I’m a Tidal user from some time and mu subscription gives music to my family, wife, daughter and my brothers.
Few months ago i tried the QoBuz for the first time and i ´ve been trying between one and the other. At the end there’s no clear winner, some tracks sound better on the Tidal and other on the QoBuz. Because wen i was younger i was a Dj and i still like to mix some musics in my private party’s with friends and the software of the mixing table didn’t support QoBuz, it give the final result, I keep with Tidal.
But now we know MQA its going to end and the FLAC files its going to Tidal like its on the QoBuz.
The price difference between the 2 is significant and because i pay the subscription for 12 months on Qobuz, the price difference is almost 40% less on QoBuz.
In this cenário, I’m on the final trial to move from good to Qobuz.
I would like to know your opinion witch sounds best and if the price diference is justify.
Having both Tidal & Qobuz for many years I prefer the latter. Never cared about MQA and to my ears Qobuz just sounds a tad better. Last but not least with a Qobuz Sublime subscription one gets significant discount on purchases (which can be re-downloaded indefinitely in any format of choice up to the bit rate payed for).
@Ivo im also getting there, that’s why i already cancel the subscription that renove in 16 September and bought the family plan with one year subscription
For me as an old geezer the problem with Tidal has always been that its presentation has always struck me as being for the under 30s. It has not been very friendly outside of rock or hiphop/soul/R&B genres., at least to me. As you probably know my main interest is classical music and I have not been convinced that Tidal even know what that is. They certainly don’t ( unless things have changed) understand that classical music does not normally include stage musical shows, film soundtracks etc except in a limited number of cases.
I remember back in their early days talking with them and saying that the classical offering was lacking. I checked and all they then had was a collection of the type of recordings that you see CDs of at garages e.g 15 Mozart hits by royalty free,made up orchestras , you know " Berne Philharmonia" kind of thing.
Things are now much better I understand but I still feel that this repertoire exists there only as a business decision rather than there being anything more substantial behind it unlike the curation at Qobuz.
I also support the discounts to Sublime + members for downloads.
I have both Tidal and Qobuz, and for me they are complementary. Almost always I find on at least one of them what I like to hear, and it gives me the opportunity to compare versions, and SQ.
I do not understand why people bother about what their subscriptions cost. Compared to the investments made in hardware it is nothing.
Neither do I although I have not seen a complaint of this type for many years.
Even for music enthusiasts without high end equipment to use as a comparator, a subscription to the most expensive Qobuz offer is much less than the cost of 2 full price CDs per month. To me it’s a bargain.
@Ermos@PAR, it’s not how much it cost, it’s a way of life.
I can drink some bottles of wine with my wife or friends spending hundreds ou thousands of euros, but I’m enjoying.
I can spend 8K euros in a suit or 12k in a leader jacket but I use it, like the desing and the fabrics.
I can spend 300k euros in a car and driving hard that one fuel tank only achieve to 150km, but don’t matter because I’m in joy in every moment, every drop of fuel and rubber of the tires.
But going to extreme, I don’t like to see a light turn on for no reason… I don’t burn money by principle. This I try to pass to my 11 years old daughter and probably have more value than the cars, houses, office and watches I’m going to left to her…
If I don’t use, I don’t pay, why i will pay both services if I don’t need and Tidal is on the way to turn all the songs in FLAC like Qobuz? Have just to have? The same with the Tv streaming services, I had it almost all but nobody use most of them, so I kept the Disney plus and Netflix that we mostly use.
I’m now using Qobuz for a year and for my music stile and applications use it have some downsides. First is the algorithm they use to recommend musics by my historic of listening, i think Tidal does a much better job, Qobuz is really bad. Second, Qobuz still does not have the “connect”. Third and i think is the most important, dont have the lyrics of the song and my 12 year old daughter loves it. If with that she ear more music so its important. I think that when the 12 months expire in 20 days ill go back to Tidal…
your comment is the first that I have seen with that conclusion. I do not know why this is so but would remark that ensuring that you are comparing like with like is not straightforward.
Without attempting to go into the byzantine practices of the record industry,what appear to be similar recordings are not necessarily identical country to country if supplied by different companies. Often the production master ( from which the file supplied to the streaming service probably derives) varies country to country or completely different companies are involved . For example a recording may be owned by UMG in one territory but Sony Music in another and files are supplied in line . Tidal runs out of Sweden and Qobuz has a different database for each supplied territory. Some are mirrored copies, others not.
Incidentally similar considerations may exist with hard copy CDs produced by different pressing facilities.
So, whilst acknowledging that you heard what you heard and which preferred is what you prefer, the comparisons may not be simple.
I don’t compare every 16bit/44.1kHz album to each service because I’ve heard enough of a statistically significant sample size where I find tidal better.
However. I should maybe go back and examine a few.
While I agree they should sound identical, it may be the master source rather than the service which is the difference?
It has also occurred to me that comparisons with Tidal had a further issue up until the past year or so, Tidal ran a single itinventory database as far as possible. So MQA files were used. These, of course, provide a CD quality output or hi-res, depending on the user’s choice/equipment. However the claim was that the MQA encoding process “improved” CD quality as well. Very controversial.
However I understand that from late July, MQA has now been dropped ( I am unable to confirm this). Whether that means that substitute files are now used or if it indicates that although the supplied MQA service is no more, the source remains as before.
Herb doesn’t giver any clear reason as to the difference in sound between streamed files and CDs. He does speculate though and this can be compressed to the idea that different technologies and equipment sound different. Who knew that?
In my, admittedly very brief read through of the article, it doesn’t look like he attempted any sort of apples-to-apples comparison before making the assertion. So, just another throw-away comment from yet another audio journalist
However when I play it back on my Audioquest Dragonfly (MQA renderer) Roon’s signal path shows that this is just straight 16/44.1 FLAC with no MQA-encoding.
