I swear, you guys are going to make me subscribe to Qobuz if you keep talking about it like this. So I won’t give up TIDAL, and I have ROON. Maybe I’ll give up heating oil, or worse yet, alcohol.
[[sticking fingers in ears]] WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!
OK, I know that won’t keep me from reading here. But what do you expect from a guy who drives up to the McDonald’s window and asks for the sign-language menu?
Well, if you drove up to the window and asked for the braile menu, I’d be very, very alarmed.
You never know with these Teslas
I just subscribed to Quboz (Studio Premier) this weekend, and I am blown away by how good it sounds. I have been a Tidal HiFi subscriber for a good while, and am shocked how much better Quboz is. I will be keeping Tidal for now, as they have more of my favorite music, but Quboz definitely sounds better.
What music do they have more of out of curiosity?
Tidal has more of the Electronica stuff, that I listen to 90% of the time, like Max Cooper and Christian Loffler. They both have the Artist listed, but Tidal has more of each artist songs.
I tried Quboz a year ago and it was cool but like your experience, I felt Tidal had more of my musical preference. Tidal integrated into both things I use (Plex & Roon vs. just Roon) and streamed slightly better when I was in Australia (Ok, I’m not there often but left an impression on me). Work also blocks Quboz vs. Tidal… must be them Jay-Z kickbacks. I did like the idea of Quboz better as I wouldn’t have to deal with MQA to get the “high res” but didn’t plug into my rhythms nearly as well.
Couldn’t agree more. I still use Spotify but feel that Qobuz has superior sound.
Yeah I noticed things like this as well from Qobuz, it’s that 10,000,000 less tracks in the US that is currently holding back their platform from having equal selection along with best quality. I believe in Europe they have 50,000,000 tracks so not sure how long it will take them to get the licensing in the US to match Tidal and Amazon.
Spotify is superior for music discovery, selection and you don’t have to worry about destroying your cell data plan in 1 hour lol.
After my second night with Quboz now, and I have cancelled my Tidal subscription. Even though Quboz is missing a few of my favorite songs, the sound quality is top notch, and I am amazed at how much better it is than Tidal. I am hearing things in the mids, that I have never heard before, and really did not think my system could get any better than with using Tidal, but I was wrong. Quboz has better balance from top to bottom, and I am hearing everything in the recording now. The only thing I like about Tidal is the vocals, and I could see that working well for rap, which makes sense. However, I don’t listen to rap at all, and I never really liked seeing nothing but Rappers on the home page of Tidal, so no need for Tidal anymore:smiley:
Quboz is legit, and I am glad I took the leap!
Awesome man! You’re going to love it! I just keep Spotify and Amazon for the stuff I cant find there which isn’t everyday.
I am using Amazon Music HD. I had a subscription to Tidal HiFi and really liked the sound quality of MQA tracks when listening through my DAC (and I liked when the color changed from green to purple on the DAC lights :)). I could hear a difference ever so slightly compared to Ultra HD on Amazon Music. But for tracks that weren’t Masters, the Ultra HD from Amazon sounds a lot more rich and defined. So I cancelled Tidal. I also find more of the music I like on Amazon Music.
This thread looks like it got quiet but thought I would share my experience as a novice with sensitive IEMs.
When I started this pursuit a few months back, I was very frustrated with the quality of sound coming from my MacMini, I made some improvements in hardware but the source material always had a very high noise floor and what I think were digital artifacts, and what I think you more experienced listeners call compressed and harsh sound. Those subjects are addressed in depth on this forum and others.
I got a high end USB cable that separates the USB power (which I plug into a portable battery power brick), a Jitterbug, an inexpensive AC conditioner, and plugged that chain into a Jotunheim with multibit DAC. This really improved the sound subjectively, but objectively it absolutely lowered the noise floor to inaudible levels with my IEMs.
Then, just to try it, I got Audirvana and Tidal. Wow. This is not subtle. This improved the source quality, if I understand correctly, by bypassing some of the MacMini’s interference with the USB signal.
I could not be happier. Or maybe I could with Roon, Qobuz etc, but I do not have the benefit of comparison.
So this post is not a comparison of different services, but just a personal observation that these services when combined with other modest hardware upgrades can clean up the source material when using a MacMini.
In the meantime, thanks to all who have shared their deeper experience and comparisons. I am really enjoying this forum and the kind folks who contribute.
Happy listening,
Mokhamark
Great stuff @MokhaMark. Glad to hear your enjoying your music and iem’s. That’s what it’s all about in the end.
Qobuz 1st, followed by Tidal, then my huge collection of LP’s and CD.
I recently discovered that Mastered for iTunes is still around as Apple Digital Master and that Apple Music (streaming) uses these same masters.
While Apple Digital Masters aren’t lossless or high resolution, they often have better dynamic range with less clipping.
Well, if you can’t build headphones that make music sound good, change the music to sound good on your headphones…
Not sure if you understand. Apple doesn’t change the music. Apple Digital Master is a workflow and set of standards for the music publisher to use when encoding the master for iTunes and Apple Music so as to preserve sound quality. Among other things they limit the overall gain, so it’s a good solution to the Loudness Wars.
I haven’t read that, and I doubt I will, to be honest. I regard it as just another proprietary Apple thing that I want nothing to do with, because (especially as a non-Apple user) such things just muddy the standards waters and it benefits nobody. Well, except Apple’s income, that is.
It’s another zero calorie carrot to dangle in front of slaves of that ecosystem.