Spotify premium? Tidal or Qobuz or what ? Argh [emoji37]

[andyrlb]

I hope I’ve posted this in the correct place, sorry if I haven’t mods .
I’m about ready to pull out my remaining hairs with all the choices so can someone PLEASE help !

I currently use my Sony PS4 to stream Spotify premium to my Jolida DAC, some people say “ nah Spotify premium is shite “ you want tidal or Qobuz , now I have to say that some or maybe most of what I’ve listened to on Spotify premium makes my ears almost bleed , is SP that bad ? Some tunes sound great I must say but shouldn’t all of them ?
Now if I take the leap over to tidal or Qobuz I will need another/different device ( hence the Jolida being for sale )
I’m told get a bluesound node 2i ( £400-£500 ) then get tidal .
What should I do ?


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[Poldark]

I'm not a great expert, having only recently moved to streaming, but I have compared Spotify Connect to Tidal (both on their Standard services circa £10 monthly).

To me on sound quality Tidal is clearly superior, even on fairly entry level DACs.

I can only suspect if you move to better equipment that Tidal will always have the edge. And that's without their HiFi service offering even higher quality.

From online research the Node 2i is a worthwhile piece of kit, but there are other lower priced options too.

Best of luck

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[Alex_UK]

I subscribe to both Spotify Premium (Family) and Tidal Hi-Fi (I think it's called.) Max quality with Spotify is 320kbps (Ogg Vorbis) which is perfectly fine for the car (when it was used!) and kitchen system but Tidal sounds better in "Hi-Fi" (CD) quality and many albums are available in "Master" quality - which generally sound amazing to my ears. I much prefer the Spotify interface, but the Tidal sound quality edges it for critical listening for me.

[struth]

You will need a way of streaming it. Qobuz is imo better audibly to tidal, although tidal may just have a better catalogue. Qobuz is also better laid out.
Both sound good.
I use a laptop but there are other ways like was mentioned.
Don't know what tidal charge currently but I pay £15 for qobuz studio which it a great deal.
As said, Spotify can be good or not so good, but rarely sounds great in a high rez system.

Depending on what you use, u might need a dac too.

[andyrlb]

Thanks guys , so it’s between tidal and Qobuz which means buying new hardware , PS4 doesn’t allow the use of either and I don’t own a laptop ( only a desktop pc ) .
The Jolida dac is fantastic imo so the concern then would be is how would the node 2i’s dac perform in comparison.


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[paulf-2007]

If it makes your ears bleed then it's your kit as my ears don't bleed with Spotify.

[andyrlb]

If it makes your ears bleed then it's your kit as my ears don't bleed with Spotify.

Definitely not the kit though it was listenable when my kit was not as good , I’m now streaming flac files from the pc and it’s bliss.


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[jonners]

Tidal have a good offer going if that helps: https://www.whathifi.com/news/get-four-months-of-any-tidal-plan-for-just-pound4-with-this-streaming-deal-of-the-year

[andyrlb]

Tidal have a good offer going if that helps: https://www.whathifi.com/news/get-four-months-of-any-tidal-plan-for-just-pound4-with-this-streaming-deal-of-the-year

Thanks [emoji1303]


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[ianlenco]

I too have been thinking about streaming options and notice that Qobuz do a lot of hi res stuff as well as CD quality. A quick look through their offerings for some of the less mainstream stuff I listen to showed they had all I wanted.
If you like your Jolida then why not keep it and buy my Innuos Zen mini :) You could take out the free, time limited subscriptions to Tidal and Qobuz as well as linking to your Spotify account - the Zen will do them all - and also rip all your CDs onto the Zen's 1Tb hard disc.

https://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?68792-Innuos-Zen-Mini-Mk-II-with-linear-power-supply

[andyrlb]

I too have been thinking about streaming options and notice that Qobuz do a lot of hi res stuff as well as CD quality. A quick look through their offerings for some of the less mainstream stuff I listen to showed they had all I wanted.
If you like your Jolida then why not keep it and buy my Innuos Zen mini :) You could take out the free, time limited subscriptions to Tidal and Qobuz as well as linking to your Spotify account - the Zen will do them all - and also rip all your CDs onto the Zen's 1Tb hard disc.

https://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?68792-Innuos-Zen-Mini-Mk-II-with-linear-power-supply

If I wasn’t currently furloughed I probably would look at buying your Zen but needs be must so the Jolida would fund a streamer/dac hence the bluesound node 2i , I appreciate it though [emoji1303]


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[brian2957]

If it makes your ears bleed then it's your kit as my ears don't bleed with Spotify.

Aye Spotify sounds very good in my system too :)

[Ali Tait]

I have both Tidal and Qobuz, both very good to my ears. A few folk say Qobuz sounds better, but I can’t hear any difference, both sound good to me.

[hifinutt]

I just love my spotify premium through the jolida , loads of choice of music and sounds pretty fine

[andyrlb]

I just love my spotify premium through the jolida , loads of choice of music and sounds pretty fine

But the fact is that it’s not lossless Phil ,I’ve been comparing my Spotify premium against lossless ( streamed from my pc ) today, track for track and I won’t be listening to Spotify again.


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[Macca]

If you're hearing obvious difference then most likely explanation is that the different sites are using different masterings.

If you could name a couple of the songs you've compared maybe people here with both services could also do the comparison and see what they think?

[struth]

I liked spotty too, and with use of the buyable parametric equaliser sounded very good on cans with many albums. Not so good through the main system tho for me.
Quboz is my fav these days but tidal sounds great too. Both via roon are a pleasure to use

[This boy can wait]

I’ve just been going through all of this comparing Tidal, Qobuz and briefly Amazon HD.

