Some pretty great deals if you are looking to add to your FLAC files!
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they(qobuz) have the new “Big Little Lies” soundtrack and it is quite good, but not in Hi-Res
Tidal does not have it
Spotify Premium has both albums as 1 playlist - while I pressed the follow button my wife started the Playlist in our home office and I saw it on my mobile - haven´t talked about it at the moment - kind of creepy- 2 souls bla bla 
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Qobuz just dropped their Studio streaming price to $14.99! that is a heck of a deal!
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I just extended my annual subscription. Ended up costing me about $35 for six more months, Qobuz is giving credit for the unused months of the prior annual subscription. The new annual fee is $149.99, and renews at that price per my confirmation email. Great stuff.
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Why would I go qubuz instead of tidal? Honest question and trying to learn.
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I can take a stab at it… but I think @Torq or @rrwwss52 might be able to give a better analogy/actual facts for backing up their decisions lol
For me I find Spotify to have the best catalog of music (music discovery, random tracks I like)
Qobuz has the best “sound quality” but the smallest catalog of music (in comparision, I still find majority of my music on Qobuz)
Tidal splits the difference between the two other services with a lean towards hip-hop/r&b/etc
If you are looking to eek out that last lil bits of audio transparency/goodness go with Qobuz, otherwise I don’t think you are “missing out” by going with Tidal =)
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I’ve had both of them simultaneously. Both are good quality services. I’ve had Deezer Elite too. It’s great, but not Roon compatible.
***I ended up dropping Tidal a couple of months ago
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Customer service contact with Qobuz is better than Tidal. I recently asked them to add an REO Speedwagon album that was missing from their catalog, and within a couple of weeks it showed up. My experiences (only a couple though) with Tidal customer service were lacking.
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After a period of time, I found myself selecting the Qobuz versions over the Tidal versions in Roon. To my ears, they sounded more natural, especially using good headphone equipment. I have MQA equipment too, but Qobuz was my preferred album version.
3). Qobuz was out first with an annual plan. It saved a little money. This new rollout is even better.
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I use both TIDAL and Qobuz, simultaneously - something made much easier by using Roon (and to a lesser extent, Audirvana). This is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.
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TIDAL has a bigger catalog, though the gap is shrinking.
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Qobuz is, now at least, cheaper.
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Qobuz handles classical music better, at least from a metadata perspective.
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In some cases, the masters used for albums in Qobuz (that are also available in higher-than-Redbook resolutions), appear to be different and usually better than the TIDAL version.
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Where Qobuz has a high-resolution version of an album, and TIDAL offers it in MQA, I invariably prefer the Qobuz version (true on both MQA-enabled and non-MQA hardware).
In general I would ascribe any “sound quality” benefits to the masters used rather than because of the resolutions or encoding format offered. It seems more care was given to some of masters for the high-resolution copies (on both services).
Where clear superiority in masters exists in high-resolution versions, I would rank “quality” as: Qobuz (HiRes) > TIDAL (MQA) > TIDAL (Redbook).
Where there is no apparent different in masters, I would rank “quality” as: Qobuz (HiRes) > TIDAL (Redbook) > TIDAL (MQA).
The biggest thing for me, however, is:
With a Qobuz Sublime+ subscription, I can frequently buy the high-resolution version of an album from Qobuz for substantially less than the cheapest alternative option (i.e. it’s usefully cheaper than lossy downloads, the rarely-available CD-quality downloads and the actual physical CD from Amazon).
In the first month of my Sublime+ subscription, I’d saved more on purchases vs. any alternative purchase method, than the entire subscription cost me for a year.
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Side topic; I see qobuz plays flac files. Any app on iOS that will play my flac files from Bandcamp?
Neutron Music Player, and Onkyo HF Player will play FLAC files, though they have to be stored locally on the device.
You’ll need to buy Neutron, however, and FLAC support in Onkyo HF player is a paid in-app upgrade.
There’s an actual Bandcamp app of course, though it’s not clear to me if that supports lossless content. It does, at least, let you stream from Bancamp directly.
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Ive been looking into a Spotify alternative. We have a Spotify family account right now, and my wife still uses it as she canceled her Apple Music sub recently. I tried Tidal and hated it for many reasons. I may give Qobuz a shot now, while maintaining Spotify.
It’s too bad Qobuz doesn’t have a family subscription plan. Would make a jump much easier.
How’s the UI and frustration factor vs Tidal/Spotify?
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For me it’s not better or worse specifically … just differently shitty.
I avoid their interfaces entirely by using Roon.
I might have kept Spotify around if they had lossless content and Roon integration. It’d take both to get me back.
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Well, I just signed up for the demo. It’s already better than Tidal as it actually works in Hi-Res with my RME ADI-2 DAC. For some reason, I could never get it working before and Tidal CS was useless. It worked fine on my computer’s built-in audio.
The desktop app needs a dark theme, otherwise, it’s just okay.
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For these specific reasons, I canceled Spotify recently. Don’t really miss it, and I’m very happy with Tidal / Roon so far. Just signed up for Qobuz trial to see if I like it any better.
this, exactly.
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How much is sublime? I couldn’t find it listed on site.
$249.99/year … paid up front, no monthly option.
That may be lower currently in light of the current offer on Studio Premier subscription, since previously the Hi-Res “Studio” subscription was $24.99/month (basic lossless was $19.99).
But Sublime+ is only useful if in addition to streaming, you want to BUY high-resolution downloads (standard 16/44.1 content is not discounted).
A quick price example, for a recent release (Loreena McKennit, Live a the Royal Albert Hall):
- Amazon CD: $17.99
- Amazon MP3: $12.49
- Qobuz Hi-Res: $17.99
- Qobuz 16/44: $14.99
- Qobuz Hi-Res (with Sublime+): $8.99
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Thank you Torq. At that price I’ll probably stick with just buying from Bandcamp.
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Thanks for the details Torq. That’s a bit of a tough one for most people I’d assume, unless one plans on spending nearly a $1000 a year just buying music (so that the savings pile up beyond $250).
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Well, if you’re trying to get the subscription to be effectively free, then you’d need to buy $500 worth of hi-res downloads in addition to the initial subscription to reach that vs. buying elsewhere, since the discount is typically 50%.
I think it’s more interesting (and relevant) to compare against the costs of having a different hi-res streaming subscription than against “free”, however:
And if you’re simply trying to offset the increased cost of Sublime+ then it’s a much smaller gap. Vs. TIDAL HiFi you’d be spending an extra $30 on hi-res downloads, after which every additional hi-res purchase is saving you money. And vs. Qobuz Studio Premier you’d spend an extra $150 over the base subscription.
Of course, lots of people see streaming as a 100% replacement for buying - which would make all of the above moot for them.
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