Tidal Sound Quality - Why the Gripes?

On the whole, I agree. Tidal sound quality is maybe a touch behind local streaming quality, but it's close. There are exceptions though, including some tracks that are only available in a lossy format. 

I agree, it is close and for some tracks it is indistinguishable. Unlike Spotify, it does not hurt my ears to listen to it. I do find that as you back in time sometimes the quality is inferior. On the other hand, in a night of cheesy tunes, we had a fabulous rendition of Rhinestone Cowboy. 

Overall I think of it the way I used to think of FM radio. Some stations sound better and than others and on the same station some tracks sounded right where others did not. Like FM, which required a good antenna, it requires good bandwidth. 

I agree with everyone who has posted so far. The Tidal sound quality is pretty good, and for the most part almost indistinguishable from the same tracks played from my NAS.  

In fact, much of my normal casual listening is now carried out using Tidal, irrespective of whether or not I have the album on my NAS, unless of course I have a high res version of the album on my NAS.

I guess that we've never had it so good when it comes to the accessibility of music, although of course it does come with a hefty price tag. The one good (not) spinoff from BREXIT of course is that the cost of subscription is getting better and better every day with the ongoing demise of the pound. We still have to pay £19.99 a month for Tidal, but by the middle of next year when the pound falls below the value of a dollar or Euro, everyone around the world will be moaning that they pay more for the service than we do.  

I agree, Tidal sounds pretty fine these days but I have not done direct comparisons between it and local streaming. I think that might also be misleading as there are different 'versions' of many albums and who knows if you are comparing like-for-like in that regard. Also CD rips can sound different to hi res downloads of the same album adding further confusion.

Much of my listening these days is on full fat Tidal (mainly because I have discovered so much new material) and I believe Tidal SQ has improved over the time I have been using it. During that time I have also made one or two upgrades to my system so it is difficult to disentangle what part (if any) Tidal has played in the improved SQ I am enjoying.

I am still intrigued by the long-awaited firmware update, not just because it should help with drop-outs (something I don't often suffer from) but mainly because it has been hinted that the updated firmware will improve Tidal SQ.

Yes, Tidal is not cheap, but for me it offers great VFM as I listen to it almost every day. An excellent 'product' IMHO with the promise of more to come.

I find myself listening to Tidal more and more these days and most of it sounds great to my ears.

Sometimes I come across a poor sounding album, sometimes this is down to lossy format, but i think also it can be because the album is a poorly mastered one in the first place.

I do find it easier looking for stuff on my server than a limitless selection via Tidal (its easy to forget what you've got sometimes!) But I really don't have any complaints regarding SQ the vast majority of the time.

Via Audirvana tidal is very close to local playback but, if you listen back to back, local playback is still better, although it is marginal I would say.  Tidal is certainly good enough for a serious listening session and fantastic for new music discovery.  

I agree with all the positive pro Tidal comments above regarding its streaming sound quality. Like Dayjay I do most of my Tidal listening via Audirvana Plus (A+) and find it very good indeed only just shaded out by local playback of redbook CDs but its a very close call indeed and not something that has troubled me to date. Needless to say as a source for new, old or obscure eclectic material its very good indeed but lagging behind (I'm told) the Qobuz classical music library.

tidal is fine ,  drop outs do occur vis naim gear  .for someone who has limited collected music its the way.    i will keep it for awhile  ,busy with revox  

Nice thing about Tidal is that you can find there a lot of music in good quality. In the country where I'm currently living it's impossible to buy Cd's or files with music from my homeland (especially old recordings) - I could find some of those artists/albums at Tidal in really good quality.

Kacper

There is also the real possibility that Tidal stream files with audible watermarking, especially those from UMG which covers many major labels. Has anyone actually established that Tidal stream material that is bit-identical to the original cd? Would this be difficult to do?

If ur not too PC, there is Soundtap, probably not bit-identical, but it is very good. Perhaps best used for copyright free material.

Hi Graeme, for a significant part the differences I find are down to the fact Tidal is FLAC and I tend to, but not always now, stream locally Wave format.

i have noticed if the Tidal servers and/or internet home access and internet route is busy and there is lots of bursty segment flow control this can have an adverse affect on SQ too. You see a similar thing with local streaming over a busy wifi.

