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I just switched to Qobuz after 4 years on Tidal. I was very glad to make the switch.I used this free service to automatically transfer all my saved albums, artists, playlists, etc over to Qobuz with just a couple clicks. It worked perfectly. There was one obscure album that was on Tidal but not Qobuz (nor any other streaming services.) The final summary page clearly displayed this discrepancy.
Good to know about this service. I still have both, but I find the curating of Qobuz much more to my liking, so perhaps it's time for a trial transfer to see what I might be missing. These days pretty much everything I find in discovery mode exists on both platforms, so I don't need Tidal in that case. I don't personally care about MQA in Tidal either.
Qobuz recommends this service as an FYI.
The difference is simple. Tidal has a volume setting that actually allows gain to be applied to the stream. Therefore, it will clip down stream, like in your DAC. Qobuz volume control maxes out at unity gain so it doesn't have this problem- but most streaming services (Including Tidal) do. I arrived at this discovery using a variety of audio utilities and source material such as test tones.Clipping is bad and will sound bad. Eliminate it and the sound is just like from a cd- and just like every other service.. All the services get their source material from the same place.
No takers on another forum from the following post. The comparison was specifically with Amazon HD, but I noted differences versus Tidal as well." ... got a Bluesound Node 2i a few weeks ago. I'm going Bluesound -> DAC via coax. Though unexpected, I tried out Qobuz and IMHO, it was clearly better sounding than Amazon HD on both CD quality and Hi-Rez.Given that both services stream 16-bit/44.1 Khz & 24-bit 96Khz/ 192Khz, and over the same system downstream ... I don't understand how this is happens. But it does. [Maybe somebody can explain that in laymen's terms]"dB Cooper, thanks so much for your explanation. Different services varying in SQ, just did not make sense to me. Appreciate your insight.FWIW, got a couple more weeks trials left with Tidal & Qobuz. Tidal MQA produces best overall sound in Hi-Rez category. Qobuz is clear winner for CD quality stuff; and given Tidal's low ratio of MQA to CD catalog, plus it's higher monthly cost, I'll be sticking with Qobuz. Happy Listening!
Db,Should you make sure the Tidal volume is maxed out then or where do you set it?
Apparently, the volume control issue isn't the only thing affecting the sound quality of different services. This is from Gordon Rankin (about a year ago on AA): "Anyway, Amazon's service is not really that great at this time. I am not sure if it will be upgraded and I have already seen some changes since day 1. But here are the two big problems. a) The(y) use an adaptive streaming method which means that first off the music is not bit true and the quality varies depending on your link speed and the servers ability to send content. b) They resample all incoming music to the highest sample rate selected. They kind of assume you have the default rate at the max... if you don't they complain and tell you to change it. They don't use Exclusive mode or give you the option for that so it's really so so sonically." According to posters on AS, although Amazon does now have Exclusive mode, it doesn't work. Anyway the first issue remains and there may be other issues around the how music is streamed by the various services. I never tried Tidal but Qobuz was clearly superior in sound to Amazon when I tried both at the beginning of this year.
