switched to Quobuz from Tidal for sound quality and because I listen to mostly jazz/classic. Plus I resent the MQA ■■■■■■■■■
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A lot of music from Qobuz is available at higher resolution than CD. I prefer that.
I keep Tidal because they have an Android Auto app. I can play that library on the road.
Yes exactly this.
Last I checked, no radio function.
I have been on Qobuz for a while, but periodically they did not have a new release or they had it and it was not high rez. So I did a free trial on Amazon and they had a lot of new Indie releases Qobuz often did not, plus some high rez (using BluOS sadly not Room) that Qobuz did not when I checked. Then I got a cheap $50 a year Tidal offer and while I prefer Qobuz and it is better for Jazz and Classical, Roon now shows me both versions and sometimes Tidal has a better quality (24 bit MQA still better than 16 bit I think). Honestly have not tried to see if I can tell MQA is worse at 24 bit… My gut feeling is that it is but, that and a quarter will get you 15 min on a parking meter (here!) Tidal has more Indie so I will prob keep it.
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Qobuz may claim that but once you look deeper in the catalog of some artists, you’ll see they’re missing albums that most of the other services have. That’s why I decided to try Tidal again a few months ago and only lasted a few days after hearing how some of the MQA only album’s didn’t sound as good as Qobuz hires.
I quickly went back to Qobuz but still looking for a solution to filling in these holes. I thought Amazon HD would be the answer but their apps are not bit perfect and don’t have a lot of hardware solutions.
That’s were I hope Spotify hifi will be the solution. Already have Spotify connect on streamer and Spotify can also output to Alexa and any other devices you can instal the app on. Been using the daily playlists and then when find something I haven’t heard before or know I haven’t favorited, I’ll try adding album in roon with Qobuz but have already found several that are missing from their library.
Also Qobuz discovery features are not that great. They have a general list of albums you should have for each genre but it’s not updated much or personalize. At least roon tries to personalize their recommendations but just think it’s too limited based on 100,000 users for their machine learning. Spotify has 300 million users and more years of data to pull.
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Tidal has better playlists but Qobuz has a deeper jazz catalog. In addition Qobuz’s high resolution files do not require an MQA DAC. Oh and Qobuz is less expensive if one gets a yearly subscription. Try Qobuz for a month at the monthly price and if it works for you then switch to a yearly subscription.
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I want Tidal catalogue with Qobuz sound quality.
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I have both and prefer Qobuz. Sound quality is simply better. I’m not anti-MQA, and in fact sometimes prefer a Tidal MQA file over a Qobuz redbook file (sorry…), but (a) Qobuz has Sony/Columbia in hi-res and Tidal doesn’t; and (b) Qobuz is getting tons of new Warner albums in hi-res.
If you’re a Best Buy Elite customer, there’s a fantastic annual Tidal Hi-Fi tier deal that starts at $99.99 (and combined with an album tie-in can be as low as $79.98), and renews at $119.99/year. Maybe that makes it economical for you to try both over a long time period?
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When Spotify Redbook comes , I will be completely happy with that . Yes some hi res flac sounds better and fuller but generally I’ll be happy with Spotify’s terrific discovery features and massive catalogue.
You can ask them to add missing pieces
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That’s good to know and think they have been doing a good job building up their catalog since they came to the US. But the issue is when you do find the holes, you don’t want to have to wait weeks for a chance it might get filled in. That’s like when used to go to record store and they didn’t have the album and they’d ask if you wanted them to order it. I’d say no and then head to another record store.
We should be grateful for what they offer but when you have choice as a customer, you have to weigh what’s important to you. So I’m thinking Spotify hifi may work out for me but I could end up back with Qobuz and roon if don’t find sound quality up to par. The current output is definitely subpar.
I didn’t know this! Thanks! Request submitted
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Both. Qobuz as standard. Tidal only if a requested album is not in the Qobuz catalogue. Unfortunately that is sometimes the case. If I like an album I download it from Qobuz online shop.
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The only tension here for me is Bandcamp now. I subscribe to Qobuz sublime, so you get a discount, but I like to use Bandcamp as I figure the artist gets a bigger cut. I don’t get the Qobuz discount that I’ve paid for.
Very good. A bit less selfish than me. 
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The real issue is I’m not entirely certain that I am 
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I currently subscribe to both just for access to more music (although there is considerable overlap.) As primarily a classical music listener, I prefer Qobuz because they often provide liner notes (especially important on opera, choral, song recordings); offer a number of recordings in hi-res [not MQA]; and, less importantly but nice, I can buy downloads of some of the recordings if i want (example: Solti leading the Chicago Symphony and an all-star cast in Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” in, I recall, 96/24 resolution).
If Roon added a FLAC level Spotify, i would drop Tidal.
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I would probably do a Qobuz,Spotify combo too.
Don’t think we’ll ever get that combo within roon but you can get a roon endpoint that can also do Spotify Connect and switch between the two on the fly. I’m going to see if I can make due with just Spotify hifi when it comes out and probably cancel Qobuz. I still have lifetime sub for roon, so can easily come back at anytime. And all the streaming services keep your history in place and Soundliz can be used to sync any updates between the services.
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