Qobuz (-Qz-) has meant a definite lot to me — music hasn’t ever felt so
real. I don’t know how much may’ve changed since What Hi·Fi’s review, but as of today, Qz is definitely, 100% better than Tidal — this so much as objectively cos, when the records get modified, not
by their conceiver for the listener but by whoever
for the streaming service something’s bound to go wrong, – like, there’s just a loss of integrity in it, right? Innit? As many have commented already, Qz’s CD quality’s just evidently cleaner, but it’s when you notice that cleanliness that you really catch it. I very much liked the following comment as its terms were aesthetically telling to me:
I have spent so much time testing and comparing the sound quality on Tidal and Qobuz recently and I’ve come to the conclusion that it really does come down to personal preference-I am not sure if it is correct to say categorically that “X is better than Y” as there are so many factors at play such as what equipment you are using, what genre you listen to, and ultimately what sounds good to your ears is a very personal thing which is different for everyone. So there is no right or wrong here, just go with whatever sound you personally prefer with your particular equipment.
For me personally I was initially obsessed with the amazing clarity and detail of the Qobuz sound, with every layer of sound being so perfectly clean crisp and clear, with lush timbres, especially on the mids and highs. So I had Qobuz as my front runner initially.
However, I have now come to the conclusion that for me with my equipment I much prefer the sound of Tidal.
I think one of the main reasons is that Tidal compliments my particular headphones better than Qobuz. As I am using Sennheiser HD800 headphones with Sennheiser HDVD 800 DAC/amp, these headphones already give a very detailed “clinical” sound at the expense of some warmth, bass, and cohesiveness of the music as a whole. So with the Qobuz sound also being similarly very clinical I find it just that little bit too clinical: it’s quite flat, “dull”, too trebly and “middy”, lacking bass, depth, “punch” and cohesiveness overall, which makes the listening experience not as enjoyable for me.
Tidal is more enjoyable for my ears as it sounds more full-bodied, cohesive, richer, well-balanced between lows mids and highs, with more warmth, depth, soul, life and “oomph” (for want of a better word!), whilst still providing a sufficient level of detail and clarity across the different layers of sound.
Even though I find the clarity, detail, and timbre of the mids and trebles superior on Qobuz (perhaps this is what makes it so popular with listeners of classical music in particular?) for me this does not lead to a favourable overall sound when considering the music as a whole. Tidal’s overall sound is “greater than the sum of it’s parts” for me, if you get what I mean.
But again, each to their own- I can completely understand why many people would prefer the Qobuz sound to Tidal, and vice versa. Our ears are all different. And again, that sound will vary depending on what headphones or speakers each individual is using: I am sure that if I tried out various different speakers and headphones / setups I may find Qobuz better in some cases.
Absolutely, yes: I can’t afford a DAC so I just use my Mac’s –which allegedly tops at 32 bits / 96 kHz– and I don’t worry about the amp so that it’s just that and a Sony WH-1000XM5 headset, a rather good headset that really exploits Qz’s richness as described by mickylane above & also exposes Tidal’s faults, — namely the
corruption of so many records! The corruption is indeed also as described by mickylane, thus rendering a better record at times — as other people have noted before me. This is, if you’d like to make a test right now, the case with U2’s
Invisible, whereas Qz’s supremacy is patent all through Coldplay’s
Everyday Life, and even –this should be quite a differential for anyone anyway– through Ye’s
Yeezus. But I also enjoy Qz better through a Bose Revolve, and most certainly through some ‘cheap’ wired EarPods. As a matter of fact –this is somewhat terrible–, I don’t think—I
really do not think that I’ll ever enjoy music as much as I’m doin’ right now with Qobuz, with any other streaming service (–I’ve tried ’em all–). And this is terrible because I’m finding Qobuz increasingly unreliable, on the software-side of things.
Qz’s iOS & macOS apps are a genuine disgrace. Some days are better than others, and then some days are awful: the apps (specially iOS’s) will (1) skip records from within the play queue, ‘refusing,’ as it were, to play them until they’ve skipped ’em all! (For instance, if you’re gonna play an album, it’ll skip every record before allowing you to play any single one for real — if you interrupt it –from skipping them–, insisting upon playing the album or, say, it’s head record, the app will just start skippin’em again! Its kind of funny actually — if not downright annoying), (2) take comparatively long times, and sometimes
really long times loading whatever, certainly due to server-side issues (cos the client’s side works just fine with Tidal, Deezer, etc.), (3) display, out of the blue, enigmatic error prompts declaring that ‘whatever’ couldn't be loaded — then you close and reopen the app and it happens again, so you just wait a minute or so until it is, just as enigmatically as it went off, working back again, (4) just stop playback; and I honestly believe that I were to keep thinking I’d come up with more. And this worries me cos it suggests bad software maintenance — period. It could be some other thing though... I’m in Colombia, which probably matters a lot when it comes down to this. But beware: these crashes, they’ve been reported elsewhere too, and it’s been this last week that they’ve become really much more frequent; think of Twitter’s quality of service fluctuations since Musk’s instalment and you’ll see what I mean.
Then there’s also a few lags in software development. Qz doesn’t offer an EQ — not that it
needs it, which is awesome (for headphones, say), but one does enjoy playing with one’s music. Qz doesn’t display any record’s lyrics either, which hurts when you wanna sing somethin’. I don’t think its interface is that handsome either... By which I mean
enjoyable.
I think the prices are fair, — really fair. A month here costs a dollar more than a month of Apple’s, so you see what I mean... — & they’d just cost the same if you were to buy the annual subscription,
but who would amidst such uncertainty? — Look, I’m listening to some music as I put this together and error #1 just happened. It’s inconvenient, this software...
But music’s never felt so real.
——
A tiny note on something important:
And once again a review states that one service sounds better than another. Makes no sense, as they are both using Flac, so how come one supposedly sounds better than the other? Most streamers will cache the flac files before they are played, so can't have anything to do with how the file is delivered. And how sure are WH that they are listening to the exact same masters? Has anyone compared the size of each platforms flacs, to see if the better sounding ones are less compressed, putting less strain on the player when unpacking?
This is an understandable mistake, because it is on these terms that streaming services are being marketed. You can encode silence as mp3, as FLAC, you know? Flac can be whatever, or rather anything can be (
as) FLAC. The really important thing is how the records play to you, for real. ALAC, Master-whatever don’t matter ‘cause it can, it very much can still sound horrendous — sound and all aesthetic matters are mandatorily personal. So the baseline here’s,
test it!