Tidal pricing

Mike-B posted:

It looks to be the availablity & highest number of tracks (songs) albums & music genre rather than quality that driving the streaming market,  & of course streaming on the move via 4G.  In that case as I see it Apple has already won the race.    Tidal are way behind apart from the music genre(s) which its owners/sponsors are famed for,  they have very poor jazz, folk & classical & even fall short on some of the rock classics.    

If you want quality with a reasonable portfolio then IME Deezer might be worth looking at ........ the Premium+ service is costs £9.99 p/m for unlimited listening but worth looking into the deals with Orange and EE customers.   The Deezer Elite service with 16/44.1 CD-quality is £14.99 p/m or £10 for 1 year (£120 paid upfront)    I understand the Sonos / Deezer Elite service is up for renewal & for offers from other makes.

I'm surprised the popular hifi press have not done more on reporting the in/outs of the streaming services,  but maybe I'm not looking in the right places as I only read one on a regular basis.  

 

Mike,

For me the requirements are :

1) Lossless quality (preferably uncompressed)

2) Accessible directly via NDS without needing an additional computer

#2 is important to me as it reduces complexity and yet further need to fiddle/fettle.  I realise that #2 probably makes me part of a very small minority and I believe I can only do this with Tidal.

Given I've already concluded (at least for myself) that Tidal SQ is worse than ripped/streamed CD I can't really justify £20/month for it.  If it was similar price to Netflix then I might be tempted to keep.

I too have ditched Tidal. Apart from there being hardly any decent classical and jazz, the sound quaility is disappointingly poor, and not a patch on music streamed from my Synology in CD quality. 

Well, I have to say, and I am using a beta firmware, but Tidal playing into my streamer and off board DAC sounds almost as good as locally streamed media, and on a few masters Tidal can sound better.. and of course the Tidal 44.1/16 streams are obviously CD quality albeit packaged as FLAC.. It's just one has to be pickey about masters as they are not all the same.

Mike, DAB is interesting.. I have been up in the Swiss Alps listening to the DAB+ Ensembles and comparing to regular DAB.. It appears severeal stations here are transmitted in both legacy and current.. Now it was only my BMW sound system, but the sonic quality difference  between old fashioned DAB as used in the UK and DAB+ was stupid.. we certainly have been short changed with the prehistoric creaking DAB technology used back in Blighty.

Simon

I think the main problem in the UK is that because we use DAB, which uses an older codec than DAB+, in order to fit the transmissions into the allocated radio spectrum, the bit rate of most our transmissions are much too low.  Radio 3 is by far the best in terms of BBC SQ, but it only uses 192 Kbps and that isn't all the time.  Apparently there is too large an installed base of DAB-only receivers for the Government, the BBC or the radio industry to decide to make the switch to DAB+ which is clearly what they should do.

The SQ on DAB was never brilliant, but as the mux operators pack more and more stations in so as to raise their revenue, in my opinion at least, the SQ goes inexorably downwards. Thank goodness for two things: the fact of Internet radio and also that the FM band ll isn't useful for mobile communications, so wouldn't be worth much at auction.

sorry this is a bit off topic for this thread.....

best

David

Agreed Simon,  I was listening to DAB+ vs DAB in Holland.   I believe this was due to DAB+ giving better SQ for the same bit rate, but also DAB+ can carry a higher bit rate on the same bandwidth.  I understand the UK DAB+ trails are progressing well but that the cost of change is not insignificant.  Will we get it, who knows, we can only hope the forthcoming future of radio meetings will take DAB+ seriously into the considerations;  problem is the current official opinion is   "there are no major benefits of DAB+ over DAB"   "if DAB+ could be used to increase significantly the bit rate used per service, this would improve the sound quality"  However it seems the radio industry consider DAB+'s more efficient bandwidth as an opportunity for more station cramming. 

Locally my BBC DAB service in my BMW sounds better on some music than it does with FM,  it has more extension in the high frequencies & is a bit less chesty BBC,  maybe FM is taking a 10kHz dive to avoid the pilot tone.  Voice programs on FM are more relaxing tho'.  

Well Mike, back in Suffolk our local BBC radio station still does not appear and transmit in DAB, so can't make the comparison. BTW I feel with modern signal processing the pilot tone could be notched out in addition to a more gradual HF roll off from 15kHz so I see no real reason why the HF need be unduly rolled off early in a modern quality design.  I have no way of easily looking at the Swiss DAB / DAB+ Ensembles and their bandwidths, but there certainly appear many stations in the Ensemble muxes.. Swiss Jazz+ also appears to transmit graphics in addition to the station logo which appears on the car display as a 'slide show' which is a nice touch..

Dave yes you are right regarding muxes, but the market does seem to want at least 128kbps stereo MP2 for music (and I think that is the official minimum recommendation too), but 128kbps AAC sounds so much better than MP2 (in vast majority of cases)

It is a high price, not quite so bad for 6 months in advance, but I think the quality through my NDX is generally good, depending of course on the masters.

