Qobuz or Apple Music?


Which service do you use?  Are they close in sound quality, or do you prefer one over the other?  

Thank you for your thoughts.

 

 

128x128mikeydee

@m_j_s Curious, how is it not convenient? That should be handled seamlessly between your streamer and dac...no?

I agree with everyone.  Tidal,  Qubuz,  radio paradise.  They all sound great. 

Bluesound probably has the best user friendly app. Can be used with NAD devices as well. .

 

I find that tidal has the best ability to create and discover new music. They also do videos which are great. 

I stream Tidal and Qobuz through Roon on a dedicated Mac Mini —> USB —> MSB DAC —> Whammerdyne SET amp —> Spatial X5 speakers. With this setup Tidal and Qobuz are VERY close, but I decided to consolidate my library to Qobuz. Wouldn’t you know, about 15% of my library was available on Tidal only. So for yucks I checked Apple music, which is part of my Apple One subscription, and voila - all of the albums missing from Qobuz were available on Apple. So now my project is to compare Qobuz vs Apple Music lossless/hi res. If Apple has all of the music I want and the SQ is comparable to Qobuz, I can ditch Roon, Tidal and Qobuz and save several hundred $$ a year.

@treynolds155 I am unaware of any method to stream 192/24 wirelessly from your Apple device into a DAC. Tether your iDevice or Mac to your DAC via USB for sure, but not possible without a wired connection. Happy to be corrected.

This is a recurring question with the usual answers. Qobuz got me off Tidal for good (hated MQA and other features). Still have an enormous Apple Music library of less challenging recordings which I can also play via Qobuz for SQ comparison.