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Qobuz vs Tidal

Just sharing my recent experience.  I'll be brief.  I've been a dedicated music streamer for the past 4 years and have enjoyed it immensely.  I always had both Tidal and Qobuz at my disposal, but because Tidal had a more extensive music catalog, sound quality comparable to Qobuz, and seemed more user friendly, I decided to make Tidal my Roon default (most all of my music library was Tidal).  All was well and sounding great.  Yes, I was fully aware of the fact that Qobuz was widely recognized as the "audiophile's" choice over Tidal, but when I occasionally did "brief" comparisons between the two, I thought the differences in sound quality were negligible, so I left things as they were.  Well, after all this time, just the other day, while watching high end audio show video footage on youtube, I noticed that all of the exhibitors who were streaming their music were using Qobuz, as opposed to Tidal.  This observation prompted me to really want go back, take my time, and see for myself which streaming service really did sound best to my ears.  After hours of back and forth comparisons, I have to say, Qobuz came out on top.  What I noticed was that Qobuz sounded slightly more focused, more refined, more natural and real-to-life.  I was convinced!!!  I believe that switching to Qobuz from Tidal actually succeeded in elevating the overall sound quality of my listening experience a notch.  I immediately began the process of converting my entire music library from Tidal over to Qobuz.  Happy listening.                                    

kennymacc
brianlucey's avatar
brianlucey
168 posts
 

@ghdprentice not to pick on you in particular but because you brought up the point…

High resolution audio is 100% marketing bullshit

the best Audio possible is whatever was happening in the mastering room, that is what was approved by the artist, the label, etc.,

 

there is no upgrading this by making it have a higher sample rate or more bits, etc.

 

24/96 is not better if the original masters were printed to 16 bit/44.1

I know this is a difficult concept for many people to grasp, but in simple terms, when you change the audio, that’s not an upgrade, it’s a downgrade.

 

back on this topic… I've never done the comparison, but I'm interested in the observations, I still don't stream anything here and I'm open to the idea but it's never been really necessary

ghdprentice
7,500 posts
 

I disagree about it being marketing hype. While I am sure the there are lots of examples of not great sounding albums. When I have compared a regular album, redbook streamed and audiophile pressing with high def streaming in general I have found the audiophile pressing and the high definition streaming to sound way better than the lower resolution versions. I am sure you can find exceptions. Just like I have purchased some audiophile vinyl pressings that were terrible... terrible remastering. 

ejr1953
921 posts
 

I stream using a Roon server, had both Tidal and Qobuz and did a lot of comparison and it was close, but found that when the same music sounded different, it usually sounded slightly better on Qobuz, so I dropped my Tidal subscription.  Someone wrote into Paul from PS Audio and he learned that Tidal and Qobuz used FLAC encoders from different sources and that the resulting FLAC files encoded by Qobuz were slightly larger.

cleeds
6,067 posts
 

ejr1953

Tidal and Qobuz used FLAC encoders from different sources and that the resulting FLAC files encoded by Qobuz were slightly larger.

That's not how it works. Qobuz doesn't rip or encode anything - it provides files exactly as received from the record companies and distributors. That is according to a VP of Qobuz.

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