I've been dancing on the edge of the loyal Apple volcano for a while now but when they replaced iTunes with Apple Music AND totally abandoned classic iPod owners like me-self that was the last straw.
First off, Apple Music just plain sucks. The update to OS Catalina along with the replacement of iTunes proved to be an absolute mess. ALL of my music, around 160GB, had to be re-downloaded. ( I have a lot more music in FLAC format stored on a portable hard drive which includes all of my iTunes music and more. ) It's a wet mess at best.
I will mention here that I purchase all of my music. Yes, I still buy compact discs and vinyl as well, so the streaming thing is something I purposely avoided until only recently.
I never tried Spotify for obvious reasons, so my first leap into streaming was through Tidal. The platform promises access to higher resolution files - at a price - so I thought, "let's give it a shot."
Tidal is good. I signed up for the most premium service. I like the depth of their catalogue. At $19.99 per month it's a bit on the "expensive" side, but the sound quality justifies the premium. (My stereo setup is modest but quite decent; a Belles 250i Integrated hybrid amplifier, Bluesound Node, Jolida FX tube DAC, and either a pair of Thiel CS2.4 or Totem Acoustic Rainmaker monitors. ) I had a much better (IMHO) setup years ago but financial hardships beginning in 2018 have stunted that pursuit. C'est la vie.
I never heard of qobuz before this month, so while I was subscribed to Tidal I opted in for the trial version just for kicks. With both programs opened on my desktop I selected an identical tune from each - in this instance Ginger Baker's "Cyril Davies" - and performed an amateur side by side comparison.
Now my desktop computer ( 27" iMac, 2018 ) is hardly a "hifi" piece of equipment, but the difference I heard between Tidal and qobuz was vivid - even through the crappy little speakers in the desktop. qobuz had "air" in the music, a sense of depth that I felt Tidal lacked. This was "near-field" listening so methinks my observations have a sound footing.
Since abandoning Tidal for qobuz a few things have become obvious. qobuz has more frequent drop-outs than I ever experienced with Tidal - it can be pretty annoying. The depth of the catalogue leaves some things to be desired. ex.: Lyle Lovett's catalogue is non-existent. (Admittedly this has more to do with obtaining licensing rights and whatnot, but that did surprise me. ) I thought I had everything Lucinda Williams recorded as a guest here and there, so comparing my iTunes library with many of the offerings on qobuz I discovered I was missing a few. Go figger.
This predicament was also experienced with Tidal and, I imagine, will be with any streaming program. All of the platforms pretty much mirrored one another with new releases, differences were/are minimal at best. qobuz appears much more like a webpage than either of the other two so my attempts to open a section in "another window" were met with a slap. Hard to break habits... Also, when rummaging through "suggested" recordings it is pretty annoying to return to the beginning page which defaults to the starting point instead of where you had last scrolled to. Not a huge imposition, just kind of annoying.
To sum it up, I like qobuz. Good curation, decent catalogue depth, and easy personalization. At $14.99 a month for the highest level I think it beats the others. I look at streaming as a complement to my already existing music collection, not as a replacement.
