so what is your streaming preference and why?

[Halfway Tree]

As I've stated previously, this is also my finding and I turn this feature off when comparing audio players.

Ken, this is the volume normalisation that I mentioned in post #171. It all depends on how it has been implemented.

JRiver for example uses the "R128 analysis method which is the international standard for loudness normalization. The R128 standard targets -23 loudness units below full-scale (equivalent to -23dBFS) as the volume reference level. Media Center's implementation of the standard targets an 83dB output at the reference level."

If a streaming service or replay software uses this then there should be no quality loss when implemented. Unfortunately, not all streaming services or players implement it - I could be wrong but I think Spotify uses ReplayGain which has different levels, so you can't directly compare a service using R128 with one using ReplayGain as they will output at different levels.

In any service if you turn off volume normalisation then those tracks that are more heavily compressed will sound louder. And they may even be mastered differently for different services - unfortunately this makes comparing apples to apples nigh well impossible.

[Tim]

Conspiracy theory? - maybe - but there is much more to MQA than just sound quality IMO.

Thanks for the link to the interview with Brian Lucey, interesting read. I spent the last few days reading about MQA and watching a whole bunch of presentations on YouTube and look forward to hearing it, but I don't like what I've heard from the sceptics and even a talk by Bob Stuart didn't convince me it's needed.

One things for sure though, it is as you say much more than just sound quality - lot's a marketing speak too, even from Bob Stuart, which always makes me suspicious.