You can choose your favorite tracks, listen to full albums, view hand-picked playlists or let the algorithm decide. (There also appears to be a respectable selection of pop and hip-hop, if you’re into that kind of thing.) The interface is clean and navigable, and the service has plenty of curation options. Over the past week, I’ve found almost everything I want to listen to, from chill bluegrass, to tried-and-true classic rock, to John Williams soundtracks and more. (They’re all popular, but it’s fair to say that none of them is topping the Billboard charts right now.) I was pleased to find Gillian Welch, The Rolling Stones and Hilary Hahn all listed among the top choices. When you first start up the program, Tidal asks you to pick three artists (ideally in three different genres) to get a good idea of your tastes. Thankfully, Tidal has been pretty good in this regard so far. But it’s good to know that if I decide to pay for a monthly subscription, I’ll be getting music at CD quality or better, rather than "mid-2000s era MP3."Īll the sound quality in the world won’t do you any good if an app doesn’t offer the music you want to listen to. On the free tier, Tidal offers a 160 kbps bitrate, the same as Spotify’s free tier. I haven’t decided whether or not to pay for Tidal yet, so my only access to this high-quality bitrate has been through a 30-day free trial. Spotify, on the other hand, tops out at 320 kbps, which is a sizable difference. The more moderate HiFi plan ($10 per month) streams at around 1,411 kbps. At the $20 per month HiFi Plus tier, you can get lossless bitrates of up to 9,216 kbps on certain master tracks. Headphones will make it easier to hear artifacts but you don't necessarily need high-end equipment.Tidal’s primary selling point over Spotify has always been its better sound quality. (I'm not sure if I have any recordings with castanets, and I don't really want to hear compression artifacts anyway.) "They say" castanets generate compression artifacts. Some sounds are easier to compress than others so if you're tying to hear a difference it does help to focus-on and repeat the parts where you think you're hearing a difference. And, you'd have to match the RMS or LUFS levels because MP3 usually changes the peak levels so if you do regular peak normalization, the loudness levels won't match. You could record both Tidal and Spotify (with Audacity, etc.) and that makes it easy to switch between them but you might question if you've "captured" the stream accurately and you'd have to level-match them. The easiest way to do this it to rip a CD to FLAC & MP3 so you're starting with the same source. If you can hear a difference 10 out of 10 you probably are hearing a difference. If you can hear a difference 6 out of 10 times, you probably aren't really hearing a difference. You know you have the accurate-original recording. The main thing about lossless (or high-resolution lossless) is that you don't have to give the storage/transmission format any thought. Sometimes there is an LPCM (lossless) stereo track and 5.1 Dolby or DTS, at I'll always choose the surround track. ![]() Some of the best-sounding music I have is on concert DVDs with 5.1 channel Dolby, and that's lossy. MP3 is lossy but if you can hear a difference (with high-quality lossy compression) it's usually not as obvious as many people think. ![]() This could also maybe explain why the difference seemed so clear a couple of weeks ago when I was comparing the same tracks on Spotify and Tidal. I can try some A / B testing as Jimbob proposed and see if there really is an audible difference.Įarlier today I read that Spotify, even if the streaming setting is "extreme", does not necessarily stream at this higher quality. ![]() Obviously there are many factors here which have changed. It's the first time in years that I've been just listening to tracks for hours, all day, all genres, without getting fatigue. ![]() Last week got a really nice DAC, set up my Hi Fi properly in the front room, and have been listening on Audirvana / Tidal / Qobuz. "I've not done that comparison but prior to Apple Music going lossless I found I got listening fatigue really quickly." Thanks, I guess this goes some way to explain the remark someone made about "Tidal is a rip off." I thought this might have just have been to do with the MQA thing. "Tidal is a bit sketchy in that they lie about offering "CD quality" lossless, even though that's not always the case." I find that there are so many answers across various platforms, not to mention articles online that seem a bit like puff pieces, or some subjective things ("you can hear the difference if you have a good setup and know what to listen for.") I suppose partly I wanted to try and make a simple thread on this reputable forum, so someone in a similar position could understand more at a glance what's going on.
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