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Tidal MQA vs Qobuz hi-res

My brief experience.. for posterity.

Comparing Tidal MQA to Qobuz hi-res, you -will- hear degredation/loss in the high frequencies (violins in an orchestra etc) on MQA... assuming you have reasonably resolving equipment. For me, that’s Macbook USB to a $150 Audio Engine D1 DAC going to a $600 used Parasound A23 going to used $600 Kef LS50’s, $100 Transparent speaker cables and cheap USB and RCA cables.

The Audio Engine is surprisingly good for it’s price BTW. Over the years, trying different DACs in audio stores when I had an opportunity, I feel like you’d need to spend close to $1,000 to get something significantly better.

The A23 and LS50’s are really good too for today’s used prices. New, they would’ve been $2,500 a few years go

bataras
liv2teach
20 posts
 
I'm in the camp that I like Tidal and MQA...so much so I haven't listened to a record or reel to reel in sometime. Of course some of that is convenience too, I often doze while I listen to music and don't want to have to rise to flip records or swap around tape.

For what it's worth my system for listening is Roon (Tidal):
UltraRendu
Modwright Oppo 205 with power supply
Primaluna Dialogue Preamp
Primaluna Dialogue Amps with KT 150 tubes
Goldenear Reference Speakers
Acoustic Zen interconnects and speaker cables


brianlucey's avatar
brianlucey
163 posts
 
MQA is a big con, and they lie about it to sell it. They are desparate. It is a lossy codec that creates harmonic distortion. It can sound "better" if you like the panita, or it can sound destructive (which it is) ... but it’s NEVER closer to the source. The source is the 16 or 24 bit wav files PCM ... in the NATIVE session rate of the mastering session.  Higher rates are NOT better and MQA is NOT better, if better means the objective master approved by the team.
ilkeresmer
42 posts
 
I am driving my mac mini usb over  Emm Labs Xds1 V3 player, and i did lots of tests against Qobuz and Tidal, Qobuz always wins the contests...Qobuz has much  quite background and lots of details,,,
bataras OP
12 posts
 
problem with Qobuz for me is the UI sucks for discovery, they're missing content that Tidal and spotify have and not alot of the content is Hi-Res.

I haven't used Roon yet, but I wonder when connected to Tidal and Qobuz if it's smart enough to grab hi-res tracks form Quboz when they're available and hide all the hunting from the user
cycles2
208 posts
 
@bataras 
Perhaps we listen to different genres of music but I find Qobuz has more HiRez titles than TIDAL has MQA.  I find the UI's of TIDAL and Qobuz to be similar, perhaps that's because of the integration with a dCS Rossini streamer. 

And the comparison of sound quality between HiRez and MQA is not close wit HiRez being the better.  HiRez titles also are more portable than MQA as you can Bluetooth HiRez from a phone to a car or other audio systems.   

I used TIDAL for a couple years before switching to Qobuz and to me Qobuz is a better option and costs $5 less per month.
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