Linux @lemmy.ml strawberry @kbin.earth 2 mo. ago

Anybody know how to get lossless audio on linux?

I pay for apple music, but all the linux clients seem to just be webapps which support 256AAC at most. Any way to maybe automatically download my library as flac and keep it locally (legal or not idc)

cant move services as every other service sucks (yes i have tried them all (tidal, spotify, qobuzz, deezer)

thank you all

49 comments

The easiest way to get lossless music is to buy a CD and rip it. Of course you can always sail the high seas too. 🏴‍☠️
- That's still too lossey. I prefer to hire the band to follow me around for the day. It's the only true way.
- sailing the high seas is great, thats why i said legal or not. however, i dont know of a way to automatically get my am library and download it through something like nicotine
  
  last time i did it was a very manual process
  
  Soundiiz -> last.fm or spotify playlist -> Newsbin or torrent + lidarr
  
  Convert from apple to another music product and then automate that?
bandcamp is great! you can just pay and download music in whatever format (flac, wav, mp3), no questions asked.

They don't have the Taylor Swifts of the world, but most indy bands and artists are on there, which is good enough for me.

For classical music, there is presto music, but their download experience is not as straight forward as bandcamp IMO.
- Also, yesterday was Bandcamp Friday (they forgoe their cut and everything goes to the artist). The next two are Oct 4th and Dec 6th.
- yeah no I listen to mostly bigger names
  
  Then if you care about the artists being compensated fairly, you can CD+rip; if not, streamrip/torrent will produce a lot less waste and much more convenient.
  
  TBH most big names are millionaires anyway, I probably would care much more about my convenience than them getting paid 5 bucks for all my troubles.
- HDtracks is a bit more commercial and FLAC friendly.
I know you said you don't want to switch, but I was in a similar situation, switched to Qobuz, installed qobuz-dl and navidrome, and now Qobuz is just an input for my self-hosted streaming service.
Soulseek
- nicotine+ is a nice soulseek interface.
- This is the only true answer here. Answers like Bandcamp (which hardly has a repository big enough) or switching to Tidal aren't practical. OP paid for his music, and deserves access to it.
  
  I have Amazon Prime as part of Prime Unlimited but holy Christ, have I never gotten their web app to stream in Linux. As long as greediness on part of these lousy corporations live on, piracy would remain the only true option.
Can't help you there, I buy CDs and lossless copies from Bandcamp and Qobuz. Those work for me.
I know you said no service change but I use this Tidal client which works really well and goes up to 24-bit 192 kHz: https://github.com/Mastermindzh/tidal-hifi

I also download FLACs from Tidal, Deezer or Qobuz. You can find downloaders for them very easily.
- tidal has the most atrocious android app I have seen in my life
  
  If you can download music, you can either host your own using navidrome, or just use a local player like auxio.
  
  The only downside to this approach is that the artists you like might not get compensated fairly, as most streaming service pay by stream times. This is also why I prefer buying music than streaming.
- IIRC, one can integrate Tidal with music players like Strawberry on nix too, I think.
- Is there anything like this for Android that you're aware of? That would be awesome.
  
  Do you mean for downloading or for streaming? I use the normal Tidal app which already does the highest quality. Not the best app in the world but it does the job and I mostly listen to downloaded music anyway.
cant move services as every other service sucks

What are your requirements?

I use Tidal and I know High/Max quality works in the web UI, just needs widevine support.
- spotify doesnt have lossless, deezers app is really slow, tidals is janky and slow, qobuzz was missing 20% of my library (though maybe ill check again, they used a different service for transfers)
Check out some of the *ARR apps like Lidarr and pair it with something like sabnzbd or ~~ubittorrent~~ qbittorrent
- *qbittorrent
  
  Yep! My bad. Lemme edit that lol
- *if you like piracy
  
  oh I love piracy
  
  I don't mind. I support the artists I love by seeing them live and buying merch, pays them way more than a few streams anyways
  
  from OP's post:
  
  "legal or not idc"
Wine/bottles? I do use qobuz in a bottle and get hd audio out to my dac.
- I don't think the Apple Music Windows app does lossless or hi-res either
  
  Man, it sounds like if HD is your requirement, Apple really might not be the best.
  
  Short of an Android emulator, it sounds like they don't want it out of their ecosystem.
  
  says it does
- the qobuz webapp is hi-res too, I just use it in Firefox and my dac reports the same bit/sample rate that qobuz does. AFAIK there's no compression there though I haven't extensively verified that, only that the end result is 24bit/192kHz if that's what qobuz says is playing.
  
  EDIT: Also, qobuz is nice because there's very few things you can click on in the web interface which cause the music to stop playing. I really appreciate that feature.... looking at you bandcamp....
  
  I'm too likely to close a web browser. plus I keep getting logged out. But I did notice that too.
I don't think it works with Apple, but I really like Streamrip. It works with Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer and SoundCloud. Just adding it to the list of recommendations.
Deezer
Pretty much the same way you do on Windows & Mac.
https://rentry.co/firehawk52
How many albums you plan to downloads that require automation? I downloaded mine off of various torrent sites (about 300+ songs) and I still haven't listened to all of them yet

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