Decoupling the DAC from the streamer seems to help mitigate (but not eliminate) these  effects

At one point I had both Tidal and Qobuz subscriptions at the same time and compared the two on the same equipment; there was no comparison for me, Tidal was very clearly superior. Qobuz was better than Spotify and good enough for music discovery but I couldn't have lived with it as my main source, I could with Tidal if I needed to.

dayjay posted:

At one point I had both Tidal and Qobuz subscriptions at the same time and compared the two on the same equipment; there was no comparison for me, Tidal was very clearly superior. Qobuz was better than Spotify and good enough for music discovery but I couldn't have lived with it as my main source, I could with Tidal if I needed to.

I believe you are right. But the drop outs cause me to be only capable to listen to Tidal on my main system. And as I use the guys to sample music and not really extent my collection, ultimate sound quality is not the ultimate priority for me. When I start reducing my buying patterns which I should, Tidal will start to show more benefits.

Very interesting comments folks.

Seems most respondents think the sq good and the service good value. I certainly remember the day where 2 CDs cost as much as the monthly subscription.

G

likesmusic posted:

There is also the real possibility that Tidal stream files with audible watermarking, especially those from UMG which covers many major labels. Has anyone actually established that Tidal stream material that is bit-identical to the original cd? Would this be difficult to do?

I doubt if it is being used it is at all audible. Most methods of media watermarking are inaudible so as to be covert. I understand that Spread Spectrum Watermarking is currently one of the most robust and may effectively appear as an everso extreme low level hiss on the audio (think quantisation error level and dither in digital audio). It this was to be applied it would make sense for it to be done at the master stages... and as such I would expect it to appear on CDs and other lossless distributions. My guess is if SSW is being used it will depend on the publisher and will be managed by the publisher's master rather than distributor... and will be across various lossless digital media types.

nigelb posted:

I agree, Tidal sounds pretty fine these days but I have not done direct comparisons between it and local streaming. I think that might also be misleading as there are different 'versions' of many albums and who knows if you are comparing like-for-like in that regard. Also CD rips can sound different to hi res downloads of the same album adding further confusion.

Much of my listening these days is on full fat Tidal (mainly because I have discovered so much new material) and I believe Tidal SQ has improved over the time I have been using it. During that time I have also made one or two upgrades to my system so it is difficult to disentangle what part (if any) Tidal has played in the improved SQ I am enjoying.

I am still intrigued by the long-awaited firmware update, not just because it should help with drop-outs (something I don't often suffer from) but mainly because it has been hinted that the updated firmware will improve Tidal SQ.

Yes, Tidal is not cheap, but for me it offers great VFM as I listen to it almost every day. An excellent 'product' IMHO with the promise of more to come.

 

After the release of the new stramers, it is clear that there has been some secret testing to get the app ready for the launch of the new streamers, so the update to existing streamers is probably  to be expected in a not so distant future.

Claus  

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

likesmusic posted:

There is also the real possibility that Tidal stream files with audible watermarking, especially those from UMG which covers many major labels. Has anyone actually established that Tidal stream material that is bit-identical to the original cd? Would this be difficult to do?

I doubt if it is being used it is at all audible. Most methods of media watermarking are inaudible so as to be covert. I understand that Spread Spectrum Watermarking is currently one of the most robust and may effectively appear as an everso extreme low level hiss on the audio (think quantisation error level and dither in digital audio). It this was to be applied it would make sense for it to be done at the master stages... and as such I would expect it to appear on CDs and other lossless distributions. My guess is if SSW is being used it will depend on the publisher and will be managed by the publisher's master rather than distributor... and will be across various lossless digital media types.

google "matt Montag UMG audible watermarking" for some facts - and a listening test. It is particularly gruesome on classical piano. No doubt there are many kinds of electronic music where an extra little bit of noise isn't noticeable in the overall noise, but this is not the case for classical music.

Can you demonstrate that Tidal stream UMG sourced material that is bit-identical to the original CD?

Qobuz also seem to be using watermarked files. They have refused to deny this to me and many other classical music listeners who have emailed them.