Tidal or Qobuz

I initially went with Qobuz since I wanted high resolution PCM when available and not MQA. Now that Tidal has moved away from MQA to high resolution PCM, my advice would be to pick the service that has more of the music you prefer. I think 99.99% of the folks using these services will not be able to detect sound quality differences, if any, for whatever reason. One day, I will revisit Tidal to see if I find any content advantages.

BTW, I'm a Roon user simply because I love what it offers regardless of sound quality which I find excellent on my optimized network.

Tidal’s been implementing what they call “Max”. Basically a non-MQA hi-rez format identical to what Qobuz offers today, up to 24/192. Not all streamers are caught up on it though but it’s becoming available at a steady pace. I have also read that the newest hi-rez additions will be in Max and no longer in MQA. But I don’t know how reliable this information is.
I’ll amend my earlier post about Tidal sounding better to me than Qobuz…that was the case with a Lumin streamer or with the inbuilt network renderer in my DAC running as a Roon endpoint. I just got an Aurender N200 and I would say that with this streamer the scale had tipped towards Qobuz. There are still albums on Tidal that sound equally good or better but Qobuz is the better source overall with Aurender in my system. I guess it’s the implementation and processing that matters as well as the source. Live and learn! It’s what makes this hobby so interesting.

@audphile1

Congradulations!

Once fully broken in, it would be interesting to hear a comparison between this and your former streamer.

Here we are a year later. Just renewed my Tidal trial subscription for $2 for 60 days. The reason is more and more Roon/Qobuz tracks are playing with soft clicking sounds. Annoying. I opened a case with Roon, provided all of my gear specifics and customer support was unable to resolve the issue. I then tried multiple Muse settings, ethernet to wifi and back, and many combinations of both. Still clicking. Interestingly, Qobuz via Chromecast is fine. Downloaded Tidal and now running Roon/Tidal for the tracks with clicking and no more clicking. I fully understand my setup may be the issue, but with Roon/Tidal working flawlessly I will end my Qobuz subscription at renewal.

Interesting that multiple people report opposite conclusions on which one sounds better. Maybe this is due to personal preferences in sound or, as @nyev mentioned, there could be other variables at play. Maybe differences in hardware, internet service, upsampling in Roon, gain within the streaming software, data centers, etc. are playing a part?