Latest Tidal offer

Just taken advantage of the latest offer - £1.99 for a 120 day trial of the Tidal Hi-res service. Would you expect to hear a significant improvement in sound quality over Spotify Premium? Apart from a slight increase in volume I am struggling to hear any difference

Yes, I indeed. Spotify is awful.
Tidal HiFi should be loads better, if it isn’t the may be an issue elsewhere.

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Qobuz is better. If you get a trial of roon. Naim doesn’t support MQA (Tidal). Roon can decode it. But qobuz has a lot more 24bit music. Tidal is mostly 16bit. There is a discernable difference. Hope this helps. You can trial both Room and Qobuz for free regardless. :+1:t3:

The most important criterion for me is the catalogue of music offered by each of the services, but sound quality obviously does count as well.

I subscribe to Tidal rather than Qobuz because for my musical tastes I find the Tidal HiFi offering to be more comprehensive, and I find there to be little difference in sound quality.

I subscribe to Tidal rather than Spotify because although the Spotify catalogue is probably more comprehensive for my musical taste, I find the difference in sound quality and the better sound quality offered by Tidal is sufficient to over-ride any music catalogue differences. I do grudge the difference in subscription costs.

If you do not hear a significant difference between Spotify and Tidal hi-res then it would seem like a no brainer to stick with Spotify and save yourself some money. I would definitely check out music catalogues before choosing to make a change. Although some people dismiss Spotify, its sound quality (on my systems at least) isn’t ‘appalling’. It’s actually not too bad for the most part - just not quite as good as the CD quality offerings or higher from Qobuz and Tidal. Only you, and your wallet can decide.

A description of your system components would help in respect of advice from forum members.

I’ve posted this a few times, so apologies if I’m like a stuck re ord. but Tidal native on Naim is awful, use a UPNP Server (I use Bubble UPNP) and connect via UPNP to the Naim for Tidal playback - then it will sound perfect!

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…that’s funny I have been using TIDAL through the NAIM app for a couple of years and it has been wonderful, lots of great sounding music. There is the occasional bad recording but the vast majority of the time is sounds mighty fine!

JMHO - YMMV

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I’d love it if you could try via UPNP to see if it is even better.

I upgraded from SU to Nova and was underwhelmed by the sq as I only use Tidal. A bit of reading around led me to try UPNP and it made a huge difference. I then posted on here saying I wonder if it’s psychological and somebody replied saying that they A/B tested (Native vs via UPNP) and there really is an improvement via UPNP…

Give it a go if you can, just in case you can get even more from the music!!

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I’ve been using Tidal for years and switched to Qobuz due to the absolute hate for MQA (and all that it stands for in the hifi industry). Also at like for like : 16/44 / Redbook, Qobuz sounds SO much better. I can only assume they do some type of manipulation or volume level compression or something.

Yes awful

Not sure I can hear a quality difference between Tidal HIFI and Spotify Premium if one compare same master and release. I’d claim few could do so. I stay with Spotify and purchase CD’s when needed instead because there i can at least hear a difference.

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Been using Tidal for years but this thread has made me think I should try Qobuz, I’ll sign up for the free trail and let you know my thoughts.

I have no issues with tidal…except the price…4months for £1.99 … except if your an existing user…then it’s sod off …£19.99 thanks

But will try qobuz and also report back

I got it for £1.99 but I’d left…:wink:

I did consider leaving …but didn’t want to loose the saved lists I have …

You don’t lose anything. t’s all there when you go back.

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