Tidal HiFi versus CD ripping, is ripping better?

With my 272 I find Tidal to sound worse than ripped CDs. It may however not be the case with the Core. The answer is to sign up to a free trial of Tidal and see what you think. 

hungryhalibut posted:

With my 272 I find Tidal to sound worse than ripped CDs. It may however not be the case with the Core. The answer is to sign up to a free trial of Tidal and see what you think. 

That’s a good idea. I’ll try that. The other question will be how much older material is available for my fringe progressive rock likes.

I've found with 4K streaming movies that they don’t look as sharp as a 4K UHD disk, so figured audio would be similar. Oddly enough 4K movies from disk are like night and day, soundwise, to streamed 4K videos, due to compression.

Mike Sullivan posted:

hungryhalibut posted:

With my 272 I find Tidal to sound worse than ripped CDs. It may however not be the case with the Core. The answer is to sign up to a free trial of Tidal and see what you think. 

That’s a good idea. I’ll try that. The other question will be how much older material is available for my fringe progressive rock likes.

My findings were the same when I first tried Tidal, it was OK, but clearly not as good as streaming CD rips. More recently, I have found that the gap has narrowed, and Tidal sounds better than it used to. The range of music available is not bad, but not as wide as other services. They all have free trials, but some require workarounds to get them to play on a 272.

I agree that Tidal does sound better recently. Tidal may have made some changes but it also sounds better on v4.6. 

You can't compare it to streaming video to bluray as streaming video is compressed to a lower bitrate or it would not stream if using the same quality of blursh. Tidal flac is lossless so should be it's equal but that seems to depend on your system. I find to be just as good the majority of time on my Atom but I use Roon and not Naims streaming.

Regardless of whether they actually sound the same or different, assuming the same source material, streaming from a local source has less potential for anything to cause degradation, and no reason at all for dropouts that can occur with online streaming. 

I haven’t compared for myself as local storage is a no-brainer for me: I’m not dependant on continued business viability or other challenges to service availability, internet performance wherever I may choose to live, or stocking of albums I like (and in perpetuity). And I do not have to keep paying monthly to listen to my music. 

For me streaming Tidal has been a very nice alternative...  Of course the results depend strongly on the system you use ... I can imagine that you don't hear much difference on a mu-so, but the resolution of a NDX based system is a completely different story ...

This is  something I don"t understand at all. You got a Multi dollar(euro-pound) system and then you feed the thing with questionable SQ streams like tidal or Ipod mp3 files.makes no sense to me.

I’m listening on a 250 272 system and I’m absolutely delighted with Tidal. I’ve streamed a few albums to compare against CDs I’ve ripped, but quite casually so possibly there are differences but on my system so small as to be a non issue for me, they are so close I’d be really surprised if anyone could identify one from the other, but that’s a 272 so who knows on a better system maybe.

What I do know is I am much more open to investigating unknown or overlooked albums, ones I wouldn’t have taken the £10 punt on, and then you have other people’s playlists to plunder, so for me it represents very good value. 

In answer to that Fred, I can’t hear a difference from Tidal to rip, I can from Spotify though which I found very poor. Apple Music lies somewhere between the two.

@FRED47: I certainly wouldn't regard Tidal SQ as "questionable".  I found local streaming a touch better but a higher resolution system may highlight larger differences.

fred47 posted:

This is  something I don"t understand at all. You got a Multi dollar(euro-pound) system and then you feed the thing with questionable SQ streams like tidal or Ipod mp3 files.makes no sense to me.

With respect to lossy MP3s, I agree entirely, but lossless Tidal is much better than an MP3 stream, and can be as good as a CD rip, or at least close to it. 

bobbyrab1 posted:

I’m listening on a 250 272 system and I’m absolutely delighted with Tidal. I’ve streamed a few albums to compare against CDs I’ve ripped, but quite casually so possibly there are differences but on my system so small as to be a non issue for me, they are so close I’d be really surprised if anyone could identify one from the other, but that’s a 272 so who knows on a better system maybe.

What I do know is I am much more open to investigating unknown or overlooked albums, ones I wouldn’t have taken the £10 punt on, and then you have other people’s playlists to plunder, so for me it represents very good value. 

However you can listen to new music to decide if you want to buy, Using the likes of Spotify, uTube and a range of other sources, all free of charge, so saving the tidal subscription cost to those you do like enough to buy and listen in highest quality.

Well, we view it differently then, personally for me to decide if I like an album or not I need a bit of exposure to it, for things I don’t dislike immediately it can take 3 or 4 plays to see if it sticks with me, so that would end up with quite a number of hours per week listening to mp3 or worse, YouTube, and I wouldn’t like to do that. You pays your money etc. There’s no right or wrong, just choices.

