Who cares. Another douche thread. It’s a trend lately.
Ended my Qobuz subscription
My music tastes largely revolve around jazz recordings and I find a deep lacuna in Qobuz's jazz offerings, as well as with some other music genres. I just cancelled my Qobuz subscription and am back with Tidal Hifi which has a much deeper jazz catalogue than that from Qoubuz.
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Went back to Spotify premium +1 Spotify's catalog is the largest that can satisfy all my needs of online music. Some of my favorite tracks are only available to Spotify. It is a pity that Spotify doesn't offer a store for purchases like Apple Music. So sometimes I will use the Spotify playlist downloader to download them for personal listening. Hope Spotify could provide an entry for music purchases in one day. |
I really want to be able to stick with Qobuz. It does sound better on CD quality files than Tidal. And I love the Hi-Res. But there are just too many gaps in the catalog. For now I have cancelled it again (for the 3rd time...) and am sticking with Tidal. Just can't justify paying for both. Would love to hear from anyone who has info on whether Qobuz is moving in any sort of aggressive way to develop their catalog. |
I don’t remember all the many examples of an album I searched in both Qobuz and Tidal. I read a lot of jazz magazines including Jazz Times, DownBeat, Jazziz and search for artists as I discover them in writing. Tidal, as pointed out before has more. I saw no reason to keep Qobuz. I don’t do play lists except my own. I ignore the hype and suggestions. I agree with kacommes about the weak search in Tidal. Any misspelling and you don’t find it. It is definitely not comparable to a simple google, bing, or Duck Duck search that will offer variations. Also if you search an artist by name they may not show the albums with other variations, eg “trio”, or live, or with xxx. |
I went the other way - I cancelled Tidal and settled (for now) for a year's subscription with Qobuz. I thought MQA was pretty good, but the high-res flac files (92 kHz, 24 bit) at Qobuz are just as good IMO.Me, too. I did find Tidal's library to be slightly bigger but I'd *much* rather have 24 bit PCM than MQA (the main reason I switched). Meanwhile, it appears than the Qobuz library is expanding. |
I moved from Tidal to Qobuz with big expectations. Then it seemed every time I found an artist I was interested in, Qobuz had no rights to the best albums by the artist. Once this situation became the norm and after tiring of the Non-Support Qobuz offered I dropped it and sold the Roon Streamer. Perhaps in a year or two when more legitimate companies get in the game I will come back. It was more pain than pleasure as it was down more than up and I was hardwired, dedicated, etc. |
I agree with those who find Tidal’s jazz catalog more extensive. I also agree with those who find Qobuz’s classical catalog better. I listen to both classical and jazz and have chosen Qobuz. They have far more high definition classical recordings and having done A/B tests, I find no difference between a Tidal MQA track and a Qobuz track at the same resolution. Since I have a good jazz collection on my server and find myself streaming more classical, I’m canceling Tidal. Whatever floats at your boat. |
For critical listening I prefer Qobuz. I like the fact that I can listen to hi-res files and don't need any proprietary equipment (hello MQA) to do so. Tidal does have a bigger library and the MQA files do sound good, even with a non MQA DAC (I have both). If I can't find something on Qobuz, then I'll go look for it on Tidal and can usually find it. I also have Spotify and Pandora for less critical listening (background music, in the car, etc.) Spotify does a better job of putting together playlists based on my musical tastes than Tidal and Qobuz doesn't currently have this feature. For me it's not a matter of either/or, I use them all based on their strengths. If Qobuz's library expands to compete with Spotify and Tidal and they provide custom playlists on par with Spotify's, then I would probably go with Qobuz only. |
For me Quobuz was the best since I primarily listen to classical. I experimented with Tidal for about a week and found it inferior for classical. Their tag system was terrible.
