There is a Naim legacy product, the Unitiserve. It rips CDs in excellent quality. What it does in parallel is rip a lower quality file of the same song/disc (not quite sure if today’s Core does that). Means you have two copies, one is bit-perfect 1:1 (44,1/16, you can select from wav or flac) and one is of lower quality, actually you can choose that level. In my case it is MP3/320. And the difference is so obvious, at least in my home system.
Admittedly, I use the compressed version on my boat, I doubt the system there would reveal any significant difference.
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A lot is track dependent - some sound better - others cant’ tell - but moved from Tidal to Qobuz for compatibility reasons. Naim seem more at the mercy of tidal changes over Qobuz and they way Tidal works ( i hear) with different servers delivering parts of the track over the more static Quobuz approach suit Naim better.
Of course the new streamer may be different.
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We all have different hearing and most likely different systems and of course different size rooms. Lots of reason why people may not agree.
I have never done a comparison with Spotify. When I did a side by side comparison between Tidal and Qobuz, I found Qobuz to be the winner with not only sound quality as well as pricing. So a win - win situation.
Just find the service you think is best and enjoy the music.
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My understanding is that a 320mbps stream does have compression artefacts that are audible to some people under some circumstances. They are more likely to be noticeable to ‘trained listeners’; and if you have identified what you are listening for in a more highly compressed stream, you are more likely to hear artefacts in a 320mbps stream. The BBC did conduct some tests, and concluded that 320mbps was good enough for playout; I understand internal routing however is uncompressed pcm.
It’s also worth noting that many people now prefer a compressed stream because that’s what they expect it to sound like… rather like people sometimes prefer the sound of vintage valve based mixing desks because that’s the tonal ‘colour’ of their favourite recordings, (and get upset when someone releases a ‘clean’ remix).
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Hello @Thruster04
I stream Qobuz through my ND5 XS2 having tried Tidal and Spotify and in my room / system, there is a noticeable improvement in SQ in favour of Qobuz. There was also an improvement to CD rips when I had a Uniti Serve but no significent difference with stored Hi Res files.
Visitors / members of the family occasionally stream with Spotify but have on several occasions asked why the system is sounding ‘off’. Streaming the same track from Qobuz has always restored equilibrium!
So in summary, I am surprised you are not hearing a significant improvement but as always YMMV.
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