Qobuz is a French streaming audio service which has been beta-tested in the United States since February. After many months of customer feedback, Qobuz is finally going live to compete with rival streaming service Tidal. In this article, we compare Qobuz and Tidal streaming services to determine which is the best fit for your audiophile needs.
“Why do we need another streaming service?” You ask.
In a free market, there is nothing wrong with competition, but sometimes all these choices can be confusing. Sometimes competition can ultimately lead to the failure of all options, leaving the consumer with no choices whatsoever. When it comes to streaming services, we have the big players like Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. Now we can add Qobuz to the list of boutique brands like Tidal that cater to audiophiles. Given that Tidal seems to be struggling, we wondered if there was, in fact, a need for yet another niche streaming service.
Tidal vs QoBuz High-Resolution Music Streaming YouTube Discussion
Features
Tidal Vs Qobuz 2020
Amazon takes on Tidal, Deezer, and Qobuz with Amazon Music HD: a high-res music service Amazon Music HD offers 50 million lossless tunes for $14.99 per month, undercutting its rivals. Tidal vs Qobuz vs Spotify vs GPM vs YTM vs Deezer vs Nugs. Posted by 1 year ago. Tidal vs Qobuz vs Spotify vs GPM vs YTM vs Deezer vs Nugs. So, I currently have access to all of these streaming services, and I can say that they are definitely not the same. I've put my notes on each below, but I would. Which do people like? I canceled my Tidal and have trials of both. I've looked around a bit, and Qobuz doesn't have a few of the artists that I listen to, but it has most and its interface is way better. Deezer has everything, but it's interface is like some iTunes from 2006 level shit. TIDAL is ranked 7th while Qobuz is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose TIDAL is: The Tidal music streaming service has a maximum streaming quality of 1,411Kbps bit rate with FLAC-formatted lossless files.
Although both are considered audiophile streaming services, Qobuz does differentiate itself from Tidal in potentially important ways. Like Tidal, Qobuz offers multiple ways to access music. Both allow you to stream music or download a modest selection of songs to listen offline. Unlike Tidal, Qobuz, allows you to buy the music as well. I can understand the lure of downloading since I have scenarios where I often want to listen to high-resolution music and I don’t have a good internet signal. For example, traveling on a plane. However, I am not sure why I would want to buy downloads. Tidal does allow you to download some of your favorite music and play it back via their app which is useful when you're on an airplane and have no wi-fi.
The major players in streaming audio (Apple, Spotify, and Amazon) use a lossy compression algorithm that deteriorates the sound of the streaming service. Tidal, on the other hand, offers a lossless FLAC based streaming option. In my listening tests comparing Spotify, Amazon, and Tidal I found Spotify and Amazon to sound muted with the leading edge of dynamic transients and the bass sounding flat. The overall presentation just sounded weaker. The best way I could describe it is like taking the life out of the music. I was convinced from these comparisons that I could not live with these lossy services. So far I’ve been all too happy to spend $20 a month on Tidal to gain access to CD-quality sound.
When Tidal began offering Master Quality Sound, which used MQA encoding, a supposedly lossless perceptual coding system which could provide High-Resolution sound in above CD quality, I thought of it as a bonus. However, like many, when I began listening to MQA encoded streams on Tidal, I didn’t walk away all that impressed. For the most part, I simply didn’t hear a difference. Then news began to pour in that MQA might not be all it’s cracked up to be, possibly even being less than CD quality.
This is where Qobuz comes in, offering a FLAC based streaming service that streams at up to 24-bit 192 kHz quality. FLAC is a bit-perfect lossless compression algorithm that is known to not deteriorate the sound in any way. Why would you want or need High-Resolution sound at 24 bit or 192 kHz is another topic, and although I will delve into it briefly here, it is far too big of a topic (and far too unsettled) to go into with any depth in the scope of this article.
Qobuz released a beta copy of the software and smartphone app, but full integration into hardware seemed to trickle out. I have a Yamaha receiver that I had hoped would be integrated with Qobuz, but Yamaha left it out in recent firmware update for my particular model.
My original intent was to report back on this article after Qobuz integration happened, but given the extended 6 months of use, I was able to extensively test its integration into my Sonos system.
I can say that its integration into Sonos was very poor initially, but improved over time. Compared to Tidal, Qobuz had significant problems, often with the app failing to start the music, pausing, drop-outs, with poor overall quality and stability issues. With time and experience, Qobuz started working better with Sonos, so finger’s crossed, maybe the issue is resolved.
