Qobuz vs. Tidal

[PaulT]

I have a Quad based hi-fi system (Quad CD-P, 44 pre amp, 909 power amp and 2905 electrostatics) and have just bought a Linn Akurate DSM streamer. The Linn has the inbuilt ability to play both Qobuz and Tidal streams via Linn Kazoo on iPad so just about to sign up for a free trial of both.

As far as I can see, everyone here seems to use Qobuz. Tidal hardly ever gets a mention. However What Hifi magazine have just done a survey of streaming services and give Tidal a higher scoring for sound quality.

A quick search of both services' seems to indicate Qobuz has greater coverage of the Classical back catalogue.

Wondering if anyone has tried both recently? Would welcome your feedback.

[mallard fizz]

I have a Quad based hi-fi system (Quad CD-P, 44 pre amp, 909 power amp and 2905 electrostatics) and have just bought a Linn Akurate DSM streamer. The Linn has the inbuilt ability to play both Qobuz and Tidal streams via Linn Kazoo on iPad so just about to sign up for a free trial of both.

As far as I can see, everyone here seems to use Qobuz. Tidal hardly ever gets a mention. However What Hifi magazine have just done a survey of streaming services and give Tidal a higher scoring for sound quality.

A quick search of both services' seems to indicate Qobuz has greater coverage of the Classical back catalogue.

Wondering if anyone has tried both recently? Would welcome your feedback.

Interestingly, on another music chat room that I'm a member of, it's all Tidal and no mention of Qobuz (except from me!).

I have used both. Extensively.

I am a Qobuz Studio Hi-Res subscriber, because it was easy, given that I found buying downloads superior to anything out there and just went from there.

However, my experience is that Tidal is superior for streaming. Both in terms of sound quality and user interface. If I had used my head to choose, rather than my emotions/lazyness, I would have chosen to subscribe to Tidal.

But your mileage may vary.

[richardfinegold]

My brief free Tidal trial was over 3 years ago, and that is an eternity in digital music. Their Classical selections were extremely poorly organized. Someone else described it as appearing as though it had been organized by a Chimp on Crystal Meth. Qobuz is a much better organized site and as to which sounds better, I never did a side by side comparison but I'm a picky audiophile and Qobuz sounds pretty good to me. Tidal offers MQA if that is important to you.

[HighlandDougie]

My foray into network boxes - Aurender (now x 2 - one per country) - made me rethink my previously unfortunate experience with Tidal and Audirvana. As one of the DACs I use (a Mytek) is MQA enabled, I’ve gone down the Tidal route again - at high-res standard. Still not brilliant in terms of organisation of classical ‘titles’ but a lot better than before. But the sound quality is really excellent. Aurender is equally seamless with Qobuz as with Tidal but it doesn’t have MQA. So, not a lot to choose between them??

[johnb]

Can someone explain the benefit of using MQA streaming as opposed to FLAC (lossless) streaming?

[PaulT]

Can someone explain the benefit of using MQA streaming as opposed to FLAC (lossless) streaming?

Thanks for raising the "benefit of MQA" issue. I was wondering about this. I am told my Linn Akurate doesn't recognise MQA as they haven't divvied up for the required licence. I think this means I don't have access to Tidal's Masters streams. I'm now live with trial versions of both Tidal and Qobuz and on my limited (a couple of hours sampling) use so far there seems to be no real difference in sound quality between Tidal and Qobuz.

[Stunsworth]

I’m a long term user of Qobuz, though I did try Tidal as well for a couple of months. In the end I stayed with Qobuz as I found their catalogue for the music I like (classical and jazz) better than Tidal. Also I found Qobuz’s meta data better.

In the U.K. Qobuz now only offer one subscription that offers FLAC streaming up to 24/192.

[richardfinegold]

Can someone explain the benefit of using MQA streaming as opposed to FLAC (lossless) streaming?

It makes Bob Stuart of Meridian a lot wealthier. Otherwise, imo, not to much

[Dave2002]

I got so fed up with Qobuz that I tried to cancel my subscription. Then I heard nothing, despite having written several times to clarify what they were doing etc.

Now I discover that I must have set up an automatic renewal of the subscription - but this has now failed, presumably because my bank card has changed. I am quite happy to let it lapse, as that seems a more definite and satisfactory (gulp) way to terminate my relationship with this streaming service, and I've not used it for some time.

I will not be rejoining in a hurry.

[jayne lee wilson]

But its all in the setup, the implementation, isn't it Dave? And local broadband conditions etc. What happened to cheese you off so much?

