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I'm EXTREMELY happy with Tidal

Tim 700

Tim 700

Active Member
Excellent quality, good interface, never freezes or shuts down. Creating play lists is easy and 90% of my song/artist/album searches are found.

TIDAL HiFi relies on FLAC (16bit / 44.1kHz)

$20.00 per month. Highly recommended.

I use it on my phone to stream and play via BlueTooth and from my desktop to 9 zones I have wired in my home.

Anyone else impressed with the sound quality of Tidal?

PS I have no professional affiliation with Tidal.
 
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I'm still choosing which streaming service(s) I will use going forward. I like the Tidal user experience just fine, but so far prefer the sound quality of Qobuz and then Amazon HD.

In my case, Tidal files are a mix of CD bitrate FLAC and MQA.
 
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Tim 700 said:
Excellent quality, good interface, never freezes or shuts down. Creating play lists is easy and 90% of my song/artist/album searches are found.

TIDAL HiFi relies on FLAC (16bit / 44.1kHz)

$20.00 per month. Highly recommended.

I use it on my phone to stream and play via BlueTooth and from my desktop to 9 zones I have wired in my home.

Anyone else impressed with the sound quality of Tidal?

PS I have no professional affiliation with Tidal.
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If you are using bluetooth, then you are not getting the full lossless HiFi quality. I'm not up on the latest bluetooth tech, but my understanding is that it tops out at 345 Kbps, which is about the same as a Spotify mp3, which is 320 Kbps. It's a different type of compression, but still lossy. If I was paying for Tidal HiFi, I would want to make sure I was actually listening to the full lossless files.
 
WillVT said:
If you are using bluetooth, then you are not getting the full lossless HiFi quality. I'm not up on the latest bluetooth tech, but my understanding is that it tops out at 345 Kbps, which is about the same as a Spotify mp3, which is 320 Kbps. It's a different type of compression, but still lossy. If I was paying for Tidal HiFi, I would want to make sure I was actually listening to the full lossless files.
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I mostly listen through my computer which has Toslink out to three receivers and 9 listening zones in my home. I also have one computer USB into a DAC that sounds pretty awesome in one zone.
 
My biggest complaint on both Tidal and Qobuz, used with the Lumin app, is it won’t do what Pandora does when you play an artist. Pandora will play similar music after you choose an artist. I’ve found lots of great stuff that way. Pandora will continue to play a genre, once you select a single artist. Tidal and Qobuz, with the Lumin app, makes you add all the songs you want and won’t continue to play anything other than those songs. I like both Tidal and Qobuz for the quality of the sound. I hate it for lack of features. IMHO
 
trinhsman said:
My biggest complaint on both Tidal and Qobuz, used with the Lumin app, is it won’t do what Pandora does when you play an artist. Pandora will play similar music after you choose an artist. I’ve found lots of great stuff that way. Pandora will continue to play a genre, once you select a single artist. Tidal and Qobuz, with the Lumin app, makes you add all the songs you want and won’t continue to play anything other than those songs. I like both Tidal and Qobuz for the quality of the sound. I hate it for lack of features. IMHO
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Tidal does have a somewhat similar feature. If you turn on Autoplay, it will keep playing similar songs after you playlist or album ends. Also, you can start Artist Radio, or Song Radio.

I do agree though, Tidal does lack some features. Spotify I think has the best setup. And having access to all user's public playlists is pretty cool. I like that I can just type in a random search, like "dinner jazz," or "classical sleep," or "moody indie," and get multiple quality playlists. I just hope Spotify makes the jump to lossless at some point.
 
trinhsman said:
My biggest complaint on both Tidal and Qobuz, used with the Lumin app, is it won’t do what Pandora does when you play an artist. Pandora will play similar music after you choose an artist. I’ve found lots of great stuff that way. Pandora will continue to play a genre, once you select a single artist. Tidal and Qobuz, with the Lumin app, makes you add all the songs you want and won’t continue to play anything other than those songs. I like both Tidal and Qobuz for the quality of the sound. I hate it for lack of features. IMHO
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As noted, Tidal does play similar genre etc. As a matter of fact, it's one of the best ways to listen to and find new artists.
 
botrytis said:
Tidal has been putting out MQA CD files as 16/44 regular CD files. In fact most of Tidal's library files are now MQA even when they say they are regular FLAC. It is a little bit of a bait and switch going on.
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Why would they do this?
 
As a FYI I'm doing a trial of Amazon HD Music unlimited. Why???? Reviewers of Hi-Res and HD include this service as it's been recently added to Amazon (the HD level). Plus being a Prime member I'm playing $13.00 instead of the $20.00 they charge. The music catalog is important to me with my vinyl library running from Classic Rock, Fusion Jazz, Mainstream Jazz, Folk mixtures (Bluegrass and Folk, NO Country) and my digital adding Alt Rock, new folk, some "world music" whatever that is, like Moby, Moorcheba and Thievery Corporation. So far not too bad on getting a good bit of my requests in HD.
 
I tried Tidal for a month and had no issues with sound quality. Quite good.

what I had a problem with was the lack of learning. This is half of the reason I use these types of services. Yes I know when you find a song you can click on track radio and it will play more like it

HOWEVER, this leads me to my bigger complaint. I know the platform was owned by Jay Z until recently but Jesus Christmas in no point in my listening history have I listened to or care to listen to Young thug, Da Baby, Gunna, Lil Baby or Curren$y.

This was all I ever saw on my home screen. Bye bye.
 
Bassmantweed said:
I tried Tidal for a month and had no issues with sound quality. Quite good.

what I had a problem with was the lack of learning. This is half of the reason I use these types of services. Yes I know when you find a song you can click on track radio and it will play more like it

HOWEVER, this leads me to my bigger complaint. I know the platform was owned by Jay Z until recently but Jesus Christmas in no point in my listening history have I listened to or care to listen to Young thug, Da Baby, Gunna, Lil Baby or Curren$y.

This was all I ever saw on my home screen. Bye bye.
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Strange, I never see any of the artists you mention. Maybe your user name (Bassmantweed) directs music with more bass & weed towards you.

Mine looks like this.

Screen Shot 2021-05-14 at 4.37.29 PM.png
 
olson_jr said:
Strange, I never see any of the artists you mention. Maybe your user name (Bassmantweed) directs music with more bass & weed towards you.

Mine looks like this.

View attachment 2226664
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Same here when I was using Tidal. I really only use my library on the streaming services but when I checked them all their “picks” for me are/where in line with the stuff I listen to.
 
I don't think it will be too long before Tidal and Qobuz have to rethink their structure and pricing. Since it's said that Apple is jumping into Lossless and Spotify has said they would later in the year, things are going to be changing I would think. Spotify may move theirs earlier because of the Apple announcement and it will be interesting to see how the monthly price on theirs goes now that Amazon Music HD is $7.99 a month for ALL users. Going to be hard for the "small fries" to keep up with that. Have Qobuz and Tidal dropped their pricing yet? In looking just now, it seems like it. I tried them both for the free trial early on but hated their recommendations and their interface. Same thing with Amazon Music HD...their interface was clunky. Now, I don't listen on a phone.....this is desktop PC then to the gear. Spotify Connect still reigns supreme in control for that. I wish Amazon would reverse engineer their system. ha
 
I have been listening to tidal for close to 2 years now. 1) If you are a vet you can get a discount on there service. 2) the quality of the music is exceptional ,IMHO. 3) I have no problem finding the same type music from different groups. It does have glitches but that may be from my internet provider???? . all in all I like it a lot.
 
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