Of course, what good is the streaming quality if the music catalog is weak? I was unable to find a reliable source with the exact size of the catalog for Apple or Spotify, but best I can tell, it appears to be around 45 million songs for Apple and over 35 million songs for Spotify. Whatever the true number is, it’s certainly enough music to keep you busy for centuries. This is exactly why I love streaming services so much. As a budding audio enthusiast, I used to borrow albums and CD’s from my father's collection, each having over 1000 albums to choose from. To me, it was a dream to someday have as large a music collection as my father, so I could listen to so much great music any time I wanted. I used to spend hours in my bedroom making mix-tapes I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, when we thought mix-tapes were cool. The world and technology moved on, and now it doesn’t make sense to build giant collections of albums and cd’s when a streaming service can offer us far more music than any reasonable human could ever own. Further, we can recreate the fun of those mix-tapes with playlists- the modern equivalent. I love music and never have I had so much access to music as I have with streaming services. The great thing about these boutique services is that they claim to offer even more music, 60 million tracks for Tidal and 40 million for Qobuz. I do find that they seem to have more eclectic choices, with a broader selection of world music, classical, and jazz. They all seem to equally cover modern pop, rock, hip-hop, electronic music, and classic rock. The main reason to choose one service over another is likely going to be sound quality and the selection of more obscure music.
But…This brings us back to the issue of quality. The primary reason most of us held onto our CD collections was that the sound quality exceeded that of the streaming services. Several reviewers and friends I have talked to have indicated that the streaming services such as Tidal and Qobuz do not sound as good as CD and should not be used for serious listening. I have to wonder what they are listening to.
First, a FLAC file provides no loss of sound quality over that of the original file stored on the CD. It is not perceptually lossless, it’s actually lossless. However, just like no amount of science will ever convince a flat-earther that the earth is really round, no amount of science will likely help me prove to a non-believer that lossless FLAC is the equal of CD. Or, is something else going on here? Could Tidal and Qobuz modify the albums they stream to lower the data rate of their lossless FLAC files? I asked Qobuz and Tidal and received the same basic answer. They do not process the files in any way, they simply take the music they get from the studios and host it on their servers for streaming. Any loss of quality would be the result of a modification the studio has made. With that being true, I see no reason that a CD-quality FLAC stream could possibly sound worse than the original CD. My guess is that these reviewers are not listening to the same albums. A lot of classic albums have been reissued and remastered (often to the detriment of good sound) making the provenance of the streaming track come into question. While it should be obvious in the labeling of the music, I found a handful of Queen and Elton John albums which appeared to be mislabeled as the original, but sounding and measuring the same as a later remaster. Tidal being the bigger offender in this regard. All this to say, in most cases, there is no sound quality difference between CD and the FLAC based streaming services. Any difference I heard could be associated with a difference in provenance.
What about the Price Difference?
Apple and Spotify costs $9.99 a month for a lossy service, and they do not offer a lossless option. Amazon is $7.99 a month (with a Prime membership), which I suppose you might call a bargain of the bunch. Tidal is also $9.99 a month for their lossy service. Noticing a trend here? Yeah, they all cost the same. “But wait”, you say, “I thought Tidal was twice as expensive. This is a sign of bad advertising on Tidal’s part or bad misinformation from the media (Fake News maybe). Tidal is no more expensive than anyone else for an equal product.
As I already noted, I think the lossless service is worth the cost of entry. As someone who used to buy a new album or two every month, if not more, spending $20 a month is not a big deal. Qobuz is $9.99 a month for their basic lossy service, but they offer a discount to $99 a year if you pay for the entire year. You can get their Hi-fi plan, which provides CD-quality for $19.99 a month ($199 a year) to match Tidal, and their Studio plan is priced at $24.99 ($249.99 a year) for High-Resolution quality. Further, they offer a top tier for $299 a year, which provides the same access to Studio quality tracks along with discounts on purchased tracks. I am already seeing other media outlets proclaim Qobuz as another streaming service offering the same service like Spotify or Apple for much more money, and again I say, they just don’t get it.
You may be asking why you should pay twice as much, or more, for better quality tracks. After all, a lot of marketing has gone into trying to convince us that perceptual compression algorithms are now so good that they are indistinguishable from lossless CD quality and that CD quality is auditory perfection. Is that true? I don’t know, but that doesn’t jive with my personal experience, at least to a point.
Research on Lossy vs Lossless Compression
Let’s start with the basics; lossy compression uses what is known as perceptual coding. This is a method of getting rid of parts of the music that we don’t tend to perceive when presented in conjunction with other aspects of the music. It relies heavily on the notion of masking, which is where certain sounds or artifacts are masked by other sounds, especially as they get louder. It is generally built around red book CD at 16 bits and 44.1 kHz, which gives a theoretical 96dB dynamic range and extension from below 20 Hz to around 22 kHz. Extensive research into how we hear and how masking works has allowed us to create models of hearing that suggest that compression at 320kbs is, for the most part, close to indistinguishable from CD quality. In my listening comparisons, I have been able to identify particular musical content that remains easily distinguished between lossless and lossy compression, and it was these comparisons of these particular tracks that lead me to decide I couldn’t live with a lossy streaming service. Am I fooling myself into believing something that research doesn’t support? Well, I don’t think research on this topic is so clear cut. We can further muddy the waters by going to the pièce de résistance of Qobuz, it’s offering of High-Resolution tracks.
