Sound quality

Hi bluezzbastardz,

I don’t know if this will work, but here’s the “link” for the Grieg on Tidal https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/f8314783-9cae-4a30-90fc-d1a15d081095. The difference in sound quality was immediately noticeable when I switched from Deezer on first comparing reproduction via my Hi-Fi system. If you don’t have Tidal and the subject interests you, it is still possible to get a month’s free trial. However, Deezer FLAC seems good to me and you may not want to bother. (Blow, the link won’t work – you have to log in, no 30 seconds for free!)

Maybe Tidal also has higher quality versions of other BIS stuff. Will try to insert/attach a screenshot of what the Tidal browser version shows. The screenshot says that TIDAL Desktop can’t play “Master” but, if I remember correctly (happens once in a blue moon), MQA wasn’t/isn’t available. Tidal uses “Normal”, “High” and “HiFi” in its quality nomenclature (if the English version uses direct translations).

Best regards,

Crowsong

Hi Rick,

Thanks, I didn’t realise that clicking the Queue icon showed the results on the album cover. I was looking for something on or around where I pressed. There is no problem setting the quality to “maximum”. As bluezzbastardz has explained, it seems Deezer only has this in HQ = 320 kbps. Will see if using the “report” facility can change this. I know Deezer has a good reputation for acting on things, but many other factors come into play here and I certainly don’t expect action.

Best regards,

Crowsong

Meanwhile I have found a shorter “Best of” version of the same Peer Gynt recording by BIS on Deezer with 11 tracks, it’s also only available in HQ:

Here is the screenshot of the play queue view in the web player:

It may be intentional of BIS to not offer their highest available quality to streaming services, as they are known for their quality, e.g. these albums also have the Super Audio CD label on it (behind the HQ one). They do not officially offer their albums on YouTube either, don’t know for other sites, maybe not even on Spotify. OK, checked it, that album is available on Spotify, probably because they do not offer lossless streaming anyhow:

So now you can compare Spotify at 160kbps Ogg Vorbis (for free users) to Deezer at MP3 with 320kbps if you are bored.

Thanks for the Tidal link, by the way, but I think I will not test them, too much to do and listen to good music with HiFi sound in the meantime. 😉 But it’s good that you could identify the worse MP3 at 320kbps sound immediately, there are many people who cannot or do not care.

It’s admittedly not the most intuitive thing but helpful once you know it’s there - I usually go to the Queue screen as soon as I start listening since this stuff interests me. In an equally odd way if you Chromecast to a supported device from a phone app, the app doesn’t report what quality is playing but the device being cast to does…

Deezer need to add a Stats for nerds option like Netflix has!

Hi bluezzbastardz and Rick,

Thank you both for all the very useful information. I’ve learnt a lot. Will need to do more testing before picking D or T. I’m guessing that D will have FLAC/Hi-Fi quality for most of the stuff that interests me. Will most probably be buying the Peer Gynt on CD (if I can find a copy).

BR,

Crowsong

There is still a chance that the Deezer catalogue team requests a HiFi version of the album, and BIS will send one, perhaps it was a long time ago when they (or their distributor) have sent their catalogue to Deezer which they usually do in one big data dump, I think, not only a few albums. Why should Tidal have a lossless version and not Deezer? By the way, ad-supported Tidal Free is only available in the U.S., as far as I know, and it only offers AAC at 160kbps.