Apple Music vs Tidal for SQ

@oldschool1948 

So you are saying the ripped versions sound better? What difference do you hear? Just curious. 

Tidal is good without paying for MQA and I couldn’t really tell the difference any way.

Can anyone clarify the difference between Tidal Master and MQA?

I did trial Qobuz but really didn’t put much effort into the trial before it ran out but this thread has prompted me to have another go.

I don’t hear much about Deezer on AG, nor do I know much about it. Any opinions?

My ripped CDs sound better than Qobuz or Tidal CD quality music. Qobuz HiRes and Tidal MQA sound a bit better than my ripped CDs. Quboz HiRes sounds better than Tidal MQA. DSD128 songs played via the Zenith beats them all.

I play Qobuz through a Zenith MK2 to Matrix-X to PS Audio DSD DAC via i2s.  I play Tidal through the DSD DAC’s Bridge II card.  When playing via the Zenith, I use the Innous Sense app.  I play Tidal via Roon. Sense sounds much better than Roon.

So got my new Sony Signature dac/pre/headphone amp unboxed and hooked up today. It sounded amazing right out of the box and has a ton of filters. I found the the DSD remastering was best for my taste. So I hook up my Onkyo DP-X1 DAP which has a USB out that I haven’t used, use it more with headphones. Worked great. It also has a feature to upmix files to DSD but only with ripped files, not streaming. The Sony DSD remastering works with everything. The good news is I can listen to everything I can rip in DSD after going through this conversion process. The bad news is now streaming, while still good, will be less satisfying than playing ripped tracks. I can purchase CD quality downloads, replay at the remastered DSD format. Thank you Sony and Onkyo! Marantz also has a DSD remastering feature on their higher end SACD players. I never gravitated to DSD much because a lot of the music I like isn’t available and what is starts at $25 a pop and goes up from there.

https://www.themasterswitch.com/review-sony-ta-zh1es

I haven’t listened to Tidal in years.  I switched from Qobuz to Apple for various reasons and while I give Qobuz a slight edge in sonics I found Apple to be a lot closer than I had anticipated