Qobuz + TIDAL. Am I nuts?

I’m running both too. I’ve found them to be significantly different where Qobuz provides a better up front experience for classical and jazz and Tidal excels at what’s happening now. The purchase discount for Sublime+ has caused a slide away from HDtracks.

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I agree with your findings exactly.
I run both side-by-side, and find that they compliment each other very well. They both excel in different ways.
And yes, my purchasing from both HDTracks and Qobuz has almost stopped since I subscribed to both.

I still have interest in HDtracls for the Van Halen 192 albums with better mastering than the 96 versions on Qobuz. Now I am nervous that other titles found in 192 are different mastering than the 96 qobuz. Perhaps that is rare?

But, deep down, you know she is wrong, you need it.

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After living a month or so with just Qobuz, I’m back to Tidal. The difference between hires and cd tracks on my Chord Hugo dac wasn’t that great so I found the smaller library the bigger issue. This became more noticeable in roon when I’d be looking at artist info and then trying to check out earlier bands they were in and not finding anything available. I’d check in Tidal and there they were.

As far as Qobuz doing any backfill, I really haven’t noticed much improvement in last month. All the albums I noticed were missing are still missing. They do a good job of having most new albums available but even then I’d find a few new releases missing that Tidal has.

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This is very funny!! :grinning:

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I am now back to Tidal only. I gave Qobuz feedback about the issues experienced and I may look back in from time to time to see if they have improved but they have some catching up to do to win my business.

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Was it just the extent of the library or other reasons?

Not crazy. Not at all. Roon is “enthusiast only.” And subscribing to both is very enthusiast-y.

I’m personally a one-or-the-other-guy, but that’s just me. I like the SQ of Qobuz just a bit more than Tidal, so even though I like Tidal’s library a bit more, with Roon, I can supplement Qoboz’s library with my own FLAC files. But I’m already on a Google Play Music Family Plan, and my wife and kids LOVE the commercial free youtube that came along for the ride with a GPM subscription, and as a result I can’t cancel that even if I wanted to… and I just can’t bring myself to have 3 concurrent music streaming plans side-by-side. But I don’t think you’re “nuts”… at least not any more nuts than all the rest of us Roon users. The amount of gear I own makes me look “nuts” compared to pretty much every other non-Roon-user I know. On this forum? You’re amoungst friends :slight_smile:

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Funnily enough the library wasn’t the biggest issue. Tidal just worked. When I had delays playing or messages saying a file wasn’t available it was always a Qobuz file. For streaming on the move the native Tidal app was better than Qobuz too.

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+1 to that. The Qobuz app, at least for Android, is pretty terrible.

The vast majority of my usage involves either their Web Player (at the office) or through Roon (at home), both of which work quite well, so this hasn’t been much of an issue for me… but, I don’t know if the iOS app is any better, but the Android Qobuz app is (or at least was, the last time I tried to use it) hot garbage.

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I got really excited for about a week and a half, when an album showed up from an artist I care about in Qobuz, a new mini-album/EP, and was not available in Tidal. I thought a-ha! Now I see there’s content I need Qobuz for that Tidal doesn’t offer! A good reason to keep both! And then of course after a week and a half I now see it on Tidal under “versions” as well.

So far I’ve yet to find a track on Qobuz I can’t find on Tidal, but I find a great many on Tidal I can’t find on Qobuz. There is one album that Tidal has a mangled version of, where the second half of the albums tracks are actually tracks from some other completely different album in a different genre, and it’s not mangled on Qobuz. I reported it to Tidal but it’s still broken for now. But other than that, Qobuz just seems like a subset of Tidal for the same money, and arguably equally terrible playlists, and zero discovery features.

I really hoped “Beta” meant “we’re bringing the good stuff in increments.” So far it seems like it really means “Waiting to secure funding to finish the product.”

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So I have finally done it. I started an experiment to see what albums were not available on Qobuz that were on Tidal. I changed every album to Qobuz that I could and kept track of the ones that were missing. Took a while but I found about 10 albums, none of which were a deal breaker as they were 16/44.1 releases and I either have a local ripped version or the actual CD of that I can use it. The biggest album missing was Oasis, and Nina Simone. Oasis had the greatest hits available and Nina I just pulled a different album that had the songs I wanted. The only reason to keep Tidal was the Android app, with streaming at work and with Android Auto. Tidal became unusable in the car so I’m probably switching to Spotify or Amazon or Google Play for that.

I’m in on both, and I love it. I think Qobuz offers a lot more high resolution CDs than Tidal and my DAC goes to 384kbps so why not listen to them.

I’d also add the Naxos Music Library if that were integrated with Roon.

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This matches my experience. Qobuz playlists might be getting better or I am exploring them more. I want to like Qobuz more but not convinced yet.

I just realized Qobuz (USA) is missing an essential track!

Better seen with the Youtube video:

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I am canceling Qobuz and staying with Tidal + Spotify (plus SoundCloud and MixCould).

Qobuz did not add enough for me to switch (and lose playlists and playcounts in Roon) and not enough to run both.

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I have both. The only reason I like Quboz apart from the usual optionality explained above within the context of streaming. I also like downloading content that I like in HI Res (have the sublime subscription ) I find downloaded off my server to my device or done locally on your network is sometimes preferable.to streaming including MQA encoding (for example p during travel where is no Mobile network for your “DAP”) / also some of my devices (system setup for either a HiFi setup in the bedroom or headphone(s) gear inclusive of a DACs sounds better with Quboz. This may be all sound psychosomatic and it probably is !!

I’m back with Tidal again. Probably have canceled each 3 times now. Last time I switched to Qobuz was because Tidal was carrying only MQA for some new releases. After a month with Qobuz I started to miss all the albums that Tidal has to offer.

I think sound quality between hires and MQA ends up being minor compared not being able to listen to certain albums at all. Whenever possible I use the cd version but in end doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. My current dac does an excellent job so everything sounds great anyway.

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The major points in favour of Qobuz for me are as follows-

  1. Qobuz has way more releases in Hi-Res because Tidal only has titles that are available in MQA and these are limited to 96/24 without an MQA equipped DAC

  2. Why would anyone want an MQA version when they can have the native Hi-Res file (up to 192/24) streamed from Qobuz?

  3. Tidal’s presentation of genres such as classical and jazz is ridiculously poor. They show no understanding of or interest in these genres unlike the enthusiasm and care shown by Qobuz.

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