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Tidal SQ Issues

Has anyone experienced transient excessive harshness when streaming Tidal?

I'm a "high-res" streaming newbie, and was auditioning a friend's system last week. For the most part, I was really impressed by the quality of what I was hearing. But, a few tracks were accompanied by a discordant brightness that made the track virtually unlistenable. In trying to troubleshoot the root of the problem, I suggested that it might be due to the friend using coaxial rather than usb to connect the streamer to the dac.

Then, later in the week, I experienced the same issue on my own system. That got me thinking that Tidal Max's "better-than-cd-quality" algorithm was overcompensating for something in the original file and introducing some noise into the "up-res'd" version. I wonder, if the same effect would occur if I used their lower quality streams (but, really, why bother?). Going to try Qobuz out to see if it has similar issues.

danto
danto OP
10 posts
 

@audphile1  Unfortunately, I wasn’t tracking the issue that closely to notice the tracks being played. I’m on the alert now. 
 

@soix laugh

decooney
2,185 posts
 

Played Tidal on 16-bit and 24/192 modes both past three weekends in a row. 

No issues.  I don't use or want MQA. 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,383 posts
 

Well you’re tracking it close enough to start a new thread here. And you don’t remember the recording you were playing. I’ll say it’s probably something you’ve not familiar with and you didn’t care for it enough to remember what it is. If it comes back to you post it here. Otherwise I’ll say it isn’t a significant enough problem to bother and start a new thread here questioning Tidal sound quality. Thoughts?

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,383 posts
 

@decooney no more MQA on Tidal. It’s all FLAC. I have zero issues with Tidal and I use both Tidal and Qobuz. Sounds great to me as well. 

kennymacc
448 posts
 

I use Tidal and Qobuz.  No such issues here.  They both sound heavenly, in my room, through my audio system.  As a matter of fact, between the two, my Roon default is Tidal and not Qobuz.  Happy listening. 

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