2. digital
  3. 160187-150269

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

bataras
bataras OP
12 posts
 
rosevarte, smallgreencomputers.com isn't responding for me. typo?
glupson
7,842 posts
 
Qobuz offers different file formats to download. All that I have seen have "CD quality" (16/44.1) as an option with a few lower options (mp3s, I think).

The files you dowload at 16/44.1 will be just that, 16/44.1. However, is that really what it was originally? Is there a possibility that some of those are upconverted files?

I ask because I have seen a few somewhat obscure albums in "CD quality" while I have doubts that they ever made it to CD. I am probably just paranoid, but provenance of streaming files seems unknown at times to me.
oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948
494 posts
 
I A/B listened to Qobuz HighRes and Tidal MQA.  I didn't hear much of a difference. In some cases, a track would sound better on one than the other, but neither was a clear winner in that department.  When it came to CD quality tracks, there was no appreciable difference between either streaming service or tracks played from my Innous Zenith MKII network streamer.  I settled on Tidal because it has more of the music I like and I get a 40% military discount. 

I use Roon.  My PS Audio DirectStream DAC (DSD) renders MQA and I like the sound.  I placed a Matrix X-SPDIF 2 between the Zenith and DSD.  The Matrix does not render MQA; however, sound quality via the Matrix i2s HDMI interface is noticeably better than what I had before.

In my case, I think my choice of system components had a bigger impact on SQ than my choice of streaming service or the format of the music streamed.
More to discover