Qobuz vs Tidal
Posted by: Peter Fransen on 19 September 2015
I have a Qubuz subscription and a one month trial subscription to Tidal. I have an old iPhone5 connected to my WiFi. I have Tidal installed on it and stream the output to apple TV which is optically connected to my UQ2.
I do this exactly the same with Qobuz. Both using the same setup, the quality of Qobuz sounds better to me (should not be, but still). I compared each time the same tracks of the same albums. Qubuz comes close to my own ripped CD's.
Does anyone share the same experiance?
Tidal here, it is exactly the same as my ripped CDs why wouldn't it be?
H
DHT, what transport are you using for Tidal. I use a Sonos as well as others, and it can sound close to my locally streamed CDs, but ultimately not as good.. Perhaps it's down to the fact Tidal uses FLAC and I locally stream WAV.
Also Tidal seems to frequently use different masters to that used on my CD copies, where there is a difference occasionally I prefer the Tidal version, but more usually the other way around.
I have a Mac mini with amarra and tidal into dac v1 and unitqute2 with Spotify using 24/96 bnc out to bnc in to dac v1. Mac is omptimized and is used only for music . The sound is okay with a big airy soundstage . But my oversampling Qute is way more fun and soundstaging is not far behind..
To the OP, that is exactly my finding, and except where the masters are different, I maintain that Qobuz is as good as my rips, to the extent that I've only ripped at this stage the CDs that cannot currently be streamed. I did try Tidal not long after launch, and didn't get on with it for a number of reasons, and did feel the sound quality was not as good as Qobuz for some reason. I understand they have improved their PC apps to offer better sound quality, but being content with Qobuz, and Tidal costing the same per month, I'm not likely to re-evaluate it.
One thing I would say, you may find either perform better if the streaming source is more direct. Having a phone, WIFI, and an apple TV in the mix before it reaches the UQ2, may introduce issues not just with reliability, but with general SQ as well.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Qobuz has two huge advantages for classical listeners - gapless playback, which means you don't get gaps of several seconds in the middle of continuous pieces of music where the track number changes; and access to CD booklets, and thus notes, libretto etc - in most but not all cases. Tidal are still promising jam tomorrow on both counts.
If you like jazz or classical, Tidal is utterly useless. Qobuz, on the other hand, is really superb. If Naim ever get around to integrating a streaming service, let's hope it's Qobuz. Or both, as I understand that Qobuz is not available in the U.S.
If you like jazz or classical, Tidal is utterly useless. Qobuz, on the other hand, is really superb. If Naim ever get around to integrating a streaming service, let's hope it's Qobuz. Or both, as I understand that Qobuz is not available in the U.S.
+1 One annoyance though is that the Scottish company's label doesn't feature on Qobuz at all, and there's some damn good stuff in there. I know they've integrated with Tidal in their streaming products, and I guess that's why. I wonder if they would have made the same decision with hindsight.
This is worth a read, though the author's failure to mention the importance of gapless for classical listening is a weakness:-