2. digital
  3. 184060-40

Shootout: Roon versus Plex, Qobuz versus Tidal: Who Won?

After a good bit of up front reading and preparation, a first ever (for me) digital streaming competition took place this weekend at home involving the contenders above. It put many of my preconceived notions about digital streaming these days to the test and was quite the eye opener!

I started with Plex and my personal music library of mostly CD resolution FLAC files. Then I added Roon, Tidal and Qobuz and had it out.

It’s mostly over now. The results were clear.

How did it end? Roon soundly thrashed the spunky upstart Plex. Then Qobuz beat out Tidal mainly based on cost.

Lots to talk about.

Key Findings:

  1. Plex could not match Roon for overall sound quality or overall listener experience.
  2. Sound quality to my ears was a wash between Qobuz and Tidal so Qobuz wins mainly based on cost (and no need for MQA though my streamer delivers full MQA compatibility).

I enjoy and tested all genres of music.

​​​Test system was Cambridge Evo 150 to Ohm Walsh F5 speakers in larger main listening room and to KEF ls50 meta speakers + sub in smaller 12x12 room.

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Showing 1 response by christianb5s4

christianb5s4
231 posts
 

Another vote for Qobuz as being the overall superior choice, for me anyway. I did a lot of comparisons with the same track same sample and bitrate between Qobuz and Tidal and found Qobuz more consistently matched CDs and local FLACs.

 

That said, I don’t think Tidal/MQA sounds bad. In fact it sounds great, and sometimes MQA versions of songs sound better. I still have both but in all honesty 99% of my listening is Qobuz if I had to add it all up. For casual listening at the gym, car, etc, I usually default to Spotify.

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