Quality differences across various FLAC stores (Bandcamp, Qobuz, etc.)

[kinghrothgar]

Back in the day I worked at music streaming service, and I know back then, Pandora, early Spotify, and we often had to do our own ripping of CDs, labels wouldn't send us files directly. As such each service's rip varied a lot depending on what software, arguments, etc they were using.

A lot has changes since then though, so I wondered how consistent FLAC files where across various services. I assume the services are being sent the files directly now. Out of interest I snagged the "Brutus - Unison Life" 24-bit FLAC album from Bandcamp and Qobuz. The audio appears to be identical with the files having matching "MD5 of the unencoded content".

Have y'all encountered any significant differences in FLAC from different download services?

 

[Dunring]

I bailed on Tidal because of no interest in MQA and just use Qobuz now. No issues with their stuff, just do the 16 bit 44.1khz format for simplicity. Mainly concerned with not having any money going to MQA so there's potentially more for the artists.