Tidal HiFi Test - how representative?

Ghosthouse, I see where you're going with this. Since I signed up for the more expensive plan right away, I don't know how the two plans vary from one another since I'm always hifi. Tidal hifi is streamed lossless, which they claim is CD quality, the way the artists intended for you to hear it. Tidal premium is restricted to high quality, which means the max quality will be AAC 320 kbps.

Hey 280 - For me to see what the hoopla is all about I might well just have to do the free trial. Have to say, I've been VERY happy with Spotify. Sound seems excellent to me. I don't notice obvious compression...things sound very dynamic with good frequency extension and imaging. But I remain curious about what I might be missing with Tidal. When I took the Tidal "test" with my AKG550 headphones + Dragonfly/Jitterbug DAC combo, I got 4 out of 5 correct (selected the lossless/uncompressed version for 4 out of 5 tracks) even though the B sample of the last 2 tracks had problems playing back in a timely way. Based on my experience with the test material, to my ears and with my gear, I found the differences between the Tidal A & B samples to be very subtle and the perceived improvement not really all that compelling as a reason to make a change and pay 2x more. I was a bit surprised and disappointed given the raves about Tidal. Even on my main system, I felt like I was somewhat guessing which sample sounded better. I'd rank any improvement from Tidal well below what an IC cable upgrade can bring. This is not intended to challenge what anyone else hears from Tidal HiFi and goad them into defending it. It might well be how my system is "tuned" (not as highly resolving as some???; although the AKGs are pretty resolving) such that the benefit is just not there for me. At any rate, I didn't want to make a final judgement about Tidal based solely on their test samples, hence my original question. Since no one yet seems to have compared test material vs actual streamed subscription content, doing the trial might be the only way to scratch the itch. Thanks again for your various comments.

I was thinking about this last night. I'm quite happy with the sound listening to Radio Tunes, which I pay the premium for. It comes in at 128AAC. I think I'll have to compare Radio Tunes to premium Tidal to see if I really need to pay the extra 10 dollars for HIFI. It's usually on for casual listening anyways.

280 - I'm certainly not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I do like the ability with Spotify or Tidal to pick an album or artist and just listen to their stuff vs hearing single tracks mixed with a lot of other "related" music - as is the case with something like Pandora (and maybe Radio Tunes?).

I wonder if the folks who say $20 a month for Tidal is too much think about how much a month they use to spend on CD's? I know I was regularly spending $50/month netting myself at most 7-8 discs. For less than half that I can listen to literally thousands of albums on Tidal at CD quality. Seems a relative bargain to me.