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-fo...al-of-the-year

[andyrlb]

Tidal have a good offer going if that helps: https://www.whathifi.com/news/get-fo...al-of-the-year

Thanks


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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/show...r-power-supply