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Post by SteveC on May 17, 2019 14:23:56 GMT
Last year, I had free home trials of Tidal, Spotufy and Qobuz and settled on a monthly subscription to Spotify Premium at £9.99 per month.
I know some of you also use Spotify Premium and the Hi-Rez offerings from Tidal and Qobuz. Some of you subscribe to more that one streaming service!
For those who have the Hi-Rez versions of Tidal and/or Qobuz, is the extra resolution/sound quality worth the extra monthly payment?
I have been looking at Qobuz Studio, which I don't think was an available option when I sampled their service and see that they stream in Hi-Rez for £24.99 per month.
I am not particularly interested in the Qobuz Sublime service at £29.99 per month, which offers discounted Hi-Rez downloads.
How do Qobuz and Tidal compare with Spotify Premium as regards library content?
I would be interested in any comments from users of these streaming services.
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Post by MartinT on May 17, 2019 14:44:46 GMT
Spotify still has the best catalogue no matter what the claims made elsewhere.
I subscribe to Qobuz Studio and find it a very good service. It does have catalogue holes but they seem to be filling them by the month as I discover more of my favourites suddenly appearing. On the sound quality front, it's quite superb. Even standard 16/44 material sounds very good and many of the hi-res albums are excellent. They seem to have all manner of formats for different albums including such oddities as 24/44 and 24/48. The service is glitch-free and very reliable and there are good apps for it. Search is fast but beware of some remnant French usage (e.g. Symphonie) in classical music which can affect search accuracy.
I am very happy with Qobuz supplemented by Spotify for my music streaming.
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Post by mikeyb on May 17, 2019 15:04:09 GMT
First thing you need to check is what artists you like that each service provides. No point going for best audio when they don't carry your favourite musicians.
I've tried them all and there were massive variations on the amount of artists I like to listen to, with Qobuz being the worst ( poor on Prog Rock and Electronic )
Tidal and Spotify tend to be very similar on those genres.
Amazon was a non starter due to audio quality.
Next thing you should be looking out for is the interface, Spotify and Tidal both good with Spotify edging it. Qobuz a distant 3rd.
So do your trial periods on them all and then decide, remember you can do multiple trials by using different email addresses and you can even save money by using a VPN and paying by PayPal 😉
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Post by jandl100 on May 18, 2019 6:41:46 GMT
Streamer interfaces will be largely dependent on the equipment you use them on. Huge differences here, you just have to try it and see how it works on your gear. I've seen some folks say that Qobuz is unusable, for example, but I find it just fine.
I hear significant tonal differences between streaming services, and it's not just resolution imo.
Tidal is brightest, Qobuz and Deezer sit in the middle, and Spotify Premium sounds least bright.
In my experience a system optimised for Spotify will sound bright and headache-inducing on Tidal. And if optimised for Tidal will sound dull and rolled off with Spotify.
I'm using Spotify Premium for its (on my system) gapless playback between tracks. No other streaming service manages that ime. But that might just be my setup. It's particularly important with classical music as consecutive tracks are often musically continuous.
Spotify has the largest music catalogue but there is some music it lacks that others have, so it's not a simple issue but will depend on what you are interested in.
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Post by MartinT on May 18, 2019 6:48:12 GMT
If you use a streamer with its own interface (like Volumio), the provider interfaces become irrelevant except when creating playlists.
Jerry, I'll check but I thought Qobuz gives gapless when playing an album?
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Post by John on May 18, 2019 7:12:20 GMT
The good thing about the streaming services is the free month trail. So you can find out what works best for your system and you.
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Post by julesd68 on May 18, 2019 8:43:21 GMT
Spotify is fantastic but if only they could let you organise your library as you want - can't believe they haven't offered this yet ...
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Post by SteveC on May 18, 2019 13:09:13 GMT
Certainly, usability in my system has changed with the recent free software/firmware upgrade from dCS, called Mosaic.
The new iOS app for my iPAD gives access to radio stations and for the first time, imbedded options for Qobuz and Deezer, in addition to Tidal and Spotify.
Previously, my free trial of Qobuz only allowed me to stream to my Vivaldi Upsampler, via Apple Airplay.
dCS Mosaic incorporates ROON-like information for the artist/music you are streaming.
I can see that ultimate sound quality would be paramount for users such as Martin, who stream music as a main system source. My listening is split between CD/SACD, streaming from a Melco digital music library (6TB) and occasionally, vinyl.
I tend to use Spotify Premium to identify new music and stream old favourites from yesteryear, which I may not have in my collection.
Although I feel I have optimised the playback chain for streaming media (ultra-low linear PSU for the router, which is also grounded and connected via a MeiCord ethernet cable to my dCS Vivaldi Upsampler) it is not my primary source of listening, so I was interested in the opinion of others as to what advantages may be offered by the competition (Tidal HiFi, Qobuz Studio) at a higher monthly cost of subscription.
Thank you Jerry, for your explanation of the nuance comparison between each service during system playback.
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Post by jandl100 on May 18, 2019 13:25:06 GMT
Jerry, I'll check but I thought Qobuz gives gapless when playing an album? Sadly, Qobuz has an approximately 2 second gap between tracks on my setup. I'd probably use it in preference to Spotify otherwise as I prefer it in some ways, eg. it's ability to search by recording company, its in line reviews and commentary. |
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Post by zippy on May 18, 2019 13:51:59 GMT
Jerry, I'll check but I thought Qobuz gives gapless when playing an album? Sadly, Qobuz has an approximately 2 second gap between tracks on my setup. I'd probably use it in preference to Spotify otherwise as I prefer it in some ways, eg. it's ability to search by recording company, its in line reviews and commentary. That's strange - I'm sure Qobuz is working gapless for me, but doesn't it depend on whatever control software you're using, rather than the source - e.g. I use the Bubble app, with my StreamX doing the rendering. p.s. I just tried running the Qobuz app on my Windows PC, played some Pink Floyd, and it's definitely working gapless as expected.. |
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Post by MartinT on May 30, 2019 19:17:36 GMT
I'm using Spotify Premium for its (on my system) gapless playback between tracks. No other streaming service manages that ime. Hi Jerry, I have confirmed that Qobuz does do gapless playback, at least through Volumio. EDIT: ...and through their own Windows interface, too. |
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Post by jandl100 on May 31, 2019 4:59:19 GMT
I'm guessing that it's my ancient Windows version that's holding it back and causing some issues like this lack of gapless capability on everything except Spotify.
The glitch that now causes a 1 second pause 30 seconds from the end of every Tidal track is probably similar!
I'll look into that sometime soon.
But my system is currently tuned to Spotify tonality, so it would be a bit of a pain to align it with Qobuz anyway.
-- maybe the various streaming service tonalities that I hear is also a Windows glitch? Although at least 1 person on AOS hears the same sort of tonal differences.
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Post by MartinT on May 31, 2019 5:06:30 GMT
No - I hear the tonality differences too, although as my system has improved Spotify and Qobuz have come a lot closer to each other, so much so that I don't care about which source I use (Qobuz preferred, Spotify for anything it doesn't have).
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