ProtoBlues
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2016
- Posts
- 36
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- 10
I thought I would take a moment to point out that, at least in the mobile app, you can download the HiFi version of the song to your mobile device so that you can listen later. This is important for two reasons, especially when using your phone, because you may not have internet service where you are going (or it may not be fast enough to support the full bandwidth required for lossless HiFi audio) and because it would allow you to download the song when you have access to a WiFi connection to avoid using up a lot of your data limit. The default setting in the Android app is to only stream HiFi quality music when you are connected to WiFi/unmetered internet, though you can change that in the settings if you choose to. I always stream HiFi, but I also rarely ever listen to anything that isn't already part of one of my playlists that are marked for "Offline Listening", which causes the phone to download the whole playlist.
Now, that said, you ARE paying a relatively steep monthly fee to listen to your music, but if you're like me and you have a huge collection of "Not one single HiFi album" because you are an iTunes/MP3 child of the 90's, Tidal is the only way to have access to all that music you have collected as crummy 128kbps MP3s or your more modern 320kbps AAC for the few songs you actually paid for on iTunes in lossless HiFi. If you already have a bunch of vinyl that you can rip to any bitrate/depth you want as a FLAC file or you've been buying up 24/192 FLAC albums from HDTracks, Tidal probably isn't for you. I can't afford to buy a $25+ album just to get the one or two songs I want from it (seriously, why can't I buy single tracks in HD?!?).
You never bought any albums? Surely you must have some. I ripped mine to FLAC, so I have some losseless music. If Tidal lets you download the tunes you're listening to, that changes things, and I might consider a service like that in the future...provided you can do this on the desktop as well.
Converting vinyl isn't a straightforward process, if you want to do it correctly.