songs of my collection (mostly hardcore/electronic) which are still in mp3 and tried to search for them on qobuz but i noticed many, specially hardcore/hardsytle artists are completely missing or a large part of their portfolio
(for me) qobuz offers everything i need, but it really lacks in hardcore and electronic in general

So since i wanna get into (good) hardcore/electronic again, i listened as i was younger nearly only electronic but this shifted with time, now on my current system i would say there are not many really good hardcore/electronic songs but some are real gems

mp3 (so soundcloud/youtube/mixcloud, and i like all 3 concepts but mp3 is a nogo for me) messes heavly with (deep) bass (and high frequencys) imo, so its kinda hard to rate songs, unless you wanna rate mp3 at the same time

1. Can someone recommend a Streaming service (hi res would be awesome) that covers most of electronic stuff?
my guess would be that i have to use youtube music/amazon or apple but im open to any suggestions
i mainly want the second streaming service for discovering songs but will probably buy them if i like them and maybe stop using the streaming service again later on

2. one other thing i noticed is that its nearly impossible to get livesets/mixes in flac, they are all over the place in mp3 but flac is unobtainable, so i highly appreciate if you guys can recommend a solution here

 

[WorksUnit]

You cannot generally find that sort of the niche stuff on Amazon HD either.
Although I have been surprised..
Mixes in FLAC used to exist on the defunct Little Detroit website.,...might have a go at it with Wayback Machine.

 

[Ghoostknight]

You cannot generally find that sort of the niche stuff on Amazon HD either.
Although I have been surprised..

ah i was just thinking about that... i think most promotions i saw a while back were either for spotify or apple (or maybe some more niche services like soundcloud/mixcloud/deezer)
and i just thought to myself amazon probably hasnt all of it ( but i wasnt sure if this changed )

Mixes in FLAC used to exist on the defunct Little Detroit website.,...might have a go at it with Wayback Machine.

will check it out, thanks

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if i wanna go with high res the only services i know are amazon music, apple music, qobuz and tidal and my guess would be apple is my best option here (tho i dont own a single apple device, so not sure if this will integrate flawlessly)
one other reason to go for qobuz was that i dislike going with "monopoly" companys which kinda exclude amazon and apple.... and tidal is imo just another commercial "joke" with its MQA
i kinda think i shouldnt exclude only cd quality services here (kinda wished spotify would offer cd quality already but yea...) tho right now just deezer comes to mind but i kinda remember it being more indie/electronic friendly

 

[Ghoostknight]

im on a deezer trial now, using the TuneMyMusic.com integration was a blast, much better than soundiiz i used before
i imported 9000 tracks from spotify, 1300 tracks from soundcloud and 2000 from qobuz around 100 were missing but i noticed some bad picks afterwards (and some of it can be still found correctly manually )
pretty much all hardstyle/hardcore artists i missed on qobuz are available on deezer but i have not checked for discography completeness yet
im really happy catalog wise so far, also it has more options to pick where qobuz mostly just offers broad tags like pop/rock/classic/jazz/electronic

one strange thing: it sounds a bit different than qobuz... for me there is more bass overall (and it sounds "harder"/more punchy) not sure where this comes from but i disabled volume normalization on deezer and qobuz doesnt offer a switch (but it sounds like no volume normalization), i used for both the webplayer with firefox under fedora both set to cd quality (i used native cd quality tracks on qobuz to compare)

i cant really say i like the sound signature of deezer or qobuz better, they sound quality wise on par but somehow still a bit different (tho im actually kinda leaning towards liking deezer more for cd quality, but high res tracks on qobuz still have a edge)

 

[WorksUnit]

NIce one, will give deezer a whirl. Completely forgot about it.

 

[Ghoostknight]

NIce one, will give deezer a whirl. Completely forgot about it.

yea it seems like a underdog but i noticed a few years ago that many electronic artist promoted being on deezer too (i think i read apple/spotify/deezer the most in this context)
maybe it also helps that its a older platform, so older artist that may not be active anymore are still on deezer but not on newer platforms (tho this just applys to a small percentage of my music)

one thing i will also try in the following days is song mixes/recommendations and "flow" on deezer, i really missed those features on qobuz

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atleast if we speak hi-res, there are only 4 options, tidal, amazon music, apple music and qobuz and i kinda dont wanna go with any of them beside qobuz (and qobuz is the only one offering 192khz i think)
1. tidal: and as far as i understand it if you dont have a mqa device tidal is just good for cd quality streaming (2-3 years ago i compared tidal to qobuz and it sounded like less bass and more highs than qobuz) and i dont wanna support MQA at all, flac/wav is all we need
2. amazon and apple, "maybe" i will try out apple music (specially after the deezer trial), tho i kinda dislike both options

deezer seems like the only real alternative for my "morals", thats why i tried it first now ^^
kinda wondering if there are more streaming services offering atleast cd quality, pandora isnt available in germany

also one option i will consider in the feature: since (for me) there are subtle differences in streaming services im actually curious how it compares to original CD, i kinda A/B this before with some flac files i bought but kinda wanna repeat this to see what streaming platform is actually closer to original CD

also i will definitely consider going forward with a cd quality streaming service (specially if it has better discovery functions, kinda sick of qobuz with just going up and down my own collection) and just buy high res albums if i want too

 

[Ghoostknight]

Soo a little update:
im really happy with deezer overall

- i like the deezer "mixes/sugesstions" based on a song
- i like the interface, much better than qobuz imo and im a fan of the dark mode
- radio channels are available (missing on qobuz), tho i havent checked them out, radio paradise is the only radio i listen to sometimes
- "all" edm artists available, tho there are no dj sets/mixes/livesets which i kinda still miss
- soundquality seems better than qobuz, im still question myself why this is

- i started to really like volume normalization, finally older songs on par with new stuff volume-wise, if you are used to no volume normalization you "miss" the impact of some songs compared to others but overall volume normalization is a better expierence i think (and volume normalization seems to be missing on qobuz completely), i havent notice a quality degredation by it, tho its kinda hard to compare because of the volume difference
tho what i noticed, volume normalization isnt the weapon for all, while the "loudness" might be similar i noticed that normally quite songs are actually louder than new stuff, i also can see this in easyeffects, quite songs peak at 0db while others get reduced to -10 to -5db peak and i think this is noticable (so basicly its the other way around sometimes, old quite songs are actually louder with normalization than new stuff that normally would peak at -2 to 0db)
also sometimes a song starts loud for a sec before volume normalization kicks in

- i still have to try the "mood mixes"
- artists have sometimes playlists, a future qobuz doesnt offer either and there seems to be "better/more" playlists by others
- the "last songs played" and "future songs list of mixes" tab is way better to handle than on qobuz, i kinda never used it on qobuz, you can also make this list a playlists of yours, a nice future if you wanna save a mix based on a song
- i havent checked out podcasts or audiobooks, audiobook wise it didnt look like a big library tho

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and why i actually made this post (beside giving others maybe a idea of my expierence with deezer) i wanna try apple music next
(here is a link where you can sign up for 4 months for free https://redeem.apple.com/msh-de-online? )
tho i will still keep listening/testing deezer for a few weeks till i have a week left of my 2 months free to make my testing somewhat economic

i heared there are actually mixes/livesets on apple music which i really wanna try, there are not many (or non at all to be honest) lossless sources for mixes (there is soundcloud, youtube and mixcloud but yea... crappy codecs)