Who has tried "TIDAL" vs other streaming applications?

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.

Ghosthouse as soon as I wrote my last post I in fact started thinking about remasters. And in terms of recordings made from analog tape and transferred to digital it's as they said in the early days of cd to paraphrase.....'This recording my reveal limitations in the source material'. That being said analog tape is capable of capturing a ton of information, just look at the current revival of reel to reel and analog tape recorders/players. So yes absolutely the original source material matters greatly and not all reissues/remasters are created equally. But that's not really the fault of the digital medium but rather the implementation. Source material being equal a higher resolution recording will sound better than a compressed or downsampled recording. I think we are basically thinking along the same lines and broadly agreeing. And I am enjoying Bill Evans on Tidal as I write this so thank you!

This was posted in another thread it's a bit vague but seems relevant.

http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/6972/high-resolution-audio-you-can-hear-me-now?id=%2D13...

I don't to hi-rez at all myself.

Hi,
I would like to chime in one more time about the SQ of TIDAL.

I still have, but will soon drop, my subscription to Spotify Premium and keep TIDAL. Why? Because after having TIDAL for some time now,  I queued up the album by "OMI Me 4U", both on Spotify and TIDAL and performed an A/B, Tidal crushed Spotify hands down in terms of SQ! I can only guess for members that do not notice a substantial improvement with TIDAL vs Spotify, that there may be something amiss in their systems? I really don't know.

For me, and "MY" ears, TIDAL has proven to me that this is the streaming App to keep. For those that do not hear any substantial difference, stick with the less costly Spotify Premium.

Hey, life is good, no worries!