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Newbie with Tidal question.

New to hifi. I have a nice but probably 15 year old system. Sounds great via CD player. 

Just signed for 30 day trial of Tidal hifi. 

However, it’s going into the pre-amp from my laptop through the headphone jack/RCA ‘y’ cable. 

It sounds pretty good to me. A/B testing verses an actual CD of the same song is better but the difference doesn’t seem huge. 

I’m just wondering what I’m actually getting quality-wise with this setup and if it is any better than the Tidal low-fi option or iTunes. I’m assuming even if I’m using the Tidal desktop app that the signal is still coming from the laptops sound card. 
n80
n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
Well, I can say this: The SQ is much better through the laptop headphone jack than it is through the iPhone.

I may compare Tidal  SQ vs iTunes run to pre-amp the same why to see if I can tell a difference.

The lack of a remote feature makes Tidal much less appealing to me though.
ajnackman
79 posts
 
If you are using the headphone jack out from your laptop then you are hearing the onboard DAC in your laptop. If you want your streamable content to sound better consider buying a standalone DAC between your laptop and preamp. Tidal makes use of MQA compression, there are some affordable DAC's that can "unfold" the compression completely such as the meridian explorer 2. Or choose something like the HRT music streamer HD, no MQA support on that unit.

However if you are serious about achieving a streaming system that can rival your CD's be prepared to go down the rabbit hole :)
n80 OP
2,133 posts
 
Thanks for the response. I guess the million dollar question is: Do you need to go down the rabbit hole to get your money’s worth of Tidal’s hifi streaming?
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