Tidal Music


Hi Audiogoners,
Is there any advantage to subscribe to Tidal Hifi if we don't have the MQA decoder in our DAC?

Thanks,
Calvin
dangcaonguyen

Do a free trial of Qobuz if it’s available where you are.  I switched from Tidal to Qobuz a couple years ago and will never go back.  MQA is the answer to a problem nobody had and nobody asked for.  It’s an algorithm built to modify the original signal to what IT thinks it should be — original artist’s intent be damned.  No thanks.  Plus, there’s more hi-res material on Qobuz that requires no special features or silly unfolding — what a joke IMHO.  I’ve seen lots of people here switch from Tidal to Qobuz along with me who are much happier both with the sound quality and user interface.  People switching from Qobuz to Tidal, not so much and can’t even remember anyone saying they did that.  To me, that says it all.

Unfortunately, Qobuz is not available in Canada. I tried using Qobuz with a U.S. address but it did not work (they know you are in a non-supported country).

Therefore, I have to live with Tidal, Tidal Connect being better than Apple Music AirPlay.

I had Tidal for 4 years and switched to Qobuz 6 months ago.  I much prefer Qobuz for the following reasons: (1) Qobuz just sounds better.  Not on every single album but on the vast majority;  (2) Qobuz has about 10x more hi-res content than Tidal and I prefer Qobuz 24/96 (or 192) to MQA; (3) Qobuz is quite a bit cheaper than Tidal and if you pay by the year it is more than 50% cheaper than Tidal for a hi-res tier; (4) Qobuz is more classical and jazz oriented and has a lot more offerings in these genres than Tidal.  Since I'm not into rap, hiphop or the like I do not miss Tidal at all.

@cagma7 Why is Qobuz still not available in Our Home and Native Land? Seems very strange and unfair to our knobs from the North.

I know that Qobuz sign an agreement with QUB music, a local streaming service who is using Qobuz files (but in MP3 format only). Therefore I suspect we won't see Qobuz in Canada for a while.

Hope I am wrong...