More Consensus That Streaming Is An Inferior Format & Not High End?

[microstrip]

(...) Roon is fine for mainstream. I don't know any serious collector who uses Roon.

Are you pretending that unless we are "serious collectors" we should be considered "mainstream listeners"?

IMO if you had a less focused idea on "collection" you would have a different opinion on Roon. Some areas of collection are very well served in Roon. In fact sometimes the offer is so high that it makes selection tiresome.

 

[Gregadd]

Coltrane's Love Supreme, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, etc... They are just a drop in the ocean, but that's what everybody has on their "100 best jazz albums of all time", and that's why you find 500 re-issues of these albums, while so many more are out there still unavailable on CD or streaming... Such is life.

Don't get me started on Roon It is not that the data is "unknown" (check out Tom Lord's discography, for starters, but there are many more). It is just that Roon bases its data primarily on Rovi, and Rovi is a commercial site which has very poor quality data. Roon is fine for mainstream. I don't know any serious collector who uses Roon.

That must be one hell of an ocean. Do you know what it meant to Just to be in Miles Davis 'band?

 

[the sound of Tao]

Sometimes I find myself playing the same album, or parts of the same album multiple times. Recently listening to Beethoven later string quartets, genius deserves more than I can take in, in a single hearing.

I love Beethoven’s late string quartets… last night and the night before I was comparing a few versions of performance of Janaceks pair of string quartets… his Kreutzer and Intimate Letters string quartets.

It’s a bit easier tracking down good candidates with Czech chamber music because it is an area of chamber music where the local quartet players really do have it all together fairly regularly over the imports.

I love the Pavel Haas quartet in most all of their work, they bring the colour and tension and sense of vivacity and freedom this kind of chamber music really needs but they do it all the time with precision and with lovely tone and finesse as well. But especially in the Janaceks the Prazac and Panocha quartets both nail it. How do you differentiate between such brilliance with any simple analysis. In the end it comes down to a sense of rightness that allows me to inhabit the work effortlessly, completely and unassailed. I could listen to any of these over and over. I can enjoy other quartets in Janacek’s pair of string quartets but often a handful manage to redefine for me the level of greatness or completeness in a work. Playing something so close to great but not quite in terms of music or performance is a bit like having a format that is brilliant but still not quite the best. Still amazing and deeply satisfying but just not quite the same. But sometimes we are left to make a choice to serve the sound or to serve the music.

In orchestral music there are maybe about two dozen classical composers whose work when played at their best (critical distinction for me) I can inhabit without effort… chamber music the list is not the same for me though there are a lot of crossovers there. What I’m pointing to is about music totality (gestalt) which while it struggles to be boxed in under any simple tick box of analysis is a capacity I believe accessible to all of us if you play enough versions to be able to learn about your version of rightness from those experiences. It’s a dynamic thing learning. Fine tuning that ultimate appreciation is a full time gig.

I guess that having a sense of rightness of the whole could be a way of defining a personal desert island list of composers and compositions and performances for myself… but fortunately its just a work in progress that will likely outlast me in time needed to work through but still nourish and enrich me all the way. I love the gear but it’s not as special to me as the music… and while it’s hard work at times having too much choice and sorting through it but if it enables me to get into the music more deeply the way I need to do it then not having enough choice would be worse.

 

[Bill Hart]

Bill I was making a plug for Tidal.
I assume Tidal does not offer a listing for side musician. Perhaps they should. For instance, consider all the jazz giants who were a part of Miles Davis bands. Or those who played in Duke Ellington's band.
Maybe you should contact customer service with that suggestion. It' amazing what computers can do.

Thanks for responding Greg. A lot of his stuff is on private or small label; he was part of the "loft jazz" scene in NY when jazz was dead commercially but man, what a musical bassist. And I never had a thing for bass players until I started listening to his work. It might be hard to "clear" some of this stuff too for licensing purposes. Same with Pharaoh- he was on India Navigation, a very small label, for a period. The self-titled record goes for around US 700 for a VG+ copy-- not worth it to me. That's where streaming would complement vinyl.
I can call Tidal- not sure they'd have a better answer. What amazed me, when I contacted Universal years ago, they still had the tapes for all the really obscure vintage prog stuff on Vertigo Swirl out of the UK- albums that sold 1,500 copies tops.

 

[hopkins]

That must be one hell of an ocean. Do you know what it meant to Just to be in Miles Davis 'band?

Yes, it is one hell of an ocean.

Miles and Coltrane are great, for sure, and my intention was not denigrate them or deny their importance.

 

[hopkins]

Are you pretending that unless we are "serious collectors" we should be considered "mainstream listeners"?

IMO if you had a less focused idea on "collection" you would have a different opinion on Roon. Some areas of collection are very well served in Roon. In fact sometimes the offer is so high that it makes selection tiresome.

