Tidal?

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CPR

400 Club - QQ All-Star
Joined
Mar 2, 2006
Messages
488
Location
Brooklyn, NY
Anyone have Tidal? Is the sound quality & dynamic range better than Spotify, Amazon music, etc.?
3 free months is enticing; downloading thousands of songs, again, is not
any ideas?
 
I had Wimp which was the precursor to Tidal. I liked the interface more, and of course it was nice to have CD quality, sometimes I could hear slight differences but then again you can't really tell which master it is since they don't give out such info. When Wimp was sold I gave up the service and never really missed it.
 
Anyone have Tidal? Is the sound quality & dynamic range better than Spotify, Amazon music, etc.?
3 free months is enticing; downloading thousands of songs, again, is not
any ideas?

It sounds fine to me but is prone to buffering.
 
I use Tidal with Roon, on my 100MB connection I get no buffering really..... I love Tidal !!

I don't get buffering all the time, but it happens. I also occasionally find times when I can add a track to the playlist but the track won't play.

I use two different methods to feed Tidal to my Squeezeboxes as well as the native W*nd*ws client and they're all at the mercy of Tidal's mood.
 
I have a Tidal account that I use at work, $19.99 a month. I just play through crappy little Logitech speakers but allows me at least CD quality.
I read a nice article on Facebook for any of you that have nice PC systems at home or work that peeked my interest.

I took a Tidal trial, and decided to subscribe. I asked about the Hi-Fi streams, and here is the response from Tech Support, which you may or may not already know:

In order to listen to the MQA format to its fullest extent, your equipment needs to be MQA capable. Otherwise, you will not be getting the full MQA experience but you will still have better quality than HiFi.

If you do not use a DAC at all, the TIDAL client will decode the MQA in 1x unfolding. A DAC which is MQA capable can unfold up to 8x (provided the DAC has that capability).

With the desktop and/or a non-MQA DAC you will get 24bit/88.2 (96) kHz . The stream quality of each album depends on the labels’ engineering of the album. Please ensure that the "passthrough MQA" is not enabled if you do not have an MQA DAC.
So, I'll need to look for a DAC that I can hook up from the HDMI port on my PC, assuming that one exists. Suggestions for a DAC are welcome.

Brooklyn DAC
 
I listened to tidal for a couple of months on the master setting through (24/192 on my dell i7 standard computer soundcard) and have never heard better sound..I felt there was much more detail in the music than regular cds. Did not mess with getting mqa. Highs were brighter for sure as with most of the hi res music I've experienced. Also the music on Niel Young's Archives is some of the best streaming listening out there..even when the music is set on 16/44.
 
I'm subscribing to both Qobuz & Tidal. I'm not messing around with MQA (lossy hi-res), but with CD quality it depends on the mastering (either a good one or a brickwalled to death remaster...)
 
I did a trial for my work listening, but even using a outboard DAC with nice headphones, the difference compared to Spotify's 320 MP3 wasn't that great and just use Spotify (which I get essentially for free from my bro-in-law's family account).
 
Picked up a set of Sennheiser HD1s last week and I was looking for something other than iTunes to see how they performed, so signed up for the free month of hi res Tidal. Man, this is going to be hard to give up in January, I might have to keep it :unsure:
 
I listened to tidal for a couple of months on the master setting through (24/192 on my dell i7 standard computer soundcard) and have never heard better sound..I felt there was much more detail in the music than regular cds. Did not mess with getting mqa. Highs were brighter for sure as with most of the hi res music I've experienced. Also the music on Niel Young's Archives is some of the best streaming listening out there..even when the music is set on 16/44.
I thought MQA was part of what you paid for with the Master setting or Hi-Fi as they call it
 
From my understanding, to stream "master" files in mqa you have to run the steam through a special mqa dac (purchased separately). I ran the master streams through the 24/192 setting in my computer and it sounded great. I do have many hi res discs and many of these master files sounded just as good or better. One of the sreams that stood out to me was the BREAD" Guitar Man" master stream. I have the original 7 1/2 ips reel tape of this album and that master stream puts it to shame ( I noticed clearer detail in the music).
 
From my understanding, to stream "master" files in mqa you have to run the steam through a special mqa dac (purchased separately). I ran the master streams through the 24/192 setting in my computer and it sounded great. I do have many hi res discs and many of these master files sounded just as good or better. One of the sreams that stood out to me was the BREAD" Guitar Man" master stream. I have the original 7 1/2 ips reel tape of this album and that master stream puts it to shame ( I noticed clearer detail in the music).
Awesome thanks for this 😀😀😀. Happy Holidays to you and your family as well
 
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