If 320kbs lossy compressed tracks are close enough to CD, why would we need something even better? The research into this topic is pretty poor, to be honest, but we do have a meta-analysis (a sort of study of studies) that looked specifically at the high sampling rate. A paper by Joshua Reiss examined the overall evidence of 18 studies with appropriate data to see if listeners could discriminate between high sampling rate tracks and those tracks played back at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz. What was the preponderance of evidence in this study? A small but significant finding suggesting that people can distinguish high sampling rate music, and this effect gets stronger with training for what to listen for. Does this meta-analysis prove that high-resolution audio is better than CD quality, let alone lossy compressed formats? Not really, but it does suggest we can’t dismiss high sampling rateaudio as a waste of time. These studies only establish that it wasaudibly distinguishable. For all we know, it sounded worse. Further, itdidn’t test high bit-rate music.
What would the advantages of 24 bit and 192 kHz music even be? It would theoretically give you a far wider dynamic range- over 144dB- and with noise shaping dither, all of these can be further extended. What can a human hear? At least 140dB’s. We don’t need this much for music, and there are several reasons why this is so. First, just because you can hear it doesn’t mean you want to. A 140dB dynamic range means hearing sounds from 0 (no audible sound) to 140dB (Instant pain and hearing loss). That is really loud, and (I’m sure you already figured this out) your stereo can’t reproduce that. However, all else being equal, if we can have 24 bits instead of 16 bits, thereby gaining some theoretical benefits, then why not.
What about that sampling rate? I have my theory about why high sampling rates might be audibly superior, and it isn’t that we can hear past 20 kHz. It's possible, but more research is needed. If we can hear above 20 kHz, we need to figure out how, since the human ear is not capable of reacting much past 20 kHz. However, it is possible that by sampling at a higher frequency, the deleterious effect of the digital low pass filter is moved farther out of the audible range and reduces any possibility of problems it may introduce. By doing this at the point of encoding, it reduces the possibility that this effect is encoded in the content (hence why it's preferable over up-sampling). I say again, if we can have high sampling rate music with minimal to no extra cost, then why not. It isn’t hurting anything. This brings us back to Qobuz; a service that provides the music I love in a format that is guaranteed to do no harm. Qobuz and Tidal both offer high sampling and high bit rate “HD” music.
Editorial Note: Hearing vs Age by Gene DellaSala
As we get older, our ability to hear high frequencies diminish by the following rate: 20925 - (age x 166) = max Frequency you can hear. IE. An average person of age 45 has an upper limit of hearing at around 13.45kHz. Food for thought when you see older audiophiles debating the merits of exotic cables and how they affect the sound of their systems.
Qobuz vs Tidal
Let's start our comparison of Qobuz and Tidal by first comparing both to Apple music, another service I have access to. If we take sound quality out of the equation, they are all the same. The interfaces are different, but my experience has been that these differences are subjective. Each has some features or design attributes I like better than the other. When I switch to Tidal, I like its dark, mostly black look. Its sleek, modern, and easy to navigate. Since it is the primary way I listen to music, it is the service I am most familiar with. What does Qobuz offer compared to Tidal in this regard? It’s a white interface, so it is much brighter. It’s a more pleasant interface to navigate. Other differences are that when I pick an artist, I often get information about that artist. I’ve not noticed that kind of detail with Tidal. I don’t care since I use it to listen to music, but it’s nice, nonetheless. Overall, I find the user interface for Qobuz to be similar (In general, I find all the modern streaming services similar) to Tidal. It's intuitive, easy to use, and it gets the job done. Qobuz makes it easier to switch the sound quality and output device, and this made it easier to compare the different modes.
What would I have liked? Amazon offers lyrics, and I wish all these services offered lyrics. I like to sing along to the music sometimes (I’ve borne my soul to you). Qobuz makes it easy and obvious to switch between ASIO, WASAPI, WASAPI Exclusive, and DirectSound. I know some folks lose sleep over this stuff. I couldn’t hear any difference between these modes and I used WASAPI exclusive for all my listening tests.
Did Qobuz sound noticeably better than Tidal? I couldn’t tell with anything I tried. I played a range of music from classic rock from Elton John, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, to pop music from Michael Jackson, Ariana Grande, and Phil Collins, and classical and Jazz that I thought might take advantage of the High-Resolution format. As I type this, I am listening to “Tiny Dancer” from Elton John’s MadMan Across the Water in 24-bit 96 kHz. It sounds great. As good as I’veever heard it? Sure. But better than I’ve ever heard it? I don’t knowabout that. It’s noticeably louder and more compressed than the originalLP record album, a product of modern times I suppose. Wanting to see how some wide dynamic range music fared, I put on the extremely dynamic “Tin Pan Alley” from Stevie Ray Vaughns Couldn’t Stand the Weather. This is one of those songs that uses dynamic gradation in such a special way where it helps tell the story by adding more color to the song. Through the Qobuz service in 24-bit 96 kHz, it again sounded about the same as it did on Tidal. I thought at times it sounded a little fuller, maybe a little more dynamic, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I had no way to blind myself to the apps, and I certainly wouldn’t want to place a wager on any differences I heard. I know a lot of folks are doing tests themselves, sighted listening tests, and concluding that Qobuz is superior. I strongly believe, after my listening tests, that if we put these same individuals through an ABX test, they wouldn’t be so confident in the end. Why? Because I didn’t just listen, I analyzed the files to find differences. What I found was that differences in musical provenance explained any measured differences, otherwise, the two were identical.
