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Tidal WiFi not as good as cd

Hi all,

Trying out tidal hifi and noticed that the same music airplayed to my dac is not as good as my CD ripped to the computer and airplayed to the same dac. Almost sounds like a lossy file. Am I doing something wrong or is this what is to be expected because of streaming. Not exactly sure what Roon is but heard it should make tidal streams better. If so, would it still be worse than ripped CDs?  


jaferd
lukaszwk
56 posts
 
I think that the general consensus is that tidal lags slightly behind in sq from locally stored files, streamer or not. Although miles better than hq from spotify it’s not really red book quality. I think it’s still worth it. The op should try roon. It will improve both sources and might bring tidal sq closer to local files. In either case, both will sound better.
grannyring's avatar
grannyring
6,479 posts
 
Tidal sounds slightly better than CDs for the most part on my rig. This is completely system dependent. I have an Innuos Zen 3 server and Sotm Switch and Ethernet cables.  Again, the answer to this question is 100% system dependent. Meaning what your front end is including cabling and LAN network gear and tweaks. In digital it all matters. 
hughp3's avatar
hughp3
75 posts
 
Tidal sound excellent on my rig. Window10 tower JCAT FEMTO USB card, AR Ref 6, dCS bartok with hardware MQA decoding. I also have Jriver with 24bit files. The same 24bit on TIDAL is just as good. Very pleased with it.

jaferd OP
44 posts
 
I tried a different laptop usb to dac and it's getting pretty close to Redbook. I'm waiting for Chromecast to arrive to see if just as good thru Wi-Fi. If not, I'm pretty ok with the sq from usb. Time to explore tidal's library. 
jond's avatar
jond
5,794 posts
 
I have the exact same streaming setup as @wrm57  and Tidal sounds great to me. Some cd masters I own sound better than Tidal and Tidal sounds better than some cd masters I own.
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