Taking advantage of the free trial for Tidal, I decided to take the plunge today, so here’s an initial review from a few hours’ listening. I was streaming from my iPad using Airplay to my Pioneer VSX-2021 receiver, both through my MA Radius R270HD’s and my Sennheiser headphones for Spotify and Tidal.
I must state at the outset that I absolutely LOVE Spotify, so I’m not going to be a Tidal pushover. I essentially use Spotify for learning about new music and creating playlists for background music, friends coming round and less focussed listening. Then if I really like an album after a few auditions, I purchase the CD. Not being young enough to have grown up with streaming, I’m struggling to let go of the concept of “owning a music collection.”
Please bear with me with the length of this post. If you’re seriously contemplaying Tidal, there are one or two potential deal-breakers below, so please have the patience to read on…
Using the Tidal iOS app
The layout is very clear and intuitive. Within a short time I’d become almost as familiar with it as with Spotify. Swiping from the left brings up the main options of What’s New / Playlists / Genres / My Music / Offline Content / Audio Search and Settings.
I wouldn’t say it’s buggy as such, but it can be very slow to respond to inputs. If you’re playing an album and want to select something else it seems to take a few taps before the app realises, then 5 to 10 seconds to actually play it. Occasionally it didn’t seem to respond at all. How much this operation lag is due to the increased demand on my wifi, I couldn’t say. Whatever, I can’t say it’s as slick and quick Spotify.
This may seem a minor point, but when I have time to treat myself to a few Spotify hours, I’ll be jumping all over the shop using the related artists feature, dipping my toe in a track and moving on before settling on a smaller handful of artists I’d like to give a more concentrated listen. Doing this on Tidal will take longer, so for discovering new music it won’t be quite such a pleasant experience.
Listening Comparisons
I mainly stuck to albums I knew best that I know are well mastered. I listened to more than this, but the main differences can be illustrated with these examples.
Nitin Sawnhey – Philtre – Noches En Vela (Parts 1 and 2). – I did a back to back comparison here beginning with Spotify. This is a very well-produced album and is about as good as a 320kbps track can sound. TBH, it sounded pretty good! The pluck of the guitar and electronic beats stood out well, as they should.
Then I played it through Tidal. Initially I couldn’t seem to detect much difference, but once I spotted the changes, this pattern became more obvious with other music too. The soundstage became much larger and it was easier to detect each individual texture within the music.
I noticed the greatest difference to the sound with percussion, particularly upper treble. Anything with a tendency towards sibilance could sound a bit unruly and ‘splashy’ on Spotify. Tidal just sounded more in control. We are talking shades, not night and day, but this extra 5-10% of technical merit added 25% more emotion and slam to the tracks.
Rodrigo y Gabriela – 11:11. Playing “Triveni” – much of the same comments as the Nitin Sawnhey track were apparent here so I won’t duplicate them, suffice to say that the tidiness of each note through Tidal just helped with the overall impact of the timing, crucial to a plucky track like this.
Camelia Jordana – Dans La Peau. Playing the very North African feel track “Ma gueule” it was interesting to see the affect that the wider soundstage through Tidal had on the track. It seemed to make more space to allow Camelia’s achingly beautiful voice shine through. Everything was there on Spotify, but the more compressed soundstage just seemed to reduce her voice a little in the mix. Tidal allowed the 15% full bodied red wine voice to flood through the track with all it’s texture, breathiness and tone in tact.
Benjamin Clementine – Cornerstone. This is just an epic track full of vitality and emotion and it sounds absolutely gorgeous on Tidal. That smidgen more detail comes through actually in his voice. There’s just a little more texture to it. (I noticed this playing the Staves, Dead & Born & Grown too that ) the enunciation of consonants in his voice seems that bit more precise. It’s rather similar to the trebly percussion I mentioned above.
Catalogue
This was just as interesting as the listening comparison and showed some very unexpected results. My musical tastes are not very mainstream anyway, so I was curious to see how Tidal coped with some leftfield searches.
