Will, I’m sorry to hear of your medical issue.
I have subscriptions to Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, and Qobuz. I listed them below in terms of how much I listen to each:
Spotify doesn’t have the greatest sound quality, but does an amazing job of picking music out for me with its "Your Daily Mix" selections. I listen to it when getting ready for work and in the car.
Pandora has some stations that I like for working out. Sound quality isn’t horrible, but noticeably worse if you listen closely, which I don’t while I’m working out.
The only reason I keep Tidal is that it has a bigger library than Qobuz. I have DACs that do MQA and some that don’t. The sound quality of Qobuz’ hi-res selections through both my non-MQA and MQA DACs is excellent and doesn’t leave me wanting in any way.
I won’t get into the whole MQA thing other than to say that I don’t having to limit my equipment choices in order to get the full monty with MQA. Of course if you’re going to listen to hi-res music you need a DAC that will support the higher bit rates offered. MQA sounds different. Perhaps "better" than a hi-res file, perhaps not. I’ll leave it at that.
To me what matters more than the bit-rate is how well it was recorded in the first place. There’s a lot of music that sounds amazing as a standard FLAC file and there's a lot of music that's hi-res that sounds "meh" to me.
Tidal does have a pretty good engine for creating playlists based on your listening habits. Not as good as Spotify, but this is one feature Qobuz lacks that I would like to see them add.
Tidal seems to focus on a younger demographic with a focus on rap, soul, and hip-hop, while Qobuz seems to target a more mature (older) audience, with a lot more alt/indie, rock, classical, and jazz on their landing page.
I have subscriptions to Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, and Qobuz. I listed them below in terms of how much I listen to each:
- Qobuz
- Spotify
- Pandora
- Tidal
Spotify doesn’t have the greatest sound quality, but does an amazing job of picking music out for me with its "Your Daily Mix" selections. I listen to it when getting ready for work and in the car.
Pandora has some stations that I like for working out. Sound quality isn’t horrible, but noticeably worse if you listen closely, which I don’t while I’m working out.
The only reason I keep Tidal is that it has a bigger library than Qobuz. I have DACs that do MQA and some that don’t. The sound quality of Qobuz’ hi-res selections through both my non-MQA and MQA DACs is excellent and doesn’t leave me wanting in any way.
I won’t get into the whole MQA thing other than to say that I don’t having to limit my equipment choices in order to get the full monty with MQA. Of course if you’re going to listen to hi-res music you need a DAC that will support the higher bit rates offered. MQA sounds different. Perhaps "better" than a hi-res file, perhaps not. I’ll leave it at that.
To me what matters more than the bit-rate is how well it was recorded in the first place. There’s a lot of music that sounds amazing as a standard FLAC file and there's a lot of music that's hi-res that sounds "meh" to me.
Tidal does have a pretty good engine for creating playlists based on your listening habits. Not as good as Spotify, but this is one feature Qobuz lacks that I would like to see them add.
Tidal seems to focus on a younger demographic with a focus on rap, soul, and hip-hop, while Qobuz seems to target a more mature (older) audience, with a lot more alt/indie, rock, classical, and jazz on their landing page.