Great post. I’ll add my experience/experiment from 2 years ago. So, things may have changed.
I subscribed to Tidal. When Qobuz became widely available, I subscribed to it, too. A few months in, I decided to listen to the same music on both services. I checked to be sure it was the same resolution, etc. On my system, Qobuz consistently sounded better than Tidal. While there were tracks on Tidal I enjoyed that were not available on Qobuz, I dropped it anyway as there was more than enough overlap.
I feel it’s relevant to note that I also dropped Roon because Qobuz through my streamers native operating system was clearly superior to listening to the same track through Roon, even though I had an optimized Mac mini running core and my streamer is a certified Roon endpoint. YMMV.
Streaming is wonderful and the quality of sound I now achieve on my system rivals my local files. I’ve spent a lot of effort to get there, but now enjoy exceptional sound, variety and convenience. But the underpinnings of all of this are complex. None of us should be surprised that almost everything has an impact on the end result. 40 years ago, digital promised perfect sound forever. Turns out it is as variable as analog is. But, the rewards are worth it.
