Isn’t Spotify low res?
Yes - Qobuz has much more Jazz than Tidal. Tidal has a grand total of 96 artists in their Jazz genre - quite small.
Is Qobuz available in the US? I’ve never has a problem streaming Tidal and it’s always sounded very good. I have no interest in low bit rate streaming service except for background music streaming via my old squeezebox. Pandora is fine for that. Even 320b streams I have on my HD are a big drop off from lossless on the DS.
Technically no, many workaround the registration issue by using a VPN connection to France so that it appears your computer is in France. The streams would still be coming from whereever Qobuz hosts or via CDN (content-delivery network) of choice.
They’ve announced US available later this year.
Let your ears be the judge. Tidal does not noticeably beat Spotify on sound quality, matches maybe, does not beat by much, if any.
1 Like
I’m of the opinion that Tidal’s HiFi option is pretty good. Let me state that I live in a large urban area that has good internet. The actual node for fibre to coax is on my property and I have gigabit service. Granted that bragging right is nonsense but our stream is 700 megs. Internal cable is Cat 6 to Cat 7 through gigabit switches. So the problem of delivery is mitigated. I can go from CD to streaming and it’s close. My point is to look at your whole digital ecosystem to identify weak links. Me? I’m thrilled to have Tidal.
I am sensing you would not be impressed with my 1.5 kbps service. 
Tidal HiFi is lossless 44/16. Spotify is lossy. We would certainly expect Tidal to possess better sound.
There are many here that imply Tidal has poor quality. I have no problem with what I’m getting. I just came back from 10 days in SoCal and Las Vegas. I’ve had my system idling for half a day and now it’s playing. I have a smile on my face and what’s happening with Tidal is great.
I have been a Tidal HiFi subscriber since March of 2016 and what I am saying, not implying, is that the sound quality has gone down in the last year. Whether that has to do with MQA, their partnership with Sprint with the constant “free” multi-month promotions or just over stressed content servers and infrastructure I don’t know. All I know is what I hear using multiple brands of streamers in two different systems. We all hear what we hear and if you like what you hear with Tidal then carry on.
I take notice of your opinion here. What I am finding is, you just can’t generalize and assume that lossless Tidal sounds better than lossy Spotify. Because on my system, comparing Spotify 320 kbps against Tidal 44.1/16, they both sound great. I can’t even say direct CD playback sounds any better than what’s coming from either streaming service.
I guess it’s possible that 320 from a streaming service may sound better than 320 from my HD just not sure how. Tidal beats 320 from the HD pretty easily with my system. 320 doesn’t sound bad it’s just not lossless on a resolving system. Don’t see how it could be.
1 Like
This mirrors my experience.
Lossy audio compression at 320 kbit/s sounds remarkably good - especially in light of the musical information which has been tossed by the down conversion - but it pales in comparison to Redbook 44/16.
1 Like
Not so pleased with my Tidal (Master) at this point either. Will probably make the switch to Qobuz Sublime eventually when it gets to my country (Argentina), no workarounds.
I’ve come into my listen room this evening for a session…I went to give Spotify the flick and put on a CD…nah, it sounds so good I said to myself “as you were”. I’ve cancelled my Tidal, support ticket open for 9 days and not even an interim response of any substance.
Don’t blame you. If they ignore your support request for over a week, dumping them makes sense.
I’m playing some MQA Studio now (24 bit 352.8 kHz) and it’s just not getting my attention. This is the highest resolution I’ve yet played on my Esoteric DAC and whilst it does sound good, it doesn’t get my attention any more than CD quality.
1 Like
1 Like
I saw Tidal as only a “Turn & Burn” investment for its current owners.
Buy it, inflate its value, sell it at an obscene profit and wash your hands of it.
But that is not happening for them, no one wants to take it off their hands.
When I initially started my subscription process, I stopped part way through, I had a question, what constitutes a “family” under the family plan.
I was emailed daily that I had to complete my subscription process.
I replied that I would not complete the process until my question was answered.
I finally received an answer as to what constitutes a “family” under the family plan.
The reply was, a mother and 4 children.
I never finished my subscription process.
I tried the free 12 Days of Tidal offer last year, I was not impressed with the service.
12 days since I lodged my Tidal support ticket. I updated the ticket to say I’d cancelled my Tidal subscription because of the slow response so they could now go ahead and just close the ticket. Which they did, and offered me a very brief feedback survey “good, I’m satisfied” or “bad, I’m not satisfied”. I suppose they don’t really care what I choose there.
1 Like
Brodric
On their forum the CEO of Auralic said that at this point they don’t even respond to him and they have been a Tidal partner from the beginning.
2 Likes