Tidal vs Qobuz in 2024?

[Barrelhouse Solly]

I recently signed up for Qobuz after a 1 month comparison with Amazon. I'm a niche person. I like pre-WWII blues, jazz and country; classical from before 1825, and occasional oddball stuff like Bobby Lounge. Qobuz has a better selection of the music I prefer and a much better search than Amazon. The Amazon search is as bad as the product search on the retail site. Both searches don't handle keywords well. Even though the music is tagged neither search supports the full range of tags as search arguments.

 

[Nabussan]

Oh, and only Tidal does ATMOS music. I play Atmos music on my shield, send it to my Smyth A16 Realizer, and listen to it binauralied over headphones, so something extra there as well. So the vote goes to Tidal.

Is there an extensive range of classical music in the Tidal catalog? Is the Atmos content recorded natively in Atmos format or has it been "upmixed" from stereo sources?

 

[Booker]

Qobuz may look more high-endish to some and appeal more to the high-end crowd.

 

[JCM800]

I haven’t used Tidal so maybe these aren’t points for Qobuz but they’re part of why I’m happy to use it:

1. Qobuz pays fair royalties (unlike Spotify)

2. You can buy lossless files from Qobuz’s download store (unlike Apple’s iTunes music store’s lossy files)

3. For the top Qobuz tier you get a significant download discount for high-res, typically pricing them well below the CD quality price

4. Qobuz’s player apps are quite good

5. Many 3rd party players, streamers, apps, etc. integrate Qobuz (Roon, Audirvana, Vox, etc)

6. I haven’t found any missing albums on Qobuz (rock and metal fan); even my tiny little band’s new single is on there

 

[Deckard01]

I have tested them all. I am the guy that is bored of listening all the way albums and I need algorithms to give me good playlist recommendation based on my like songs and artists.

At this Spotify is the really king full of playlist and as I like the idea what will play next as I really bored of all the way jazz, rock alternative, I really like to change sound.

Qobuz in that way is really really far behind but with very good audio quality.

Tidal as with new cost plan and leaving MQA is very good option.

Moreover Tidal and Qobuz are bit perfect that's a very good key point for me against Amazon, Deezer and Apple with is not bit perfect on Android/Windows.

As far as my liked songs and artists Tidal can match Spotify. Qobuz is behind in that.

As if Apple had bit perfect and good integration with the out of their scope ecosystems would be the perfect option, but also my hope and stop of searching perfect option would be Hi Fi Spotify. This service have all the checkbox except of the Hi Fi. So so sad...

As Roon is expensive for my pocket as I read that AI of Roon can create good playlists (correct me if I'm wrong).
Then the only option I see is Tidal.

Or then a not a good and exensive option which is Spotify+ Tidal + Soundiiz for transfering playlist. But I do not see that worth the point.

All services headache is heare. And I can not believe that even now in 2024 Qobuz and Spotify can not effort some time and cost to invest for a good AI Algo (so so many AI tools out there) for good suggested playlists.


That's my thought..

 

[EagleKent]

I am a long time Qobuz user but now that Tidal have catched up in terms of SQ and they lowering their price I am thinking of going back to Tidal. Another reason is auto-play doesn't work all the time on my iPhone which drives me nuts especially when driving or commuting. Hope Tidal auto-play works better.

 

[Brian Hall]

As Roon is expensive for my pocket as I read that AI of Roon can create good playlists (correct me if I'm wrong).
Then the only option I see is Tidal.

Roon is not cheap, but if you listen to a lot of music, it does add enough to justify the price. I doubted it was really worth the cost until I tried it.

As far as creating good playlists based on what I like, yes, Roon has that nailed for me, second place would go to Spotify, third place tie Youtube Music and Amazon HD. Tidal and Qobuz both still want to include tracks that make me go WTF?!

 

[slaweks]

I have tested them all. I am the guy that is bored of listening all the way albums and I need algorithms to give me good playlist recommendation based on my like songs and artists.

At this Spotify is the really king full of playlist and as I like the idea what will play next as I really bored of all the way jazz, rock alternative, I really like to change sound.