One more time then.... using Qobuz Studio Premier on Audirvana+ (following its evolution from Qobuz HiFi, then Studio) has given me years of seamless, high quality listening.... truly never a glitch or a dropout.
Its become my personal radio station, my privileged sampler for New Releases, my go-to for researching new music or less well known recordings....
I use it every day, or very nearly. Almost take it for granted (almost! especially in the corona-era..). Just sling it on with something soothing (Cyrillus Kreek, Gesualdo... ) if I haven't time to pay close attention.

And £10 less than it used to be. So, very hard to live without now.

[Dave2002]

If I want high quality audio I'm happy enough to use CDs or other disc based systems. I don't always expect to have very high quality sound - though I do appreciate it when I get it.

I was on the lowest rate of payment, but Qobuz unilaterally decided to increase the prices considerably. I meant to cancel at that time, and indeed wrote about that here. Then I discovered I was still paying, and on one or two occasions I actually did use the service, but there's no way that my use was worth £10 per month.

I also tried to contact Qobuz to figure out whether I was paying, or still subscribing or what. AFAIK I had no reply.

I'm sorry, but just because some people find this service good, and worthwhile does not mean that everyone will. Maybe I was just unlucky, but I'm not going to repeat the experience. This is an example of the sort of statistics which happens with consumer products and services.

We once bought an ironing board from Amazon. It had a high rating - something like 90+% saying it was very good (4 or 5 stars), with just a few saying it was terrible, and giving reasons for their low rating. Unfortunately the one we received was completely unusable, and had more or less the exactly the same fault as was described by those who gave it a one star rating. It was a complete pain. That does not mean that the other people were unhappy - they may have got a good product, but we did not, so even if we were in a small group, it was still confirmation that things don't always work out well.

[Bryn]

But its all in the setup, the implementation, isn't it Dave? And local broadband conditions etc. What happened to cheese you off so much?

One more time then.... using Qobuz Studio Premier on Audirvana+ (following its evolution from Qobuz HiFi, then Studio) has given me years of seamless, high quality listening.... truly never a glitch or a dropout.
Its become my personal radio station, my privileged sampler for New Releases, my go-to for researching new music or less well known recordings....
I use it every day, or very nearly. Almost take it for granted (almost! especially in the corona-era..). Just sling it on with something soothing (Cyrillus Kreek, Gesualdo... ) if I haven't time to pay close attention.

And £10 less than it used to be. So, very hard to live without now.

I am happy to endorse most of what you report there, jlw. It would be wrong, though, not to note the occasional serious failures in their quality control procedures regarding the audio files they are provided with by the record companies.

[jayne lee wilson]

I am happy to endorse most of what you report there, jlw. It would be wrong, though, not to note the occasional serious failures in their quality control procedures regarding the audio files they are provided with by the record companies.

That worried me more when I bought the download.... but when I discovered that the faulty files were the same on all the download sites I just took the rough with the smooth - and Qobuz often gave me a free album when I reported it... but as you imply, how fast they put it right is out of Qobuz' control.

So with HQ streaming obviously the pressure is off.... let them know, move on to something else, check later....
HQ Streaming, then buying the physical disc sometimes when the passions dictate (quite often recently - Hindemith, Holmboe...), is a nice, user-friendly, ear-friendly balance for me.....

[johnb]

I was on the lowest rate of payment, but Qobuz unilaterally decided to increase the prices considerably. I meant to cancel at that time, and indeed wrote about that here. Then I discovered I was still paying, and on one or two occasions I actually did use the service, but there's no way that my use was worth £10 per month.

I also tried to contact Qobuz to figure out whether I was paying, or still subscribing or what. AFAIK I had no reply.

I'm a bit confused, are you saying that you cancelled your account via the Qobuz website but found that Qobuz were still charging you?

Or did you e-mail them to cancel your account without cancelling it on the website?

I have a HiFi account (CD quality) and find it very useful indeed. (Streamed via LMS running on a server --> Allo Signature "transport" running piCorePlayer --> Metrum DAC)

[Dave2002]

I'm a bit confused, are you saying that you cancelled your account via the Qobuz website but found that Qobuz were still charging you?

Or did you e-mail them to cancel your account without cancelling it on the website?

I have a HiFi account (CD quality) and find it very useful indeed. (Streamed via LMS running on a server --> Allo Signature "transport" running piCorePlayer --> Metrum DAC)

Very possibly - it doesn't matter. As long as they don't now mysteriously find a way to make my bank transfers work after all - which might happen.

What I don't get is why everyone seems to think I have to have this. I'm not saying that others don't like it, or get a benefit, but just that I personally don't, and I don't need it, so I won't subscribe until I think I may - which may never happen.