Composers are not the same as performing artists and movements are not separate songs. Works are not songs. The catalog of classical releases on Tital was thin. |
I went the other way - I cancelled Tidal and settled (for now) for a year's subscription with Qobuz. I thought MQA was pretty good, but the high-res flac files (92 kHz, 24 bit) at Qobuz are just as good IMO. MQA offers higher resolution tracks, but selection was minimal. The CD quality tracks sound better at Qobuz and the rock selection is better at Tidal, but both don't compare to Spotify (which doesn't offer hi-res). The classical selection is better at Qobuz. Overall, I'm satisfied with Qobuz. SRV's Tin Pan Alley is the best track (rock) I have heard so far. |
Amazon Prime should offer CD quality or hopefully even higher as an upgrade and own the entire space globally. Why they haven't thought of this yet given everything else they do is pretty surprising. I have no idea how deep their current music offerings are. For the record I just left Tidal this month and have been wishing for years that Spotify would offer lossless. |
Qobuz has incredible playlists. You can follow this link to see them: https://play.qobuz.com/featured/playlists On my Aurender, I go to the playlist tab and look for Prestige 70 - Jazz classics. An outstanding collection of jazz music. Other servers, including, Roon have similar options for selecting Qobuz playlists. Or, Search for Gramophone awards and you will see 7 playlists. Qobuz gets an A+ for this music collection. Another suggestion is to enter #hires in the search field for a list of hi-res albums. I especially like listening to the hi-res albums and always find something that I like. I highly recommend Qobuz. |
I almost exclusively listen to jazz and classical music. I have Tidal and Spotify. I have Tidal at the student rate of $10/month. At that price level, Tidal with "Masters" (MQA) is worthwhile, but maybe I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic if the "usual" price applied. I have three complaints about the service: 1) the search function is persnickety (even a minor misspelling baffles the algorithm and sometimes entering by artist name or album title returns nothing but an alternative search phrase finds what I want). 2) Tidal relentlessly and annoyingly promotes music associated with its major shareholders (e.g., Jay-Z) and, 3) The algorithm oftentimes links music I like with utterly baffling choices. I also have Spotify Premium at the student rate. I like that service for my "inattentive" listening because : 1). While fidelity doesn’t seem quite to the level of Tidal’s (but maybe I’ve fallen victim to propaganda in that regard), the selection of jazz seems more comprehensive and classical is commensurate with Tidal, 2) The Spotify algorithm creates more appealing playlists than does Tidal’s and, 3) Spotify’s search function is more forgiving (or simply better) than Tidal’s. Right now, I can’t find a compelling justification for Qobuz, either by price or selection. I’d hoped that competition would drive down costs, but so far, that hasn’t happened. keith |
I'm staying with Qobuz for now. I listen to 80% classical and find their catalogue to be vast and seems to be growing daily. Tidal is way behind in this area, but I didn't realise they had so much jazz. Tidal beats Qobuz with its rock selection by a wide margin. Although, I've found that Qobuz has a fantastic selection of UK and Euro alternative/ independent music from the 80s and 90s. Makes sense since Qobuz got their start in Europe. |
My Tidal account is part of a family package so I'm only out $5.00 per month. The larger Jazz selection of Tidal vs Qobuz is important to me and I fill in the gaps of Tidal with the free Spotify service but the majority of my listening is from my own eclectic music files
collection
(mostly 44.1/16 ripped from my CDs but also with some purchased HiRes files). The files are on my Aurender music server/streamer which can integrate album titles I select from Tidal into my collection database with my own titles. |
Haven’t tried Qubuz, and just cancelled Tidal HQ. Even though I have BluOS2i MDC module (in NAD C388) that natively unfolds MQA (and MQA does sound great), the $20/mo. means $2-4 per listen. For me, that’s not a good enough value. Thinking back, I’ve probably listened to maybe 50’ish songs in the 3 months since started, and paid $60, so something close to $1 per song (and don’t own any of it) - again, not a good value. I’ll stream FLAC from router-based NAS (approx. 2TB of music) for HQ, and use Prime Music to find new artists. If Tidal price goes down due to economy of scale, might give them another go later. Tidal worked great for me on both Denon (Heos) in basement HT system and NAD (BluOS) in 2-channel music system - no complaints on functionality. |
