I’ve added Quobuz this weekend, I already had Tidal.
I’m still evaluating if I can find all the music I want in Quobuz as well but for now it seems I can find it in both. (Europe)
I plan to ditch Tidal as it only has CD quality and I don’t use lossy MQA. I disabled MQA in the Tidal app by setting it hifi and in Roon by setting MQA Core decoding to off in the DAC preferences. I seem to get the CD quality streams then. I normally don’t use the app, only the IOS app in the car and on the motorbike.
I really like Quobuz: quite a bit of true hi-res albums and the ability to purchase them at a big price reduction with the Sublime+ plan I chose. I use the Mac app to find music to purchase since that doesn’t seem to be possible from within Roon and the IOS app for the car and bike like I did with Tidal.
So for now I have both and if I will ditch one it ‘ll be Tidal.
I wonder what you mean by “not out of beta”. In January 2015, I signed up with Qobuz, because at that time they had more content than Tidal. In the following years Tidal improved their content dramatically. When I got Roon at the end of 2015, I moved from Qobuz to Tidal because of the Roon integration.
Are you now stating that Qobuz is more than 4 years in beta?
Thanks for all the great dialogue and civility. Doesn’t Q charge you for each of your downloads? So, in essence you are paying twice, are you not? I know the. Tidal downloads are free only if you subscribe, but it is free.
I agree with many - so much music, and so little time. I really do love reading a music magazine then going to Tidal and listening to it directly.
On Qobuz, you can buy downloads, after which you own the files and can do with them like you please. Qobuz also has on ‘offline’ mode where you can download music for offline listening within the app (just like Tidal).
No, both services let you download for offline listening but when you stop your subscription you can’t listen to those files anymore.
Both services also let you buy music. For tidal you have to go to a webpage and they don’t seem to have so much to purchase. Quobuz has a lot more to purchase right from their app and in hi-rez. Hi-rez is available at about half price if you have the Sublime+ subscription which makes that subscription almost free if you purchase regularly.
Thanks for starting this discussion. Since the availability of qobuz on Roon, I’ve had the exact same question, and am still wondering if subscribing to qobuz (Studio level) in addition to Tidal HiFi is worth it.
Jim Heckman
I am keeping both for a while – at least as long as Tidal offers a “veteran’s discount”. Maybe, when all is said and done, the Q library is as extensive as T’s, I will settle on just one.
That was my thought at first as well but now I’m more thinking whether I should keep Tidal as Quobuz Supreme+ is a no brainer for me: practically free due to the savings I get for the music I want to buy and I like the quality better.
Jeff, I had the same view of the Tidal/Qobuz offerings – Tidal has a far better Blues/Jazz offering that are the focus of my musical interest. Whether that will change when Q is out of beta, I don’t know. But for now, I, for one, will stick with Tidal and see how Qobuz develops in the future.
I have both, but only because the top package on Qobuz offers some pretty decent discounts on buying music… hence I subsrcibe. I make the sibscription cost back at least 5 times over from music purchase discounts.
Well, whatever you are, count me in. I subscribe to both as well. In my case, considering the extremely discounted prices on high-res music, Qobuz will more than pay for itself in a year. Both also come in handy if/when you also use Roon Radio—a great way to discover new music you are pretty sure to like. I guess if I paid a fat fee for cable TV every month I might question the expense, but as we tend to listen to music a lot more than we watch TV, and just watch via Mohu antenna or stream via Roku, It’s a wash money wise.
So She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is reluctant to spend any more money on music services, what with money being spent on Spotify and Apple Music and Tidal and a Tidal Gift for my dad. Adding Qobuz would violate the “some is better than none” principle (that we have already violated).
Plus, it turns out that I prefer fully unfolded MQA Hi-Res tracks to their Hi-Res FLAC counterparts, even when the FLAC is upsampled by my favorite filters to DSD256. I find them smoother, fuller, wider and more spacious.
Still, I like the idea of buying an album and having it available no matter what I do with the subscription service that spawned it. AFAIK, I can’t purchase and download any Tidal MQA tracks. But I can purchase and download the Qobuz Hi-Res albums. And it’s not like I hate the Hi-Res FLAC versions.
Two days left to decide. First-world problems, indeed!
EDIT: Please no MQA vs. FLAC posts. I don’t want to be blamed for sparking that debate. We all like what we like, and everyone’s opinion on that is just as valid as anyone else’s. I know graphs and charts exist that can quantitatively show that MQA is little better than snake oil, or that upsampling audio is a waste of time and destroys the pure audio signal. But my brain doesn’t interpret graphs and charts through my ears; it interprets an audio signal. And I can hear a difference. Even if I am imagining that I hear a difference, I’m imagining that same difference across multiple tracks from multiple albums at multiple sampling rates. Science brings the art of music to our devices, but at the end of the day science must give way to the eye of the beholder.
@Jeff_Bellune - I’d kill the spend on Spotify and Apple. I would be hard pressed to find features that they offer that a combo of Qobuz and Tidal don’t. But, if you factor in family politics all logic is thrown asunder.
Starting with my post in this thread, Masters available on Tidal iOS, I detail my struggles to get the latest Tidal iOS app update to stream MQA to my Meridian Explorer 2. So I searched for other portable DACs that could decode/render a fully unfolded and authenticated MQA stream with a minimum of hassle. In my search I found a plethora of DACs that could send FLAC/PCM Hi-Res Audio to a good pair of headphones from an iPhone or iPad with a minimum of hassle, but very few that could do the same with MQA. The Oppo HA-2 that I already own is in the former category.
The Explorer 2 works great with Roon or the Tidal desktop app at home, but I travel a lot, most of it overseas. I already fight with slow WiFi in hotels and throttled data on my cellular plan over there. I don’t need more hassles with the hardware/software interface between my iPhone/iPad and my DAC.
Plus, Qobuz has more tracks that I am likely to listen to in Hi-Res Audio than Tidal does. I found that out when I transferred my Tidal favorite albums to Qobuz through Soundiiz.
So the marginally more pleasant audio that MQA provides over Hi-Res FLAC isn’t worth the effort to bring that sound to me away from the house, either locally or far away.
I’ve already saved $50 on Hi-Res Audio purchases using my Sublime+ subscription versus any other Qobuz tier, or a service like HDTracks. So the annualized cost of Sublime+ is effectively the same as Studio at this point, because I was going to buy the albums anyway.
Thank you, everyone, for your input, especially @Chrislayeruk in the linked topic above. It helped me make my decision.
I have both Qobuz and Tidal and plan to keep both.
They both highlight different albums and I can’t tell really which sounds best.
I also have Apple Music primarily for stability and it’s seamless interface with my whole apple world of phones, iPads, apple tv’s etc.
They also seem to have the deepest catalogue. I buy a year for $99.
