First thing is, this is on a Chromecast Audio. Other streaming solutions may give different results..

First up Paradise and lunch - Ry Cooper.
Fool for a cigarette...

What I hear is a slightly cleaner, less rounded sound on Tidal. The vocals are slightly sharper too. Guess that the frequency our ears are most in tune with after all..

On to Beatles come together.. Same story as above. The guitar riff that really breaks out in my left horn stack really punches. Both are good but again Tidal is slightly more hi fi.

Adele's Million years ago.. Her vocal is cleaner, more etched on Tidal, no question. When she lets rip it's a joy on both compared to via my laptop.. Don't know why that is, but it is what it is..

Onto Johnny Cash's - When the man comes around (as used in the FBI troopers being taken out when they attack a terminator scene on the Sarah Connor Cronicles..)
Again and the more I listen, Tidal wins more easily.
It's richer more resonant, easily equal to my Flac streaming laptop on this track.

Next up Kingston Wall's You.
The stand out here is the attack on the drums when they kick in. The above differences I've written also stand, but the drums, the drums.. Tidal wins..

Low's Death of a Salesman.. Wow the higher res really plays in. There's lower noise or the background is quieter or something. Tidal just gives you the goods, nothing more, nothing less.

Yello's Stay with Heidi Happy.
Yup Tidal wins. More dynamic, less noise, cleaner.

The Who, Eminence Front up next.
Sounds good on Spotify..
The intro is just cleaner on Tidal. That makes it sound more musical. Or more of the music comes through..

Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Black and tan fantasy.. Haha not available on Tidal! First one so far..

The Beautiful American is on both but on a different album.. Ah hear Spotify wins as it has the beautifully remastered version. Richer, tonally, dynamic, better job of stereo mix, superior in every way..

Good Havest, Charly.. Spotify sounds great and as is not there on Tidal, Spotify wins.. Much of my beloved Scandinavian music will I fear be missing with Tidal..

Anders Glenmark, Regnet is on both.. Better on Tidal.

Eva Dahlgren En plats pa Jorden and Blackshear tracks.. Closer this one. Bit more command on Tidal and less noise around the music.

Pixies Hey. Lower noise floor in Tidal.
Spotify is punchy though.

Suite for solo Cello no. 5 bwv, 1027.
N/A on Tidal. Was directed to others..

La Femme, Always in the sun. Cleaner and even more punchy on Tidal.

So, you get the picture.
This could largely be down to the implementation in Chromecast Audio.

But boy oh boy does CA with Tidal make a convincing case for itself sound wise for me.

If I can live with its catalogue long term I can't say..

Evil Urges and Lissie's unplugged album are not available on either service.. Tidal need to stop copying what Spotify have methinks and go and get the real hifi sounding tracks we like - eh Martin?

Yeah they must be pulled by the artist or label somehow.
Perhaps they are hardcopy best sellers..

It would be great if Spotify did a hifi sub with 1 being hifi and the rest lower res for phones, Echo, Sonos etc.

Tidal do a family package. Only £5 more than the usual hifi. But and it's a big but, Tidal isn't on Echo or Sonos..
So no dice for us for that..
Whoops, tell a lie, all my echo and Sonos devices are there in the Tidal app .. can I ask Alexa to play on Tidal too?

Ah but none of my Amazon Echo devices are there at the moment.. time to Google..

I'll try Tidal Hifi on Sonos Vs Spotify SQ tomorrow.

Thanks for sharing Steve I suspect most people will have similar results

We've been doing some comparisons between Tidal and Spotify on the Sonos systems we have.
Pretty much across the board the findings on my main system hold true.
It's less noticeable but definitely there.
Had daughter listening and she confirmed the same. We can definitely hear artifacts (and I call them that for want of a better word), that are present on Spotify that are not there on Tidal.
We are not imagining it - Did blind tests too, to try and catch ourselves out..

It's interesting to try and define these artifacts we're hearing.

I define them as softer slightly more grainy vocals. It's not much, but there.
I could also describe it as a sort of air or 'breathiness' around the vocal, that shouldn't be there.
When you've heard it without, it's a little bit in the way.

Then there's the slight clarity and dynamics side of it.

We didn't think it was going to possible to hear a difference to be honest, but we do.

Tidal use, in the Sonos app at present, is not as well integrated as Spotify is.

I'm also running into more road blocks song catalogue wise..

None of current artists I miss on Spotify are on Tidal either.

Still Tidal sounds good..

Good work, Steve. I still reference your Spotify list, too.

I intend on building my playlists in Qobuz to replicate my Spotify ones, but there's little point until Volumio fixes the Qobuz Connect bug so that I can use their app.

I did listen to some of your choices, my notes above. Unfortunately, none of them were in hi-res on Qobuz and, as you can see, Spotify is well up there with 16/44 in terms of sound quality with barely any differences. This tallies with all my findings so far.

Good question. Now that I have Spotify as a very good baseline, I've been looking for a source of hi-res streams to supplement it (as well as the continued hope that Spotify will one day go hi-res).  Qobuz appeared to have a better range than Tidal.  I'm not so sure of that now, and I'm disappointed at how many albums I know to be mastered in hi-res (e.g. they have SACD or DVD-A releases) but are not on Qobuz in hi-res.  It's quite frustrating!  Is Tidal similar?

All my findings so far mirror what I found with SACD and DVD-A discs compared with CD.  Marginal improvements, a few outstanding ones, but generally not night-and-day differences over good CDs.

You are not selling Tidal to me!!

The Chromecast Audio Ethernet / power adapter has arrived.
I'll first plumb it in as it is and evaluate if there is an improvement with it verses over WiFi with the standard power supply.
If it proves good, I'll look at removing the mains and giving it a linear 5Vdc supply.
I can already see where my tools will get purchase to open the casing up

Other testing: I played Spotify Premium with all the best settings Vs Tidal HiFi against each other on my laptop with my top of range Sennheiser ear buds.
Same tracks same mastering (as per the info) etc.
Tidal won hands down which is not surprising as every effort to stream Spotify on a Windows laptop I've made in past, proved unsatisfactory.
It's not that Spotify wasn't acceptable, it sounds okay.
It was just that every time I switched to Tidal is was, .. oh, that's cleaner, clearer, less congested, more definition, more HiFi.