Tidal v. Qobuz -- a different perspective


No, this isn't one more "jeez, which one do YOU think sounds better?" question.

I'm a long-time Tidal user, never been on Qobuz.  Since signing up, my stereo & home theater have undergone significant upgrades and I'm now listening through a midlevel audiophile setup, T+A DAC, amp, & pre; Harbeths; DS Audio/Korf/GEM record-player; that sort of thing. I'm not a Roon user and there are no standalone computers or networked servers in my signal path

Re: sound quality & breadth of catalog, postings, in aggregate, seem to lean toward slightly preferring Qobuz's SQ and Tidal's content.  So re: those issues, I don't see an advantage big enough to warrant moving to Qobuz.

My real question is about functionality.  Some aspects of Tidal's UI are infuriating.  Does Qobuz do better?

Specifically:

- Tidal's search engine sucks.  You can't sort or apply filters to search results.  Command-line syntax is primitive and utterly fails when searching for certain types of content.  For example, how would you search efficiently for an (imaginary) Solti/CSO 1971 LSO "Firebird" album on Columbia?  How about the 6th version of "Heart of the Sunrise" (the one recorded 11/15/72 in Knoxville) from Yes's seven-show live compilation "Progeny"?  Or one specific cover of "Norwegian Wood"; or a Miles "My Funny Valentine" released on an unknown album in a known year?  You can choose at most two search criteria (one of which is composer or artist, and even that doesn't work a lot of the time), but regardless, searches like these simply yield huge, unsorted lists of results.  This lack of sophistication is incomprehensible in 2025.  Is Qobuz any better?  

- The Tidal Web app usually delivers a lot of useful artist and content documentation.  But the Android app, for some incomprehensible reason, provides none.  If I discover an exciting new artist or album, I usually want to read about the performers, composers, back catalogs, related works and artists, etc., to figure out what to explore next. Tidal lets me do that when listening on a desktop PC, but on the audiophile setup the  Android app provides almost no context.

- It would be nice to be able to stream 5.1 content to my home-theater A/V processor.  I'd be happy to trade a bit of SQ for true surround sound once in a while.  Tidal provides a little support in this area, including Atmos playlists, but the process is confusing and limited.  Is Qobuz any better at streaming multichannel content?

So, yeah, I'm not looking for a comparison of sound quality or catalog -- 2 topics done to death.  What do people who are familiar with both services have to say about functionality and ease of use?

 

cundare2

Long time Tidal user - since I got Qobuz Connect I'm streaming more than ever and found Tidal difficult the one time I switched back...never actually tried to compare

I can't do without either one, discovered two oft listened to releases suddenly unavailable via Qobuz, thankfully still available via Tidal. Infuriating how these apps just drop releases willy nilly!

@jl35  What in particular made the Tidal interface more difficult than Qobuz’s UI, especially on an Android platform?  That’s the details I’m looking for.  How successful would you be on Qobuz if you searched for the specific types of content mentioned in my examples?

Qubuz will give you a 30-day free trial, and if that's not enough, you can pay for it by the month. Your own experience will be the best way to answer your questions.

#1 for the 'Qobuz connect'. A feature that's a must have even though the search engine sucks for similar artists. I found Chat GPT to be a much better search engine!

One feature that Tidal has is popular songs come up first after choosing an artist.  So If I just want to see what the most popular songs are and don't want to play entire albums, I can do that on Tidal but not Q.

I’m fairly new to streaming and as such tried both Tidal and Qobuz simultaneously. 
I found them virtually the same. Sure there were minor differences between the two but nothing to really separate them. I chose Qobuz because a good friend also yses it and it’s simple the share playlists and favorites directly online. 

@mojo771 Not sure where you got that impression of Qobuz. 

When I search for an artist, the first section I see is their "most popular tracks". The list is greatly expandable in case the song you are looking for isn't in the top 6-8. Depending upon the artist the expanded list can hold dozens or hundreds of popular tracks. Each track has an icon indicating what album it came from.

The next section is most popular albums, expandable to all albums.

Next sections include collaborations and live performances. 

mwinkc  I just now searched The Beatles, on my Android phone app.  At the top is some bio on the Beatles, then just below are two albums and a tab for View All, then under that is Similar Artists.  

So I don’t know if your app is different or if it can be customized, but no section for Songs

 

On Tidal, Top Tracks is at the top, then Albums, and then Similar Artisits