OK, I admit, terrible choice of words - instead of "serious" I could have used "OCD" and not used the word "mainstream" which does have a somewhat negative connotation. This is what I posted on the Roon forum in 2019 and which explains my point of view in more detail:

Bye Roon, why I am not renewing my subscription

After using Roon for 3 years i decided to cancel my subscription. Am sharing my experience as i think it reflects issues others may have. I do not use Qobuz or Tidal, so only local files. I am quite demanding when it comes to the accuracy and completeness of metadata. Roon’s model is not...

community.roonlabs.com

Let's not debate all this again here... I have no beef with Roon, and its users!

 

[Amir]

I said before to me audio is just a device for enjoying music not more. I have enjoyed listening to music when I was climbing before sunrise while I had airpods.
Over trillions of cells in human body are working in a super advance/complex structure to let us enjoy life enjoy music but we are reading stereophile to see new DAC is dark or bright or the New amplifier has less distortion or more distortion!
Every things in audio if not related to music enjoying is meaningless.
Audio devices are just tools for enjoying music, is there another goal for sound reproduction?

 

[hopkins]

I said before to me audio is just a device for enjoying music not more. I have enjoyed listening to music when I was climbing before sunrise while I had airpods.
Over trillions of cells in human body are working in a super advance/complex structure to let us enjoy life enjoy music but we are reading stereophile to see new DAC is dark or bright!!!!
Every thing in audio if not related to music enjoying is nonsense

If you are referring to my comments on Roon, then you need to consider that they are not related to music enjoyment! Did I say they were ?
These are two different things. Whether one decides to invest time in managing one's collection, and how, is a personal choice. I don't go about criticizing your "hobbies"...

 

[wil]

Really? My experience is quite the opposite... there are no streaming services that offer decent credits for albums. To circumvent the problem, here is what I have done (note: the search bar is not operational on this web version) https://paulstephane.github.io/collection.html

By the way, the Internet Archive is a nice resource for liner notes (but far from complete ).

As far as "discovery" goes, the lack of credits makes things really difficult. I find I have to spend many hours looking for albums across various services, and very often end up purchasing CDs. I often start with Discogs, and then work my way back to other sources.

Just google the album. You can find lots of information on any album do you want.

quite a few albums on Qobuz have nice pdfs as well.

 

[hopkins]

Just google the album. You can find lots of information on any album do you want.

quite a few albums on Qobuz have nice pdfs as well.

You do find album information out there, but there are plenty for which the liner notes or detailed credits are simply not available. My experience with liner notes on Qobuz is that they are available for a minority of albums only. It is hard to generalize, but I would say that Qobuz credits are generally very poor and often inaccurate. My main area of interest is jazz, and with jazz, but possibly other genres as well, you need "session" information. A list of credits given for an entire album without any detailed information on the dates of the various tracks is pretty useless and even misleading. This is especially true for compilations, but nowadays album labels will often add multiple bonus tracks to original albums as well.

New albums by living artists are usually well documented. For the rest, much less.

I'll anticipate further comments on this by stating that you obviously don't need exact information to enjoy music, but for music that you do enjoy, it is valuable to know who is playing. That is also part of the discovery process. For example, you listen to a track and wonder - who plays this amazing solo ?

Liner notes are often of interest, as they can give historical context, provide insights into the music, etc..

Of course, sometimes the original physical album (LP, CD...) does not provide adequate information either, or inaccurate data.

Not everyone is interested in this level of detail, and that's fine, but for those who are, streaming can be a little frustrating. There are so many releases out there that I understand streaming service don't have the resources to do this, nor the incentive (as most are willing to do without the information).

Artists (performers or composers/lyricists) do benefit from accurate information. It is estimated that 25 % of royalty payments are paid out incorrectly because of missing or inaccurate data...

I am not saying all this to "bash" streaming services - I have a subscription to Qobuz, Spotify (family plan), and YouTube premium...

 

[RCanelas]

Just to point out that this is not a problem inherent to streaming or any medium, but the music industry itself. Some forms of music do not map well to the fast food type consumption the industry has largely pushed for.

Jazz and classical are very context dense, and liner notes are rarely enough to fully characterize the pieces you're interested in. I have a good collection of Archiv Produktion editions, probably the most documented releases I've ever seen, and even then I end up searching things up on other sources. And we're talking about specialized labels putting these things out and still not doing an amazing job.

Streaming services only populate their offer with what labels/artists provide. I'm guessing there just aren't enough good incentives for due process on this, from any side.

 

[hopkins]

Just to point out that this is not a problem inherent to streaming or any medium, but the music industry itself. Some forms of music do not map well to the fast food type consumption the industry has largely pushed for.

Jazz and classical are very context dense, and liner notes are rarely enough to fully characterize the pieces you're interested in. I have a good collection of Archiv Produktion editions, probably the most documented releases I've ever seen, and even then I end up searching things up on other sources. And we're talking about specialized labels putting these things out and still not doing an amazing job.

Streaming services only populate their offer with what labels/artists provide. I'm guessing there just aren't enough good incentives for due process on this, from any side.

Agreed. But streaming makes the problem even more critical to the extent that physical media may no longer be available, or only as collector items. This may be a challenge for future generations.