Electronica:
Alphawezen. Both my favourite albums, En Passant and Comme Vous Voulez were present.
Radiohead (yes pretty mainstream!) This was an interesting one. Radiohead is noteworthy by its absence on Spotify, but my favourite albums Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief were there (as were the Special Edition versions), although the newer albums The King of Limbs and In Rainbows weren’t there.
Folk / Singer Songwriter:
Snowgoose – Harmony Springs. On Spotify but not Tidal. This is quite an obscure find, so congrats to Spotify to having it. Jolly good album too, check it out!
The Unthanks – this was the biggest disappointment for me with Tidal. The Unthanks are well known within the folk scene but none of their albums were there. There’s a good selection on Spotify. I own the albums, so could spin the CD, but that’s not the point.
Rachel Sermanni – The album “Under Mountains” was on Spotify and Tidal, but this was Tidal’s only showing, whereas Spotify had her other albums too.
Benjamin Clementine – Cornerstone and Glorious You EP’s – Spotify and Tidal.
The Staves – Dead and Born and Grown – Spotify and Tidal.
Jazz / Latin:
Rosalia de Souza – l’Improvviso – Spotify and Tidal
Introducing Christian Scott – Spotify and Tidal
Blue Note Trip album series. A few albums were on Tidal (such as my favourite number 8), but number 2 (also a favourite) was only on Spotify.
Melanie de Biasio – No Deal. Spotify and Tidal.
Classical / OST’s
This showed up some odd things with the search facility on Tidal. Searching under Hans Zimmer for example showed up a large suite of albums, but no Inception OST. It was there if you searched under “Inception”, so if you’re looking for something in particular, you might need to be more of a sleuth than with Spotify which I’ve found almost as clever as Google search.
Searching for Rachmaninov showed some disappointing results initially, but searching under “Vladimir Ashkenazy” (one of my favour pianists of Rachmaninov’s concertos) showed a vast array of Rach’s works, so again the search facility isn’t quite as comprehensive as the actual catalogue.
And finally, probably the biggest negative so far with Tidal (other than it being double the price of Spotify premium):
NO GAPLESS PLAYBACK. Yes, I did just say that. I must look again, but I don’t remember seeing that anywhere in the reviews about Tidal. I noticed it first playing the Nitin Sawnhey track mentioned above. “Part 1” sets the scene for “Part 2” (unsurprisingly) and builds anticipation in readiness for the slam of part 2, but this anticipation is immediately deflated by……NOTHING for 2-3 seconds.
Not only is this a problem with the emotional peaks and troughs of joined tracks like this, but it’s a particular spoiler for classical music. This is a tad ironic considering that it’s classical that tends to benefit most from the larger soundstage and greater detail on offer with Tidal. It’s a real shame and might, for now at least discourage people from forking out the extra tenner a month. It’s also something Tidal might be able to fix in time, but at least you have been warned.
Summary
My first few hours listening has thrown up an unexpected reaction in me. Although I’m a real Spotify fan, I was quite prepared to jump ship to Tidal and I’m still tempted, but as a package, whether the differences justify the extra outlay depends on how you intend to use the service really.
If you mainly use Spotify as a music browsing service, I would say that it’s slicker quicker user interface and more comprehensive catalogue (for my musical tastes at least) makes it more successful at this task.
But if you intend to ditch your NAS and downloaded music and use this as your primary source, then the quality easily justifies this. I love the simplicity of streaming over the hassle of NAS drives, streamers, ripping and indexing et al. And although we’re talking about small gains in quality, it’s precisely those gains that seems to emotionally engage you with the music that much more. It’s the same premise as someone who’s prepared to pay £1500 for an amp that increases the perceived quality by 5% over a £750 amp. You know what I mean.
As for me, I’m going to give Tidal a month or two of listening before I decide either way. I’d love to have Spotify AND Tidal really – Spotify for searching out new artists and generating playlists for social occasions when I would much prefer gapless playback, but Tidal as my primary more focussed listening source. I can’t justify the cost of both services though, so I’ve got to figure out what I actually want from a streaming service before deciding. Maybe that’s the process you’ll need to go through too.