Qobuz vs Tidal Analysis
As noted, subjectively it was hard to tell the difference between Tidal Masters and Qobuz Studio. In fact, it was hard to tell the difference between the high-resolution tracks from either and that of the Red book CD-quality tracks. I was curious if the various streams measured any differently and decided to set up an experiment that would allow me to extract the audio from the streaming services, analyze the tracks, and share objective differences with our readership. To do this I used a virtual loopback software known as VB-cable, Audacity, along with MusicScope, a music file analysis software. I captured the streams into Audacity as 24 bit, 192khz files (regardless of the stream quality).
What I found was surprising. First, most of the music has no HF content at all, so even the high definition streams had very little content near 20khz, let alone above it (Ok that isn’t so surprising). The purpose of this analysis was not to look for objectively measurable audible differences, rather, just to look for any differences. I analyzed dozens of files, but to keep this article manageable, we will just look at a recent tribute to John Williams Jurassic Park theme. I chose this track because it did contain ultra-high frequency content allowing for a fair comparison and the album was new enough that no provenance issue could be a concern. Are there differences? Clearly, but they all appear in ways that I suspect cannot be audible. There is more roll-off of the high-frequency noise near the 48khz limit. That noise is already way down in level, it is not musical, and it is highly doubtful your equipment can reproduce that, let alone you be able to hear it. I also see a difference between the HF energy between 12khz and 24khz, but the differences are very slight. Again, this appears to be largely differences in noise rather than actual musical content.
What do I conclude? Nothing yet, I’m still examining files to look for signs of meaningful differences. So far, the evidence suggests we shouldn’t worry so much about any kind of sound quality loss with MQA on Tidal, as I’m not finding any differences of consequence so far. Could there be differences I am not measuring? I suppose, and if my readers have ideas, I’m open to further exploration.
Qobuz Complaints?
I don’t have many complaints: the app is well-executed, music is easy to find, their catalog is huge. The only thing I couldn’t find was typically obscure stuff not available on any of the streaming services (Shades of Dring, Lewis Nash, etc.). However, I did find that the search algorithm wasn’t as good as Tidal’s (or the competition) in that it sometimes brought up bad matches to my search criteria. Lewis Nash is my favorite jazz drummer, and a lot of his music isn’t widely available. However, he played with a lot of more famous artists, which Tidal picks up. Qobuz brought up everything with “Nash” in the name. Occasionally I notice Qobuz being a CPU hog, using about a quarter of my CPU’s resources. While multitasking, I occasionally had a slight glitch. Nevertheless, the app never locked up or crashed on my laptop or phone. During the beta period, the app felt polished. However, its beta nature eventually showed through, and that roughness stuck with me. I had a lot of problems with dropouts on Qobuz while using the iOS phone app or the SONOS integration. As of the completion of this article, I still was having these problems (though it seems each firmware and software update resolved some of these issues).
Is a Tidal Divorce In My Future?
At the intro to this article, I noted that I might be switching to Qobuz. If you read this review carefully, you will see that, while there are some technical advantages to Qobuz, my experience with it was that it sounded just as good as Tidal, my current reference streaming service, but not necessarily better. The music catalog was similar. The sound was similar. The software was glitchy at times and is not well integrated into most of my hardware. So why switch? Tidal often makes recommendations for music or video content that I am not interested in. I find the way it foists this content on me supremely annoying. A lot of the music I place into my playlists becomes unavailable later. On Qobuz, a lot of that music was available, and I liked the way content was laid out. The differences aren’t huge, but given these differences, and the identical cost, why not? Plus, people might shun me at the audio shows and events I attend if I’m not using the hottest new thing, and Qobuz is the hottest new streaming service on the block. Do I recommend it? As I stated earlier, I love streaming services, I think there are a lot of great options, and Qobuz is certainly one of them. Of all the options, I think that Tidal and Qobuz are the best options, given their ability to playback at CD or better quality. Should you switch from Tidal to Qobuz? I don’t think that one is superior to the other, and I could be happy with either. Tidal has more integrated support with hardware right now, but Qobuz is working on that. I suggest taking advantage of their free trial and trying it for yourself. What streaming app you are using is certainly nothing to lose sleep over.
Tell is what your favorite streaming app is in the related forum thread below.
Sometime soon, hopefully before the end of 2018, North American audiophiles will have their choice of two high-resolution music-streaming services. One of them is a familiar name -- now available in 57 countries, Tidal has been operating in North America since 2015. The other is a relative unknown, at least on the west side of the Atlantic.
