Just to add from my own experience…there are albums on Tidal that aren’t available on Qobuz. Some albums also sound better on Tidal. I always compare both and add to favorite the version that sounds best to me.
I also use Roon. One of my favorite features is Roon radio. It allows you to discover tons of new great music.
Shootout: Roon versus Plex, Qobuz versus Tidal: Who Won?
After a good bit of up front reading and preparation, a first ever (for me) digital streaming competition took place this weekend at home involving the contenders above. It put many of my preconceived notions about digital streaming these days to the test and was quite the eye opener!
I started with Plex and my personal music library of mostly CD resolution FLAC files. Then I added Roon, Tidal and Qobuz and had it out.
It’s mostly over now. The results were clear.
How did it end? Roon soundly thrashed the spunky upstart Plex. Then Qobuz beat out Tidal mainly based on cost.
Lots to talk about.
Key Findings:
- Plex could not match Roon for overall sound quality or overall listener experience.
- Sound quality to my ears was a wash between Qobuz and Tidal so Qobuz wins mainly based on cost (and no need for MQA though my streamer delivers full MQA compatibility).
I enjoy and tested all genres of music.
Test system was Cambridge Evo 150 to Ohm Walsh F5 speakers in larger main listening room and to KEF ls50 meta speakers + sub in smaller 12x12 room.
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Mapman, Thanks for the comparison’s. I have done the same, with my EVO 150, between Tidal and Qobuz and came to the same conclusion as you have....sound wise it’s a wash so Qobuz wins on being the cheaper option, although, from what I’v read, I think Tidal may have the larger catalog The MQA makes it a difficult choice though as it is an easier load on the/my network even though my provider is fi-optic. Curious as to what Roon input settings you used, did you bi-pass MQA in comparison, as I did? If so did you stream using DSD up-sampling settings, which is what causes clipping and freezing on my network? I seem to gravitate to the DSD settings when available. It seems as if MQA diminishes the choices of Roon upsampling to no choice?? Do you agree, about MQA diminishing the choices, or am I missing something, which is entirely possible. I recently, after the comparison, got new speakers LSR+ replacing the older LSR. I have now discovered that much of my fiddling was due to the hi-mid frequency roughness of the LSRs. Plus my room has 16 windows so that roughness was exaggerated 4 fold. Now I care much less about settings but I am still curious what settings you and others use with the EVO or any equipment that has a MQA upsampling DAC.
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Since Lumin has announced support for Plex, I did a casual comparison. My results were very different to yours. Plex(amp) did not sound worse than Roon. And that was a bit of a disappointment to be honest. I expected Roon to sound better (being a Roon lifetime sub), but it just didn't. It was too close to call if either sounded different, let alone better. I'll be doing several more comparisons in the future though. |
@willywonka Part of Roon is it’s digital streaming engine. The details of how the digital streaming is done certainly can and does determine the resulting sound. Roon’s DSP user functionality is simply an extension of that, the part that Roon Gives users control of. |
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