Tidal...I think it's excellent.
Posted by: realmadspur on 19 December 2014
I have for awhile used a Arcam miniblink plugged into analogue 1 on my Uniti to stream Spotify, this week I took up the Tidal offer. The difference in sound quality is night and day. In fact I just played CD side by side and was struggling to tell the difference....are my ears getting to old?
No, your ears are fine!
Lossless streaming sounds just as good as lossless rips - you'll never have to buy a cd again, welcome to the new paradigm
I have been using Tidal on my 500 system since it became available in the States. I also benefit from the fact that Linn were quick to integrate it into the KDS.
I am in a state of shock each time I listen. An all you can eat buffet of 25,000,000 tracks in glorious uncompressed full CD quality.
The amount of money I will save by not purchasing some questionable CD's (which I can now preview) will help fund my upgrade to Naims new speaker and interconnect cables 
Agreed - Tidal is absolutely amazing. I've been on for 3 weeks and its now used instead of my NAS (which has 52,000 tracks ripped from CD).
I did use Amarra with iTunes but will stick with Tidal. I'll buy an NDX when they support Tidal and not before.
Vinyl will remain my primary source and will continue to buy LP's. Tidal is simply great for discovering new music and avoiding getting up to turn an LP over when not in the mood 
Then I wonder why Naim Audio has selected Spotify?
I have just checked the Tidal website to find the monthly cost of the service: $19.99 in the USA and £19.99 in the UK. With the current spot rate of £1=$1.56, this UK price equates to $31.18.
Why do we always get ripped off in the UK? This really tees me off!
Because they know the Brits won't kick up a fuss, and just pay up! I am definitely not interested in Spotify. I don't want to stream MP3 quality through £10,000 worth of kit. However, Tidal does look interesting! Expesive, but good quality.
FSQ time ...Can you download the stuff from Tidal?
No, your ears are fine!
Lossless streaming sounds just as good as lossless rips - you'll never have to buy a cd again, welcome to the new paradigm
I would guess that I now listen to Qobuz around 80% of the time. My NDX is being used less and less. However, I actually find the quality of my CD rips to be better than streaming from either Qobuz or TIDAL. It's not that Qobuz or TIDAL are bad - they're not - its just that for some reason my zero compression FLAC and AIFF rips generally sound a bit 'fuller' and 'cleaner' (played either from the NDX or iTunes). Perhaps it's down to the Qobuz and TIDAL software clients on my Mac?
Other possible reasons: it's not always possible to check whether the masters are exactly the same; also TIDAL told me that about 85% of their catalogue is lossless, the rest currently isn't. I wouldn't be surprised if the same applies to Qobuz.
No, your ears are fine!
Lossless streaming sounds just as good as lossless rips - you'll never have to buy a cd again, welcome to the new paradigm
I actually find the quality of my CD rips to be better than streaming from either Qobuz or TIDAL. It's not that Qobuz or TIDAL are bad - they're not - its just that for some reason my zero compession FLAC and AIFF rips generally sound a bit 'fuller' and 'cleaner'. Perhaps it's down to the Qobuz and TIDAL software clients on my Mac?
Other possible reasons: it's not always possible to check whether the masters are exactly the same; also TIDAL told me that about 85% of their catalogue is lossless, the rest currently isn't. I wouldn't be surprised if the same applies to Qobuz.
I've certainly found different masters on Qobuz to those on CD rips I have, but on the whole I actually think Qobuz sounds better than anything else. And I did wonder if the Qobuz client software had anything to do with it, and to prove the point to myself, I wrote a small program which uses the same sound components as the Qobuz player, something known as Fmod Ex, and you can use it for free, even in a commercial project, as long as the budget for your project is less than $100k...weird. In my setup both Jriver and my own creation pass DAC-V1 bit-perfect test, so no difference there, but I did think that my Fmod based player sounded a little livelier and natural, similar to my feelings about Qobuz vs my CD rips. Is it really the case? Well, I see no reason why it should be, all things being equal with regard to bit-perfect results, but with all the blurb elsewhere on this forum, even down to worrying about RFI being introduced by the power supply of a network switch, right through to the ongoing debate about the effect of different USB cables......welll, maybe it is better and not just my imagination.
I've certainly found different masters on Qobuz to those on CD rips I have, but on the whole I actually think Qobuz sounds better than anything else. And I did wonder if the Qobuz client software had anything to do with it, and to prove the point to myself, I wrote a small program which uses the same sound components as the Qobuz player, something known as Fmod Ex, and you can use it for free, even in a commercial project, as long as the budget for your project is less than $100k...weird. In my setup both Jriver and my own creation pass DAC-V1 bit-perfect test, so no difference there, but I did think that my Fmod based player sounded a little livelier and natural, similar to my feelings about Qobuz vs my CD rips. Is it really the case? Well, I see no reason why it should be, all things being equal with regard to bit-perfect results, but with all the blurb elsewhere on this forum, even down to worrying about RFI being introduced by the power supply of a network switch, right through to the ongoing debate about the effect of different USB cables......welll, maybe it is better and not just my imagination.
Fascinating I just wonder whether Qobuz and TIDAL would sound better if the clients were running on my NDX...
Greg, that's encouraging - I hope that Naim can deliver the same 
. Can you hear any difference between your CD rips and TIDAL? Assuming the same masters of course...
I suppose that one disadvantage of running TIDAL natively on your KDS is that you can't download and store music for later playback - or can you?
Fascinating I just wonder whether Qobuz and TIDAL would sound better if the clients were running on my NDX...
Though I do not own one that is something I am interested to hear about too. Logic (my logic, anyway) would suggest that if you feed bit-perfect data to a DAC from a computer, and then feed the same bit-perfect data to the same DAC from the digital out on an NDX, there should be no difference at all. If the NDX sounds significantly better, you have to ask what witchcraft has gone on in there to achieve that. Does an NDX digital out simply deliver the decoded digital audio unmolested, or is there up-sampling or digital filtering going on at that level?
I can certainly hear a significant difference between 'bit-perfect' output from my Mac (iTunes) streamed either wi-fi or ethernet and digital out from the NDX. The differences are mainly tonal: the NDX has a fuller, smoother sound whilst the Mac is brighter and 'airier' with apparently more detail. I would guess that if you measured the digital signal (1s and 0s) there would be no difference - but they sure sound different
I can certainly hear a significant difference between 'bit-perfect' output from my Mac (iTunes) streamed either wi-fi or ethernet and digital out from the NDX. The differences are mainly tonal: the NDX has a fuller, smoother sound whilst the Mac is brighter and 'airier' with apparently more detail. I would guess that if you measured the digital signal (1s and 0s) there would be no difference - but they sure sound different
All good, I felt at risk of being branded part of the bits-r-bits brigade there, and preparing to point out that even my PC not only stands on blu-tak, and has it all around where the outer case meets the chassis, but inside has grounded 1.5mm oxygen free copper shield around the CPU area which I had specially made, And yes, I believe it sounds better as a result. May seem excessive, but why not, better to be safe ;-)
Greg, that's encouraging - I hope that Naim can deliver the same . Can you hear any difference between your CD rips and TIDAL? Assuming the same masters of course...
I suppose that one disadvantage of running TIDAL natively on your KDS is that you can't download and store music for later playback - or can you?
Music can be downloaded and stored on an iOS device - not on a NAS.
No need to store it for playback via the KDS - it gets pulled directly from their servers. As long as you have a fast enough connection it is full proof.
I have not done any legitimate AB comparisons however initial listening shows very little difference. At this point I consider it a real bargain especially with the amount of money I am saving by not purchasing duff CDs