Who has tried "TIDAL" vs other streaming applications?

Ghosthouse I just don't see how compressing a signal and shaving off bits, or however it's done sorry not an engineer, can't make it worse sounding. If compression is lossy then there is a loss of information right? It seems to make common sense that a lossless recording is going to sound better than a lossy recording. I am not talking about any sort of upsampling or high rez here. I listen to redbook cd and my Dac doesn't upsample. The difference between mp3's and flacs or wav files isn't just noticeable its pretty glaring.

jond - Please re-read my last post. I’m not saying that "compressing a signal and shaving off bits" can’t make it worse sounding. What did I say about the Amazon MP3s? Lossless/Hi Res is definitely to be preferred assuming there’s data in the original source to benefit from that "superior" format. BUT if there’s no meaningful data in the region that gets removed, hi res might not sound better that a lower res file.

It’s the old "can’t judge a book by its cover" - whether the "cover" is MP3 or Lossless/Hi Res. What matters is the content and how that compares to the original source (so think of the book we’re reading as a translation!).

OR to use another analogy (I’m no EE either) it’s like you have 2 boxes...one larger than the other. The boxes hold data. The data capacity of the larger box is greater than the small box so everybody wants the larger box. But that larger size only matters if the extra space of the larger box is actually filled with meaningful sonic info. If it’s just filled with a bunch of ’zeros’ the extra data carrying capacity won’t make things sound better. If the original source material didn’t have the data to fill the extra space, the extra space in the container won’t magically produce it. A smaller box might be adequate to convey all the data from the source.

Check out that longish YouTube video via the link a couple of posts above this one. Dr. Waldrep is saying it ain’t an automatic "given" that hi res offerings are always conveying a greater quantity of meaningful sonic data than more conventional lower res sources. "Quantity" might not be the best choice of words but it conveys the point I think. Hope that clears things up a bit.

Ghosthouse no recording engineer records at 320kbps, the info in the larger box is in fact there and compressed to fit the smaller box not the other way around. You've basically made the point I was attempting to make for me. These days most recording are done at 24/96 is not higher then downsampled to redbook and further for mp3 so the larger box always has more data.

well said jond.

jond - Thanks for sticking with this. I don’t pretend to know all about digital recording. I’m definitely learning from reading and the discussion here. I mostly agree with your point about "the larger box" if talking exclusively about modern recordings. Even there, however, while the technology might be capable of 24/96 how many studios are actually delivering final product consistent with that? And do all their recordings have sonic content across that range?? Mark Waldrep claims his AIX Records produces and delivers true hi res recordings. There are certainly others but they seem a minority. Big gap maybe between what the studio is capable of and what commercial product gets made available to you and me - hence the need to know "provenance".

My main knock on so-called hi res (using that adjective loosely) is back catalogs from decades ago being re-released as hi res. If the source is tape and not even first gen,, how hi-res is that? See what Waldrep has to say about "tape resolution" and the degradation accompanying production of multiple generations of tape.

Don’t get me wrong, the old master tapes can sound very good even if not "hi res". I certainly agree with you that someone can take an old but good sounding tape mastered recording and ’f’ it up making a crappy MP3 - but I have not been trying to defend MP3s in what I’ve written. I also agree, depending on care taken in a studio that fully utilizes a 24/96 capability, a lossless uncompressed file is going to sound better than something lossy and compressed - or at least that would be my expectation. But you have to consider how much of the library offered by a Tidal or Apple Music or Spotify is actually derived from such high quality sources. I think (my O-pinion) it’s a minority of the available library - regardless of what’s claimed. As a result, the difference between Tidal HiFi and Spotify Premium (to get this back to what I was initially commenting on) might not be that significant OR significant at all.
Let me know if you have a premo recording to experiment with. When I did the Spotify/Tidal comparison I did go back and forth between relatively recent recordings I was familiar with and that I though had great sonics.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with my understanding right now. If you are hearing some benefit from a service you subscribe to, by all means, enjoy it. Please do check out the Waldrep presentation. It is very illuminating. What I will try to do is see if he has an AIX recording that’s also available in a conventional format. See if these old ears can pick up on that.

Ciao.