Tidal vs. Others- End of 2021

Another vote for Qobuz. I've had a Tidal account for almost three years. Happy for the most part. Sound quality is satisfactory to me, and aside from a few rare occasions, I've been able to find all tracks I search for. I am sceptical of MQA, and dislike Tidal's insistence on using it. Recent changes to Tidal's subscription tiers prompted a change, with their HiFi plan now offering 16/44.1 FLAC. Easy choice for me to downgrade my plan as I prefer access to redbook quality over MQA.

The cost saving allowed for the addition of a Qobuz subscription. So far I have encountered only one scenario where Tidal had an album and Qobuz did not. The advantage of Qobuz is the access to Hi-Res files in FLAC. With Tidal anything higher than 16/44.1 is packaged in MQA.

Thank you, everyone who responded, good discussion.

@mitch2  Sounds like a good plan! 

Thanks @big_greg for the information.  I use Roon/Tidal now and will try the Qobuz free trial.  The money it costs or having multiple services is not the issue but rather having something I will not use. Therefore, as long as the trial does not reveal any bogies, I will probably go ahead with the year subscription after the trial, since IMO you really need to give stuff like this a year to get sorted out and to figure out the value and how much you will really use it.

Why limit yourself to one?  You can have 3 or 4 services for about the price of 1 or 2 vinyl records a month?  I have Qobuz, Spotify, Tidal, and Pandora.  Qobuz mainly for "serious" listening and the best sound quality.  Tidal is great when I just want to put on some music and not pick, the My Mix feature is great and sometimes there are things there that aren't on Qobuz.  Spotify is nice in the car, less drop outs while I'm driving.  Pandora is good for background music, like when I'm working out.

If I had to pick one, it would be Qobuz for sure. 

If you do decide to go with Tidal, I wouldn't get too hung up on the MQA thing.  You don't "have" to have a DAC that does MQA.  Any DAC will do.  The MQA files may sound a little different if you have a DAC that will do the last "unfold", but different isn't always better.  Tidal's player or Roon will do the first "unfold" of the MQA file.  If you have a good DAC, it should sound great.

I would start out with Premiere.  You can always upgrade to Sublime if you think you're going to buy a bunch of music files.  I've bought a couple of albums of DSD files, and they did sound pretty amazing, but I have compared them back to back with the streaming version of the same album.

Qobuz does not have the "radio" feature like Tidal, where it keeps playing after you finish an album, however if you get Roon, it will do that.

Had Tidal, did the MQA thing and over time wasn’t impressed. Switched to Qobuz and couldn’t be happier.

I have not yet tried Qobuz but plan to. Is the content difference between that and Tidal (which I use now) really just “a couple of tracks“ as @zyphryx stated, or is it more significant wrt rock, blues, and other popular genres? Also, does Qobuz have a feature that continues playing the type of music that was most recently selected once your specific selections have finished playing?

Also, can any of you recommend whether the “Sublime” package is worth the extra money over “Premire”? I do have a server/streamer that holds my own content as well as streams, so are there advantages to Sublime if I wanted to occasionally purchase content?

Qobuz. 

Qobuz is slightly better sounding.  More weight and body. Tidal is a tad thin or lean.  

I prefer Qobuz. Tidal has a couple of tracks that won't show up on Qobuz but not enough for me to warrant the subscription

Qobuz.

You should check out Qobuz it's definitely better than Tidal and no MQA nonsense.