At first, I thought that SQ alone was what should decide.
Qobuz won right away for having a default player that finally actually doesn't sound bad compared to even the average local-file player. After that, Qobuz won, even while playing both on the best player that supports both streamers also, Audirvana. The reason is because Tidal was busy screwing customers by charging double for a false invisible bandwidth saving technology that makes stuff sound worse than the original 44.1khz versions, MQA.
Except after Qobuz winning by sounding the least broken, Qobuz had new music browsing that was the same only around two pages for my whole 6 months with them. On top of that, and a point on which Tidal destroys ever other streamer, is that my Qobuz personalized playlist never offered anything I cared about. Tidal gives me 8 different smart playlists all separated by music types, which also rotate every few days.
That turns out to be the actual winning point in the streaming services war, how good are my personalized playlists. Although if they didn't also offer the best playback copy of that track, I would complain. Since Audirvana supports Tidal and Qobuz streaming for their users, the only thing to desire is downloading the FLAC file, decompress it onto a temporary hard drive wav file, and then play that file instead of having any streaming overhead, either. If you're a believer in FLAC still sounding like it's all there, and is also inaudibly altered for playback, try seeing if you can hear the disappearing brass instrument effect of uncompressed original playback, which you have to admit is required for reference playback quality. Too much gets played back by lossless compression playback, you're supposed to be able to fall asleep compared to lossless compression playback, if it's a good track.
So, Tidal proves to me that 8 smart rotating playlists wins first, and then whichever service runs through Audirvana, so that I can only complain about the isolated compression and even worse streaming issue, that could be defeated, as above.
I still have to get more into pressing favorite whenever a track is better than the rest, to work the system most effectively. I think we need a number out of 100 to really help with the custom playlists, not just favorite or nothing.
Anyways, Tidal is (for some reason not all as one batch file that could be finished in a day) reverting all their tracks to normal, non-MQA, Their player remains disappointing only when compared to Qobuz's, and especially compared to normal local file players, but their browsing and customizable playlists are way ahead of the rest. But $10 per month for an Audirvana subscription allows both Tidal and Qobuz streaming also through the #1 local file player.
Also, after Jay-Z got out of the Tidal business, they made higher res streaming included in the regular recently lowered subscription cost. That makes up for me sticking with them through the MQA scam, just to get my 8 smart playlists.
As it stands, I only have to suffer with less than stellar audio quality if I want to hear sound from a game at the same time, when I'll have to use the default streamer's player. Audirvana locks my audio device into the only "not adding any problems to the output" ASIO output mode.
