What sounds better? Tidal MQA or Qobuz HiRes

This is my observation and quite consistent. There are more ‘loudness’ treatment in Tidal compared to Qobuz. There’s apparently more ‘details’ and better separation overall. Audio equipment with lower resolution can still sound good too.

I have both and will keep both and still hear no difference for like for like albums on any of my setups. Hires and MQA can sound the same, better or worse than the other depending on the content. I and found it’s never consistent. Sometime hires masters just don’t agree with me at all wether they are mqa or standard pcm.

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I actually canceled Qobuz earlier in the month but had until today to still use. I decided to do some last minute tests comparing hires to MQA rendered in my dac and just unfolded and upsampled using same roon setting as I do for hires. In all tests I preferred Qobuz. More bass extension, more natural vocals, overall more realistic.

It’s subtle but was enough for me to resubscribe. So now I may cancel Tidal and then maybe resync with Qobuz in 6 mo to see if remaining albums show up.

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A beautiful example of the placebo effect

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But in this case wouldn’t I want Tidal to sound better? It saves me money, I have a MQA rendering dac, Tidal has better selection and I already canceled Qobuz. I’m not even one of those anti-MQA people. I’d be better off if MQA sounded as good in my setup.

I agree with you but Qobuz’s music library is seriously lacking. Thats why I am sticking with Tidal for now.

I actually went thru with it and canceled Tidal. I just picked up a Chord Hugo and was doing comparisons with Qobuz hires and Tidal MQA unfolded by roon, and once again Qobuz came out on top.

Also the designer of Chords products recommends against even using MQA unfolded since alters the original signal. The fully rendered filters of an MQA dac are the opposite of what’s used in the Chord. And based how great Chord does with spacial cues, I’m going to follow their advice and stay away from MQA.

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Congrats on your choice. You’ve obviously taken into account everything Chord has recommended and if you’re not gonna miss the extra music on Tidal - that sounds like a perfect choice.

If Qobuz doesn’t end up improving their catalog down the road then if have to think of worth spending extra $20 to have Tidal for those missing albums at CD quality.

But made up my mind that the sound quality of Qobuz is worth it for my system.

I am staying with Tidal as I just don’t have the time to listen to any more music than I already do, split between music I buy and own and the ability to stream from a back catalogue held on Tidal.
I have never yet found Tidal is missing the music I am looking for and via my Meridian DSP SE system I just love the sound of MQA.
There is only room for one streaming service in this house, and it’s Tidal right now.

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So far, I’m still using both, but I recently committed to hi-res Qobuz for a year. It would be nice if Tidal offered a similar annual deal versus only monthly, but for now I’m gonna stick with both. Both are great music sources IMO.

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I agree. I was planning to use the free Qobuz trial just to compare with Tidal, but I find the services complement my musical taste. I do, however, prefer Tidal MQA to Qobuz Hi-Res just for sound quality.

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I like Tidal. Nothing I’m about to say here is meant to sound anti-Tidal. I think Tidal sounds good. I think Tidal sounds better than every other streaming service OTHER THAN Qobuz. I like Tidal.

That said, in an A-B comparison between Tidal’s CD quality and my own CD rips, I can sometimes hear a little bit of a difference. Sometimes I thought it was as benign as maybe Tidal bumped the gain up, even just a little bit, to make Tidal sound louder than the CD? Sometimes I could hear the “watermark” some refer to with Tidal. Sometimes I couldn’t. With Qobuz, so far, my experience has been that Qobuz streaming, at all qualities, sounds (to my ears) IDENTICAL to my own library of 320 kbps MP3 rips, FLAC CD rips, and HiRez purchases. The source (Qobuz vs. Local) is indistinguishable to me, and I like that… I didn’t always feel that way about Tidal.

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I also find Qobuz preferable for SQ. While I had both on subscription I never found anything I wanted on Tidal that wasn’t available on Qobuz, so cancelled my subscription.

On Windows 10 (USB connection), Tidal on ROON (or Tidal on Audirvana) sounds better than Tidal native application.

I have both services. Qobuz is the winner for me when comparing two identical recordings if I am concentrating on comparing. However, just doing normal listening…no difference.

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Maybe Qobuz native application is better than Tidal native application, on Windows.
Qobuz is not available in Romania.

Maybe if I try real hard I’d say MQA is better than the Qobuz 24 bit counterpart, sometimes. But I’m pretty sure I could never pick one out blinded.
To some degree I find it nice that Roon can do such a good job of preserving the DSP convolution filtered signal that there is no discernible loss of fidelity with MQA. There is a very different signal path, and yet all the digital manipulations behind the scenes keep things straight.

I agree with those who say “it’s a tie”. I suspect it’s in the choices the mastering engineer has taken vs. our individual preferences.

Some rock & roll tracks (to me) sound louder and fuller on MQA. Some (maybe most) classical tracks sound smoother and more detailed on Qobuz.

I used to stream using a Roon core installed on a Windows10 Pro Dell, but recently changed to a Roon Nucleus Plus. When I stream to my PS Audio DirectStream DAC (which does not decode MQA), using the USB output on the Nucleus Plus, to me it’s noticeably smoother, and before many tracks sounded “dull” and “lifeless”, not the case with the new machine. Must be a significantly better USB port.

As I now have two dacs that added MQA ability I can say I dont prefer one over the other hearing it through the full chain makes a bug difference, to the half unfolded in Roon. But it still the same for me as it was before, some MQA sound better, some PCM sound better its not a fixed constant at all.

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