Tidal FLAC vs. Qobuz


Does the recent change by Tidal, from MQA to FLAC make Tidal the better choice for streaming?  Or, since Tidal only seems to offer FLAC on its own app and not the BluOS defeat the purpose since you need to transmit by Bluetooth instead of ethernet?  

Currently, I stream from Tidal over direct ethernet cable to a Bluesound Vault streamer, to a McIntosh amp and Revel speakers.  I have a trial membership to  Qobuz but I find Tidal has a much better catalog.  Since Tidal added Flac I thought it would be the obvious choice moving forward, but isn't the point of FLAC defeated since you need to send wirelessly from the Tidal app over Bluetooth?

mojo771

@gkelly I admit I bought the Niagara without knowing the diff between the PC and a LPS.  Can you give me a simple explanation between the two?

A power conditioner, regulates voltage, reduce noise, and filters out electrical disturbances. it can be electronic or transformer-based. Power conditioners are similar to power strips, but are designed to filter noise and interference. A linear power supply is a power supply circuit that converts electrical energy to provide a stable direct current(dc) output. it consist of a step down, transformer, a rectifier, a filter circuit, and voltage regulator. Linear power supplies our designed for low noise and are often considered quiet. They are used to replace low quality SMPS (switch mode power supply)often the wall wart for your DAC, streamers or whatever equipment that uses one. So both are necessary when one is a trying to achieve good sound. Now mind you that apparently there is some new technology to where the SMPS is just as good as a linear power supply so you have to be aware. But I don’t think we are in that kind of dollars world yet.

I can stream wired through the BluOS at mqa quality OR I can use the Tidal connect app to get flac, but only connect wirelessly.  So I thought Tidal had solved the flac issue but if its only wirelessly then I will need to stay with mqa or go to Qobuz on the BluOS app.

@mojo771  You can get hi-res FLAC from Tidal's own desktop apps (Mac/PC) on USB output.

On 3rd party streamers, only a few vendors so far have completed updating their software to support Tidal hi-res FLAC (I know of Linn, Volumio and Lumin). Roon says they are working on it, and no doubt BluOS is in progress as well.

I’m using Amazon.  It is only music as far as I can tell and it has I don’t know how many high res albums, but it seems most of what I listen to is high res.  I listen to mostly Jazz and I have never not found an album on Amazon that also wasn’t on Qobuz. I just recently dropped my Qobuz account because I really couldn’t find much of a difference in titles or sound.

All the best.

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