Can you make the objective case that Qobuz is better than Tidal?

[Gregadd]

This question has bothered me since I attended the Horizon launch last year. At that time Lukasz advised the audience, if given a choice of a selection carried both by both Tidal and Qobuz chose Qobuz. it is better. I may be paraphrasing. It was his opinion. A learned one from one I consider to be an expert. My ears had come to the opposite conclusion. Not only, to my ears, was Qobus significantly inferior, I was something I just was not interested in. Yet this opinion of Qobuzs' subjective superiority to Tidal was far more prevalent than I had previously realized. It was coming from people with world class dacs (Horizon and WADAX, e g.). All anecdotal and subjective of course Still they very connfident in thier opinion.

I sought a trial membership but had a little trouble joining. At this year's CAF I arrived at the Qobuz exhibit smartphone and credit card in hand ready to sign up. Surely the rep could solve any problem I was having. Before doing so I gave it another listen. One exhibit had the new Manley headamp. I perceived no difference from what I heard. The rep gave a product support link. I lefft the exhibit as confused as ever.
I wonder if anyone can make an objective case for Qomuz's; alleged superiority over Tidal? I will spot you these two.
1. It sounds better to you.
2. It has a superior library. I don't know that it does. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that it does.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

i have both Tidal and Quboz, but really only use Tidal when my Roon search engine presents it. or when i select 'versions' on Roon and see the various choices on Tidal, Quboz and my hard drive files.

5%-10% of the time an MQA file on Tidal will be better than the Quboz file at whatever resolution, or my hard drive file. so it does happen. however; the other 90%-95% of the time i compare i prefer Quboz to Tidal. 16/44 on both generally is better on Quboz when i can tell the difference, which is about 2/3rds of the time. but not always. Quboz sounds less processed and has a bit more presence and sparkle.

it's been suggested that my Wadax (or MSB prior) did/does not 'unpack' the MQA completely. i suppose that is possible. in any case, i prefer Quboz new titles to Tidal also, as there seems to be more new Classical selections presented. not saying Tidal does not have them, but i prefer the Quboz way of bringing them to me.

i don't really pay attention to where the title is coming from when i'm searching, other than i know Tidal does not do high rez other than MQA.

happy i have both. it's the best musical equation ever for the music lover bar none. great time to love music.

 

[ecwl]

Hmm… That seems to be a can of worms question. Because ultimately, Tidal is MQA and Qobuz can do lossless high-res. If you go on Audiophile Style, you can see lots of debates on MQA.

Personally, I can’t stand MQA but I can’t get Qobuz in Canada easily.
That said, I totally understand why some people love MQA, particularly with specific DACs and specific systems.

I think most of these services have a free trial period. So I think people should just try them and see what suits their system and their listening preferences best.

 

[Gunnar]

Interesting subject.

I am far away from being an expert on streaming but when I went from Tidal to Qobuz I guess 3-4 years ago I heard a positive difference in the favour of Qobuz . But since then ….. Tidal is now streaming up to 192/24.

My DAC/streamer does not read MQA. . So no opinion.

 

[treitz3]

I think it's as simple as this. I have both. I listen to both. While a large chunk of my listening comes from Qobuz, it largely comes down to the quality of the version I listen too. (If it's available on both services)

In other words, it boils down to the recording, the version offered and the bit rate. All of these factors must be met and when they are, that determines whether or not one is "better".

Like Mike mentioned, I am also happy I have both. Between the two, I can usually find what I am looking for.

Tom

 

[bryans]

I use both Tidal and Qobuz. Honestly I don't get caught up in the MQA, HiRez, etc. debate. I'm all for whatever sounds good to me. If I find a track that I want to favorite, I will listen to all the formats I can find. Whichever one sounds the best to my ears is the one I go with. I have found tracks that sound better via Tidal, Qobuz, and MQA.

 

[rando]

I'm somewhat taken aback that a founding member here should not trust their own ears.

A tendency being reinforced by statements suggesting being totally on another wavelength. That should only serve to reinforce settling the matter.

What is verifiably important is there is an option which you feel works well for you.

 

[Gregadd]

I'm somewhat taken aback that a founding member here should not trust their own ears. {text omitted]

i deserved that.