Based in France, Qobuz has been operating since 2007, but until now has been available only in a few European countries. In January, at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Qobuz announced that it would launch a North American service this year. The US would come first, with Canada following a few months later. That launch was supposed to happen at the 2018 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, in October. In late September, David Solomon, Qobuz’s chief evangelist for hi-rez music, told me that that date had slipped, and that Qobuz would announce its North American launch date “certainly in the last quarter” of 2018.
I’ve had a demo account of Qobuz since last January, and have been listening to Tidal’s Masters tier since its launch, in January 2017. I’ve had ample opportunity to compare the two services. However, as I completed this feature in late October, the North American version of Qobuz was still a work in progress. My demo account of Qobuz was for the European version. Because Qobuz must negotiate licensing agreements with rights holders for each region in which it offers its service, the eventual selection of music available on Qobuz US might well differ from what I’ve been enjoying, as might the software and the user interface.
Tidal, too, is in flux. That service has desktop and mobile apps, but with a couple of exceptions, Tidal’s mobile apps don’t yet support hi-rez playback. Rumors have circulated for months that Tidal would soon issue apps permitting hi-rez playback on mobile devices, but as I put this piece to bed that had yet to happen.
Of course, streaming services are always in flux -- in terms of the content offered, the software and user experience, and which devices are compatible with which services. But the current situation is unusually fluid.
Wars of religion
Qobuz’s arrival in the New World promises to stoke one of audio’s hottest controversies: the merits of Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) technology. Tidal uses MQA for its high-resolution Masters tier; Qobuz uses the nonproprietary FLAC format. Playing the same recordings, does one of these services sound better than the other? Do Tidal and Qobuz sound different at all? Comparing the sound quality of the two services can help shed light on the MQA debate.
MQA vs. non-MQA is the latest of audio’s wars of religion, and one of the most bitterly fought. Maybe that’s because so much of the fighting now takes place on social media and Internet forums. Granted, the combatants aren’t impaling their enemies or burning them alive, as happened in Europe’s wars of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries. Even so, I’m repulsed by the ad hominem slurs and character assassinations that have marked the debate. This behavior has implications far beyond audio: It poisons public discourse throughout the world.
The MQA debate can’t be avoided, because sound quality is one factor that listeners must consider when choosing between Tidal and Qobuz. But Tidal’s use of MQA and Qobuz’s use of standard FLAC have many other implications, notably the equipment required to get the most out of each service. There are other important issues: the music available on each service, and those services’ user interfaces.
MQA: recap
Originally developed by UK-based Meridian Audio and announced in 2014, MQA was subsequently spun off as a separate company.
MQA packs high-resolution audio into a file about 50% larger than a lossless standard-resolution file, using a process MQA poetically terms “musical origami.” The limited amount of energy in higher frequency bands (above 22.05 or 24kHz) is “folded” into the lowest bits of a 24-bit/44.1kHz or 24/48 file. When played through an MQA-compatible system, high-resolution audio is “unfolded” and passed on to the DAC.
Critics of MQA question the need for reduced file size, citing the availability of fast broadband Internet service. That’s true for people in urban centers, but rural residents aren’t so fortunate.
In our home in Toronto, Canada, the download speed is typically over 80Mbps. Qobuz and Tidal are both rock-solid. At our vacation home in a small beach town on Lake Huron, the fastest Internet service available to us has a rated download speed of 6Mpbs. Often, the actual speed is 2Mbps or lower. With Qobuz, I frequently experience dropouts at this location when playing hi-rez music. This happens less often with Tidal.
There’s more to MQA than reduced file size. MQA’s stated goal is the experience of end-to-end losslessness: from the analog output of the mixing console to the analog output of the digital playback device. To do this, MQA seeks to mitigate filtering artifacts that are inherent to digital recording, a process MQA calls “temporal deblurring.”
According to MQA, the anti-aliasing filters used in recording and the reconstruction filters used in playback add ringing artifacts that smear sharp transient sounds, such as a staccato piano note. Depending on the filter design, this ringing can occur before and after the transient, an effect that never occurs in nature (or in analog recording). Filter pre-ringing can disrupt a recording’s portrayal of space, scale, and timing, MQA says, and add glare to the sound.
During MQA encoding of existing digital recordings, a secondary filter is applied to reduce the ringing artifacts introduced in the A-to-D process. During playback through an MQA-capable DAC, the reconstruction filter algorithm is designed to minimize ringing artifacts in the music being played. The need for this processing, and its efficacy, have been hotly debated on Internet forums and in the audiophile press. MQA’s claims are controversial, to say the least.
The arrival of Qobuz will give listeners an opportunity to test MQA’s claims for themselves. When Mike Jbara, CEO of MQA Ltd., visited Toronto in late June, I asked him if MQA streams and their FLAC counterparts usually come from the same source, with MQA processing being added for Tidal’s Masters versions. “Yes,” he replied. “We wouldn’t want anyone to be claiming that there’s one digital master for one purpose, like a FLAC download, and another for another purpose, like a Tidal stream.”
Even if the masters Tidal and Qobuz use for their hi-rez streams are different, comparisons are justified from a real-world perspective. These, after all, are the options available for people who want to stream in hi-rez.