Qobuz in that way is really really far behind but with very good audio quality.

Tidal as with new cost plan and leaving MQA is very good option.

Moreover Tidal and Qobuz are bit perfect that's a very good key point for me against Amazon, Deezer and Apple with is not bit perfect on Android/Windows.

As far as my liked songs and artists Tidal can match Spotify. Qobuz is behind in that.

As if Apple had bit perfect and good integration with the out of their scope ecosystems would be the perfect option, but also my hope and stop of searching perfect option would be Hi Fi Spotify. This service have all the checkbox except of the Hi Fi. So so sad...

As Roon is expensive for my pocket as I read that AI of Roon can create good playlists (correct me if I'm wrong).
Then the only option I see is Tidal.

Or then a not a good and exensive option which is Spotify+ Tidal + Soundiiz for transfering playlist. But I do not see that worth the point.

All services headache is heare. And I can not believe that even now in 2024 Qobuz and Spotify can not effort some time and cost to invest for a good AI Algo (so so many AI tools out there) for good suggested playlists.


That's my thought..

What do you mean by Amazon "not bit perfect"?

 

[goat76]

I am a long time Qobuz user but now that Tidal have catched up in terms of SQ and they lowering their price I am thinking of going back to Tidal. Another reason is auto-play doesn't work all the time on my iPhone which drives me nuts especially when driving or commuting. Hope Tidal auto-play works better.

I like Qobuz and the user experience I have using their service, but I have not heard much from them about music in Atmos which would be interesting to have access to. That's why I have some loose thoughts of trying Tidal again. Still, after looking into this it seems like a big hassle to get those Atmos albums to play through a speaker system without buying an Apple TV, an Nvidia Shield, or similar plastic junk of some sort.

I will probably stick with Qobuz, or does anyone know a simple solution to get those Atmos mixes from Tidal to play through a regular AVR using Tidal's Windows app?

 

[Deckard01]

What do you mean by Amazon "not bit perfect"?

As far as I know and be informed the Amazon and Deezer apps can not play bit perfect(not bit perfect option as Tidal and Qobuz) on Windows or even Android.

 

[MarnixM]

My experience is that Qobuz's library is missing much more music I'm interested in, but whether that's an issue depends on your taste.

I don't know Tidal, but as lover of Jazz and Classic I nearly never miss any new album in these categories. I'm a "collector" of several Jazz and Classic artist and composers, so when I really like an albums I can buy it as premium member as download at Qobuz with reduced price.

 

[OldTimer]

Qobuz sounds better on my systems.

Tidal will be better than Qobuz for MQA songs format. MQA is the best of all.

 

[Deckard01]

Roon is not cheap, but if you listen to a lot of music, it does add enough to justify the price. I doubted it was really worth the cost until I tried it.

As far as creating good playlists based on what I like, yes, Roon has that nailed for me, second place would go to Spotify, third place tie Youtube Music and Amazon HD. Tidal and Qobuz both still want to include tracks that make me go WTF?!

Yes one of the main reasons of paying for Roon is the playlist AI and the EQ while streaming as PEACE is not working when listening through streaming.

But I can not afford the cost till now. If they would drop the price I believe many more users would join.

 

[OldTimer]

Tidal if you want music video. Stay away from Apple Music unless you use Apple Music Classical (it’s different apps)

 

[JeremyFife]

No one service meets all my needs (wants!). With the perfectly adequate, for me, WiiM app it doesn't matter much now anyway. I use Amazon as it works for the family and the depth of choice is surprisingly good. No issues with quality.

I'd add Bandcamp into the mix - essential for me for downloads and artist support. Also works for streaming. I wouldn't be without this https://bandcamp.com/

 

[slaweks]

As far as I know and be informed the Amazon and Deezer apps can not play bit perfect(not bit perfect option as Tidal and Qobuz) on Windows or even Android.

The Amazon Music apps on Windows and Mac do not hint at any such possibility. You can see that most music is of High quality (16 bit, 44K frequency) or Ultra High (24 bits, and 48K or higher frequency).