 

[godofwealth]

If you’re a classical music lover, as I am, Qobuz is better than Tidal by a country mile. I particularly like that Qobuz makes liner notes accessible downloadable PDF documents. That one feature for me is worth the price of admission. After having suffered for decades with the ridiculously small font in CD liner notes, now I can blow them up on my iPad so my aging eyes can read them comfortably.

 

[Gregadd]

I prefer country miles to city miles straighter less traffic and traffic and more scenic.

 

[astrotoy]

I don't do streaming, but I do have an account with Qobuz and have purchased hirez downloads from them, where I couldn't find the hirez files on HD Tracks or other sources, typically 192/24, but sometimes 96/24 or even occasionally 44/24, when HD Tracks only had a 44/16 download.

Larry

 

[rando]

i deserved that.

There was no manner of deserving or disservice intended beyond the double stated suggestion of putting you on in good humor. I questioned if it went too far, it did.

What I set out to establish was if a recognition existed how closely your description aligned with that of sound and environment on the other streaming options by some who now favor Qobuz. At least this applied quite broadly to my own decision. Where I found casual playback developing into serious listening to resolve what could not be unheard.

Consumers tend to follow the desirable options ruthlessly. Anything lacking on Qobuz has slowly resolved itself in ways that don't lead me towards another streaming service. Close alignment with music loving customers and high end industry was the tipping point settling it for me. Not sure if that is objective enough to satisfy your request.

 

[Gregadd]

I'm somewhat taken aback that a founding member here should not trust their own ears.

A tendency being reinforced by statements suggesting being totally on another wavelength. That should only serve to reinforce settling the matter.

What is verifiably important is there is an option which you feel works well for you.

i did not think any offense was intended. Certainly none was taken. I merely meant that is the result of being unclear. It does not matter to me if others subjectively prefer Qobuz. I simply wanted to know if the others haad any objective reasons for their preference. Just as an aside i am completely secure in my choice of Tidal hi-fi- plus as the superior streamer choice. The question is should others follow me.

 

[Audire]

Qobuz at the max only streams up to192, while Tidal streams up to 384. We own both Qobuz and Tidal and primarily use Tidal.

If our primary use for a DAC is either Qobuz or Tidal than why have a DAC that does 512, 1024, or 3072 kHz? Yes, I know … but

 

[ecwl]

i did not think any offense was intended. Certainly none was taken. I merely meant that is the result of being unclear. It does not matter to me if others subjectively prefer Qobuz. I simply wanted to know if the others haad any objective reasons for their preference. Just as an aside i am completely secure in my choice of Tidal hi-fi- plus as the superior streamer choice. The question is should others follow me.

Like I said, sounds like opening a can of worms asking why some people objectively prefer lossless high res recordings over lossy MQA recordings or vice versa.

but sure I can try. Some people feel that to get great digital reproduction, you need to reproduce the original analog waveform. That means you have to be able to upsample whatever you digitally sampled at 44.1kHz to say a high frequency 705.6kHz accurately to recreate the original analog waveform. Otherwise you’ll hear subtle transient inaccuracies. The problem is that mathematically to accurately do that you need to use a very long filter tap length which means you need a lot of computational power and you need to take a lot of digital samples (e.g. 1 second). As a result, MQA is a “solution” to improve transient accuracy using a short tap length filter using existing hardware by first taking the high res sample and running it through a specific filter that changes the musical data and then compressing it in a lossy manner. But if you can run the low tap length MQA filter to replay the music, you should get better transient reproduction than taking the original low sample rate running it through a generic low tap length filter. Hence, it is always possible that an MQA DAC playing MQA could sound better than the same DAC playing high res lossless say 24/96 that uses a low tap length generic filter to upsample, as the MQA filter might produce better transient accuracy.

but even in that “ideal” scenario, there is no free lunch because MQA compression introduces subtle loss in bit depth and the filter lets in a lot of ultrasonic high frequency content which can mess up your electronics and generate distortions in the audible range which some people are sensitive to.

moreover, if you have a highly accurate upsampler that can upsample lossless 24/96 and compare it to the MQA upsample music, you’ll actually here timing and transient inaccuracies where the transients of notes varies from note to note and instrument to instrument in MQA because ultimately, MQA is an approximation for better transient accuracy

however, some music is so poorly recorded that sometimes getting perfect analog reproduction of the original waveform can sound too harsh. As a result, some people would prefer the subtle transient inaccuracies introduced by MQA as they would find the sound less harsh than the lossless version.

this is my explanation as a layman of why some people objectively and subjectively prefer MQA vs Lossless high-res. At the end of the day, it depends on what DAC you are using, your accompanying electronics and speakers, your musical selection and your musical preferences.

p.s. and yes sometimes the MQA Tidal version sounds better because it’s a superior master than the lossless one at Qobuz. But I find that to be rare. At least with classical music that I listen to.

