So here I am tonight, listening to the NDX and to my ears, Radio Paradise sounds better than anything I have played on Tidal.
Any idea why?
Is it electronic trickery?
2 Likes
Try listening to ‘Progressive Rock’ on the HiDef channels. Lovely rich presentation and huge bass weight!
1 Like
Are you listening to the main mix and in the highest def? I’ll give it a try. I’ve never listened before.
Tidal is playing flat 44.1 khz
Radio Paradise is in AAC 44.1khz 320bps
The NDX is pretty much at its limits playing encrypted 44.1/16 FLAC cloud streams from Tidal, roughly 1 Mbps. It works a lot less harder with lossy web radio streams at 320 kbps… I suspect that is what you are noticing and why your lossy streams are sounding better.
2 Likes
I believe radio stations often add some DSP lipgloss to their streams.
2 Likes
That probably explains it.
They do .. many smaller and mid size web radio stations use common dynamic compression and server services, and the compression is non optimized other than for loft play back devices. I have had conversations with three web radio stations on this.
To do anything other than this would be too expensive as it would require media specific optimization… so it doesn’t happen.. and most don’t notice