I have Roon and this also does the first unfold. There have been a handful of albums where I preferred MQA over the Qobuz Hires equivalent but mostly the more natural presentation of Qobuz wins out.
Thanks for the feedback. I will look into options ref Qobuz and see whatās possible, though I will stick with Tidal for now as it is clearly better than Spotify for me at least.
Streaming is good for discovering new music but many new albums are not available in physical format now, at least not in the UK, and this is my main driver for wanting the best possible SQ out of streaming.
Have you had ago with Qobuz. I have had Spotify and Tidal in the past but Qobuz is without doubt the best provider sonically.
I am extremely surprised you donāt notice a difference however with Tidal HIfi.
Iām in the Qobuz trial at the moment and as with Tidal I am underwhelmed by the āimprovementā over Spotify. My daughter, 40 years my junior cannot differentiate between the 3 and neither can I. I thought I detected more dynamism with Qobuz but then realised it streams at a higher volume. Increasing the volume on Spotify brings the same dynamic result. Time to stop comparing and just enjoy the musicā¦
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Try Abisko Lights and Accidental Touristsā¦
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Which Piegas do you
Have? They rarely get
A mention on this forum.
I do notice quite a difference with Tidal HiFi over Spotify. Itās just that on the same album and through the same DAC, to me the CD version sounded better than the equivalent quality from Tidal HiFi. However, both were clearly better than Spotify.
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TS3s - great speakers for their size. Superbly built and fit in many locations. I use them in the bedroom system.
I had an Arcam rPlay. You have to enable Hires before playback when using Qobuz 24 bit.
The rPlay only streams over the wire with Spotify, Qobuz and Tidal are sent over WiFi even if you have an ethernet cable installed.
Itās a good budget system but doesnāt have the resolving quality of Naim streamerās. It does have a nice enjoyable sound though, typical of Arcam products.
I made a huge improvement by sending the output stream to a Naim DAC/XPS but the reliance on WiFi lead me to replace it with an ND5XS.
The difference from CD quality to Hires is now as obvious as a poke in the eye. I have tried Spotify on my current setup but itās less than enthralling.
Subject to system set up, in general I found Tidal HiFi (especially MQA) and Qobuz are much better for active listening but for casual listening Tidal Premium and Spotify Premium are good enough even played back through a decent setup.
I have used TS5s for many years and they really are superb! Highs, mid and lows are so detailed and natural. Canāt fault them.
Much previous discussion on this forum about playing Tidal via a local proxy server to extract the best performance from Naimās 1st gen streamers e.g. Bubble UPnP, Audirvana etc.
That was the case for me, and I settled on Audirvana for my Tidal playback (Qobuz unavailable here). More hardware required of course, but not a whole lot, especially if you have a spare laptop or similar laying around.
I had Tidal for 5 years, and I thing itās great.
Now I have Qobuz
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Hi
I have just had a quick listen to the first 10-20 secs of In The Mountains to compare the two services.
Spotify first: sounds good, nice deep bass, piano sounds a bit muffled when it kicks in around 17 secs.
Tidal: I immediately notice the opening cymbal which hadnāt registered at all on Spotify. The tympani (if thatās the instrument or could just be a bass drum) is much tighter and when the piano kicks in, itās much more open and less blurred.
Spotify on second listen: I didnāt notice the opening cymbal as I was trying to but itās far less pronounced than in Tidal.
Iām listening on Shure SE535 earphones on my iPhone 11 Pro.
Perhaps others can try the same track opening and let us know your thoughts.
The kbit/s part refers to the bitrate, the kHz to the sampling rate.
For this discussion the bitrate is the important one. Spotify Premium streams at 320 kbps while Tidal Hifi streams at 1411 kbps. That means that the average Tidal stream carries 4.5 times approx the amount of data of the Spotify stream. Unless a song is very simple sonically there is no way to reconstruct the exact analogue signal from such a compressed data source. There will be losses. They try to keep that in the ranges that the human ear cannot hear but it will lose other things as well.
For me when I compare, the Tidal/Qobuz streams offer more clarity and detail as well as a better sound stage.
But we are not talking about moving from cassette tape to CD here, I mean Spotify is a mega business cause the solution does work. And I think that the mark of good sound hardware is that it plays all sources as well as possible. Naim would not have integrated Spotify if the result was terrible.
So it really comes down to personal preference. For me the audible difference is worth the money. If it isnāt for you, donāt do it.
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Are you saying that on Spotify the track does not begin with a simultaneous double bass note and a cymbal strike?
I think for me personally the issue is primarily the catalogues:
- Spotify has 80-90% of the things i like to listen to
- Tidal has 60-70%
- Qobuz has 50-60%
It feels a bit annoying to subscribe to a service only because it has a higher audio quality, while it carries a lot less of the stuff i like listening toā¦ 
Iād say that is pretty much reason number 1. If you canāt play something from the hi res services the discussion is moot.
Personally I sub to both Tidal and Qobuz and with Roon combining them into one library I really almost never run into the issue of not finding stuff. But could be my tastes are more in line as well.
No, itās there but is not as audible to my ears. Iām not great with the lingo but maybe itās the separation that is clearer. On Tidal I can more clearly hear both instruments.
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This is exactly what I tried to explain above I think. The Spotify stream carries less information, so less detail and that means that this will happen.