Which Music Streaming Service would best suit these needs?

30 replies

Hi, 

I'm a complete newcomer to Music Streaming Services (MSS), so would appreciate any help and guidance please.

 

I'm not sure if there is a 'best' solution (for me) but if we base it on a user/family with only Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac etc) and only B&O speakers, is there a MSS which integrates best? Sound quality needs to be good, so is there a MSS best for this? 

 

I've had a quick look on Google and currently it's a choice between Apple Music and Spotify. Spotify seems to get slightly better reviews because of it's bigger catalogue, but Apple gets better reviews for sound quality (AAC?). I'm thinking Apple to keep things easy simply because we are a family of Apple-device users. Tidal is apparently the best for sound quality, but falls short (by a long way) for it's much smaller catalogue.

 

There's just too much to read and take in on the internet, especially with the addition of Airplay 2, so thought it best to ask on here!

 

Cheers!

I would go with Apple Music in your case. 😕

leosgonewild wrote:
I would go with Apple Music in your case. 😕

 

Yeah, it's looking that way 🙂 The 3 month free trial is tempting me.!

 

Do you have to Airplay the music to a B&O speaker like for example a BS1or2? And does Airplay sound as good as having something like Deezer built into the speaker? This is the bit I get confused with!

 

Cheers

 

LR2015 wrote:

Yeah, it's looking that way The 3 month free trial is tempting me.!

Do you have to Airplay the music to a B&O speaker like for example a BS1or2? And does Airplay sound as good as having something like Deezer built into the speaker? This is the bit I get confused with!

Cheers

I’m in the exact same position as you (all Apple + B&O) and Apple Music works best for me because I prefer how Apple Music manages your library. Spotify and AM will basically have the same library for most people, but I’ve got music that doesn’t exist in any streaming service and Apple Music is the only one that lets me upload it myself and edit the metadata to add album art etc. Obviously this is personal preference though.

The AirPlay protocol is lossless so there’s no difference other than the actual audio files between Deezer + AM so you’ll be fine on the audio quality front unless you went for Deezer HiFi.
This might be a good clip for you to watch

https://youtu.be/shvURl_av0s

I myself only have apple devices at home and I use deezer.

I used deezer because it was inbuilt with the Avant but it never worked that well (slow) so I still kept deezer. I use it on my iPhone at gym and when I run.

I can either use deezer built in on any of my speakers or I can just use airplay.

If you like the Apple Music you can use AirPlay. I don’t think sonically there will be much different between inbuilt and streaming from your phone. The only main real difference is that you always have to use a device with airplay as opposed to walking up and tapping your device when the service is in built.

First, beware of casual comments that this streaming service sounds better than that one, it is extremely difficult to impossible to tell unless the differences are huge by doing a non-level matched, sighted test (where compare say A and B but know which is which while you're listening). It's very hard to level match to within 0.1 dB which is required, as the human ear perceives small differences in loudness as quality differences rather than loudness differences. So, take any opinions of "I compared Streaming Service with CD and CD was much better" with a huge grain of salt. Take them for what they are, a person's opinion, including the following! 🙂

I personally use Spotify Premium, running at 360kbs. I find the sound quality impossible to tell from CD even without level matching. Plus I really like the depth of the music catalog Spotify has, the interface is easy to use, and the radio channels are great. I have one I started off with years ago, a jazz one based off of a Grant Green album. By hitting the thumbs up and down buttons over time, it has become wonderfully adapted to my tastes. They also have various jazz playlists they've recommended to me based on that which have been spot on.

As for quality, once early on I was listening to the album "Mingus: Ah Um" specifically to the song "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." I was certain I heard distortion on the slow, solo saxophone, so I put headphones on to get a closer listen. Not distortion, but the sound of air moving through the very close miked and softly played sax, it's there on my CD of it as well. So, thought I had a "gotcha" moment for the encoding, but it was accurately reproducing a very low level sound.

Anyway, I'm quite happy with Spotify, your mileage may vary of course, and I'm sure you'll get other opinions, pro and con. Hope you find one you enjoy and are happy with. BTW, I stream Spotify to an Auralic Aries Mini, which replaced a balky Playmaker, using an iPad or iPhone depending.

B&O app for some reason pushes Deezer as „Music“ source even if you‘re logged out of Deezer and logged into Spotify...Obviously not even having an option to have Apple Music in B&O app as music source...so keep that in mind if you want to use the app as a main controller.

Spotify is good too.

I would have gone Spotify but I don’t think u could use that in built with b&o at that time.

I think you did a good thing with going with the Aries mini Jeff 👍🏻

Like Jeff, I go for Spotify (Premium) too. (Also not sure that I would pay extra, if there were a higher quality version there).

Sure Deezer is better integrated in the B&O NL-ecosystem - but Spotify does integrate pretty well also.

The main reason I go for Spotify is, that is the only way to have gapless playback (important to me, to others not).

Even if I do use Apple devices, I did not go for Apple Music. You can only AirPlay from there - it is much too restricted.

MM

Location: Flensborg————Danmark

Good point, gapless playback is important to me too, but I had forgotten about it with other streaming services.

 

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