 

[CT Man]

I forgot to mention app quality and availability. That is important. Amazon's app kind of sucks. They have good sound quality, but their app needs to be redone.

Tidal and Qobuz are pretty similar in app quality. Tidal is available on more devices that Qobuz. Roon supports both Tidal and Qobuz.

Spotify is available on almost anything.

Spotify and Amazon have the largest selection of music. Qobuz and Tidal are close to each other and getting better.

I don't think I could say any one is the best at everything.

IMO, Spotify has the best app. Well second best. Roon is the best.

I hate the Spotify app because of it's horrible play queue. It gets so messed up queuing multiple albums, moving tracks up and down, tyring to get a track or album to "Play Next", the futility of clearing the queue. The separate "Next Up" and "Queue" sections are inflexible and nonsensical. What possible advantage do they have over a single queue?

The simplicity of having a single queue with the option to add tracks or albums to the top ("Play Next") or the end ("Add to Queue") makes so much more sense to me. For the life of me, I don't understand why Spotify doesn't choose to queue this way.

Streaming service suggestions just don't work well with my taste in music. TIDAL is the worst in this regard. I prefer to filter New Releases in Qobuz by genre to try out music. Roon is way better for suggesting related music.

For me, none of the Spotify features are significantly better than TIDAL/Quobuz and it's queue is a deal breaker. On the road I stream TIDAL/Qobuz directly and at home it's Roon. There have been a number of catalog differences between TIDAL and Qobuz that were significant to me, but that seems to be lessening over time. Qobuz is better for early jazz and classical. I may drop TIDAL sometime soon since MQA lingers. I've had cases of weird artifacts in TIDAL that don't appear on other services.

 

[Peterinvan]

Now that Tidal have trimmed their price tiers (well, goes live in April) I would have to choose Tidal.
I dont believe Qobuz has any major advantages over Tidal but Tidal has a few pros:

1. Playlists can be 10k tracks in Tidal- believe its 2k in Qobuz. YMMV on how important that is- for me very.
2. Tidal connect as others have mentioned is very useful for eg with Wiim players etc
3. Once it has a good bit of data about your habits Tidal actually does decent recommendations and programmed content. Their Daily Discovery mix of 10 tracks is a regular listen. Qobuz does zero of that last time I looked.

Now MQA and the overpriced top tier are going I would pick Tidal over Qobuz every time.

That said,I also subscribe to Amazon. I agree with other comments here its app is pretty crap BUT its major selling point for me is that you can do a FULL shuffle of all your albums. I have a 6k album library and the ability to have something pop on shuffle I havent seen/ heard for years is of real value to me. Plus the Windows app lets you integrate streaming and local content in that shuffle.

I also have a Spotify account on the back on my wife's sub because that is convenient for sharing and curating playlists for the kids and such but if she left I likely would too- but it is a decent service.

I could not justify the cost for Roon just for the playlists and the parametric EQ.
After 7 years of enjoying curating my playlists on Tidal (MAX) it is now pretty good at offering up suggestions I like. I can download my playlists to my DAP.

The only genres I don't like is HipHop, Metal, and related Pop. It no longer tries to get me interested
It sometimes offers two versions of a track (expletive and non-expletive.) I find expletives distracting.

On my Win11 Tidal app I can shuffle my Tracks (i.e. full library).

I am happy with the progress in the transition from MQA to HiRes FLAC.


Latest chain: Tidal > Win11 > iUSB power > FiiO K17 > 4.4mm > Meze 109Pro. This new dongle works really well with no EQ needed.

 

[Jimbob54]

On my Win11 Tidal app I can shuffle my Tracks (i.e. full library).

If you add an album it doesn't also add them to tracks though, does it? I mostly add /fav full albums.

 

[artsky]

I have both Qobuz and Tidal and I tend to listen to Tidal more by using the "Track Radio" or the Daily Discovery. Whenever I search for a song in Tidal, I usually find related songs using the track radio option.

Lately I tried the Qobuz Android TV beta and it seems good but as of writing, it has no option yet for bit-perfect mode on Android TV so I use UAPP for Android TV instead.