Yes, 100% Qobuz sounds better to me. Some notes on my perceptions of the sound quality of various streaming services & of Qobuz vs Tidal specifically:
My subjective impressions of the musicality and sound quality of the major HD streaming services: (as of November 2020)
1. Qobuz
2. Primephonic
3. Spotify Premium (320 kbps Ogg Vorbis which is not lossless)
4. IDAGIO
5. Amazon HD
6 Tidal
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Round 2, Qobuz vs Tidal: So far Qobuz is clearly better than Tidal even listening through pretty cheap desktop passive speakers. Tidal sounds very two dimensional and flat in its sound quality but with some harshness in the high frequencies. I'll listen a bit more to Tidal, but so far I'm not impressed at all. Spotify Premium even seems to sound better than Tidal.
Some additional thoughts about Tidal after listening on higher quality equipment. I think they have applied some equalization to boost the bass and treble. In the process, I think side effects of doing this is to take out some of the presence of voices and instruments and add an artificial quality to voices and instruments.. Qobuz sounds a LOT better. Spotify Premium also sounds better. To my ears at least. (Disclaimer: Your results may vary). I'm currently listening to a track that is a MQA file on Tidal vs a CD quality file on Qobuz. The CD quality file on Qobuz sounds a LOT fuller and more natural.
Not a big fan of hip hop, but decided to listen to something that is squarely in Tidal's area of focus. I listened to 'The Box' by Roddy Ricch which is a MQA file on Tidal and CD quality on Qobuz. Same results. The Qobuz file sounds fuller and has more presence. Almost sounds like two different recordings when listening on Qobuz vs Tidal.
