After some time resisting a Qobuz subscription I succumbed this week. It’s integrated with my Roon account. My first impression is the sound is brighter. Has anyone else had a similar impression?
I’ve not compared versions yet - plan to do it this evening.
You must compare the same masters for the same releases because this is by far the most likely cause for differences. (Well, apart from expectations, biases, etc.) And this is not straightforward at all when comparing local files and the release on streaming.
FWIW, I can’t hear a difference whatsoever where I am reasonably confident that the master is the same, as one would expect. (However, a lot of music is specifically remastered for streaming, or there may simply exist many different releases of the same album from different time periods and being remastered time and time again).
(Consider the minimal differences when using Roon. When playing a local file, you might have downloaded the FLAC yesterday; when you play it, Roon decodes it to PCM and sends the PCM to the endpoint for playing. If you stream from Qobuz, it downloads the FLAC, Roon decodes it to PCM and sends the PCM to the endpoint for playing. Assuming that the masters are the same, the only difference is the time that passed between downloading and decoding, and FLAC files don’t change with age like wine and cheese)
I thought my system was sounding odd the other day - it was sweltering with very high humidity and I think that may well have had something to do with it!
39c here in the Aude today. Sat in shade Plugged in to DAP and listening to Qobuz and PlexAmp for my collection away from home. No flakey flac sounded sublime.
Thanks, nearly done, back on Monday been here for over 2 weeks now. Had a great time catching up with family as my brother lives here now, they moved during the summer of first Covid outbreak. Was a big family party first week which was great for his 70th. Not a bad view either to look at.
It’s my brothers house in Quillan in the Aude Region SW France. He lives here these days. He had a holiday place in another village for 10 years, they sold up in uk and that property in June 2020 to get this place. Which is lovely, convening for all the shops surrounded by beautiful scenary and it had a pool, his wife’s prerequisite for moving fully. Wasn’t expensive compared to UK but maintenance of pool isn’t cheap as they are discovering.