Wanted to share some thoughts with fellow enthusiast and see what your conclusions are. I believe we are in a golden era for access to music. Qobuz, Amazon Music HD (AMHD), Apple Music, Tidal.... they all have a large and ever growing library of lossless and hi-res music and thankfully an emerging list of spatial/360/Atmos tracks. Having been a die hard 2CH guy with pure analog paths using external DACs etc, this new world of
Spatial music is exciting and sounds fantastic to me.
As an aside, for the first time in many years with lots of different gear, I have removed my 2CH DAC from my system and connected my Node to my AVM 70 via coax, enabled ARC and listen to stereo in 2.2. That is whole different discussion, but I am sincerely thrilled with the sound of the Anthem and ARC.
My recent experience with Amazon Music, customer service and a Fire TV Stick caused me to ponder the current state of the industry.
I recently read the new Fire TV 4K Stick would reproduce AMHD tracks at 24 bits and the 4K Max Stick would also play Atmos music tracks. I was on chat with Amazon on and off from 9:10 a.m. to 5:38 p.m. yesterday only to finally conclude the Max Stick will play Tidal Atmos tracks but not AMHD and that for some reason neither my 2021 4K or 4K Max sticks could playback anything higher than 16 bits. Disappointing. However, I CAN play AMHD Atmos tracks in full Atmos (and 24 bit) through my Sonos Arc based system in my living room.
I just left Qobuz as I thought AMHD was my one-service solution. I was also considering giving up my Apple TV 4K (and Node?) and go all in on Fire TV as my new fiber-based TV and ISP use both Fire TV and ATV as their platforms.
Somewhat disappointingly, for now, I will use continue using Apple TV 4K for Apple Spatial playback, my
TV source and my Node for 2CH hi-res.
It would be nice to use one service and have all my music and playlists in one place. I don't care to start an MQA discussion (at all) but Tidal would do everything I want except Atmos on Sonos (not a big deal killer since my Sonos stuff is more for TV and background music), AND has Connect, and is only $11.99/mo. with Military Discount. It also works plays back in adaptive spatial quality on my Sony buds and earphones.
Do I take the plunge and go back to Tidal who I left initially sue to cost and the whole world bitching about MQA (the
passion surrounding this format is hilarious, if it sounds good who the eff cares)? And then having to hook my Node up via analog to unfold MQA only to digitize the signal and enable room correction? Do I sit tight and continue to use Apple Music for Spatial and either Qobuz or Amazon for 2CH? Do I speculate that eventually Amazon will figure their s*&t out and produce a device that does everything ATV 4K does plus Atmos from AMHD?
I get these are first world problems, and really problems at all, but I think we are as close to music playback close nirvana as I can remember and I simply trying to navigate my listening future.
What do you guys think?
@gene the recent videos with engineers, artist and similar preponderance have been spot on. I've heard you mention Tidal and Apple, are those your primary sources for streaming your music?
Thanks.
