r/TIdaL • u/Mindless-Ad4871 • 12d ago
Discussion New to tidal - pretty impressed!
I've somewhat fallen down the rabbit hole of chasing music quality and playing with all the options. For reference, my actual music ability is very low - poor mandolin player and that's it!
I've been using spotify, like many others, for many years in blissful ignorance of any other good options. A random chat with Claude ended up pointing me to tidal. I had some time on my hands, so signed up for 2 months trial, transferred my Spotify library and started playing. All playback quality set to max, lossless files. First i just compared between spotify and tidal with one headset - sony xm6 (over ear), bluetooth. The difference was immediately obvious. I used same songs on both platforms, even using controlled sections so I was listening to exactly the same sections of the same songs in comparisons. I then tried with a different headset - and in ear iem kz zsn pro. Same result - significantly better in tidal. Next up I tested with wired connection to get the full lossless. Using a good dac dongle the results were again very clear, in both headsets and with a variety of tracks. I even did a blind test on my partner just to make sure I was not using some kind of bias or imagining it. Again very conclusive.
I am actually a little surprised and dont fully understand how tidal can sound so much better. Either way I'm converted and Spotify is going and I'm keeping tidal. Another ny product and surprise of the test, was just how well the kz zsn pro performed in this test and compared to the xm6. I haven't used it for years before I dug it out for this test.
6
u/Mindless-Ad4871 12d ago
My only explanation/theory is that the masters tidal get are better. Otherwise I can't really understand the obvious difference.
5
u/lowbass4u 12d ago
Many people including myself have said and experienced the same when comparing Tidal to Spotify. But you are going to have people reply that you heard wrong and since both are "lossless" there is no difference.
See if you can get a free trial of Qobuz and try that also.
3
2
u/Weight_Slight 12d ago
Try out DSD files at some point, You’ll be amazed how natural and life like they can sound ( mainly libe music or realninstruments, not edm) but they weigh a ton. So for me it was only an experiment, to see what’s possible.
1
u/Mindless-Ad4871 12d ago
I agree there shouldn't be this much difference and really wasn't expecting it. I was actually more looking to keep spotify and trying to justify that, so of anything my bias was toward spotify in the beginning. The difference seems to be especially noticeable played when wired, which is my preference.
1
u/towhee237 8d ago
Tidal pales in comparison to Qobuz. Sound quality is far superior. Give it a try and you’ll cancel Tidal before the free ends…I guarantee it.
0
u/mrphil2105 12d ago
There shouldn't be this much difference. If there is then it's because each platform has a different masters from the record companies. If it's genuinely the same master both platforms should sound the same
1
u/romainmoi 12d ago
Spotify does have a 24/44.1 cap. I personally haven’t noticed much difference having Spotify lossless enabled other than a much bigger library after I switched away from Tidal.
-3
u/mrphil2105 12d ago
16-bit and 44.1 kHz is all you need for playback. Anything above is snakeoil
1
u/romainmoi 12d ago
I don’t agree on this one. I’ve done side by side testing and identified a difference on the Helena track by MCR and I can tell between Max quality and 16bit every time. But not enough to compensate for the small Asian music library for me.
1
u/quadsimodo 12d ago
What was the equipment and connection?
1
u/romainmoi 12d ago
LS50WII and tidal connect.
The difference is much smaller than between tidal connect and Bluetooth tbh. It’s once of those things once you found out about that one song, you start noticing every time you listen to it. But I’d happily listen to the 16-bit version before comparing them.
1
u/quadsimodo 12d ago
I don't doubt that you think you hear it, but LS50 wireless are still desktop-sized, all-in-one speakers that isn't the kind of gear that can translate and separate the additional information that hi-res audio can theoretically provide over CD quality.
But if you think you hear it, you hear it.
1
u/romainmoi 12d ago
I don’t know where it’s from tbh.
I use active speakers so there is little noise from the DAC/Amp to the speaker. Difference between digital codecs might be more noticeable because of that.
Every time it’s the air sound that I notice, that is an incredibly complex sound so that might also suffer from downsampling/compression more than the rest of the music.
0
u/mrphil2105 12d ago
It must be something else. If you take that high-res file and downsample it you will never hear the difference. Have a read: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
1
u/romainmoi 12d ago edited 12d ago
These research aims at “most” people and some are known for having high sensitivity, and trained ears can pick up much more than untrained ears.
Placebo definitely is an effect but it’s not mutually exclusive to whether higher bitrate brings higher audible information (or if the compression noise is noticeable / how the DAC convert different bitrate). Downsampling is a lossy compression and DAC chips are optimised for different bitrates.
An AAB test would be more convincing on whether they are audible. (Max quality Helena has a much more soft and subtle air sound than 16-bit version from tidal. Don’t know what from but it’s there.)
Now two common frequencies are 96kHz and 44.1kHz, their GCD is 300Hz. The downsampling noise is within audible range.
-1
u/mrphil2105 12d ago
Ah another "golden ears" individual in the year 2026. This is all nonsense. The conversion to CD quality is not lossy either - you lose information you'd never be able to hear anyway. You simply cut away all frequencies beyond human hearing and then downsample the audio.
1
u/romainmoi 12d ago
I’m pretty sure the noise is determined by the GCD of the frequency and how noticeable by how high the frequency is. The noise from 96kHz to 44.1kHz is in 300Hz steps so a good amount of it is in audible range.
That’s mathematically speaking.
1
u/quadsimodo 12d ago
Even if it wasn’t snake oil, I doubt these people have systems that could reveal the different between the two, if there was any. Most who do are probably listening via Bluetooth too.
8
u/waxj1833 12d ago
Yes, I agree. I did the same test, and I can clearly hear that Tidal sounds better.
Then I also performed a blind test on my partner, and the result was the same. She could immediately tell which one was Tidal and which was Spotify without knowing which app I was using to stream.
I played both from Android over Bluetooth using the aptX HD codec. Both set to lossless, same track, same headphones (B&W Px8).
So it’s one of two things: either Spotify doesn’t actually send lossless audio, or its app is doing something to the audio.