Spotify vs Tidal

[SteveR750]

When Amazon launched the HD tier I spent a 3 month free trial doing A-B comparisons with Tidal Masters and some fairly resolving headphones. Amazon has slightly better sound quality but the terrible interface made me keep Tidal. I'm a Prime customer and have been for almost 12 years so I'm already in the Amazon ecosystem.

Interesting conclusion. It's debatable whether anyone can hear the difference between bit perfect output, or not as happens with the Amazon app. In truth, I'm not sure I can hear the difference between W10 resampling, or direct; or between Tidal or Amazon; but for the fact that the Amazon app is simply deceiving is enough for me to not use it. I'd rather my £££ go to Tidal tbh if they sound the same. One thing is sure, if an app is streaming direct then you can have some confidence that the presentation is more accurate, even if you don't like the experience!

 

[CatVsGrizzly]

I usually stream music from my samsung S7 to my Charge 3 and listen at 320kps (or compatible) qualities. With this set up I found Tidal's rips sounded substantially inferior to Spotify and Deezer. The sound was more muffled, rogue frequencies masked music and trebles were prematurely rolled off. Even listening to Youtube sounded more pleasent. Maybe the Tidal formats dont convert well though the SBC bluetooth audio codec? In saying that, spotify and deezer still sounded great on the Charge 3.
With the limitations of the Charge 3's SBC codec, I couldn't make good use of tidal's hifi or masters formats (they downgrade like crazy).
For my really basic set up, I found spotify and deezer the way to go. I'm surprised how pleasant their lossy formats sound : )