Qobuz vs idagio vs primaphonic

I have so far tried Tidal and Primephonic for classical music. To see exactly what they are delivering I have run file segments through MusicScope, a program that tells you exactly what you have. Keep in mind that when your DAC registers a number like 44 or 48 etc. it is only registering the container for the data and not the data itself.

For Tidal: I have no idea what you get when you play its "master" files, for to hear them "correctly" you need a MQA DAC which I do not have. In any event it is an artificial proprietary manipulation in which I have no interest.

Tidal "HIFI" is supposed to provide true 44/16. But it does not. On my Chrome browser, it does not even come close. On their own app, it does come quite a bit closer, but falls short. There’s no telling precisely what its manipulation of the original red book data provides.

For Primephonic: The tracks are either in 44/16 or 48/24. I don’t believe there are any others. However it doesn’t indicate to you in any way which it is you will be listening to so I tested a few to find out. It does deliver a true red book or 48/24 as promised.  So with Primephonic you can believe your DAC read-out.

@ei001h,

To tell exactly what you have, you have to run some of the track through a diagnostic program.  I use MusicScope, unfortunately no longer available.  I do not know of a similar program.

Primephonic does not tell you what the sample frequency or bit depth of any of their files is.  In fact they give very little information to anyone.  Neither The Absolute Sound review or the PC mag review says what their maxmum sample frequency is.  I find that remarkably deficient for a serious audio review.  They only say that some of their tracks are at 24 bits.

When I tried Primephonic, I ran a lot of track segments through MusicScope.  I identified only 44.1 and 48kHz as sample frequencies given the maximum audio frequencies received.  Of course I did not run them all, but I would be astonished if there are any higher than 48kHz, given the number I ran.