I did a quick check of them all in Roon, and with volume leveling enabled the Qobuz versions are leveled down -6.5 dB and the Tidal versions are leveled down -6.4, so without leveling the Tidal should be a tiny bit louder and in any case they differ somehow, or it’s just that Tidal’s has a different LUFS number.
Now I listened, with volume leveling still enabled, comparing one of the non-Video versions in Tidal and one of the Qobuz versions and I hear damn all difference.
Interesting. The Tidal version is more of a close match to the MQA version rather then the Qobuz one. One of the listed MQA ones isn’t MQA at all so some thing has gone wrong with Tidal’s system there.
By the way, having to level down -6.5 or -6.4 must be a new record in the loudness wars
Is that good or bad? 
It means that if unleveled it’s more than 6 dB louder than the target which is a lot. Most recordings get something between -2 and +2 in the leveling. Subjectively, 10 dB is twice as loud!
It varies so much though. Their algorithms are ever changing so the idea that one is “better” is very much a temporary scenario. They’re better until… they’re not.
With lossless flac (we’re not comparing the MQA), it always decodes to the same PCM data (assuming same source PCM before encoding), so the algorithm is quite irrelevant. This is not mp3
I have Roon, so the user interface of Tidal or Qobuz is irrelevant. My preference is Qobuz. I convert the music to DSD, before people start complaining about DSD, the SACD format, that was adopted by Linn when they decided that CD suddenly sounded acceptable for the “Sondek” title. I have heard Roon decode MQA, and switched the MQA off. It is interesting how more Naim & Linn devices can be configured as Roon endpoints.
It would be interesting to obtain the CD and rip it and see if it trends to T or Q.
I’ve just downgraded my Tidal plan to the standard hi-fi/CD quality after getting my monthly playing report. It was clear that I was on-line streaming mostly from Qobuz hi-res and most of what is on Tidal that isn’t on Qobuz is only hi-fi anyway. It will save me NZ$15/month, which I might put into hi-res downloads on my favourite albums on Qobuz. It looks like the Sublime subscription is worthwhile if you make several purchase a month, but I’m not sure I’d be doing that anyway?
Qobuz sounds better in my system and I haven’t looked back since I changed. I have sublime subscription now so I’ll load up on hi res files (and they sound amazing) for the next year and re-assess then.
I just compared the track Inside Out by the Keith Jarrett Trio and they were very similar, but I preferred the Qobuz, which sounded slightly more crisp and easy to listen to.
Wow - what an exquisite blues riff Jarrett plays from 7 mins, backed by deJohnette using brushes very lightly on the snare, and touches on the bass drum and ride cymbal.
[Excluding Keith’s work with Miles Davis, could this be his best track…and/or his best album?!]
How do you find the hi-res downloaded and played from your server versus the online stream on Qobuz @ElMarko?
I was actually anxious to do the test b/c I figured I would at least know I have comparable masters. I find the Qobuz files sound better played from my server than streamed from the cloud by a noticeable margin. I’m under the impression this is b/c I’m on a legacy streamer but not sure. I think I read that streams from the cloud and local server are comparable in SQ on the new streaming platform players.
I’ll add that downloading was easier using the Qobuz app on my Macbook. Though some of the track naming conventions were not to my liking and required some editing.
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