But that is most likely going to be the same if I end up buying the CD, some will be good and some will be bad.

Some albums sound really great via Tidal streaming.....

It all boils down to how much it is streamed through the hi fi and whether this is deemed good value for money, otherwise drop down a tier, pay £10 less and just lose the hi fi streaming whilst maintaining the rest of the features. (Spotify/Tidal at that level are pretty much the same, including the best bit for me, the offline listening capability)

My circumstances will be changing in the next few months and whether I continue with Tidal Hi-fi tier will very much depend on if I can afford it comparing it with whether it seems good value for money based on the amount I am using it through the NDX.

The jury is out, but it's purely cost justification for me.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted.............  I feel with modern signal processing the pilot tone could be notched out in addition to a more gradual HF roll off from 15kHz so I see no real reason why the HF need be unduly rolled off early in a modern quality design. 

This is fascinating, given that I have an unmodified [but recently repaired, without very much being done] Trough Line 3.

Compared to digital, I would characterise the treble quality as being crystal clear, very natural, and slightly more in the balance. That is half the story as on [FM/VHF] Radio Three it stomps all over the BBC internet send in natural realism, and, most significantly, the sense of musical momentum and listener involvement. Perhaps a case of confusing numbers with musical communication?

ATB from George 

To get back to the thread's title, "Tidal Pricing", my 3 month free trial has just ended and I am not prepared to pay £20 a month for the service, but I have a large library of the music I want on CD and vinyl (over 4500 albums) and on my NAS drive collected over the past 50 years. I think for a youngster without such a lifetime's music collection it might be a more attractive proposition. I would only really use a streaming service to sample new music and there are other ways to do that.

Mike so the NAD design would appear to be a good one then. In FM  broadcast VHF transmission the 'quiet band' starts at 15 kHz, so no audio is normally broadcast above this point (give or take a little) so a receiver with a band pass upto 15kHz would be appear to be optimal.

George I don't disagree with your observations, I guess digital/web radio has to contend with lossy codecs (UK DAB using inferior low bandwidth MP2) , as well as the local DAC reconstruction process .. all of which can add digital artefacts or unnaturalness to the  audio replay.

Simon

Dear Simon,

I have just spotted how far off the topic my post was in reply to Mike.

Sorry to everyone for being so far off topic.

ATB from George

No apologies needed from you George,  if anything its my fault.  However I don't think its drifted that far, Graham posted on the question of the VFM of Tidal;  that developed into VFM of questionable fidelity terms.  One of my replies, based on my view that streaming from www is its another form of broadcasting,  made the point that as a mass media format the majority of those masses are not concerned with high fidelity as such & don't really care provided it plays a reasonably good "tune".  I believe that to be true of streaming in lossy formats vs the so called HD streaming - is not HD, its bog ordinary CD at best & I linked that with an analogy between FM & DAB in that FM has the potential to be better than DAB - that is DAB with MP2 as it is in UK at the moment - but the majority of the population really don't care.  Then I questioned the assumption that FM with many receivers is high fidelity as I don't consider a tuner that rolls off at or below 10kHz as hifi  ......  that is not disagreeing with your views on listening pleasure vs data numbers.  

To wrap this up,  I have the view that streaming, terrestrial & web radio is not really high fidelity, problem is the majority of the public are either fooled and/or don't care anyway so the public demand for something better is but a small voice in a large crowd.  I believe that if you do want the best fidelity then you have to own it & its probably going to be 24 bit or DSD for the foreseeable future.   

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Well, I have to say, and I am using a beta firmware, but Tidal playing into my streamer and off board DAC sounds almost as good as locally streamed media, and on a few masters Tidal can sound better.. and of course the Tidal 44.1/16 streams are obviously CD quality albeit packaged as FLAC.. It's just one has to be pickey about masters as they are not all the same.

Simon, well great news if that is what you've observed, shame I haven't shared the same experience otherwise I might be tempted to stay!

I find that the soundstage is much smaller and the music sounds flat, it's lost its sparkle and life - even on a better recording.  To me it seems pointless playing that through my system, it's akin to buying a really nice sports car and then feeding it with the lowest quality fuel I can find!

Much of what I have listened to has been streamed at 320kb/s so is clearly compressed even though it indicates 44.1khz.  If you want a really dire example then look up the album "Classics" by the group Hybrid and play track 8 (Formula of Fear).  Listening to an uncompressed FLAC rip of the CD this track sounds wonderful with huge amounts of low level detail.  On Tidal it is encoded as AAC 44.1khz 96kb/s and as you would expect sounds totally dire.  So much for hifi quality...

It didn't take me long to reach this personal opinion when I started the trial but I continued (well, it was free) to see if the convenience of having new music immediately available would win me over.  Unfortunately it didn't, I just didn't get past the SQ issues.  Maybe I'm just unlucky in this regard.

I've you've got an example track where you think Tidal shows off its true quality I'd love to know what it is so I can take a listen.

