I don’t pay for Tidal HiFi+ anymore. I simply don’t have the setup to take advantage of it. MQA often sounds worse to me than lossless. With the notable exception of the Radio Paradise MQA stream on my BlueSound Node, which sounds a fair bit better than the FLAC stream.
So for the purposes of this thread, I think Tidal MQA is irrelevant. However, I understand why those with the correct streamer/DAC/Roon setup etc. may actually experience a better sound quality than Apple Lossless/Hi-Res with Tidal MQA. For me that was never the case. Often MQA was considerably worse.
So, Apple Music, better sound quality than Tidal? For a setup not optimised for MQA, many tracks/Albums sound a LOT better on Apple Music, and I think it could be something to do with their source files or something they do differently. I’m not saying that Roon isn’t getting the best out of Tidal, but that you can’t make a silk purse out of a pigs ear. Also, it’s only with certain tracks. Most of the time I can’t tell any difference.
Tidal’s integration with software like Roon/Plexamp/InnuOS Sense and many streamers is what keeps me with Tidal. It’s not all about slight or occasional quality differences.
Edit - I cancelled Tidal 100% because of politics.
I used Qobuz but as it’s technically not available in my country it required some shenanigans.
Apple Music is great but doesn’t integrate well (or at all) with some of my hardware.
One day I woke up (literally and metaphorically) and realized I was spending too much time making music work on various systems and not simply enjoying it.
So I’m back on Tidal.
I did want MQA, Zen Stream and a Cambridge 200M. Sometimes a little better sometimes a little worse. Add that variable added to the recording quality. I just get confused. I gave up when moved to HQP that is most of the time better
Yes it is MQA. you get exactly the same file just some metadata is removed so MQA light does not turn on on your MQA “capable” DAC. It is still MQA encoded file.
Here are the details:
They may gradually migrate to loslless but now for many files it is not. And you will have to be really inquisitive to know hat is what.
Buying an MQA compatible DAC just seems like a waste of time, money and effort to me. What for? To get a just as good as FLAC/ALAC sound out of Tidal.
Let’s face it, MQA lost its way didn’t it? I always thought it was a way to compress music while retaining lossless quality. This I think it achieved very well. What other Lossy format sounds as good as MQA can? It’s just not always as good as Lossless, unless perhaps, you have MQA hardware and software throughout the chain. In which case it achieved its goal. It feels like it upsets many audiophiles because it’s marketed for a premium price without the premium sound (over lossless).
I don’t think the reason Apple Music sounds better than Tidal is because of MQA. In my view, MQA is either worse or as good, but can be better (with MQA hardware) - inconsistency to everyone else. It’s because of the bunch Lossless files that sound worse than AM, injecting total inconsistency into the service. Plus those tracks that still don’t sound as good as Apple Music no matter what. This could be down to GoldenSound’s theory I suppose.
How can it be? Are you suggesting Tidal charge extra for HiFi+, in part so you get MQA (or Master), but it’s exactly the same as what they serve up on their HiFi tier? Just with an extra LED/logo? I find that impossible to believe.
Although, it could contribute to the reason Apple Music sounds better.
I just can’t believe Tidal’s implementation of MQA is effecting its Lossless service. I mean why would it do that? To save money on server farms (meaning storage and streaming infrastructure)?
It also doesn’t square with Radio Paradise who seem to utilise MQA for quality improvement and do it very well (just not on Roon).
It still contains more MQA at 44.1 than you would think. You cannot escape MQA on TIdal at all. Hifi Tier does not stop it it just stops any MQA encoded at 24bits. There are plenty of 44.1 16bit MQA on Tidal.
A lot of it is though. As others have stated, Tidal is slowly replacing Redbook FLAC with 16/44.1 MQA.
One of the main selling points of MQA to the streaming services is having one file that can be delivered at various quality levels depending upon the capabilities of the receiving software/hardware to decode and render (or not). It makes storage and distribution simpler and less costly (theoretically at least).
