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.
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?