Qobuz vs idagio vs primaphonic

I’m pretty sure that none of the streaming services have complete operas.

I subscribe to Spotify, Tidal, and Qobuz. All three have a huge number of complete operas. The ultimate example: they all have many versions of the complete Wagner Ring cycle (Solti, Levine, Furtwangler, etc), each clocking in at 14-15 hours. It’s shocking if classical oriented Primephonic doesn’t offer complete operas. The music labels certainly make them available to the streaming services.

with Primephonic the transition from the middle movement to the final movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 is accomplished the way Beethoven intended -- with no interruption. Qobuz, sorry to say, takes an axe to the transition, inserting an annoying audio dropout.

This is known as gapless playback — the ability to play continuously from one track to the next seamlessly without interruption. The Qobuz app has bugs and performance issues that still need to be fixed. Gapless playback on Qobuz works well on my newer Mac computer but there are brief gaps between tracks when playing Qobuz on my old Windows laptop. I don’t have the issue with Spotify or Tidal.

In terms of fidelity, what is primaphonic and idagio offer ? Are they at least 16/44 CD quality? What about hi rez? I’m Aware of MQA in tidal. 

+1 gdrbobI can’t comment on comparisons as I’ve just used Qobuz and tried Tidal. Qobuz has glorious SQ.
A little hard to navigate classical but when you find what you like it is worth it.
Tidal not so much.

Just yesterday I equalled the SQ for streaming to CD playback.

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.