 

[Amir]

If you are referring to my comments on Roon, then you need to consider that they are not related to music enjoyment! Did I say they were ?
These are two different things. Whether one decides to invest time in managing one's collection, and how, is a personal choice. I don't go about criticizing your "hobbies"...

Dear Hopkins
I did not read your comment about Roon and I did not refer to your comment.

I hope I never bother anybody

 

[hopkins]

Dear Hopkins
I did not read your comment about Roon and I did not refer to your comment.

I hope I never bother anybody

Thanks for the clarification, and sorry for my knee-jerk reaction!

 

[Daverich4]

Thanks for that but unless I register for a "free" account I can't really see what they offer of his--I think he's done over 400 performances on records, some as a featured player, like Mutima and Alternative Spaces; others, like Milt Ward, involve him as a sideman. Are these all individual tracks? Would you mind telling me how many?
Thanks, Greg.

I found this interesting. When I search Qobuz directly for Cecil McBee I get 3 main albums plus a smattering of other listings. But when I do the same search from Roon I get 12 main albums, 38 albums listed as “with“ another artist and 88 listings as “appearing” on an album. Not sure why the different search results.

 

[Bill Hart]

I found this interesting. When I search Qobuz directly for Cecil McBee I get 3 main albums plus a smattering of other listings. But when I do the same search from Roon I get 12 main albums, 38 albums listed as “with“ another artist and 88 listings as “appearing” on an album. Not sure why the different search results.

Thanks for that. Could simply come down to what the platform bothered to license.

 

[Republicoftexas69]

I found this interesting. When I search Qobuz directly for Cecil McBee I get 3 main albums plus a smattering of other listings. But when I do the same search from Roon I get 12 main albums, 38 albums listed as “with“ another artist and 88 listings as “appearing” on an album. Not sure why the different search results.

Roon is simply showing what is available through Tidal and Qobuz. So who do have subscriptions with? May be that particular artist may have better availability through Tidal? Can you play all of them? Are subscribing to both Quboz and Tidal?

I am a Innuos Sense user though I am a lifetime Roon adapter, Innuos sounds so much better and I subscribe to Qobuz.

 

[Daverich4]

Roon is simply showing what is available through Tidal and Qobuz. So who do have subscriptions with? May be that particular artist may have better availability through Tidal? Can you play all of them? Are subscribing to both Quboz and Tidal?

I am a Innuos Sense user though I am a lifetime Roon adapter, Innuos sounds so much better and I subscribe to Qobuz.

In my case it’s just showing what is available from Qobuz as I don’t have a subscription to Tidal. I can play any of the results of the search. What I don’t understand is why Roon is able to find more items from the artist than Qobuz is seeing is how they’re all hosted on Qobuz.

 

[wil]

You do find album information out there, but there are plenty for which the liner notes or detailed credits are simply not available. My experience with liner notes on Qobuz is that they are available for a minority of albums only. It is hard to generalize, but I would say that Qobuz credits are generally very poor and often inaccurate. My main area of interest is jazz, and with jazz, but possibly other genres as well, you need "session" information. A list of credits given for an entire album without any detailed information on the dates of the various tracks is pretty useless and even misleading. This is especially true for compilations, but nowadays album labels will often add multiple bonus tracks to original albums as well.

New albums by living artists are usually well documented. For the rest, much less.

I'll anticipate further comments on this by stating that you obviously don't need exact information to enjoy music, but for music that you do enjoy, it is valuable to know who is playing. That is also part of the discovery process. For example, you listen to a track and wonder - who plays this amazing solo ?

Liner notes are often of interest, as they can give historical context, provide insights into the music, etc..

Of course, sometimes the original physical album (LP, CD...) does not provide adequate information either, or inaccurate data.

Not everyone is interested in this level of detail, and that's fine, but for those who are, streaming can be a little frustrating. There are so many releases out there that I understand streaming service don't have the resources to do this, nor the incentive (as most are willing to do without the information).

Artists (performers or composers/lyricists) do benefit from accurate information. It is estimated that 25 % of royalty payments are paid out incorrectly because of missing or inaccurate data...

I am not saying all this to "bash" streaming services - I have a subscription to Qobuz, Spotify (family plan), and YouTube premium...

I don’t feel the need for my streaming service or Roon to provide this information. I can usually find a wealth of information on the Internet.

What I do wish Roon/Qobuz could provide is the provenance of the particular recording. Is it a remaster? Upsampled or native?

 

[hopkins]

What I don’t understand is why Roon is able to find more items from the artist than Qobuz is seeing is how they’re all hosted on Qobuz.

Example: Chet Baker - Blues For A Reason

Blues for a Reason - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Cecil McBee plays on that album, but is not listed in Qobuz' credits.



Qobuz credits are incomplete. Roon adds information from Rovi (AllMusic) or MusicBrainz. In this case, the album, oddly, is not listed in AllMusic, so the information should come from MusicBrainz:



I don't know if the album shows up on your search in Roon, but it could/should...