I’ve just been trialing Qobuz for the last couple of days. The catalogues are different, sometimes I find stuff on Qobuz that’s not on Tidal and vice versa. Tidal seem to have more music on mqa than Qobuz have in hi-res.
SQ wise, it’s still early days. I think I prefer Tidal - a bit more bass and depth.
Still got about 28 days left on the trial to go…
One thing I hated about Qobuz but see less frequently now was tracks disappearing, I was told this was Qobuz ability to keep the records labels or royalties happy, if not they lost it.
This is not unusual on Tidal. At any one point in time, there are nearly always around a dozen entries on my favourites list that are greyed out.
On my last comparison between Tidal and Qobuz
I found no obvious difference when comparing 16bit material.
Is there any album in particular that you found to be different?
Hi there
I still haven’t put Qobuz through its paces completely but I didn’t notice a difference on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Family album. I also noticed a difference on an old del amitri album called Twisted.
OK. Are you sure the Tidal ones were not MQA and the release year was the same for both? What streamer are you using ?
Just checking for fairness that’s all. 
I’m streaming this through my synology on my Superuniti so no option of mqa unfortunately and there weren’t hd versions of either of these albums on Qobuz.
As to the release year, I’m pretty sure that they were the same!
I’m using Bubble/Raspi > ND5XS/nDAC/XPS. Bubble is needed because the ND5 isn’t able to go connect to Qobuz natively.
The best comparision is to compare the Qobuz/Tidal stream to your own local from your Synology NAS.
I have decided to give Hires Qobuz a try on Roon. I already have my NAS and Tidal connected to my Roon media server.
I have found no noticeable difference between 44.1/16/2 media of the same master from all three sources.
However when it comes to 24 bit and hires it gets interesting. Tidal seems to encode just about everything that is not 44.1/16/2 in MQA… Qobuz doesn’t, they simply send as hires FLAC compressed LPCM.
Now on my setup, the hires LPCM seems to breath and flow and has more distinct bite and attack, more realistic timbre, micro space and greater intelligibility than the MQA variants… the MQA sounds a little filtered, flat and artificial by comparison to its hires LPCM variant, but can be still fairly enjoyable on some recordings once you get used to it. For completeness I am not using an MQA DAC, and undertaking first level MQA decode in the Roon server.
I am still evaluating… but currently the hires Qobuz is probably winning. There is very little MQA hires classical or jazz on Tidal, but there is no shortage on Qobuz. Selections on both platforms at 44.1/16/2 seem to pretty similar, with minor plus and minuses on each platform. Tidal perhaps ever so slightly has a larger collection, but there is not much in it at all, the Qobuz playlists seem better prepared and more relevant to my tastes. The only downside is the hires Qobuz costs an extra five pounds a month.
I had both Qobuz and Tidal but finally decided a couple of months ago to drop Tidal and go with Qobuz. I think that is a reflection of musical preferences rather than SQ, if like me you are more classical inclined then you would tend towards Qobuz, modern rock/pop and Rap then Tidal.
Moreover, and my technical ignorance may have a part in this, I don’t ‘get’ MQA which seems to me to be a vehicle to stream hi-Res where bandwidth and/or network issues impact. If Qobuz can stream in FLAC without the MQA artifice then to my mind that is the way to go.
Given the money most on here have paid for their kit then the price of a pint extra a month for Qobuz hi-Res does not seem a particular issue.
I have been surprised how equal Qobuz is to Tidal on pop, rock, rap, r&b etc… certainly different from a year or so ago. Perhaps the distributors have got their acts together. But yes Tidal does seem to have a larger selection of more niche EPs and Singles.
The classical catalogue for Tidal, to be fair, has also increased, but mostly limited to 44.1/16 where as Qobuz it will often have that same title at 96/24 or higher. The Qobuz classical collection is ultimately more extensive than Tidal.
Roon makes it very easy to compare the collections.
Yes, in my limited experience that is fair comment, when I switched my Tidal favourites to Qobuz the only thing that wasn’t available was some Bob Seger stuff which I wasn’t too upset about anyway.
I have noticed quite a large number of 44.1/24 tracks on Qobuz… and to my ears they sound rather good… often somewhat more punchy and tighter sounding than the 44.1/16 equivalent… nice.
I will not be using either Tidal or Qobuz or any other Internet based music service. I have recently junked Internet based TV in favour of a Sky Q with a dish and it so much better. My monthly bill has gone down too. If only I could be rid of the Government enforced BBC subscription (licence fee) then I’d be happy with audio visual experience until the end of my days.
Internet access in the village is rubbish and there are no plans to improve it.
Yes, I agree. At first I thought I was being cheated slightly but no the 24 bit albums are better regardless of bit rate. I find it easier to set a comfortable volume level than with 16 bit material too.
I have SkyQ and I get Netflix bundled with it or for a few quid extra… I have noticed the bit rates / compression artefacts are better with Netflix HD over Sky HD. 4K/Ultra there are less differences, but Sky are still not supporting HDR unlike Netflix which is a shame…
To me HD with and without HDR is like comparing PCM to AAC.
I think Sky will be slowly shifting more and more higher quality material online… leasing the transponder bandwidth for high bandwidth content can’t be cheap.
And the ashtray had a hole in it.
Why buy a great system and then use MQA?
Might as well use Spotify or Apple Music.
Nothing wrong with Apple Music… it’s great when you are out and about… to my ears I prefer to Spotify’s Ogg Vorbis implementation. Not an MQA fan, the audio often appears mangled to my ears…
No nothing wrong with it, but I prefer to download some albums from my music server to my iPhone or iPad then I don’t need an Internet connection: so no subscription or Internet fees and no data collators noting down I’m listening to Scrumpy & Western by Adge Cutler & the Wurzels.