It's entirely possible that you are hearing different masters on the varying formats.
I think there may be something to that, Johnny.
Not all tracks on Tidal sound hard/bright. Lise De LaSalle playing mozart/Prokofiev solo piano is one of the most beautiful sounding piano recordings I've ever heard and she is a brute technician player, if it could sound hard with her playing it would. So it's not a global thing, and it's not unique to my system tonality. I do hear the problem on Clifford Brown album "Study In Brown" which was released to CD in 1990s and that sounds essentially the same as the vinyl which was released in 1955. But I don't hear the problem on a new hi-rez MQA 24/192 Clifford Brown release "A New Star on the Horizon" on Tidal. It is a true high resolution remastering, with much more tonal detail like a modern audiophile recording, so it MUST be remastered recently from the original tapes and it sounds glorious, unbelievable to hear him in hirez.
So whether it is Tidal or the record company who changes the tracks for whatever reason, it does seem that some of the tracks on Tidal are not the same as the original versions issued on CD. Maybe that's all we can surmise at this point.
Could be these tracks are altered by the record companies to sound best when streamed to phones, car, earbuds, or to appeal to young music listeners accustomed to the grating edgy sound of today's pop music?
