Studio de blurring and authenticity of the file are two good points to start on…
For media service subscriptions, every individual purchase is easy enough to justify. The trouble is, when you add them all together (starting with the cable subscription), the total may approach what you paid back in the day for rent.
Not “nuts” at all. I have both subscriptions and thus access to all the beautiful music one can hope to find. Far cheaper than purchasing a couple of specious “high resolution” monthly downloads.
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I wish I could bring myself to pay for both services but should be unnecessary. Qobuz just needs to expand their library a little faster and I’d be good. Otherwise I feel like I’m paying an extra $20 a month to have Tidal fill in the missing gaps. But right now with just Tidal, I feel like I’m missing out on improved sound quality. Trade offs either way if only select one.
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I still have both Tidal and Qobuz and can’t bring myself to drop one or the other. I did drop Spotify and have a free subscription to Apple Music (from Verizon) that I never use.
I have 673 albums in my library (about 300 are duplicated) which includes the highest resolution version of each album from both Tidal and Qobuz. I don’t have many albums that are not available in both (about 70). While many are the same resolution in both, Tidal has the highest resolution for 17 albums and Qobuz has the highest resolution for 70 albums.
Based on this, I’m not sure how much longer I can justify keeping both Tidal and Qobuz. If I had to choose today, I would keep Qobuz and drop Tidal. However, there are some songs that I really prefer the MQA punch and bass emphasis, at least to my ears.
What the heck, I may just keep both.
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What the heck, YOLO, live the life!
I took Tidal when I first got Roon. When Qobuz became available in Roon I took an annual subscription thinking I would drop Tidal. When I looked at how many albums I had in Tidal I decided to wait to see if I continued to use it. Now I find that some of the titles I want are only available in Tidal so I keep both. I wish Tidal would take the annual model like Qoboz so I don’t see the charge each month. But I am keeping both for as long as I can.
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I’ve dropped Qobuz as only a handful of albums were not on Tidal. Cancelled 3x subs to Apple Music, as our free usage on EE has come to an end. I’ve bought an Allo USBridge Sig and loaded Ropieee XL. This has enabled me to use Spotify again. Bought a Spotify Family sub for £14.99 per month. I’m saving £420 a year! To be honest, running Spotify through the USBridge Sig/Shanti>>ISO Regen/LPS 1.2 combo I’m struggling to find a massive difference to Roon/Tidal.
“Me too” as far as far as the OP remark goes.
I still keep Tidal as I am not yet sure about MQA (either way) but use Qobuz much more due to:
- Ability to quickly filter new releases in my genres (classical)
- Availability of PDF booklets in Roon
- Discounted purchases
Most likely will switch to the top Qobuz offering soon and discard Tidal
I have both as well and also prefer Qobuz but I’m in Europe, I hear the catalog is different (less) in the US.
I have the annual subscription with big discounts for purchases really like that offering.
Not interested in MQA so Tidal doesn’t really offer an extra advantage to me, thinking of dropping it.
Well I must be a cheapskate, because there’s no way I’m paying for two subs at the same time! That said, I’m giving Qobuz another free trial to see how it compares, and so far, it’s better than it used to be. I have found a few gaps in the catalogue that are available in Tidal, but I find that you have to be careful to make sure that you haven’t missed some material due to their shoddy curation. For example, an artist sometimes has two separate entries, with their catalogue split between them, and if you miss this, you might think that some of the material is missing.
Regarding cheap downloads on Qobuz, they really seem to have hiked their prices recently, and along with poor customer service experience and erratic metadata on downloads, I would hesitate to recommend them.
I dropped Netflix 4K and save a bunch that way. Who needs movies with all this high resolution music?
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As for the OP - not at all. I have both. I like both. If I had to only have one I’d pick Qobuz; it’s better for my needs/uses. But I like having the larger pop/modern library of Tidal, too, and having both along with my own files within Roon really allows me to cover all my bases and really have everything covered. Definitely lets you get your full money’s worth out of you Roon investment…
Now as far as having both within Roon - is there a way to have Roon “prefer” Qobuz over Tidal. IE, when you have Roon show the “quality” on the CD cover image, can it default to whatever Qobuz has it at (example: 24/48) rather than what Tidal has it at (example: MQA)?
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HibTimothy. Interesting point you raise. I don’t know a way to do that. I would in fact be interested in a variant of what you say, i.e. a way to prioritize in searches high res (24/95 in Qobuz, MQA in Tidal) versions…of course this is easy when searching your library (local + streaming services) using bookmarks in the focus menu
I just signed up for Quboz. I also have Tidal and an MQA DAC. The very first thing I noticed is that the 24/192 files in Quboz have dropouts and/or stop playing because it says “Quboz media loading slowly…”. I only have a 10 meg per second Internet connection, so that is probably the reason. In Tidal, however, I do not have the same issue, even with playing MQA files. If this continues, I will sadly have to drop Quboz.
That is probably right John, 10 mbps, particularly wirelessly, might be a bottleneck for 24/192. One thought I had was that i know within the Qobuz desktop player you can “import” tracks, which I believe downloads a DRM-protected version of the file to your device so that you don’t have to stream it… I’m not sure how Roon works with Qobuz imports? Might be a work-around?
Well, I ditched Tidal six-months ago, thinking I could just use Qobuz and my local library. I’ve been a long-term Qobuz subscriber here in the UK, compared to Tidal.
However, I’ve gone back to Tidal again. I’m not too demanding, but there were a few things missing on Qobuz, that I could get on Tidal.
The ‘crunch’ came when I saw that the album I was after was £50 on CD on Flea-bay.
‘Flunk it!’, I thought. Tidal here I come. Again! lol
I’m the OP.
I re-subscribed to Tidal for one month to try out their 360 Reality Audio tracks on my Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones.
Verdict later, but initial impression is that spatial placement of vocals and instruments is exciting, but warmth of the stereo/hi-res original is lost.
Unless other tracks “wow” me, this will be a one month paid trial.
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You can alter the streaming quality in Qobuz to 96 or CD quality to overcome the bandwidth problem.
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I have both as well, and plan on keeping both. I would just be cautious of building your Roon tags and playlists with both if you don’t plan on keeping both. There will be a daunting task on the Roon side the day you decide to get rid of one of the two. …unless I’m missing something. You would need to manually delete each album from one service and add to the other, if they even have it.