Tidal streaming service

Hi Graham -

Sorry, I don't have an answer to your question.

But I too have just signed up for the Tidal trial. For now, am just connecting an old iPod 4 to the front USB port of my NDS. Sounds quite nice and I think this is a clear step in sound quality from Spotify.

I met these young Norwegians at the RMAF show earlier this month. Very polite, knowledgeable, and absolutely passionate about this venture. Appears they are off to a good start, and I wish them the best of luck!

Now off to explore the catalog...

ATB.

Hook

Hi

Unfortunately I too have no answer to the questions, but have also been experimenting with the Tidal streaming service, although only for the last few hours, but I can instantly see a couple of disadvantages vs Qobuz.  I have some issues with the Tidal app for desktop Windows PC, the key issue being it does not offer bit perfect streaming to my DAC, it has to go through the windows mixer, not a good thing in my experience.  Also, I have a dedicated media PC connected to a DAC-V1 within my main system, so I operate such apps while lounging on my sofa via large TV screen, and the text size, fonts etc within the Tidal app are not ideal, I can't read much of it comfortably, some not at all, from such a distance.  To be fair, the Qobuz app is not really optimized for that scenario, but I find no issue at all when browsing and operating it in this way.  

In terms of content, I've heard Tidal has more to offer than the Qobuz equivalent, but unfortunately one of the first things I tried, as been quite enjoying it recently via Qobuz, was London Grammar, and there's nothing on Tidal,  Unlucky I expect, nothing else I've tried is missing.

I am sure sound quality of either is a step up from spotify, but Tidal vs Qobuz?  It's only been a quick test so far, but I have done some back to back listens, and I am not sure why, could be partly down to the windows mixer issue, but Qobuz is winning hands down in my view.  

Unfortunately it's priced at tad under £20 a month. This is the same as Qobuz and ultimately I felt this was not good value for money.. and coupled with the fact there is no easy quality way of playback with Naim and the cheap cost  of many CDs these days I resigned my Qobuz subscription after 6 months. i use a mid quality lossy Spotify 320kbps service currently for when I am out and about and have a 3G signal on the phone - works great in the car where there is coverage.

Simon

+1 for Spotify Premium. I have trialled Qobuz a couple of times but decided it was too expensive for what was on offer. Spotify has a better user interface and library and 320kbps bit rate is fine for portable devices and general (background) listening on the main sytem.

Dave

Get an Auralic Aries and connect this media hub (all formats incl. DxD)  to the Naim DAC. It supports

wimp and qobuz, internet-radio and soon usb direct attached disk.

Ralf

I have a similar approach to nap90, tending to search and discover content elsewhere, then add it to Qobuz playlists.  The searching within the Qobuz app is a bit hit 'n' miss; it's usable when searching by artist and then viewing all the albums, but searching by track or album title is hopeless.  

Something I would like is a streaming app, like the Qobuz and Tidal apps, but where you can also add tracks stored on your NAS drive, or wherever, so you could have a single playlist of content, regardless of whether the tracks can be streamed.  The sound quality of the player from Qobuz is as good as anything i have heard, so have no reason to switch to Jriver just to listen to my ripped CDs, other than I can't add them to a playlist in the Qobuz app.  Annoying,

I'm also testing Tidal against Qobuz. One major strike against Tidal - no booklets, as far as I can see, which I consider absolutely crucial for classical, which is most of my listening.

I'm also trialing tidal. It works fine with my Mac Mini/Hugo system and I've tried both a direct connection and Airplay to the Muso which went without a glitch. I'm finding the SQ of most of the music I've listened to so far isnot as good as my CD rips played through Audirvana. They also seem to have a lot of very cheap rips from the likes of Akarma. There is a lack of info too. I'm not sure ATM if it's worth £20/month. 

I've also been trialling TIDAL but have had some problems albeit on an old iMac running OSX 10.6.8 with some albums refusing to play.  The quality is very good - certainly miles better than Spotify and on a par with Qobuz.  I would agree with Steve J that CD rips do sound slightly better but it makes a fine second source.  I had understood that the TIDAL catalogue was larger than Qobuz's but from the searches I've done so far Qobuz seems to have more music that I like.

So far I prefer Qobuz Desktop to the TIDAL app but I'm only 1 day into a 30 day trial and will decide between the two whn the trial comes to an end.

I agree with T38.45 that an Aries would be a good streamer to go for if you want to use Qobuz or TIDAL as a significant source. A NAD M51 would be a good alternative and or a BlueSound Node or Sonos Connect would also do a good job.  Its a shame that Naim continue to fail provide support for music streaming services.

But watch for all new uniti products from 1 November to have airplay capacity!

upgrade for older products to be clarified!

Well AirPlay would certainly be a step forward for the mass market which would be a good move for Naim (should have been done two years ago IMHO) but the sound quality of every AirPlay-enabled system that I've heard has been merely ok and certainly not as good as properly integrated support for music streaming services.

Ok I emailed tidal re being available through sonos.

just had an email back confirming that it will be available on sonos hopefully at the end of next week.

cant wait 

Tidal are proving to have a good few labels not available via Qobuz, but for those of us who listen mainly to classical, two strikes against: no booklets, as above, and it seems no gapless, crucial in many classical works where track numbers change in the middle of continuous movements.

Probably the same source that over the years has predicted that new smaller floorstanding speakers would be shortly released, a new range of pre-amps and a reference DAC!

That'll be out of someone's arse then.......

funny...

Yup, because Naim were bound to choose a Saturday for a major launch...

Thinking about the spec. of the mu-so - it has Bluetooth, AirPlay and Spotify Connect connectivity.  Given that Naim have already developed the capability to support these it wouldn't be a surprise to see them all included in the next release of Uniti (and streamer?) products. 

Also, if a product can support Spotify Connect then it surely wouldn't be a giant step to include other streaming services like TIDAL and Qobuz...  Fingers crossed    Hopefully there would be an upgrade programme for existing products.

Well, I've had my week trial of Tidal and I'm now into day 3 of my one month Qobuz trial. Qobuz  wins hands down, for me, already. For the music I've been looking for Qobuz has the highest hit rate and greater choice. In addition the SQ of the streamed music seems far better than Tidal. This is probably because Qobuz's sources are of a higher quality. As I mentioned above there seem to be a lot of cheap CD rips on Tidal. Tidal seems way overpriced compared with what Qobuz offers for the same money.

This is one of the best features of Sonos imo. You can do a consolidated search i.e. any of it's supported sources and then send the tracks or albums to the queue or a playlist. So in any playlist track/album 1 could come from your NAS, track/album 2 from Qobuz and track/album 3 from Spotify etc.

The prophecy is fulfilled.

So will an apology now be forthcoming from Hungryhalibut and goon525?

I don't make up stories to post on here.

They haven't got airplay?

I accept that and it's spotify etc rather than airplay necessarily.. That's partly due to my lack of understanding of the technicalities of spotify, airplay and all such things. They're all the same to me, I'm afraid. It was Spotify that I knew to be coming and assumed Airplay was needed for that. 

Anyway, the good thing is that the new facilities are to come as an update.