Tidal FLAC vs. Qobuz

I use Tidal and Spotify. I used Qobuz on a trial that finished yesterday. I didn't renew it. My accompanying system is Blusound Node streamer with a Gato Audio AMP150 AE and Gato Audio FM15 bookshelf speaker.

You can play high res from your Tidal app (iPhone or PC - maybe others too but I don't use Android/MAC) in high res over wi-fi. You don't need to use Bluetooth. If you use BT then you can just use Spotify.

For Qobuz, the selection was okay but the app sucks. You can not play via WiFi from either the PC or the iPhone app. You have to go to the service in Bluesound or any other streamer you use to play it on WiFi- which honestly sucks. The Bluesound app is not as good as the streaming apps.

I have a Bluseound Vault too but for the last several years use it as a hardwired backup streaming source to my ARC/Wilson system (when Roon goes down- which it does about once a month for an hour or two) I flip over to the Vault and access Quboz and Tidal. It does a decent job but if you have a nicer system then I suggest a better streamer/DAC - it'll make a big sonic improvement. I default to liking the selections of Quboz - Tidal is still skewed toward explicit lyrics / rap etc but has overall a good mix. Sonically I can't tell them apart by the way. And, with a hardwired system the issue you raise about FLAC is moot. I bougth a Lumin PI for my main streamer/DAC and love it. It also gives access to Spotify, which the PS Audio DirectStream Jr I had previously did not. 

@p05129 I too was angry that Tidal didn’t honor their agreement with Best Buy’s customers and negated those who had already paid for a year’s subscription and forced us to start paying the full monthly price - without offering a discount for a yearly subscription. So far, I’m still with Tidal, but yeah, that definitely rubbed me the wrong way and makes Tidal "expensive" compared to yearly subscriptions of Apple Music and Amazon HD. After jumping through hoops using a 3rd party software (TuneMyMusic, which is not free for large collections, I had to temporarily subscribe to it, do the transfer, then cancel) to transfer all my Spotify albums, tracks, and playlists to Tidal, I guess I’ll stick it out and see how it goes, and if they’ll ever offer a yearly discount again.

One cool thing about TuneMyMusic was that I was also able to download a comma delimited file (.XLS format) of all my music.  That was a definite plus. 

@mojo771 Tidal connect does not stream wirelessly to the Node.  Tidal connect controls music on the node much like Roon.  It is essentially the same as playing from the Node.

Why does anybody like blusound??

The interface is hardly helpful and difficult to work with and is not as good as going to the source like tidal or qobuz.

It's just an interface that's poorly designed. Personally I prefer roon.