Qobuz and Tidal comparison


https://youtu.be/c3SGLAnweOk

 

They are doing serious demonstration.

The conclusion is that Qobuz give more realistic bass and nuanced details than Tidal.

It is because that Tidal use more compression.
 

128x128shkong78

Long-time (content) Tidal user here.  But I'm always open to other opinions.

I have a lot of obscure musical interests (like 1970s Soviet and Eastern European jazz & progressive rock) that Tidal serves surprisingly well.  But I have one big issue with the service:  When accessing it via various Android and eqpt-mfr apps, I have no access to the credits or artist information that Tidal provides in generous quantities in its Windows interface.

How does Qobuz compare on this front?

And, no, before somebody chimes in with a mansplanation, I have no interest in adding a third-party interface like Roon.

Qobuz via Roon preferred and used. So many high res tracks/albums too.

Drop out(s) likely are due to bandwidth (buffering) not the apps. Do some steamers buffer better than others would be a good thing to know?

 

I use both services with my Aurender W20se. I find that they both sound great, as a general rule. Some songs sound better on Tidal others on Qobuz. I like some of the features better on Tidal, particularly the "My Mix" playlists which I use to discover new music. The AI probably isn't as good as Spotify for sourcing "similar" music but I have yet to identify that feature on Qobuz. Qobuz seems pretty basic and I don't like the way they sort their music as much as Tidal. 

This post addresses Qobuz dropouts. I have used Qobuz directly from the Internet to my Linn streamer for a few years. Dropouts happened sporadically. Turns out DNS performance and physical distance from my router to the DNS server can induce enough latent delay that dropouts occur. Linn documentation suggested specifying a different DNS service. I made the change in my router. Either the Google public DNS service (8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4) or the Cloudflare DNS service (1.1.1.1/1.0.0.1) work perfectly.. No dropouts for 6 months.