Tidal just offered me master streaming for 1.99 a month for 4 mths … just to add to my Netflix …amazon prime … Spotify & which magazine account draining subscriptions I thought why not ?
So … the only way I can stream Tidal to my atom is chrome cast ? and Bluetooth ? … I’m trying to skip the Naim / tidal app and just use Tidal … this is where I get confused …the app will only show that I’m streaming tidal HIFI when I’m paying for master ( orange ) . It’s very hit n miss and for a system that cost me over 4000 I’m not getting what I shd
As I type this I’m listening to Tidal on my 600 quid Yamaha av amp in what tidal say is Master quality which all in is a £ 1200.00 system … it’s all a bit confusing .
ALSO … I have picked a lot of brains about certain issues with my atom on the forum without me giving many answers as I’m still learning … but I’d like to Thku all … when I know what I’m doing I’ll be more than happy to help the newbies
Naim streamers don’t support MQA, so Tidal will automatically send a 16/44.1 stream instead when it detects that it’s connecting to a non-MQA device. Personally I find MQA to sound a little unnatural even when I’ve tried it with a DAC that has full MQA support, and when I had a Tidal account I chose to turn it off and use the regular !6/44.1 stream instead.
If you want proper Hi-Res streaming, try Qobuz, which has lots of lossless 24 bit material available, and once the cheap trial periods are over, is cheaper than Tidal too.
I believe TIDAL masters streams and uses MQA which Naim does not support. So with the ATOM you will be able to stream CD quality 44.1/16 only from TIDAL. I use Qobuz and can stream up to 192/24 using their Hi-Res subscription. In the US they charge $14.99 a month but recently offered 12 months of Hi-Res for a one time payment of $149.90.
I did use Tidal with my Naim Streamer for 18 months prior to moving to Qobuz and did enjoy their service. Qobuz offered Hi-Res and was $5.00 cheaper per month in their regular monthly subscription.
If you think Tidal MQA will sound better than regular lossless streams, yes. To my ears it doesn’t on any system I’ve heard it on so far, so I’m happy for Naim to continue to optimise their digital sources around lossless 16/44.1 and Hi-Res streams.
I used to like cassettes back in the day too, but can’t say I miss them now!
Tidal certainly sounds quite a bit better than Spotify to me, but then it’s lossless, so it should. The MQA files I’ve heard sound OK, but they seem to have a slightly artificial edge to them that doesn’t sound quite right.
Naim have said in the past that they might consider adding MQA support in future if they feel that customer demand is great enough to make it worth their while. So maybe it will arrive at some point. There has been some discussion here of the idea that if a DAC is optimised to support MQA that might have a negative impact on regular lossless perfomance (and vice-versa) so that may be a reason for the likes of Naim to avoid it.
Still, if an album is available in MQA from Tidal, chances are it will be available in lossless hi-res from Qobuz, which sounds very good to me, so I jumped ship last year, and saved myself £5 a month.
Why do you not want to play Tidal via the naim app out of interest? There is a post elsewhere from naim staff explaining why using the naim app should result in a better solution than using chrome cast from the tidal app.
