My 1 year Qobuz subscription is coming to an end… I have tried both Tidal and Qobuz. Can’t decide which is better… but tidal is sure expensive and they don’t give annual plan anymore.
What is the consensus amongst our PS Audio gurus?
I’m on MK-II/Roon if that helps and I don’t care about MQA.
I tried the “12 Days of Tidal” free trial over one Christmas and compared it directly to Qobuz.
MQA is not an option for me, I found Qobuz to have better SQ in my system.
I stream up too 192 KHz without issue.
Qobuz sounds better. Tidal has more music…. I for some crazy reason have both. The only way I justified this is cuz I got a crazy Black Friday deal on a year of Qobuz and downgraded to tidal HiFi. So I am paying less than I did for a tidal MQA subscription. But now I’m paying for Roon so that even more….
I just caught an Audioholics streaming service comparison from last Feb22. I don’t have either and a lot can change in a year but Emiko Carlin’s comment that Qobuz treated the artists more fairly than others got everyone’s attention.
In my setup Qobuz is superior over Tidal in Sound Quality. Also Handling and given Information about the music tracks are better in my opinion. With Baroque Music and North Indian Classical Music Qobuz has a really large(r?) selection …
Qobuz for me. I have had a subscription for over 5 years now. I have never tried Tidal but did have a 3 month trial of Amazon Music, and although SQ difference assessment would need audiophile quibbling I felt that Qobuz had the edge. For the Baroque and early music I listen to the selection available is excellent. I have never had any streaming problems with it.
After 3-4 years of Tidal I swapped to Qobuz. I have found the choice of music suits me better . Both were on the HiFi tier , cant say that I preferred one over the over quality wise.
I subscribe to Qobuz on the yearly plain for a discount. The cost actually went down slightly last year. Haven’t heard anything about them discontinuing their annual rate.
Another vote for Qobuz. Even with a DAC that fully unfolded MQA, I didn’t hear any better sound than I got from Qobuz’s hi-res offerings. And Qobuz has much more of the music I like than Tidal. I kept them both up for three years when it dawned on me one day that I only ever used Tidal on the rare occasions they had a piece of music I couldn’t find on Qobuz. That was more than I wanted to pay for that kind of backup.
I posted this over on the MQA “Chapter 11” thread:
“Efficacy and necessity aside, I have a hunch that this is not the beginning of the end for MQA. If the referenced “negotiations” are successful, MQA Ltd. may well continue to be a going concern. Time will tell.”
Considering your musical tastes, I’m curious to know if you had ever given a lsiten to Idagio? John Darko had done a video on them several years back, which I had forgotten about. They seem to be a rather enthusiatic, well organized bunch of music geeks.
I myself, have no experience with them.
Qobuz for me. I started with Tidal and when Qobuz became available in the USA I signed up for it. I ended up dropping Tidal as they kept “losing” songs on my playlists. I also like the low price Qobuz charges for downloads.
