I got Tidal because I was sick of not having Jay Z in my streaming libraries. Then I decided to test out the $20/mo for hifi/master to see if I can appreciate the difference.
I don’t know if either my ears or my headphones are capable of picking up the difference in quality, but I’ll continue to experiment with it.
I have the Bose QCII which are bluetooth (e.g. compression) so it's unclear to me whether I'm even benefitting from less compression in the streaming, but I got mixed answers when I researched this.
Anyway....
Do you go for highest quality with your hardware/software and if so, am I thinking about things the right way?
Opened ended chat about anything related to this is welcome and appreciated.
Oldest comments (47)
Spotify is enough for me. I feel like if you're not using noise cancelling wired headphones there will always be noise and often background sound that negates the perfect audio quality that Tidal claims... Hardly noticable imperfections with Spotify are tolerable for me. Just a personal preference tho
I have Spotify Premium which has a Very High streaming quality setting and I can't tell the difference. Unless you have really good headphones that can actually produce bass frequencies, I don't think you can determine the difference between good and bad sound.
I agree. Could never tell the difference when using tidal
Well at this moment I have both: Spotify and Tidal and I can assure you that quality is needed in music streaming, Spotify needs to release a FLAC version yer o yes.
Then in my personal preference I love a lot the Quality sound from Tidal because I have cleansed my audition and I can know when an audio has bad quality.
But there are 2 problems with Tidal over Spotify:
1.- The audio quality depends of the hardware. I code in two different PC's (work and personal), In my Personal PC I have a good audio chipset and I can get the great quality from Tidal, but in my work and can't hear the quality that I get in my home, so the quality depends from the HW.
2.- The music library from Spotify defeats Tidal. I usually consume a lot of gaming OST and Spotify have a lot of soundtracks that other services doesn't have.
In conclusion: Depends from Hardware and content, but I can assure you the quality from Tidal is superb.
PS: I listen music with a HyperX Cloud 2 (A little older)
I listen on noise cancelling wireless headphones. They do signal processing by design, so even if I was listening to super high quality audio, I wouldn't get close to the original recording.
I have Spotify premium because it's ad free. I can't make out a difference in quality.
This guy has a very nice comparison between services and paid tiers:
youtube.com/watch?v=FURPQI3VW58
(Edit: oh god the typos)
God no. I am not an audiophile, by any stretch of the imagination.
I've got the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones, only because they shut out everyone/everything and I can be in my own bubble.
the XM3s are straight from heaven. I wish I could keep them on without having things playing sometimes.
Full Disclosure: I have sat with headphones and an intense look on my face while there was nothing playing. It did cut down on distractions. :-O
Basic shooting-range/construction-site earmuffs are a cheap alternative for that use-case (plus, you can bring them to "no PEDs" work-sites).
My only headphone requirements are they feel comfortable and aren't completely devoid of quality 😅
I have noise-canceling headphones and in my office, you REALLY need them (especially with a guy who is in your ear behind you coughing loudly, and complaining about how a piece of software doesn't work (mainly Microsoft Office)).
In the morning, I usually listen to some comedy show, and then usually listen to Yacht Rock or ChillHop on SiriusXM
On most things I don't notice enough of a difference to care at the levels I casually listen to things.
So a true audiophile will obviously prefer hardwired through a DAC with nice headphones. I find that a good pair of bluetooth headphones are just as good for most cases. (it's also why I don't get the need to have a headphone jack on a cellphone. With USB-C you can charge headphones in 5 minutes to last for a few hours, and audio quality is good enough for most casual listening aka: everything you'd be using the phone for)
at home, I go between the nest minis for convenience and my desktop speakers which are klipsch.
There's a world of a difference between $5-10 headphones and $60 headphones, A Decent amount of difference from 60 to 100, and after 100 it's all kinda just "i dont ever NEED this quality"
I used to be big on FLAC but I got older and my ears tell me there's no difference.
Any music I buy is on Bandcamp where I get it in 320kbit, but I really appreciate that they have lossless options. For futureproofing and programmer reasons!
As someone that is a musician and has tried mixing multi-track recordings, I feel like the energy of a song is 10x more important than clarity in most instances. The art of music is very subjective. You can spend as much as you want on music equipment but with decreasing ROI imho. Most adults can’t hear above 16k in the audio spectrum. So you can have speakers or headphones with extreme dynamic range but will you actually hear the upper harmonics of a hi-hat? Not to play down clarity (I remember the days of 22 kbps mp3s 😞) but I tend to value music that evokes emotion rather than music that is technically pristine. CD quality playback at 44k is a great middle ground for me.
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.