Selection
When Jbara and I spoke, he said that over a million tracks had so far been encoded in MQA. On its support page, Tidal says it has “over one million [MQA-encoded] tracks from our Tidal artist owners and key independent labels. We will continue to add more master-quality content over time.”
Tidal shows the most recent Masters Quality Albums on the home page of its desktop app. Choosing the View All option will display the most recent 500 albums in Masters quality. On the basis of Tidal’s app, it’s hard to verify the million-track claim. According to a list on the Meridian Unplugged forum (self-described as “the most complete list of MQA albums so far found on Tidal”), there were over 12,600 MQA-encoded albums in Tidal’s Masters tier as of late October.
Whatever the number of hi-rez tracks on Tidal, it’s a small part of its total catalog, which, according to Wikipedia, now numbers 58.5 million tracks. But Tidal’s hi-rez catalog is clearly growing, with new albums added every week.
In January, Qobuz claimed to have a million hi-rez tracks (80,000 albums), compared to 40 million tracks in CD resolution. According to Solomon, Qobuz had “over two million” hi-rez tracks as of late September.
I find more of the music I love in hi-rez on Qobuz than on Tidal, but my tastes fall outside the mainstream. As of late October, Qobuz had 153 albums by the early-music specialist Jordi Savall, 38 of them in hi-rez. Tidal had 150, but none in hi-rez. Tidal had 101 albums by the jazz and classical pianist Keith Jarrett, 21 of them in hi-rez. Qobuz had 213 Jarrett albums, 21 in hi-rez. But in Tidal’s app, Jarrett’s work is confusingly spread among three different categories: Albums, Compilations, and Live Albums -- if you’re searching for a specific album by him, you might well miss it. Even more confusing, while most of Jarrett’s live albums are indeed found in that category, a few are listed under Albums. In my experience, Qobuz manages metadata better than Tidal -- it’s easier to find the music you’re looking for.
While all genres are represented in Tidal’s Masters tier, it skews to mainstream tastes. I’ve found hi-rez albums there that I don’t see on Qobuz. Both services have hi-rez versions of the 2015 Paisley Park remastering of Prince’s Purple Rain. Qobuz offers the album in 24/44.1 FLAC, Tidal in 24/192 MQA.
It’s impossible to go through tens of thousands of albums to see which service has the more interesting hi-rez library -- and, of course, everyone will have different ideas of what makes an album interesting. Moreover, Qobuz’s North American and European hi-rez offerings could differ. Music lovers will have to assess this for themselves.
Playback
MQA-encoded audio can be distributed in standard file containers (e.g., WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC), which can be played on non-MQA equipment at standard resolution (16/44.1 or 16/48). MQA says listeners will enjoy some of the “temporal deblurring” benefits of its encoding process even through playback systems with no MQA capability.
Of course, the gold standard for MQA playback is to use MQA-capable hardware. MQA-capable DACs are now available from many companies, including dCS, exaSound, and Mytek, to name only a few. MQA decoding is also offered in some amps and preamps with built-in DACs, as well as in powered speakers and CD players. Some portable devices, such as Astell&Kern digital players and a few high-end LG smartphones, also have MQA capability.
Many listeners will be unwilling to buy new hardware just to stream hi-rez audio from Tidal. But if you’re playing music from a PC or Mac, there are some useful halfway houses. Tidal’s desktop apps for Windows and macOS, as well as the Amarra, Audirvana, and Roon music-management softwares, all have MQA capability. They can perform the first “unfolding” of an MQA stream, then pass data on to the DAC. In this case, listeners get the benefit of MQA encoding, plus hi-rez audio up to 24/88.2 or 24/96, with a non-MQA DAC. If they’re using a DAC with MQA rendering capability (such as AudioQuest’s DragonFly Black 1.5 or DragonFly Red), they’ll get full MQA playback -- not just resolution beyond 24/88.2 and 24/96, but also MQA’s playback filtering. That can’t be done with a non-MQA DAC; because the software doesn’t “know” the characteristics of the DAC, it can’t apply a suitable complementary filter.
To enable MQA decoding in Tidal’s desktop app, access the Settings menu and select Streaming. Then, in the list of Streaming Audio Quality options, choose Masters.
The situation with Qobuz is much simpler: If your system will play hi-rez FLAC files, you can stream hi-rez music from Qobuz. All you need is the Qobuz app, which is available for Windows and macOS. No extra settings are required.
If you’re using a streamer rather than a PC or Mac for in-home playback, there is a question to consider. Does your hardware have client software for Tidal and/or Qobuz? If so, you’re good to go for that service. But with Tidal, you’ll be limited to CD resolution unless you use the streamer with an MQA-capable DAC.
User experience
In the desktop apps for both services, you can create playlists, and save your favorite albums, tracks, and artists for easy recall. Tidal groups your preferred albums, tracks, and artists (and videos) under the heading My Collection, which is prominently displayed in the left-hand pane of the home screen. Qobuz groups these as Favorites, accessible by clicking the little heart icon at the top of the home screen.