I've been thinking about this and the potential associated costs, over the next say 10 years Tidal HiFi will cost me €2400 at todays prices, if I bought a Core for example it would cost me circa €2000 and I'd probably want to keep a standard Tidal account which would be €1200 over 10 years so Core and Tidal = €3200. I know I could get a NAS cheaper then a Core but I doubt I'd go down that route tbh. In some ways it's hard from a pure cost perspective to justify a Core, particularly as on top of the €3200 above I'd also be buying selected CD's to rip so that could easily be another €3K (Total €6200) so in many ways Tidal represents quite good value and the SQ to me is close if not comparable to CD. 

fred47 posted:

This is  something I don"t understand at all. You got a Multi dollar(euro-pound) system and then you feed the thing with questionable SQ streams like tidal or Ipod mp3 files.makes no sense to me.

Fred, I agree with you when it comes to MP3, but Tidal hifi is really a different thing. Are you able to hear the difference with CD rips on your uniti Nova?

I too thought I could not justify buying a core ..when I have a perfectly good Nas already..

But was supprising at the improvement and engagement that the core has brought since I caved in and bought one.

Via spdif with chord interconnect..it is amazingly good

Japtimscarlet posted:

I too thought I could not justify buying a core ..when I have a perfectly good Nas already..

But was supprising at the improvement and engagement that the core has brought since I caved in and bought one.

Via spdif with chord interconnect..it is amazingly good

Yeh I suspect I’ll cave at some point too despite my financial musings! 

Japtimscarlet posted:

I too thought I could not justify buying a core ..when I have a perfectly good Nas already..

But was supprising at the improvement and engagement that the core has brought since I caved in and bought one.

Via spdif with chord interconnect..it is amazingly good

I've wondered how the Core compares to an ND5 feeding into an nDAC.

Guinnless posted:

Japtimscarlet posted:

I too thought I could not justify buying a core ..when I have a perfectly good Nas already..

But was supprising at the improvement and engagement that the core has brought since I caved in and bought one.

Via spdif with chord interconnect..it is amazingly good

I've wondered how the Core compares to an ND5 feeding into an nDAC.

Given the technology differences, one would have to predict that the Core would be the winner.

I tried a Core for a couple of weeks and didn't like it... nothing to do with SQ, just user interface.

Guinnless posted:

Japtimscarlet posted:

I too thought I could not justify buying a core ..when I have a perfectly good Nas already..

But was supprising at the improvement and engagement that the core has brought since I caved in and bought one.

Via spdif with chord interconnect..it is amazingly good

I've wondered how the Core compares to an ND5 feeding into an nDAC.

And since  it was first released I wondered how its rendered SPDIF output compared with better renderers than ND5XS, e.g. Melco. There have been surprisingly few assessments, initially tending to suggest on balance that Core was as good, but then there seemed to be less clear, with some suggestion that it is not as good.

rjstaines posted:

Guinnless posted:

I've wondered how the Core compares to an ND5 feeding into an nDAC.

Given the technology differences, one would have to predict that the Core would be the winner.

I tried a Core for a couple of weeks and didn't like it... nothing to do with SQ, just user interface.

What didn't you like about the interface? I have a Muso so I'm familiar with the Naim app.

fred47 posted:

This is  something I don"t understand at all. You got a Multi dollar(euro-pound) system and then you feed the thing with questionable SQ streams like tidal or Ipod mp3 files.makes no sense to me.

Am currently listening to a cassette recording of an Alan Freeman Saturday Sunday Rock Show from September 1989. Not the proper 73-78 rock shows. It's fabulous, but a bit ropey. Should I be denied the pleasure of hearing some proper old radio just because it's not a perfect source with bang-on sq? It’s about the content. 

272 + XPS DR > 250DR > pair of PMCs. Fluff never sounded this good in my old 1600E.

ChrisR_EPL posted:

fred47 posted:

This is  something I don"t understand at all. You got a Multi dollar(euro-pound) system and then you feed the thing with questionable SQ streams like tidal or Ipod mp3 files.makes no sense to me.

Am currently listening to a cassette recording of an Alan Freeman Saturday Sunday Rock Show from September 1989. Not the proper 73-78 rock shows. It's fabulous, but a bit ropey. Should I be denied the pleasure of hearing some proper old radio just because it's not a perfect source with bang-on sq? It’s about the content. 

272 + XPS DR > 250DR > pair of PMCs. Fluff never sounded this good in my old 1600E.

Sombody will be Googling for some hifi kit with a model name of 1600E!   Was it Silver Fox or Aubergine ?

Silver Fox. Tremendous piece of kit.