Should you pay more for HiFi Music Streaming?

You will notice this isn’t a properly formatted article. I shared some tweets on HiFi Music Streaming and decided they could be an article. So basically this article is those tweets unrolled. You can check out the thread here, and contribute your thoughts on the same.

Apple will be launching HiFi streaming on Apple Music soon. There won’t be any extra charges. Which is weird because HiFi costs more on Tidal, Deezer and is expected to cost more on Spotify once that goes live.

Amazon Music already made HiFi free. So we should see a shift in the future where HiFi becomes free across all platforms.

But can you really tell apart HiFi Music from normal quality streaming?

There are a couple of things you need:

1. Good internet
2. Good speakers/headphones – All those stuff to do with a good DAC etc.

The only way to answer this question for me is to pay for Deezer HiFi.

I was shocked Deezer actually accepts M-Pesa. Whom did they announce this to? Not me.

But the charges are in USD not KES. Why?

Anyway, this is the third music streaming app I am paying for.

You'd expect that once on a Deezer HiFi plan, everything will automatically steam in HiFi. Nope.

You have to go to settings > audio > custom and then set everything to High Fidelity. Otherwise you'd be steaming in standard quality.

To cast to other devices in HiFi you also have to set the quality. The supported chromecast devices are those from 2015 going forward if I understood the FAQs well.

You cannot use Deezer HiFi on your Android TV by installing the app. That will stream in normal quality. You need to cast from your phone after for it to be in HiFi.

There's a HiFi logo on the bottom left of the album artwork showing what you're listening to is in HiFi quality

So can I tell the difference between normal quality and HiFi quality?

Ah, I don't think so.

And before I make any claims here are things I must say:

There's definitely some small difference in my ears. I fear perhaps I may be imagining it. That's why I can't state there is for sure.

Perhaps my ears aren't really good with listening to HiFi stuff. Aha?

Anyways:

1. Perhaps the music I’m lisening to isn’t quite HiFi quality? Could that be something? I don’t know
2. Perhaps hardware I have isn’t good enough for HiFi streaming? (Sony says the XM3s I’m using are good for many different qualities including the FLAC used by Deezer)

So should you pay for HiFi?

My suggestion, before you pay for any HiFi streaming:

1. Find a way to test and see if you can tell the difference.
2. Have good hardware for this test.
3. If you can’t tell the difference, there’s no need to pay more.

However, with Apple Music bringing HiFi for free, maybe in a few months HiFi will be free across all music apps. Their recent price changes in Kenya made Deezer also change pricing.

Originally tweeted by Dickson Otieno (@DicksonOtieno) on May 18, 2021.