Discovering new music is a big part of the appeal of streaming services, and for this, Tidal and Qobuz offer different tools.
In the Home menu of Tidal’s app are listings and playlists of new Masters albums. In the Explore menu you can check out playlists, browse new albums, and view essential recordings of your preferred genre. For most genres, Tidal will expose users to some pretty interesting music. (For classical it’s kind of pathetic, but most services have trouble with this genre.) Tidal recommends new music based on tracks you’ve played, and I’ve found its recommendations pretty reliable. Tidal also offers exclusive concerts and podcasts, and has a separate section, “Tidal Rising,” devoted to emerging artists.
Qobuz Vs Tidal Vs Deezer Vs Spotify
In Qobuz’s home screen you can view new releases in your preferred genres, and listen to playlists highlighting new releases, and others that focus on specific performers and labels. The New Releases menu has a feature I especially like: Press Awards, which lists albums that have received awards or high ratings from such publications as Gramophone, Jazz News, Diapason, and Fono Forum. I have found loads of great music with this tool.
Qobuz and Tidal both offer artist bios and album commentary, but Qobuz has more of this enhanced content, and it’s of better quality. Qobuz also has a really nice extra: With many albums, there’s a Read Digital Booklet option that you can click to read liner notes. This is available in the Qobuz desktop app, but not with players like Audirvana. Overall, I prefer Qobuz’s interface and discovery tools; but in terms of musical tastes, I’m kind of an outlier.
Tidal users have another software option: Roon. Tidal is integrated into Roon Labs’ subscription-based music-management software. If you’re a Roon user, you’ll get more extensive artist bios and album write-ups than you get on Tidal’s own app, as well as a richer, more attractive interface and enhanced metadata. But Roon isn’t cheap: $119/year, or $499 for a lifetime subscription.
Mobile playback
Tidal and Qobuz both have mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. If you’ve designated favorite albums, artists, or tracks on either service’s desktop app, they’ll show up in the mobile app after you’ve logged in. Most of the differences I’ve noted about the desktop apps apply here as well.
Tidal’s and Qobuz’s mobile apps let you download music to your smart device via Wi-Fi and cellular. Your downloads remain on your device as long as you’re logged in. Log out, or delete the app, and they’re gone. You can select the quality level separately for Wi-Fi and cellular, which is a good thing. Unless you have a really big data plan, you don’t want to be downloading (or streaming) lots of hi-rez music over cellular. The attraction of this feature is that it lets you load up your device with hi-rez or lossless music when you’re on Wi-Fi, then listen to it when you’re on cellular, or when you have no coverage at all.
Qobuz’s mobile apps support hi-rez playback, for both streaming and downloads from the service. As of this writing Tidal’s mobile apps don’t support MQA, so you’re limited to CD resolution. That could change at any time. There have been rumors for several months that Tidal will release mobile apps with MQA support, but this has yet to happen. However, Tidal does support MQA decoding on a few high-end smartphones, including LG’s G7 ThinQ, which I recently reviewed for Simplifi.
A footnote to that review: Just after I completed it, LG announced its first Android One smartphone. The G7 One has the same sleek cosmetics and bright 6.1” screen as the G7 ThinQ. But it dispenses with LG’s Android skin, and ships with only Google apps -- there’s no pre-installed app for playing locally stored music. While the G7 One has the same ESS Sabre HiFi Quad DAC as the G7 ThinQ, it doesn’t support MQA playback, contrary to reports on at least one audiophile site. Other differences include a less powerful processor, less built-in storage (32 rather than 64GB), and a single rather than double rear camera.
On the road: For in-car listening, Tidal’s mobile apps are compatible with both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. That means you can connect your smart device to a compatible car stereo and control playback from the dashboard. Before taking a long trip, I use Tidal’s mobile app to download some favorite new albums to my iPhone via Wi-Fi, then cue up the music I want from my car stereo’s touchscreen.
As of this writing, Qobuz’s mobile apps don’t support CarPlay or Android Auto, so dashboard control of playback isn’t possible. You can connect your mobile phone to a CarPlay or Android Auto component and stream from Qobuz, but you have to select music from the phone.
Losing my religion
Listening to the same hi-rez tracks on the two services, I’ve generally found that Qobuz sounds a little more incisive and detailed, Tidal a little more rounded and organic. But these differences are tiny. For this report I did additional listening, and it mainly confirmed my earlier experiences.
To compare the sonic differences between Tidal and Qobuz on a system that decodes MQA in software, I began with Where the River Goes, a new album by an all-star jazz quintet led by Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel (24/88.2, ECM), played through a Mac Mini running Audirvana, connected to a Dynaudio Connect wireless module that sends digital audio to Dynaudio Focus XD 200 active bookshelf speakers.
In “Clearing,” my favorite track from this album, were the transients of Muthspiel’s guitar and Brad Mehldau’s piano a tiny bit more rounded in the Tidal version, a little sharper in the Qobuz version? Did Eric Harland’s snare drum have a bit more snap in Qobuz? Were the backgrounds in Qobuz a bit “blacker”? Forced to respond, I’d answer all these questions in the affirmative, while acknowledging that expectation bias could have played a role in my observations. If there were any differences, they were minuscule.
