Well i figure if Spotify is cheap enough with CD quality and Tidal is forced to drop their price ,then I will keep both. Tidal is going to have to drop their price when Spotify becomes available or they are finished.
Well you have Amazon HD and Qobuz currently with lower prices and they haven’t budged but Spotify is in a different league. And with don’t really know Square’s plan for Tidal other than helping the artist make more money.
Amazon’s ios apps are awful I have a prime account but they have no hardware integration. None. Bluesound and maybe a few others.
That’s why Spotify Connect intrigues me ,all of my devices have it.
Hi Steve,
I have both services but it would be hard to make a recommendation for you. You can go to the Qobuz website and visit their Qobuz Store without an account to see the music selection they have. They not only stream music, but they sell it too. I’ve read that Tidal has about 60 million tracks, Qobuz has about 50 million. I have found that sometimes Qobuz has music not available on Tidal and vise versa.
Good luck.
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I switched from Tidal to Qobuz recently. There were only a few albums in my Tidal library that I couldn’t add in Qobuz and they were albums that I rarely listened to anyway. I used Tidal (and now Qobuz) mostly for discovery and buy albums that I can’t live without for my local Roon library. I used Soundiiz to migrate and it worked like a charm.
The big reason I finally switched was because Tidal refused to offer an annual plan and I was tired of seeing that $20 get charged to my credit card each month. That being said, I was always happy enough with Tidal via the Roon interface, but I do use the mobile app and the music that Qobuz promotes aligns much better with my tastes.
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Out of 895 albums in the genres “Electronic” and “Alternative/Indie Rock” in my local roon library:
On Tidal but not Qobuz = 37
On Qobuz but not Tidal = 6
This is consistent with previous checks I’ve done over the past few years. Nevertheless, I’ve recently cancelled my Tidal subscription and moved over to Qobuz, for two main reasons…imho Qobuz sounds a bit better…and…f*** MQA.
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I’m thinking of downgrading my Tidal account to Premium because my DAC won’t play 24/96 and above. It’ll play up to 24/88.2 though. So that’ll only be £9.99 per month.
The Tidal Premium account is lossy, so about same sound quality as the current Spotify premium account. The hifi account was supposed to offer you a choice of cd quality and MQA, but now more and more, you only get offered MQA.
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Ah didn’t know that, it’s quite confusing on their site.
I’ve been able to use the Settings in Roon so that Tidal is set to output Hi-fi rather than Masters and it just plays 16/44.1 now instead of the MQA first unfold (which causes noise with my DAC). I had hoped I’d be able to opt for a cheaper subscription as I’m only using 16/44.1. Thanks for letting me know.
Was just listening to LCD Soundsystem and comparing hi res on Qobuz vs MQA on Tidal.
It wasn’t close, Qobuz sounds better level matched with a decibel reader. I didnt do it blind but I can tell.
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Just so you know even with the setting on hifi, you still end up playing unfolded MQA albums if there is no cd equivalent. You can also setup your device settings not to unfold. But yeah, with Tidal it’s hard to avoid MQA all together.
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I’m not really bothered about MQA either way, it’s a non-issue to me. I’m don’t believe I could easily detect any difference between 16/44.1 or 24/192 (in MQA or real hi-res form) if I tried, and I’m fine with that.
I’m more into music than sound quality these days and I find all this HD/MQA/DSD512 talk to be a distraction at best. I don’t find that any of these super formats give me more enjoyment of music than CD quality, and that’s what it’s all about.
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10 posts were split to a new topic: Comparison of PCM and MQA
I tested them both and found them to be about the same SQ wise but just couldn’t stomach to whole JZ and Kanye thang of Tidal. so I went with the Qobuz
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Also do not forget Highresaudio do a loyalty points system, depending on the cost of a download you accumulate points transferred into a cash discount to offset the cost of future purchases. Have purchased 51 albums so far a few of which actually cost nothing. The only problem is as a Rock/Blues listener in general I find their catalogue sadly missing a lot of titles in this genre which is a shame as in general their titles are usually £1.50/£2.00 cheaper than Qobuz.
I used to buy quite a bit from Highresaudio even though I am a Qobuz customer just to spread my business a bit more equal and also for a bit of a local component, as they are German based 
No doubt their quality is very good. But as they have also fallen into the MQA trap, they no longer get any business from me even tough they do offer PCM in parallel (actually cheaper than those lossy MQA!). But their catalog does have gaping holes, so from that perspective I am not sure it’s a very attractive source to integrate.
In terms of any price advantage vs. Qobuz. Well frankfly, it’s not such big deal. If I look at the pricing of a Deutsche Grammophon download, its EUR 17,50 on HRA, and at ‘face value’ EUR 18,50 at Qobuz. But as a sublime Customer on Qobuz that same HIRes album costs me just EUR 10,99. Add to that the much more complete catalogue and the fact Qobuz being a “MQA free zone”, the choice is easy.
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I have Tidal, Qobuz & Spotify. I have various systems at home and work, MQA and non-MQA.
To me, Qobuz sounds best. It’s now my default.
Spotify 320kbps can sound good on a decent system. 
I will definitely renew Qobuz & Spotify, not Tidal.
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