Shootout: Roon versus Plex, Qobuz versus Tidal: Who Won?

Having a universe of music at my fingertips is something I never imagined just a few years ago.  

It's truly a wonderful thing!  What more could you ask for?

For those who already have a music library, digital or vinyl or both, and have any desire to expand effectively from there, Roon + Qobuz is the key.

Or if you are starting from scratch, you get a huge head start on people like me who have been collecting music of their own pretty much since the 33 1/3 lp first became available.

Only certain artists/albums streamed with good quality the rest of 99% just about same low-quality compressed stream that is maximum MP96.

The cheaper you go the less disappointed you will be. I use add-free YouTube and switch between YouTube cast and YouTube Music.

IF you only listen to newer popular music or do not care about having the best sound quality you can at all times, maybe so.

My experience to date is that CD resolution is as designed suitable for most all cases.

The verdict on value of higher than CD res recordings at best varies case by case. I might still be able to do without higher than CD resolution but I don’t mind having that capability for teh price of Qobuz, which is ballpark no different than Spotify.

BTW I have access to Spotify as well and to-date have used that to stream when looking to discover new music.

But its Roon that provides the ultimate user experience, sound quality aside. YOu can add Qobuz to that for ~ the same cost of Spotify, if I am not mistaken.

Spotify in most all cases falls short on sound quality compared to streaming my own CD resolution FLAC files using most any streaming technology at my disposal for Spotify: Airplay, Google Cast, USB 2 wired connection.

Roon’s built in streaming engine to me sounds like it is a cut above the others and consistently delivers the better sound with same thing playing via Roon than those other 3 I compared it with.

I have read many others also report that Roon seems to consistently deliver better sound than other comparable streaming technologies.

I find that to be true out of the can.....I have not even attempted to tweak the sound in a room using the DSP tools Roon provides users. I will be trying that soon in a different room in my home that could really benefit from some custom DSP.

Stay tuned in upcoming days for more on that.

For my set up I found Roon sounds best when I just go straight through with PCM to my DAC via USB.  I tried conversion to DSD and different types of filters but it smooths out the sound- that’s the best way I can describe it.  Straight through PCM sounds crisper, faster, cleaner and that goes for my FLAC files on the streamer’s SSD as well as for streaming all versions of hi res files such as 44.1/24 to 96/24.  (I think I have seen some 128/24 files too). Native DSD files sound fine.

Thing is I don't listen to much of the mainstream neither today's mainstream or past. I listen to obscure artists of today and yesterday. Those will be there in the worst format you can imagine while on YouTube Premium they sound a lot better 

Roon + Qobuz all day ( and night ) long.  Sounds great, giant selection, excellent recommendations ( with Roon Radio ) and lots of info about the artist and albums.  Well worth the money.  Tidal was also good with Roon but couldn’t justify having both services.  If I didn’t have Roon or could only afford Tidal or Qobuz, I probably would have gone with Tidal. Tidal Connect is very good and their user interface and info is just better than Qobuz.