For me, Qobuz has come out on top because it sounds slightly better through my system. Amazon HD could have sounded great but the user interface was so horrible that I couldn’t be bothered to spend time on it.

Relevant facts are that I’m using my laptop as a transport and playing back via Audirvana. If Audirvana had support for Amazon HD, maybe it could have been a possibility.

In summary, they’re all pretty great really and it largely depends on what user interface you can use to access the services. I understand that BluOS is great for this but I’ve not tried it.


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[Clive197]

Qobuz Simples :)

[Leeken]

Spent a considerable amount of time trying to tell the difference between tidal HiFi and Spotify today,couldn’t tell any difference blind,so far happier with Spotify’s far better catalogue and app,but there again I listen to proper rock music,maybe if I listened to audio fools music I may find that missing triangle and think the extra £20 a month is worthwhile!

[struth]

Spent a considerable amount of time trying to tell the difference between tidal HiFi and Spotify today,couldn’t tell any difference blind,so far happier with Spotify’s far better catalogue and app,but there again I listen to proper rock music,maybe if I listened to audio fools music I may find that missing triangle and think the extra £20 a month is worthwhile!No need for the fools remark

[Gazjam]

Qobuz Simples :)

Agree with this.

Have Tidal and Qobuz, Tidal for the better catalogue, Qobuz for sound qualiy.
Not much in it but Qobuz hires sounds better to me.

Having both services integrate in Roon is the way to go imo.

[hifinutt]

But the fact is that it’s not lossless Phil ,I’ve been comparing my Spotify premium against lossless ( streamed from my pc ) today, track for track and I won’t be listening to Spotify again.


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interesting , playing shelby lynnes album on spotify here is just superb , yes some recordings on spotify are perhaps not so good but some are exceptional

[andyrlb]

interesting , playing shelby lynnes album on spotify here is just superb , yes some recordings on spotify are perhaps not so good but some are exceptional

I agree that some are pretty good , I don’t understand why some are not nearly as good .
I’ve now been ripping all of our cd’s in flac and even then some are not so good .


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[Pharos]

No need for the fools remark

Why not ask him to elucidate, and then get ridiculed for prejudice if that's what he is doing?

[eatapeach]

I’ve just been going through all of this comparing Tidal, Qobuz and briefly Amazon HD.

For me, Qobuz has come out on top because it sounds slightly better through my system. Amazon HD could have sounded great but the user interface was so horrible that I couldn’t be bothered to spend time on it.

Relevant facts are that I’m using my laptop as a transport and playing back via Audirvana. If Audirvana had support for Amazon HD, maybe it could have been a possibility.

In summary, they’re all pretty great really and it largely depends on what user interface you can use to access the services. I understand that BluOS is great for this but I’ve not tried it.


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I was using Amazon HD which was acceptable. I moved up from normal Amazon audio which I'd had for a while.

I was using Amazon HD into the Blunode 2i, until I coudn;t stand the BluOS app any more - buggy, poor UX. So I tried Roon on a trial, which I think is great. The problem then was Amazon and Roon don't get along, so tried Qobuz and haven't looked back.

Great sound quality, easy easy app to use and I've discovered a boatload of new music through Roon which ultimately is the whole point.

[Qwin]

If you're hearing obvious difference then most likely explanation is that the different sites are using different masterings.

If you could name a couple of the songs you've compared maybe people here with both services could also do the comparison and see what they think?

No, its not the mastering, or results would be random from album to album, with no clear difference between services.
I don't know about the premium packages, but I tried Deezer, Qobuz and Spotify basic level. Deezer was the best sound, with Qobuz almost as good. Spotify was so much worse on every track it wasn't in the same league as the other two. I had all three loaded for 3 weeks and listened back and forth to hundreds of tracks, I used the same releases for comparison, but that does not guarantee the exact same file/master, so I looked at the average trend and results were conclusive.
I went with Qobuz because I liked the interface and it has a good selection of World music, Classical and Jazz as well as the usual stuff.

I'm setting up a Music Server/Streamer using Volumio, it can run Qobuz/Tidal native, but you have to subscribe to MyVolumio for them to run.
So you should also consider how you will be accessing your streaming service, as part of the decision making process.

[twotone]

Apologies if this has already been posted but someone on PFM posted a link to a Tidal sub which is £4 for 120 days then either £9.99 or £19.99 a month or £29 (or £19) for a family membership.

I signed up yesterday and it's excellent, takes a wee bit of working out how to use the various platforms/account details but once you've done that the music that you choose and like is synced across all platforms.

I'm currently listening via my Yamaha amp and Yamaha app on my iPhone but I've airplayed from my MacBook pro>tidal desktop to my amp and from my iPhone>tidal app to a wireless speaker, pretty impressive.

Here's the link

https://offer.tidal.com/campaigns/5e7903b2f268870019552017/products?geo=GB&campaignId=5e7903b2f268870019552017

Here's the thread on PFM that explains how to select the sub etc

https://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/tidal-120-days-for-£4.239158/

[Discopants]

Ive been using spotify premium and you tube as my only sources for the past 18 months, i think they both sound great , my digital amplifier upsamples (and downsamples) everything to 24 bit 96khz and that may be a factor in narrowing the difference to lossless

Spotify is a fantastic interface, very easy to use well laid out , the suggested albums are really fun to explore and I’m listening to artists from all over the place and all genres. That is a big plus for me.

Just this weekend I worked out I can stream other services via uPNP and a £6 app so I took a 1 month tidal hifi free trial. Tidal is a nice little uptick in SQ its not a huge difference , there is definitely a bit more air to the treble and a little more authority and control to the bass for redbook. Tidal masters is a smidgen better again on some tracks and nothing really discernible on others vs redbook Tidal to my ears on my system.

I might have to try qobuz trial too now.




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