 

[ecwl]

Qobuz at the max only streams up to192, while Tidal streams up to 384. We own both Qobuz and Tidal and primarily use Tidal.

If our primary use for a DAC is either Qobuz or Tidal than why have a DAC that does 512, 1024, or 3072 kHz? Yes, I know … but

Continuing what I said above, some people feel that to get great reproduction of digital music, you don’t want to use an NOS R2R DAC and just reproduce the 44.1kHz samples on the CD. They believe that there is the original bandwidth limited analog music with its original analog waveform that was digitally sampled at 44.1kHz (or higher frequencies). And the role of a DAC is to first upsample the 44.1kHz as accurately as possible to a high frequency, be it 192, 384, 768kHz to recreate a higher resolution of the digital waveform that closely resembles the analog waveform. But even then most DACs are DSD/PWM DACs which means they cannot just produce the 768kHz 24-bit waveform you just upsampled directly. That waveform needs to be noise-shaped to an even higher frequency. So in the case for say EMM labs DACs, the waveform is upsampled and noise-shaped to 1-bit 45MHz. You need a higher frequency because you are reducing from 24-bit to 1-bit in this case.

So when DACs start advertising very high frequency sample rates, there are basically two reasons:
1) They accept higher frequency PCM samples so that they don’t have to upsample the music to say 768kHz themselves so they’ll already start with a very accurate digital waveforms that resembles the original analog one
2) They are also referring to high much higher they can upsample and noise shape the signal to for final output using the actual “DAC” circuitry

As an aside, I don’t think Tidal streams at 384kHz. I think usually the files are still lossy compressed at say 48kHz 24-bit. It’s just that once you run the MQA filter in full on the 48kHz 24-bit file, you’ll get back a a 384kHz 24-bit file. Whereas Qobuz can stream a 192kHz 24-bit file lossless and if you have a good upsampler, you can upsample it to 384kHz 24-bit or 768kHz 24-bit likely with better fidelity to the original analog waveform compared to the MQA version.

To me, all the mathematics is irrelevant. People choose their gear for so many different reasons. So I think people should just pick what sounds best to them. I admit I chose my system because of the “math” but I know many people who don’t like listening to their favorite music on my system But I love listening classical music on my system And that’s what matters To me. I think it should be the ability to choose what sounds best to them should be the same to everyone else too.

 

[Ian B]

I personally think the MQA filtering scheme is cool and makes for a more analog-like flow, but it is clear that precision and detail are being lost and the sound is being deliberately altered. It is not always implemented well, either. The loss in quality doesn't make up for the added flavor, so I don't use it.

It's really a shame because the novel ideas in MQA filtering, the filter kernels etc are really cool, but rather than contribute to innovating ADC and DAC filtering, they decided to hoard the technology and fuse it with a lossy streaming format.

 

[Gregadd]

This video may be dated. I say that because I recall Spotify promising to go lossless. I like Amazon HD because they just put their best recordings out front.

 

[Powerman]

I can't tell any difference. I still use both because I have no committed. Each has some titles that I like the other doesn't. I HAD MQA with Roon and other streamers, but now I have a Pi4 streamer and Pontus 2 and neither does MQA. I get what ever file resolution it says it is on my DAC, but no MQA. I personally don't get the big deal with it only helping bandwidth which I don't care about. I also don't care for the secrecy and obvious untruthfulness of MQA... But what ever. Big picture is I can tell zero difference between SQ of both platforms. Features and content is personal, but if there was a SQ difference, I would ditch the other.

 

[the sound of Tao]

After years of playing both services I now search on both but just save to my library from Qobuz unless the music is unavailable there… in which case I’ll save an album from Tidal. Quboz always seems a bit less processed, a bit more effortless and just overall less constrained by the delivery of the streaming platform.