Tidal worth it in your view with £2500+ AV gear?

Tidal is great if you currently use Spotify and find that all the integrations it has with many different devices are far too convenient, and you look at your bank balance at the end of each month and find £10 more in there than you feel comfortable with.
 
I use Tidal, quite like it, so after the 60 day free trial ended I continued with the service.
If I’m going to pay for a service as opposed to something free I didn’t want some compressed or a lossy system. Which would have meant I would have gone and bought the CD anyway, now I don’t need to bother or if I really like the album I’ll perhaps buy it on vinyl and save the Tidal version as a favourite for convenience listen or for other rooms around the house.
It also fully integrates into my control app for the system.
It’s actually saved me money as I’ve bought less CD’s since, and no albums bought but then didn’t like it much.
 
I'm thinking of making the jump to Tidal when MQA is introduced for a lot of their catalogue. Supposedly going to happen soon. Assuming the original recordings were well done, should be good.
 
Meridian seem unable to say what MQA actually is without using a bunch of hi-fi buzzwords and not really providing any substance.
 
FerretBoy said:
Personally I use spotify 320kbs with my setup £5.5k.

I don't find it lacking.
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LAME MP3 is indistinguishable from lossless at about 190 kbps (--preset medium), so it's pretty safe to assume 320 kbps (--preset insane) will sound as good as lossless with music. (There might be small differences in specially-designed "problem samples".)

I like the idea of Tidal and lossless music (got an extensive ripped collection in FLAC, but that's more for archiving purposes than SQ) but if Spotify offers 320 kbps for less money I'd probably choose that.
 
I've tried it. I have amazing gear and also amazing headphones and I failed Neil Youngs Pono test every single time I tried and spent hours trying to tell the minute differences but always got 2 or 3 out of the 5 correct. Tidal is a great idea but when trying to use the hifi quality setting I couldn't find a single web browser that would allow me to actually press play on a track without an error message. Also does it not use flash which is being widely discontinued?
 
How about Google Music? Their encodes are all 320kbs. But the issue is that I would use my phone/tablet to play it via bluetooth. So I guess the question is how will bluetooth affect the quality?
 
Caged said:
Meridian seem unable to say what MQA actually is without using a bunch of hi-fi buzzwords and not really providing any substance.
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??
Surprises me.
Basically, MQA is 24/96 music compressed into a file that's the equivalent in size to a WAV file.
So it's still twice the size of FLAC cut from CD and substantially bigger again than an MP3. For all that, if you have a system capable of making use of it and music that's well enough recorded to make it pointless, then it has a lost of promise.

Trying to explain it more easily, think about the audio quality you get from a well recorded BD disk (assuming the system can output HD audio). That's roughly the equivalent of MQA. Then think about how a CD will sound in comparison.
As mentioned, with a poor system or in a room with lousy acoustics, it'll be hard to distinguish.

Make sense?
 
Scam said:
How about Google Music? Their encodes are all 320kbs. But the issue is that I would use my phone/tablet to play it via bluetooth. So I guess the question is how will bluetooth affect the quality?
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Don't use Bluetooth.... Use a Chromecast so its via WiFi with no loss, you can get an HDMI audio extractor if your using an amp with no HDMI inputs....
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
Basically, MQA is 24/96 music compressed into a file that's the equivalent in size to a WAV file.
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From what i gather, MQA isn't just compression but rather it also dumps 'non-audible' data from the original source - so technically it's a lossy codec.
Saying that, it gets good reviews but i'll wait 'til i hear it myself.


nightrider1470 - If you're happy with Spotify then stick with it but Tidal isn't a bad service and lossless material is a positive if you're an avid listener.
 
visibleman said:
From what i gather, MQA isn't just compression but rather it also dumps 'non-audible' data from the original source - so technically it's a lossy codec.
Saying that, it gets good reviews but i'll wait 'til i hear it myself.


nightrider1470 - If you're happy with Spotify then stick with it but Tidal isn't a bad service and lossless material is a positive if you're an avid listener.
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Agreed on the comment on it being partially lossy, though the article I read suggested that it was non-lossy within the standard human frequency range and only lossy for some of the real hi-frequency stuff, i.e. well above 20khz.

As you say though, the real proof will be when we get a listen.

Just hope that they can sort out the politics and money, such that we as the consumers can have a go.
 
If Tidal goes MQA as an option will hopefully see Linn release a software update to support it....(as Tidal is fully integrated into the Linn system already)
Steaming 24/96 files in will make an interesting comparison to current options....
 
Streaming 24/96 is a genuine game changer if they can bring in a genuinely large sized catalogue. Right now, I'd guess that if you totalled every BD-Audio, SACD and genuine downloadable HD audio track together that's presently available, that you'd be sub 10k, most of which is rather esoteric.
I'd jump at a service that could offer my collection in 24/96 at sensible cost.
 
It certainly would be welcome and I'd be interested to hear what it can do, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it was a games changer. The performance I can squeeze out of 16/44.1 is pretty good.
The few 24/192 files I have (from HD Tracks or Linn Records) can offer a touch more smoothness and refinement, but the difference isn't anywhere near what a good vs average recorded/mastered album will reveal. I wouldn't say I could identify a 24/192 etc just by hearing it, I'd say if it was good or not, the reason could by due to mastering rather than delivered bit rate etc.
If the delivery of higher rate files pushes up the mixing and mastering standards then it would still be worth it.

While record companies keep costs down and make a single "master" for all formats and markets then high quality kit is going to be held back due to the recording still needs to sound ok on a 20 quid portable.

What I've noticed in recent years more is "live" albums vs studio, I'm not talking big stadium stuff, just where a person or few has been in a small venue or recored live in studio. The studio, overlaid, dubbed etc stuff is so dead musically, the life, boogie and swing call it what you will is processed out of it..... Seems like there is no timing or connection between the musicians.

Play something recorded "live" and it rocks and sounds real.... or even some old recording from the 50's etc.... like an old Sun studio recording.... so alive....
 
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