What a nice touch from Naim to give us all a 90 day free trial with Tidal.
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Yes, it’s good to be able to try before you buy, and all these online streaming services offer some sort if trial. I milked the free trial offers for about 2 years before finally returning to Tidal. Roon do one, too 
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Partnering with a service provider to entice punters in isn’t anywhere close to dealers handing out free heroine wraps to create and maintain a market, but it’s somewhere along the same line on that spectrum. Tidal need customers for their premium service, Naim required a good quality music streaming service. Bingo, a good fit. It’s not really in my definition of nice tho, just a sound business decision for both parties.
Tidal is one of three pillars that makes a streamer purchase more worthwhile: local streaming, Tidal, internet radio. Remove any one and a streamer loses a lot of its attractiveness.
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A nice item of clothing for a heroic woman?
Tidal (other streaming services are available) is one of the best reasons for having a a streamer. The chance to listen to new music easily without a huge cost is so good.
I operate a like-it/buy-it policy so my local stock increases but not with duds or stuff I’ll never listen to again.
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Well: I can tell you from my own experience so far that HiFi Tidal is not a patch on locally ripped CDs and then locally streamed back. It’s nowhere near it! I cannot believe how these streaming services charge so much for music you do not own…
I’m assuming that your NAS is transcoding to to WAV, or you ripped to WAV rather than FLAC in the first place. This would give your local stream a bit more of a jump in SQ.
If the Tidal album you are playing is an MQA version then it’s down on quality - see my comments in the “Tidal vs CD” thread. Sadly you can only see if it’s an MQA version in the Tidal desktop App.
Also read.
No. It’s ripped to FLAC and then transcoded to WAV but I do have a choice if motivated. Tidal is good but there is something missing, can’t quite put my finger on it?
Good, that’s the right thing to do.
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Note that one Album has an ‘M’ - this is the MQA version and should be avoided if possible.
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I can hear why vinyl has made a huge comeback. With local streams it brilliant but with the rest of it, it’s a bit…
if you add something like a cisco 2960 switch, not expensive on used market, tidal will come very close to local streaming.
That seems fair enough FR but if I buy the CD, rip it and then stream it back it becomes ‘ultimately less aggro’ and it sounds better, regardless?
Count yourself lucky. The only streamer I have is a Sonos Connect, a relic from my old system. Feeding Tidal mp3 streams in to a XS2 and PMC twenty5.22 speakers it is seriously out of its depth.
I don’t disbelieve you but why would adding a switch make any difference to the sound? After all it is just a stream of bits to the streamer and assuming there’s no packet loss why wouldn’t the sound be the same with and without a switch?
Tidal does not sound better than my locally ripped music via my QNAP.
Getting a Cisco switch will make no difference whatsoever to the sound of Tidal relative to locally streamed music. If you want to improve it, installing Bubble upnp on the Qnap is the way to go. That will get it much closer to locally streamed CD rips, but maybe not quite as good.
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Long term it’s a Bubble proxy that’s needed to lift Tidal to local streaming level. It’s a whole new project though
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I quite fancied the idea of a ND5 XS2 but reading things like this really makes me wonder if it is worth it? I Can get a LOT of vinyl for £2299!!
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Maybe go to a dealer and have a listen. Hear what you prefer? /seriously, if I was only interested in a streaming service I would stick to just using a laptop.
I can get millions of albums from Tidal for 20 quid a month.