I'd like to add my experience and discredit the majority of Tidal-loving people a little. Actually, I mostly listen to music via Youtube, because I also like visual content, but from time to time I like the sound of the so-called hi-res. I'll make it short, Tidal sounds to me as if it was edited somehow, Apple Music sounds much fuller and more natural, more beautiful. It is true, however, that the quality from YouTube appears to me to be quite poor, of course it depends on the quality of the original mastering, bad studio mastering has the greatest influence and the best streaming service does not improve it. "You can disagree with it, you can even get upset, but that's about all you can do about it."
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Tidal vs Apple Music vs Youtube
- Thread starter KU713
- Start date
Biggest problem with Apple music is AirPlay 2 where casting from an iphone might give you just 256 Kbit If You cast from within the Apple Music app, and for high res and true 16 bit you must have your phone/mac/ipad connected to a dac with a wire.
With that said, I use apple lossless and both AirPlay and wired connection and it sounds very good, better than spotify to my ears.
Keith_W
Major Contributor
Youtube: somehow it sounds awful. Muddy and lacking dynamics. I honestly don't know why, I strongly suspect it's not the same file. However, massive selection of music. I don't know if I can cast it from a tablet to a PC. Does anyone know?
Apple: I won't touch anything Apple.
Tidal: it ticks most of the boxes for me. I say "most", because - it does not have the widest range of classical music (which is what I ONLY listen to), and Tidal Connect isn't as good as Spotify Connect. Spotify allows you to cast from tablet to PC, but Tidal does not.
Apple: I won't touch anything Apple.
Tidal: it ticks most of the boxes for me. I say "most", because - it does not have the widest range of classical music (which is what I ONLY listen to), and Tidal Connect isn't as good as Spotify Connect. Spotify allows you to cast from tablet to PC, but Tidal does not.
Tidal is my favorite streaming application for one reason: once and awhile It offers more than one version of the same album. And I like a lot of stuff from 80’s and 90’s and I tend to like the original or reissued versions, not the remastered ones.
Qobuz tends to offer the latest versions, many with loudness. Tiring. Qobuz is my second favorite. YouTube I refuse to pay for AAC 256 kbps, but I use the free version a lot because there is a lot of rarity in it.
Qobuz tends to offer the latest versions, many with loudness. Tiring. Qobuz is my second favorite. YouTube I refuse to pay for AAC 256 kbps, but I use the free version a lot because there is a lot of rarity in it.
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I'll second that. AppleTV hooked up with HDMI is convenient, and I hear good things about their Spatial Audio stuff. Their audio is limited to 48 kHz 24-bit - whether or not that's good enough for folks is their decision. I look forward to trying it out personally once my Auro3D room is set up.
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If you like classical music Qobuz appears to have a high # of selections. One of the reasons I'm switching to Apple Music-I don't listen to classical.
Are you asserting Qobuz alters its signal? Proof?
Zensō
Major Contributor
I’ve null tested my own masters against lossless Tidal, Qobuz, and Apple Music. The differences are minuscule and far below being audible. If you’re hearing differences you’re either listening to different masters or expectation bias is playing a role. Of course, YouTube and Spotify deliver compressed files which may have audible differences.
D
Deleted member 48726
Guest
Try to pass these tests:
1. https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html
2. https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
3.
1. https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html
2. https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
3.
I'm not. I said that Qobuz tends to offer the most recent versions of an album. That's it. For example, below are the albums available on Tidal from a band called Tristitia. You can see different versions of the same album, right? Can you see two different versions of Tristitia's album "One with Darkness"? By clicking on them, you can see that one is a remastered version from 2022 by Hammerheart Records and the second is the original version by Holy Records.
Here are the same albuns in Qobuz. There's only the 2022 remastered version of the album "One with Darkness".
I have the FLACs of these two Tristitia albums here with me.
| Remastered version | Original one |
"Qobuz tends to offer the latest versions, many with loudness." By "loudness" do you mean victims of the 'loudness wars'? All streaming services have multiple versions of releases in most cases. Qobuz is no different in that regard.
Qobuz is not on par with Tidal in terms of multiple versions of releases available, as I demonstrated. I refer to loudness because it is visibly easy to check, but I have heard remasters that even the sound of a cymbal disappeared. Not that remastering is always bad, but 95% is according to my empirical observation. I tend to prefer listening to the original version, even if it is in aac, mp3 or mqa, than a touched version in Flac because, yes, the source is the most important thing.
I use Youtube music, Spotify and Apple Music. Apple Music is very good with their Classical music library (good quality sound with good price too). Spotify is so good with discover new songs/music and enjoy mindlessly listening time (even it's not lossless but I think the quality is very goo too) . Youtube is great for it has the widest variety of songs (many remix or songs aren't available on any streaming platforms). The only downside for YouTube music is the quality since many songs are just a ripped off audio from YouTube.
I have never tried Tidal yet (Qobus isn't available in my country). It's the most expensive one and I don't see how I can benefit from that. Can someone tell me what is the selling point of Tidal that I might have missed?, besides the MQA since I don't own any devices that support MQA.
I have never tried Tidal yet (Qobus isn't available in my country). It's the most expensive one and I don't see how I can benefit from that. Can someone tell me what is the selling point of Tidal that I might have missed?, besides the MQA since I don't own any devices that support MQA.
Zensō
Major Contributor
There was a time when Tidal was the only mainstream streaming service that offered higher resolution streams. That time has passed and today they don’t have anything to offer over and above their competitors.
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