Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, and Tool Album Libraries Now Streaming

AudiocRaver

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Art Rock Lovers Rejoice! The studio album libraries of Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, and Tool are now all streaming!

The sometimes quirky/picky leaders of those bands - Steven Wilson, Robert Fipp, and Maynard Keenan, respectively - were holdouts who long refused to have some or all of their works available on the popular streaming services. They have seen the light, and the libraries of those three Art Rock bands are now available on Tidal and Qobuz.

Porcupine Tree’s last five albums have been my favorites, and were all mixed in 5.1 surround on DVD-Audio. Having obtained FLAC versions of these, I have been a big fan of those mixes. I have kept a Raspberry Pi active as a media server for those and other surround and hi-res albums. The Raspberry Pi will continue to be useful for listening to surround albums, and some hi-res albums, although Qobuz with their extensive hi-res streaming library will now fill that need.

King Crimson’s earlier albums were available on Tidal a few months back, along with many live recordings, but the ‘81 through ‘03 studio works were not. Those albums included all of the tracks with the Robert Fripp / Adrian Belew combination on guitars, for me the most interesting of the K.C. works by far, so I was not satisfied. To have the entire catalogue streaming has been a treat, and I have been enjoying tracks that I have not heard in years.

Tool held out the longest, just releasing their studio works to Tidal and Qobuz last week. I streamed Undertow this afternoon, my first listen to this album in 10 years. What fun!

For those not familiar with those bands or their music, here is your chance. For those who are fans already, rejoice and feast!

Another quick note on Tidal: My two complaint for years were (1) that albums recorded and mastered for gapless play between tracks, or through a whole album side, would not play properly when streamed, and (2) that tracks downloaded to a mobile device would skip around between track segments at random from time to time. Both of these problems have been resolved recently. The gapless play still has some problems if streamed through another application, like NAD’s BluOS or Oppo’s Sonica app. Ah, well, the streaming universe is not yet QUITE in perfect order. But it is now three giant steps closer.
 

JStewart

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Thanks! I'll check these out.
Where have you been lately? Good to see a post from you!
 

AudiocRaver

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So extremely lazy it's pathetic. Retirement!

Finally getting productive again.
 

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About time for a GTG huh?

So Porcupine Tree is doing the 5.1 mix via streaming? Interesting.
 

JStewart

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Thanks again for the tip. Ashamed to say I'd not listened to Porcupine Tree before. Very good stuff.

So Porcupine Tree is doing the 5.1 mix via streaming? Interesting.

Couldn't find 5.1 streaming or download available on Qobuz. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?
 

AudiocRaver

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Only the stereo versions are streaming. The 5.1, at least at 24bit 48kHz resolution, is converted from DVD-Audio to 5.1 FLAC, and requires a surround media player of some sort. I use a Raspberry Pi for that.
 

JWL.GIK

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Surprised to see that the last 2 Porcupine Tree records -- Fear of a Blank Planet and The Incident, probably my 2 favorites from their catalog -- aren't on Tidal. I already own the discs and made FLACs but would like to see them here for convenience.
 
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