I must state at the outset that I absolutely LOVE Spotify, so I’m not going to be a Tidal pushover. I essentially use Spotify for learning about new music and creating playlists for background music, friends coming round and less focussed listening. Then if I really like an album after a few auditions, I purchase the CD. Not being young enough to have grown up with streaming, I’m struggling to let go of the concept of “owning a music collection.”
Please bear with me with the length of this post. If you’re seriously contemplaying Tidal, there are one or two potential deal-breakers below, so please have the patience to read on…
Using the Tidal iOS app
The layout is very clear and intuitive. Within a short time I’d become almost as familiar with it as with Spotify. Swiping from the left brings up the main options of What’s New / Playlists / Genres / My Music / Offline Content / Audio Search and Settings.
I wouldn’t say it’s buggy as such, but it can be very slow to respond to inputs. If you’re playing an album and want to select something else it seems to take a few taps before the app realises, then 5 to 10 seconds to actually play it. Occasionally it didn’t seem to respond at all. How much this operation lag is due to the increased demand on my wifi, I couldn’t say. Whatever, I can’t say it’s as slick and quick Spotify.
This may seem a minor point, but when I have time to treat myself to a few Spotify hours, I’ll be jumping all over the shop using the related artists feature, dipping my toe in a track and moving on before settling on a smaller handful of artists I’d like to give a more concentrated listen. Doing this on Tidal will take longer, so for discovering new music it won’t be quite such a pleasant experience.
Listening Comparisons
I mainly stuck to albums I knew best that I know are well mastered. I listened to more than this, but the main differences can be illustrated with these examples.
Nitin Sawnhey – Philtre – Noches En Vela (Parts 1 and 2). – I did a back to back comparison here beginning with Spotify. This is a very well-produced album and is about as good as a 320kbps track can sound. TBH, it sounded pretty good! The pluck of the guitar and electronic beats stood out well, as they should.
Then I played it through Tidal. Initially I couldn’t seem to detect much difference, but once I spotted the changes, this pattern became more obvious with other music too. The soundstage became much larger and it was easier to detect each individual texture within the music.
I noticed the greatest difference to the sound with percussion, particularly upper treble. Anything with a tendency towards sibilance could sound a bit unruly and ‘splashy’ on Spotify. Tidal just sounded more in control. We are talking shades, not night and day, but this extra 5-10% of technical merit added 25% more emotion and slam to the tracks.
Rodrigo y Gabriela – 11:11. Playing “Triveni” – much of the same comments as the Nitin Sawnhey track were apparent here so I won’t duplicate them, suffice to say that the tidiness of each note through Tidal just helped with the overall impact of the timing, crucial to a plucky track like this.
Camelia Jordana – Dans La Peau. Playing the very North African feel track “Ma gueule” it was interesting to see the affect that the wider soundstage through Tidal had on the track. It seemed to make more space to allow Camelia’s achingly beautiful voice shine through. Everything was there on Spotify, but the more compressed soundstage just seemed to reduce her voice a little in the mix. Tidal allowed the 15% full bodied red wine voice to flood through the track with all it’s texture, breathiness and tone in tact.
Benjamin Clementine – Cornerstone. This is just an epic track full of vitality and emotion and it sounds absolutely gorgeous on Tidal. That smidgen more detail comes through actually in his voice. There’s just a little more texture to it. (I noticed this playing the Staves, Dead & Born & Grown too that ) the enunciation of consonants in his voice seems that bit more precise. It’s rather similar to the trebly percussion I mentioned above.
Catalogue
This was just as interesting as the listening comparison and showed some very unexpected results. My musical tastes are not very mainstream anyway, so I was curious to see how Tidal coped with some leftfield searches.
Electronica:
Alphawezen. Both my favourite albums, En Passant and Comme Vous Voulez were present.
