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Who has tried "TIDAL" vs other streaming applications?

Hello, I'm new to Audiogon, this is my first posting into Forums.

I enjoy streaming audio from my PC and have been using Spotify for a number of years now (college student discount to premium $5 a month). I just recently stumbled upon a App called TIDAL, that streams Lossless 16/44.1FLAC with their "HI-FI" subscription (Student $10 a month). Since I can queue up Spotify and Tidal at the same time, I was able to do an A/B and used Dire Straits Brothers in Arms. I noticed that TIDAL indeed sounds better to me but am convinced none of my family members could tell a difference. I then did an A/B with TIDAL and the actual Brothers in Arms CD, to my surprise TIDAL sounded scary close, if not just as good as the CD! This is hard for me to believe, I think I'm just trying to justify the extra cost of TIDAL on a crazy tight student budget, maybe its a placebo effect? I need to drop one of the services, but which one? I would appreciate your thoughts please... Thank you!
My system:
PC = Gaming Rig I built myself, using dedicated high quality audio card.
Krell KAV 400xi integrated
Sonus Faber Electa's with Sunfire HRS Sub
Cambridge AZUR 840C CDP/DAC
Luxman T117 Tuner
Sony SCD - C2000ES SACD Player
Kimber Silver Streak throughout  


grm
cerrot's avatar
cerrot
1,700 posts
 
Perfect!  Thanks guys!
grm OP
149 posts
 
Hello,
Perhaps someone can clarify my understanding of TIDAL "HIFI" playback, especially if you desire to integrate it with something like Roon for example.

When I signed up with the TIDAL premium HIFI subscription, I am almost positive it said that only Chrome supported HIFI, so I did not bother downloading the TIDAL app or any other app such as the many discussed in this forum. When I launch TIDAL through Chrome, the upper left hand corner of the home page shows my user name and "TIDAL HIFI" directly below it. Also, in settings, under streaming, it shows I'm listening to HIFI and gives me the options to lower the quality to HI or Low, of course I keep it on the HIFI setting.

I hope my question made sense - thanks! 
dbtom2
382 posts
 
There is an indicator at the bottom of the screen - in the transport area. Block letters: HIFI. It will be displayed in bold white letters when in effect. 

If that bold HIFI appears, you're listening to the lossless FLAC version.

In my experience, a small percentage of Tidal tracks are not available in lossless FLAC and the HIFI indicator will be greyed out. Unless you have selected a lossy version of the service under settings. 

I've used both the Chrome webplayer and Tidal's app on my Mac with no perceived quality difference.

In Roon, there is a colored dot that appears next to the track name in the transport area at the bottom of the screen. If you click on that dot, Roon displays the "Signal Path" which gives you the resolution of the source material as well as any changes your system may make to play the track. A purple dot indicates bit-perfect playback. Roon always reports the bit-perfect status - or lack thereof - when playing a track.

Hope this helps.



grm OP
149 posts
 
dbtom2,
 Thanks! Yes that helps a great deal - most appreciated!
ejr1953
914 posts
 
The more I think about the "business case" Tidal must have evaluated to decide to stream MQA in the (near) future, the more I suspect that they will do the MQA conversion in their app, maybe give you the option to stream MQA "natively", but to have spent gobs to get their library converted and only be able to offer the MQA option to those with an MQA-capable DAC probably doesn't make sense.  Plus, from what I've read, MQA is delivered to the DAC in a "PCM wrapper", so I suspect that streaming MQA, converting it in the Tidal app to FLAC and outputting that converted format to the DAC would probably give the benefits of MQA.

Fingers crossed.
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