Tidal Max, is it time to leave Qobuz?

I left Tidal when they started down the MQA path and went to QOB. Is there any advantage to Tidal Max, quality or functionality wise, where I would want to go back to Tidal? From what I can tell Tidal just equaled QOB in digital quality and there is no reason to change back. But I may be incorrect. Unbelievably that’s happened to me before! Any opinions/information would be greatly appreciated. And if this is discussed elsewhere I couldn’t find it and would appreciate direction to that thread.

Stick with what you have unless you personally have a preference for Tidal. I never moved to Qobuz because too many searches came up null for me with my music tastes. I wasn’t really bothered by the politics of MQA, but I did want to find more music I liked.

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I had both initially.

I dropped Tidal before the MQA stuff, but it was more because I didn’t like the music that they seemed to be promoting heavily, i.e., rap & hip-hop. Maybe they’ve changed in the years I’ve been away, but for me, it was a matter of what choices were being presented.

There is more than enough to find on Qobuz that keeps me happy.

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I have both Qobuz and Tidal. Also sometimes use Spotify (via Spotify Connect to Moon MiND2 Network Player connected via AES to the Altitude32, the MiND2 also got Tidal Connect which is often great when I have people visiting, avoid them to mess up my preferences and history in Roon).

Found the MiND2 Network Player in a box stuck in my storage room - probably from one of my many headphone setups years ago (had multiple of these streamers and actually thought I had sold them all…).

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Off topic, I know, but you can easily set up a profile named, erm, „guest“ to avoid them messing up your preferences and history - quite a bit cheaper than paying an extra sub for that reason …

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Much easier to let them use their own Spotify or Tidal subscription and playback via Spotify Connect or Tidal Connect using their own phone.

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I have been wondering about this too and I’ve been trying Tidal for a couple of months now. I have not had the chance to test the recent Roon update for Tidal Max, but here are just a couple of thoughts that hopefully help you.

  • Even though Tidal seems to give me better recommendations than when I first tried it some years ago, I rarely discover new music I like thanks to Tidal. I really miss Qobuz’s recommendations, even though they are less customized.

  • Qobuz has grown their catalog dramatically over the last few years. It is now very close to Tidal’s, but not quite there yet.

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I could easily have survived with one of the two. Seems like I have used Qobuz most, but this is mainly due to the MQA mess with Tidal which now seems to be removed (finally!).

Since I can not decide, I have landed on having both (+Spotify), looking at the bigger picture - the cost of these services are nothing compared to what I used to spend on CDs back in the days.

Edit:
Tidal also have more in their catalog relating local music (from the Nordic countries).

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In the UK, Qobuz costs £10.83 a month, billed annually, whereas TIDAL HiFi Plus is £19.99 a month–no annual billing. Last time I checked, Qobuz had fewer releases, but in a library of 5,000 albums, there were maybe twenty or so albums unavailable. So, it’s a no-brainer to stick with Qobuz.

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Tidal max costs nearly twice as much as Qobuz, for the same quality.

Qobuz and Tidal are very very close in terms of content these days. I find Qobuz wins over Tidal on some the more obscure stuff I listen to.

As a Roon user, who doesn’t ever need the Tidal or Qobuz interface or recommendation systems, I am more than happy with Qobuz.

Also, it seems clear that Qobuz pay more per stream on average to musicians than Tidal. So… there’s that too.

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Aren’t they free for a month?

If so, give the other a go if you’re curious…

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https://offer.tidal.com/?geo=GB

There you go - don’t forget the dairy note to cancel the first payment :grinning:

Even cheaper, if you get it for yourself via a gift card in one of their sales. I got one for £117 (£9.75 per month equiv) in Nov.

There’s a slight hassle in using it: you must cancel your Qobuz auto-renew first, then apply the gift card at the end of your current sub. It replaces, rather than extends, your current sub so don’t do it early. But it’s worth it to save a few quid.

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Some very good information in the responses. Thanks! What I extracted is there is no sound quality improvement with Max over QOB. I’ve never had a problem with QOB music offering, but I’m a bit weird in my music taste for my age. (As my kids tell me anyway) The cost of either isn’t much of a concern if one was appreciable better than the other. I knew, and appreciate that QOB pays more to the artists. So it looks like there is no reason to go back to Tidal for me.

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Just to give some statistics about the catalogue difference between TIDAL and Qobuz.

I have 8604 albums in my Roon library
6607 of them are on Qobuz, which is 76,8%
1997 of them are local albums, which is 23,2% (None of these are on Qobuz)
of those 1997 local albums, I found 198 on TIDAL, which is 2,3%

This means that (for my personal taste) the Qobuz catalog is at about 6607/(6607+198)= 97,1% of the TIDAL catalog (Do let me know if my math sucks :slight_smile: ). In reality this number is even higher because it assumes that TIDAL has everything that Qobuz has (I have not checked which albums are on Qobuz but not on TIDAL).

I think it is also important to add that at this point in time Qobuz has a much much higher percentage of high res releases in their catalog. 12,9% of my 6607 Qobuz releases are hi res. 0% of my 198 TIDAL releases are hi res.

I do not know how quickly TIDAL is working on closing this gap.

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I don’t think I’d go to that trouble for £10, and currently I’m subscribed to Sublime for the discounted downloads. TBH, I’d be happy with a Red Book-only service if the price was right, since I only use Qobuz for discovery.

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Even cheaper in Canada $10.83 CAD (6.36pd (why is there no pound emoji?)

FWIW I found Tidal too American centric - prefer Qobuz’s more European approach. Plus I save $85 a year. :sunglasses:

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where is this clear?

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Interesting article. Thanks for sharing.