Radiohead (yes pretty mainstream!) This was an interesting one. Radiohead is noteworthy by its absence on Spotify, but my favourite albums Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief were there (as were the Special Edition versions), although the newer albums The King of Limbs and In Rainbows weren’t there.
Folk / Singer Songwriter:
Snowgoose – Harmony Springs. On Spotify but not Tidal. This is quite an obscure find, so congrats to Spotify to having it. Jolly good album too, check it out!
The Unthanks – this was the biggest disappointment for me with Tidal. The Unthanks are well known within the folk scene but none of their albums were there. There’s a good selection on Spotify. I own the albums, so could spin the CD, but that’s not the point.
Rachel Sermanni – The album “Under Mountains” was on Spotify and Tidal, but this was Tidal’s only showing, whereas Spotify had her other albums too.
Benjamin Clementine – Cornerstone and Glorious You EP’s – Spotify and Tidal.
The Staves – Dead and Born and Grown – Spotify and Tidal.
Jazz / Latin:
Rosalia de Souza – l’Improvviso – Spotify and Tidal
Introducing Christian Scott – Spotify and Tidal
Blue Note Trip album series. A few albums were on Tidal (such as my favourite number 8), but number 2 (also a favourite) was only on Spotify.
Melanie de Biasio – No Deal. Spotify and Tidal.
Classical / OST’s
This showed up some odd things with the search facility on Tidal. Searching under Hans Zimmer for example showed up a large suite of albums, but no Inception OST. It was there if you searched under “Inception”, so if you’re looking for something in particular, you might need to be more of a sleuth than with Spotify which I’ve found almost as clever as Google search.
Searching for Rachmaninov showed some disappointing results initially, but searching under “Vladimir Ashkenazy” (one of my favour pianists of Rachmaninov’s concertos) showed a vast array of Rach’s works, so again the search facility isn’t quite as comprehensive as the actual catalogue.
And finally, probably the biggest negative so far with Tidal (other than it being double the price of Spotify premium):
NO GAPLESS PLAYBACK. Yes, I did just say that. I must look again, but I don’t remember seeing that anywhere in the reviews about Tidal. I noticed it first playing the Nitin Sawnhey track mentioned above. “Part 1” sets the scene for “Part 2” (unsurprisingly) and builds anticipation in readiness for the slam of part 2, but this anticipation is immediately deflated by……NOTHING for 2-3 seconds.
Not only is this a problem with the emotional peaks and troughs of joined tracks like this, but it’s a particular spoiler for classical music. This is a tad ironic considering that it’s classical that tends to benefit most from the larger soundstage and greater detail on offer with Tidal. It’s a real shame and might, for now at least discourage people from forking out the extra tenner a month. It’s also something Tidal might be able to fix in time, but at least you have been warned.
Summary
My first few hours listening has thrown up an unexpected reaction in me. Although I’m a real Spotify fan, I was quite prepared to jump ship to Tidal and I’m still tempted, but as a package, whether the differences justify the extra outlay depends on how you intend to use the service really.
If you mainly use Spotify as a music browsing service, I would say that it’s slicker quicker user interface and more comprehensive catalogue (for my musical tastes at least) makes it more successful at this task.
But if you intend to ditch your NAS and downloaded music and use this as your primary source, then the quality easily justifies this. I love the simplicity of streaming over the hassle of NAS drives, streamers, ripping and indexing et al. And although we’re talking about small gains in quality, it’s precisely those gains that seems to emotionally engage you with the music that much more. It’s the same premise as someone who’s prepared to pay £1500 for an amp that increases the perceived quality by 5% over a £750 amp. You know what I mean.
As for me, I’m going to give Tidal a month or two of listening before I decide either way. I’d love to have Spotify AND Tidal really – Spotify for searching out new artists and generating playlists for social occasions when I would much prefer gapless playback, but Tidal as my primary more focussed listening source. I can’t justify the cost of both services though, so I’ve got to figure out what I actually want from a streaming service before deciding. Maybe that’s the process you’ll need to go through too.
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