Lossless Streaming 16bit 44.1khz CD quality

Question

I've just started a trial of Qobuz - they offer the standard 320kbps as well as lossless FLAC streaming (and high res downloads if you purchase them) the sound quality is noticeably better and on classical it's just wonderful to get all that resolution through your hi-fi or headphones! The catalogue has a way to go to get to Spotify's level, but they are getting there. The iPad app isn't' too bad (the desktop app is in need of an upgrade but I hear they are putting all their efforts into mobile apps right now).
So - lossless streaming - if Qobuz can do it then so can Spotify, they must have the same source - and obviously if you are asking £20 a month then those record labels and distributors take enough notice to make the high res tracks available for streaming. What this all means is soon, very soon, we will get lossless streaming and closely followed by high res downloads - but if Spotify aren't careful it will be Apple who get there first with an audiophile premium offering, and when they do it will be a much harder market place to make money in!
** please don't lump this suggestion with the main one on lossless downloads, that's a different idea entirely guys!

Answer 1

Thanks for replying timiambeing,
"I don't think the labels and distributors have to encode any music Deeb, not like us end users from CD"
That might be the case for the major labels, but not the independents :( The music industry as a whole are still extremely unprofessional, even down to the fact that they're too lazy to digitize linear notes for the majority of albums. You've really got to get into the mentality of them to understand, they want instant gratification at the expense of quality (think about the way they "DR comrpess" CD's as part of the "loudness wars" for such quick financial gain, so that one mix sounds loudner than another mix when played back at precisely the same volume). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
The majority of independent labels would far rather reach for a CD to encode with any "insecure ripper" (such as Itunes), than request the original masters of an album be sourced for meticulous professional transfer. For them it's about getting money as quick as possible. The main problem I've got is that the average office worker who works at independent labels, doesn't understand about the problems with insecure CD encoders. They should use a secure ripper such as "DBpoweramp" or Exact Audio Copy, but they don't get it.
The only 44.1khz examples that I can think of that are gaurenteed non sourced from CD's is the whole "mastered for itunes" bla because the rules state that CD's musn't be used for encode.
"If there are imperfections then they arrive during the conversion process I would have thought"
The biggest problem with CD's is how old and primative the error correction is. As a result most CD rippers such as Itunes can't detect errors from what the CD gives, so it just passes them to file. That's why "secure rippers" such as Exact Audio Copy and dbpoweramp were invented to remedy these problems.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/overview/basic-technology/extraction-technology/
I believe that above page was written before AccurateRip was incorporated into secure rippers which takes you beyond the 99.5% accuracy that secure rippers hold on telling the user that their encode contains errors. ("accurate stream" is not the same thing as AccurateRip).
I once did this test to help me better understand the CD ripping process using both "insecure" and then "secure" software. Add scratches to a CD or a lot of dust to a CD you no longer like, but not so much that the the drive doesn't know if it's a CD or DVD or bit of blank plastic lol, and then encode it using an insecure ripper (such as windows media player or Itunes encoder). You can rip it to ALAC, WAV or AIFF and the same corrupt audio will be written out undetected.
To hear an example of a dirty encode on spotify,
search on spotify for Steve Diggle - the album "Serious Contender".
The first track drops out for 1 whole second, at 1min47.  I now own that CD and it's perfect (no drop outs etc, so it's not my ears).
Most dropouts in music are more subtle, but it's still enough to drive me nuts, e.g. skips/ imperfections/drum symbols will repeat twice (sometimes resulting in a song even finishing seconds shorter than it should. If you did the above example with scratched CD then you'll know the sounds I'm talking about.
I always buy the CD and there's no errors to be heard or if I encode to FLAC using secure software then it's perfect, so it's not my ears, although my ears are pretty decent. I like my ears (flappy things)