In this system, Audirvana does the first unfolding of MQA content, but the Dynaudio Connect/XD system is not MQA-compatible, so it doesn’t do MQA playback filtering. My headphone rig does. My Mac Mini feeds an iFi Audio Micro iDSD Black Label DAC-headphone amp, now MQA-capable following a recent firmware update.
Listening again to “Clearing” through HiFiMan’s Edition X V2 headphones, my impressions were similar. In a quiet section at the end, where Muthspiel plays an acoustic guitar while Ambrose Akinmusire responds with some wonderful trumpet effects, backgrounds seemed a tad “darker” via the Qobuz stream. The Qobuz stream also seemed more incisive, making me more aware of the interplay among the musicians. But there was a slightly greater sense of space in the Tidal stream, and instruments sounded a little more embodied. Again, the differences were tiny.
My recent review of DALI’s Callisto 2 C active speakers provided an opportunity to compare Qobuz and fully decoded Tidal Masters versions of the same music in my main listening room. Among other benefits, installing the optional BluOS module in the system’s wireless transmitter adds MQA decoding.
I hate sounding like a broken record, but with “Re-Melt,” from the Tord Gustavsen Trio’s The Other Side (ECM), Tidal’s 24/96 MQA stream sounded a little rounder and warmer through the Callisto system, Qobuz’s 24/96 FLAC stream a little more incisive. Again, the difference was tiny. The truth is, both sounded wonderful.
Deezer Vs Tidal Vs Qobuz Sound Quality
What if I went back to an earlier time in the digital era, when recordings were usually captured, mixed, and mastered at CD resolution? Would MQA’s purported ability to reduce filtering artifacts make more of a difference here? I looked for classical recordings from that era by period-music specialists John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, and Roger Norrington. While their labels are supporting MQA, I found no Tidal Masters versions of any of their albums from that era.
Moving to the mainstream, Tidal and Qobuz both had 24/88.2 versions of the 25th Anniversary Edition of R.E.M.’s Out of Time (Concord). I played both from Audirvana on my Mac Mini, through the iFi Micro iDSD Black Label and HiFiMan Edition X V2s. Was Qobuz’s FLAC version of “Losing My Religion” a tiny bit harsher than Tidal’s MQA version, or was I experiencing some form of expectation bias? I think I heard a difference, but whatever it was, it wasn’t worth worrying about.
Over the last nine months I’ve conducted similar comparisons of music by Quicksilver Messenger Service, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, the Grateful Dead, and Yes; Haydn piano trios and Shostakovich symphonies; and jazz singers such as Norah Jones and Youn Sun Nah -- all with similar results. The Qobuz version usually struck me as more dramatic and exciting, with sharper transients. The Tidal version usually seemed a little warmer and embodied, more like music being produced by real humans. Sometimes I’ve felt quite confident in my opinions on the sonic differences, other times less so. But the differences have always seemed slight.
Call me an agnostic.
The hi-rez difference
Spotify Vs Deezer Vs Tidal
I’m not agnostic about hi-rez streaming. I’ve consistently found that lossless services like Tidal HiFi sound better than services that use lossy compression; and that hi-rez services sound better still.
Here’s one example. In “The Old Shade Tree,” the lead track of Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau, a wonderful collaboration between the bluegrass singer-mandolinist and the jazz pianist (Nonesuch), Tidal’s 24/96 MQA stream had a greater sense of space and less digital glare than its 16/44.1 FLAC stream. It wasn’t a night-and-day difference, but it was noticeable and worthwhile. My experience comparing Qobuz’s 16/44.1 and 24/96 FLAC streams on the same track was similar.
Apple Music Vs Qobuz
Both were better than Apple Music’s compressed AAC stream, which sounded flatter and less engaging, with less space between the notes. Everything was more mushed together. That said, it was still satisfying -- more than good enough for casual listening.
But there are better-sounding options, if you’re willing to pay for them. Apple Music and Spotify both charge $10/month (Spotify also has a free, ad-supported tier). Tidal charges $10/month for its Premium service, which uses lossy compression, and $20/month for its HiFi lossless/Masters hi-rez tier.
As I wrapped up this piece, Qobuz still hadn’t announced its subscription prices for North America. In the UK, Qobuz charges £10/month for its Premium tier, which uses MP3 compression at 320kbps; £20/month for its Hi-Fi lossless CD-resolution service; and £25/month (about $32 USD) for its new Studio service, which offers hi-rez streaming up to 24/192.
Which Is Better Tidal Or Qobuz
It would be nice to have a hi-rez streaming service that combines the best of Tidal and Qobuz: Tidal’s support of CarPlay and Android Auto and its integration with Roon, coupled with Qobuz’s more interesting catalog and richer interface. But that’s not how things work. In the real world, you pays yer money and you makes yer choice.
Deezer Vs Tidal 2020
. . . Gordon Brockhouse
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.