Good morning to the entire community!
In a few weeks my yearly subscription with Tidal (HI-FI) will expire and I don’t know whether to continue with them or switch for a new year with Qobuz;
What do you think, what do you recommend?
As listening I prefer Vocal Jazz
0 voters
thanks
Qobuz for me. I had both Hi-res subscriptions simultaneously, and Qobuz was my preferred service for sound quality. Both are very good. That said, I thought at the time Tidal’s catalog was more robust.
I think it really needs to depend on which has the catalogue that better matches your musical tastes. Despite the fact that I’m not a fan of hip-hop or rap, that is Tidal for me. It may well be Qobuz for you. The benefit of the Qobuz highest tier is that you get money off purchases, if you decide you want to own the music. I’m old school and prefer to own my music rather than rent it - so Qobuz is a little tempting from that perspective.
Go monthly with Qobuz as a trial?
I’m in the same camp as @Karen_Hughes , the only downside is it can get expensive, so many good deals…
Hi,
In my decision I made a 2 step approach:
Why should I ask others?
Who really cares about catalogs of 60 or 70 or whatever million entries?
Absolutely trust your ears and sound quality.
Well if you mostly use Roon that’s a moot point.
Me when they don’t have what I want to listen to. I’m a Qobuz user but outside Jazz, Classical and French music I suspect Tidal’s stronger.
Why read reviews or ask for advice? Maybe he prefers to make informed decisions 
The user interface doesn’t interest me because I don’t notice it in Roon. I prefer TIDAL due to the fact that it has many more titles available than Qobuz.
With Tidal sound quality is deteriorated when in mqa.
All Warner releases that were previously available in red book pcm are now mangled,
and you need a $$ quack-dac if you want to restore part of the original quality, and
then still it doesn’t come close to what the original sound was like.
With Qobuz you don’t need to buy yourself a new dac.
And you enjoy the original sound as it sounded in the studio without all the hocus pocus.
They are constantly releasing 24/192 pcms offering all the details…
details that are lost in mqa because of compression/decompression.
Qobuz offers real hi-res from Sony and Universal.
I don’t find any of that on Tidal (if you consider mqa “hi-res”)
So the hi-res catalogue of Qobuz is actually bigger.
I compared Tidal an Qobuz for over half a year,
and I really tried to like mqa because of all the stories about it…
but it just didn’t work. It’s not sounding original.
It might sound wonderful for some, but on revealing systems it sounds damped.
So I ditched Tidal.
TIdal has a lot of selections that are exclusively MQA.
I despise the MQA philosophy and lies, so Qobuz for me.
Wow so many voters and so many recommendations!
Thanks a lot guys, I will take your advice and when my Tidal subscription expires I will do the 1 month free trial with Qobuz.
I didn’t want to comment before (to not pollute the thread unnecessarily) but my idea, which could be wrong, is this :
Tidal has the MQA but in my system it is not perceptible, in the sense that mqa or not mqa in my opinion sound the same (a little bit better maybe but just a little)
Qobuz has the track not compressed in mqa so maybe it could be more natural
I repeat, it’s just my idea but I’m really curious to hear how the tracks of qobuz will sound.
As always a heartfelt thank you
I had Qobuz a long time ago. Then switched to Tidal. Then had Qobuz and Tidal for two years. I cut the cord with Tidal about six months ago and have no regrets. Since they launched in the US their catalog has gotten very good.
Yeah, I really couldn’t tell a difference and I had upgraded my DACs network interface to give me MQA. So even with a positive expectation bias, I just thought it was a wash.
You won’t regret it.
I own a 3000$ mqa dac, and even with that one, the original pcms from qobuz sound way more natural then those compressed “mystery quack audio” versions. It’s a very good dac, but I stopped using it’s mqa capabilities after comparing thousands of albums in mqa and pcm. Pcm was almost always better. MQA sounding unnatural/damped. Qobuz is releasing many albums in hi-res now… and they are never “up sampled” as some mqa fanboys would like you to believe. (Funny as a matter of fact, because mqa is actually up sampling all the time… they just call it “unfolding”.)
You will enjoy it !
One additional point that I don’t think has been mentioned is that Qobuz supplies liner notes in PDF for many of its newer releases, and these will be picked up by Roon.
Looking for these is one of those habits that’s finally penetrating my dense skull. It’s a nice touch and as you say more and more releases have them.
I just wish they’d bundle the notes and covers in the purchase tar archives rather than separate downloads.
I switched from Tidal to Qobuz as soon as Roon supported Qobuz and never regret a moment.
If Qobuz ever becomes available in Canada I will dump Tidal in a heartbeat.
The Tidal because the Tidal catalog fits me better and other family members still using the spotify subscription…
Tidal here. Would prefer not MQA or at least choice. I am interested to see what Square does with Tidal.
There is only one option that offers good sound quality, and that is Qobuz.