![]() Tidal, in my mind, really shines in popular music, with very good playlists and recommendations in pop-rock (mainstream), RnB, rap, and the like. I have made up my mind and given up on Tidal so I turn to Qobuz when it comes to classical and opera, and 90% of the time when it comes to jazz. Grammophone in the UK or Diapason in France), you will not find most of the titles in Tidal, but you will find them in Qobuz. If you take a music magazine classical recommendations (e.g. Tidal is very much a US-centric and mass market channel for the majors, the 21st century equivalent of MTV for audio enthusiasts and geeks. I don't think MQA adds or subtracts anything to the signal, but you simply have no way to assess the original resolution.Īnyway, in my experience in a few cases Tidal has a better sounding file for a record, but most of the time there is at least one better sounding file on Qobuz, and when it comes to Classical, Opera, World Music or even Jazz, there is simply no comparison, Qobuz is the only game. Tidal, on the other hand, offers MQA and it serves as a black box so you don't know what the original resolution was/is. When it comes to audio resolution, Qobuz lets you choose from different masters, with the original file resolution (from 24/44.1 to 24/192 and all the variations in-betwwen, including many titles at 24/88.2. I am feeding my Kef LS50W either wirelessly through a Cambridge CXU using DLNA (very useful, as you can play a record and switch to streaming at any time), or directly from my laptop using USB (best sound this wayIMO). I have many records in my favorites on both platforms, and I can switch from one to the other through Audirvana. Having subscribed to both Tidal Hifi and Qobuz (Hifi, and now Studio) for several years in parallel or in turns, I agree with your comment. I have done a few A/B tests with Tidal vs Amazon and both sound really good in 24bit Master/Ultra quality - noticeably greater clarity than HiFi/HD.Īnyone else compared Tidal HiFi with Amazon Unlimited HD? ![]() ![]() I'm part of the group that thinks, whilst 192kHz may benefit some recordings, the listener is unlikely to hear the difference in audio playback terms between 24/96 and 24/192 masters. Also, I will examine Tidal's "transparency" with their MQA encoding for Master recordings vs Amazon HD's Ultra offering, but the actual recording of the artist is much more important than the playback quality, and it would be useful to know the source. ![]() So, jury is out on which to stick with long term over the coming months I will weigh-up the catalogue merits of each provider. I did a simple listening test with Fleetwood Mac The Chain (2001 Remaster) across both providers and both sounded excellent. however, Amazon has given me a re-think! (3) Amazon Music Unlimited HD £14.99 (but currently one month in to enjoying a 3 month free trial) - their HD tracks sounds very good, and HD Ultra sounds brilliant - certainly matching anything I've heard from Tidal Masters. If you factor the €0.28 per month per subscriber for 1 million subscribers, this represents a cool €280.000 per month, and €3.36 million per year.Īt the moment I have 3 music streaming subs: (1) googleplay (reduced price because I was an original subscriber) is good for vast catalogue - would discontinue because it is only Standard def, but has quite a few tracks not available from other two (2) Tidal HiFi - unsure about the assumed improvement in listening experience with Masters: my system unfolds MQA up to 96kHz, and I do notice a nice difference with tracks that were originally mastered well. I am not suggesting that Tidal has worse files than Qobuz (I have no reason to think so), but having checked the quality of many so-called MQA master titles, I feel that the quality of the so-called masters varies significantly, with a lot of music which clearly doesn't sound right for the nominal bitrates advertised (this is particularly obvious for a lot of old RnB, jazz stuff from before 1980)Ī note on Tidal's pricing - Tidal charges €19.99 for 30 days, which in practice represents €0.6663 a day or €20.28 per month (if you subscribe on the 1st of January of any given year, your 13th payment to Tidal that year will be on the 360th day of the year - people with fixed pension dates beware). In my view an analysis of the actual quality of the files (e.g brickwall filters, etc) should be seriously considered when discussing Tidal, Qobuz, Hi-Res Audio. some music was remastered kHz by publishers on DVD-Audio, and is now re-sampled at 192kHz - a change that is not trivial by any means, since 192 is not a multiple of 176.4, 88.2, 44.1, etc). Interestingly, some music is available in bitrates that are highly unlikely (e.g. ![]() No one is checking the actual "high resolution" of the files that Tidal is making available to its subscribers. Tidal is great, but I would like to remind a few facts: ![]()
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