Every major streaming service has basically converged on hi-res/lossless at this point - Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music and Amazon Music all offer bit-perfect or hi-res tiers now, and it's gone from being a premium differentiator to just... table stakes. Which is a good thing. But it's left me noticing a weird gap: the format war that used to actually matter (MQA vs. plain FLAC/ALAC lossless) has been settled pretty decisively in lossless's favor, while the real bottleneck in most people's listening chain has quietly moved somewhere else entirely - Bluetooth codec support on their headphones, or the fact that they're listening through a phone speaker or a single smart speaker that couldn't resolve the difference in the first place.
Curious what this crowd's actual chain looks like, since I'd guess it skews toward people who built a real stereo or hi-fi setup specifically to take advantage of this stuff. Are you hearing a genuine difference between hi-res and standard lossless on your gear, or was the jump from lossy-compressed-everything to lossless the one that actually mattered, with everything past that being diminishing returns? And for anyone running vinyl alongside a streaming subscription - does having lossless on tap change how often you actually reach for the turntable, or are they just different occasions entirely for you?
Curious what this crowd's actual chain looks like, since I'd guess it skews toward people who built a real stereo or hi-fi setup specifically to take advantage of this stuff. Are you hearing a genuine difference between hi-res and standard lossless on your gear, or was the jump from lossy-compressed-everything to lossless the one that actually mattered, with everything past that being diminishing returns? And for anyone running vinyl alongside a streaming subscription - does having lossless on tap change how often you actually reach for the turntable, or are they just different occasions entirely for you?