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!
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?