In my opinion, it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to be on Tidal if you don’t go for the full HiFi Plus tier and have the software/hardware to do the full decode/render. Otherwise, you’re going to get increasing amounts of 16/44.1 MQA which is going to be no better than, and arguably not as good as, standard Redbook.
When I started this thread, I had absolutely no idea Tidal were doing this. I was on their HiFi+ plan and assumed that setting the quality level to HiFi from Master gave me FLAC instead of MQA. It’s all beginning to make sense. Perhaps it explains why Tidal renamed MQA to Master and FLAC to HiFi, to try and obscure this.
Perhaps this thread should also ask, “Tidal sound quality no better than Apple Music but twice the price?” Because to gain access to MQA and moreover, Spatial audio, you need to pay double the cost. Some do care about Spatial Audio, and probably increasingly so but most won’t want to pay twice the price for it.
This makes a lot of sense in terms of explaining what could be going on here and why. It’s an extremely compelling reason for Tidal to pursue this business model. Profit matters most to any business. Spotify don’t support Lossless or HiRes, most likely due to cost. Hence why their hifi tier is continuously delayed by infrastructure and licensing requirements.
Apple (and Amazon) have the luxury of gargantuan amounts of spare cloud storage and streaming infrastructure enabling them to provide Lossless and other formats properly and profitably. Plus Apple had the added advantage of already having lossless/iTunes master (now Apple Digital Master) formats and licensing sorted, due to their longstanding iTunes service.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. So for me, Tidal has become an integration only solution for Roon/InnuOS Sense/Plexamp and Bluesound. Plus it’s costly now I don’t want it as my main service and complicates streaming library management/listening history. Without it, isn’t Roon Valence potentially a lot less effective? I will be searching threads for how to get the best out of Roon without a linked streaming service. To be honest, that’s why I started with Roon in the first place.
Edit:
The other way for me to look at this from the perspective of a Roon customer is that Roon costs an extra £10 per month to add streaming. The odd thing is, I’d be happier paying an extra £10er to keep one service rather than 2 if it could be the service I chose.
That wouldn’t be too surprising given the amount of obfuscation surrounding MQA over the years.
Agreed, $20 per month for a streaming service is a tough sell. I very much appreciate the fact that Tidal is making efforts to pay artists more equitably, but doubling the price is not likely a sustainable solution. Even my musician friends who might benefit from this are not on board at that price.
Yes, the economies of scale are in full effect with Apple and Amazon. They also don’t really need to make a profit on music, which for them is primarily a value-added feature to lock people into Prime and Apple One.
I still subscribe to Apple Music, Tidal and Qobuz. There are pros and cons to each, but I’m at a point of eliminating at least one, if not two. Some random thoughts:
I like Apple Music as a service, but I have issues with Airplay. The fact that the stream comes from a device instead of directly from the router can be problematic. I’d be all in if they developed an “Apple Music Connect” equivalent to Spotify Connect.
Tidal works very well in combination with Roon, but the $20 per month subscription fee for Tidal is a big ask. Also, I’m generally ambivalent about MQA and Atmos, and 16 bit MQA is meh.
Qobuz + Roon seems like the logical solution, but on my system/network Qobuz is the least reliable of the three. It sounds fine when it works, but I sometimes get stutters and pauses on certain endpoints. And yes, I should hardwire my whole house system, but there are reasons I can’t which I won’t go into here.
As I’ve stated before, when comparing the same masters and quality tiers, I find very little to no difference in sound quality from one service to the other, both audibly and when conducting null tests.
TL;DR: There is no one ideal solution, at least for me, in my situation.
Qobuz seems to have issues with some people for some reason, likely their CDN network isn’t as reliable or as wide as the others. Have you tried changing your DNS settings in your router to use cloudflare are Google’s dns instead of your ISPs own. For some reason ISPs tend to have routing issues to Qobuz via Roon and for a lot this can help.
