I am driving my mac mini usb over Emm Labs Xds1 V3 player, and i did lots of tests against Qobuz and Tidal, Qobuz always wins the contests...Qobuz has much quite background and lots of details,,,
Tidal MQA vs Qobuz hi-res
My brief experience.. for posterity.
Comparing Tidal MQA to Qobuz hi-res, you -will- hear degredation/loss in the high frequencies (violins in an orchestra etc) on MQA... assuming you have reasonably resolving equipment. For me, that’s Macbook USB to a $150 Audio Engine D1 DAC going to a $600 used Parasound A23 going to used $600 Kef LS50’s, $100 Transparent speaker cables and cheap USB and RCA cables.
The Audio Engine is surprisingly good for it’s price BTW. Over the years, trying different DACs in audio stores when I had an opportunity, I feel like you’d need to spend close to $1,000 to get something significantly better.
The A23 and LS50’s are really good too for today’s used prices. New, they would’ve been $2,500 a few years go
Comparing Tidal MQA to Qobuz hi-res, you -will- hear degredation/loss in the high frequencies (violins in an orchestra etc) on MQA... assuming you have reasonably resolving equipment. For me, that’s Macbook USB to a $150 Audio Engine D1 DAC going to a $600 used Parasound A23 going to used $600 Kef LS50’s, $100 Transparent speaker cables and cheap USB and RCA cables.
The Audio Engine is surprisingly good for it’s price BTW. Over the years, trying different DACs in audio stores when I had an opportunity, I feel like you’d need to spend close to $1,000 to get something significantly better.
The A23 and LS50’s are really good too for today’s used prices. New, they would’ve been $2,500 a few years go