Tony2011 posted:

Graham Clarke posted:

Am I the only one struggling to get my head around Tidal pricing?  £19.99/month or apparently £16.99 if you pay for six.

By comparison, Netflix is £7.49/month for HD (which I would argue is approx. level of Tidal Hifi), or £8.99 for 4K.  How can Tidal justify over double that???

I'm currently trying it via Apple and it costs an eye-watering £25.00. No, I wouldn't pay £19.99 either. Needles to say once the trial period is over it's bye-bye...  You can also use a VPN program installed and have a subscription as if you were based in another part of the world. Tidal, if I'm not mistaken, has a monthly subscription in Brazil of around £2.80. Go explain...

I tend to steer clear of free VPNs because some of them host malware and there are also potential privacy issues in that they can easily decode any data your sending (yes, I know, not an issue with streaming music).

Prices vary globally due to what the market can afford.  Where I work the price lists for our product in Latin America are lower than in other countries because you have poor exchange rates, high import duties etc.  I was once asked to approve a 90% discount off our product so I enquired what the justification was.  Apparently that was all the customer could afford.  Answer was "no" along with an observation that I would love to pop into a Ferrari dealership and ask for a new 458 Speciale at 90% discount because that's all I could afford

Michael posted:

To get back to the thread's title, "Tidal Pricing", my 3 month free trial has just ended and I am not prepared to pay £20 a month for the service, but I have a large library of the music I want on CD and vinyl (over 4500 albums) and on my NAS drive collected over the past 50 years. I think for a youngster without such a lifetime's music collection it might be a more attractive proposition. I would only really use a streaming service to sample new music and there are other ways to do that.

Youngsters probably aren't listening through a high quality hifi and will likely choose the cheaper Tidal offering.  Tidal's pricing of the hifi offering is likely high on the assumption that if we can afford the hardware we can afford the subscription cost.  Which is true.  I can afford it, but don't regard it as value for money.

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

Dear Simon,

I have just spotted how far off the topic my post was in reply to Mike.

Sorry to everyone for being so far off topic.

ATB from George

Actually I'm glad that staying on topic isn't too strictly policed here.  Just like conversations, allowing the discussion to drift into other areas can make for interesting reading and I'm no better at staying on topic.

Back to topic, I'm actually OK with Tidal pricing although I wouldn't complain if it was cheaper.

I guess it depends whether you are a "glass half full" or "glass half empty" person. The way I evaluate streaming services is to look for albums by bands I would like to hear more of whereas others seem to have a list of "must haves" and if many or any of those are missing the service is dismissed.

Neither approach is right or wrong but for me if I get more than 2 new cds worth of pleasure a month from Tidal then it is worth it - it easily surpasses that for me. I do have music I can't live without but I already own that. I also agree with Simon that full fat Tidal is pretty much indistinguishable from rips in terms of sound quality.

As far as I'm aware, Tidal charge £19.99 in the UK, $19.99 in the US, and €19.99 in Europe. That's a blatant ripoff, and I will therefore be cancelling when the free trial ends (and signing up for a 6 month free trial with Deezer :-)

Hi all,

These threads have just prompted me to tech and fortunately I've just found out in time that I would of been charged tomorrow 4th Jan. I have just cancelled as whilst I've enjoyed the convenience I think that just under 20 quid is too much for something that I would not use a great deal. Especially when I have to be back at work tomorrow and i have a "ton" of music already ripped. 

Graham, seems you and i have had a relatively "cheap" Christmas, i suspect that this will change in 2016!!!!!

Just to add we already have family Spotify. The family use this a great deal, so I don't begrudge just under fifteen pounds a month for family enjoyment. They are used to it and they enjoy creating playlists etc. We also have Squeezeboxes still dotted around the house and Spotify is easily linked in, especially at bedtime getting the kids off to sleep with various bedtimes stories available..and yes we still do our bit as well. I also use it for various "sleepy" music at bedtime which helps my brain switch off and get to sleep. Tidal, would mostly be used my me, and therefore would not be considered value for money....yet! Spotify is also a good resourceful investigating new music.

Pev posted:

Back to topic, I'm actually OK with Tidal pricing although I wouldn't complain if it was cheaper.

I guess it depends whether you are a "glass half full" or "glass half empty" person. The way I evaluate streaming services is to look for albums by bands I would like to hear more of whereas others seem to have a list of "must haves" and if many or any of those are missing the service is dismissed.

Neither approach is right or wrong but for me if I get more than 2 new cds worth of pleasure a month from Tidal then it is worth it - it easily surpasses that for me. I do have music I can't live without but I already own that. I also agree with Simon that full fat Tidal is pretty much indistinguishable from rips in terms of sound quality.

I would agree with Pev's 2CD rationale here.  I intend to stick with Tidal for now (hoping that the new firmware will fix the "stop-start" issues that still cause me problems - in the evenings mainly).  For me SQ is not quite on a par with CD rips but the benefits of access to a huge library of music outway this difference.