MusicLife 4+

Having just bought an Arcam CDS50, mainly for playing SACDs and CDs, I decided to broaden my usage to streaming, mostly classical music via Qobuz. So I was very disappointed to find that it doesn’t support gapless playback, something absolutely essential for some classical compositions. The other bothersome aspect of MusicLife is that on more than one occasion the sound dropped out, although the track affected still continued to play. There is nothing worse than the ‘sound of silence’ when trying to enjoy your music.

All of this is a bit of a shame as the MusicLife App would be a pleasure to use if only it did what I wanted. I’ve now reverted to my Bluesound Node2i music streamer and the Bluesound App, which not only has gapless playback but also, at least so far, hasn’t plagued me with the ‘sound of silence’.

I like this app but. If I select the Qnap as the source and browse to my tracks (flac) the albums are sometimes mixed up with the same artist. If on the other hand I say the source is plex(Symes actual source) then I get all the album artwork and the albums are correctly sorted… but when I play back classical music there is a glitch as the system changes tracks, there is no seamless version. I I use the hifi to navigate to the streams I don’t have any gaps or mustc.

The primary reason to spend over £600 on a CD streamer is not the CD player, which bluntly is brilliant, but streaming.

And streamin when you find what you want on Tidal via MusicLife is fantastic. It is the best audio experience I have ever had in my home. Brilliant!

But the whole purchase is ruined by this App.

I can’t stream direct from Tidal, and the Music Life App seems to implement its on interpretation of whatever API Tidal have given. It means that what you last played on the move (via Tidal) is not synced with Tidal (via music life)

Search functions are placed in an appealing place.

Now try searching for “Rag’n’Bone Man” but instead search for Rag and Bone, Rag n Bone, Boneman, or any logical search if you don’t know the spelling. Or ANY artist you are not sure of the spelling.

Brilliant. Millions of tracks and you can’t find popular music.

It really is a beautiful CD player and wonderful sounding streamer, but the streaming interface makes it a less than appealing purchase.

I don’t know if I should return the kit and exchange for something where better care is taken over streaming and software support.