I am not surprised by your finding. Contrary to popular beliefs, Most of the tracks I find on Qobuz are only CD quality and often Bootube and other disrespected sources have EXACTLY the same of even better tracks available. I have found that if you look carefully enough, MANY of the tracks on various sties on the web are the SAME track. Look in to those carefully and you might find some slight error/flaws made when the track was saved or uploaded, cut off starts, and endings things like that and you can see that these are the same source music. The rest is just disrespect by some people that would have yo believe in something that they want to whine about.
Apple Music vs. YouTube sound quality
I need your help with finding out what is going on.
To begin: I do not have a dedicated music server. I am using my latest MacBook Air feeding my MSB DAC through a USB cable and a AcouSence reclocker. Most of my digital music is from Apple Music lossless and stored on my iCloud.
Recently someone recommended to me the sound track of "I am Legend", especially the beginning track "My Name is Robert Neville", for wide and deep soundstage and very deep bass towards the end. I found it on Apple Music and listened to it, and yes, it is a nice show piece. As I was not familiar with the movie, I looked for a YouRube clip to watch. I found exactly the same track and played it through my MacBook Air and the same downstream: WOW, the YouTube sound was dramatically better, more depth, more dynamic, more space; only the bass seemed to be less focused than coming from Apple. So, what is going on here? YouTube sound used to be much inferior to Apple Music. They must be using another codec, but that alone won't account - at least in my book - for the fact that this track sounded really much better on YouTube. I am now researching more recordings on both platforms, but in the meantime I wanted to throw this out here, and get your opinion: have you noticed something similar lately?