Tidal FLAC vs. Qobuz


Does the recent change by Tidal, from MQA to FLAC make Tidal the better choice for streaming?  Or, since Tidal only seems to offer FLAC on its own app and not the BluOS defeat the purpose since you need to transmit by Bluetooth instead of ethernet?  

Currently, I stream from Tidal over direct ethernet cable to a Bluesound Vault streamer, to a McIntosh amp and Revel speakers.  I have a trial membership to  Qobuz but I find Tidal has a much better catalog.  Since Tidal added Flac I thought it would be the obvious choice moving forward, but isn't the point of FLAC defeated since you need to send wirelessly from the Tidal app over Bluetooth?

mojo771

Showing 3 responses by yage

@mojo771 

Are you sure it's sending the audio data via Bluetooth? If you're using TIDAL Connect with the Vault, then it's using Wi-Fi not Bluetooth.

@mojo771 

After doing some more reading, I think @moonwatcher is most likely correct - the app acts only as a remote control when TIDAL Connect is used. This means that the audio data is sent directly to the Vault over your wired network connection and the app only sends commands to the streamer for playback / volume / etc. This is similar to how Spotify Connect and UPnP / DLNA works. An email to TIDAL support should clear up the technical details.

Yeah - most likely they are. If you don't want to use two apps for music playback, then I guess you're stuck with MQA rather than pure PCM. Otherwise, there's no reason to panic since the Vault supports TIDAL Connect.