Tidal vs. Spotify

Day and night. PS, I listen to classical mostly. Use Oppo205 decode MQA, balanced line out ->  Sennheiser HDA600-> balanced XLR silver wire -> Sennheiser HD650 and HD600. Super transparent and clear sound.

i am using Tidal with a low end PreSonus USB DAC... XLR outputs and usually 24 bit/44 stereo sample rate ... it sounds very good but I want a new DAC. Check out the new OMD - Punishment of Luxury... wow

I love spotify. It's the best music streaming software. And i used MUSCONV tool to transfer my playlist to spotify. It's amazing. MUSCOV take just few minutes only to transfer large playlist. If you want you can try. Find more details at www.musconv.com 

51strebel.

Not sure what issue you have with Tidal search?
I have been using for over a year and have zero complaints at all.
I think the Tidal interface is superior to Spotify and as for the sq, not even on the same planet.
Also just started investigating Deezer which seems to be pretty comparable to Tidal in search and sq.
But of course all just my opinions...

Qobuz should be available in the US this year.

I find Qobuz much better than Tidal and Spotify but to be able to subscribe you have to live in Europe if i recall.

Comparing Tidal and Spotify is like comparing bananas with iceskates.
Spotify is way superior in usability, serachengine, intelligent music suggestions, etc.
But, in terms of sound quality, spotify is ok for the kitchen stereo or the boombox you bring to the beach. But utterly unacceptable as source in any serious setup.
In any serious setup, the difference between spotify and tidal hifi, is instantly obvious.
The sense of air, 3d imagin and realism dissapears when you switch to spotify. Where tidal delivers a soundstage that is wide, deep, high, airy and precise, everything just sounds compressed and, to say it like it is, shitty! in comparison, when played on spotify.. 

So essentially Im going in circles.  I'll try to explain.  I am trying to resign up for the Spotify Premium subscription but I forgot my password.  When I request that they e-mail me they say that my e-mail is not associated with an active account so that lead me to think that I just need to sign up again but when I try to do that they say I can't use my user name or e-mail because it is taken already (by me, I assume, from my prior subscription). 

I filled out the Spotify contact form for help but when I get to the end and press send I get the response that my session had timed out.  I filled the form out again a second time, cut and paste therefore really quickly, and I still got the same session has timed out response.

I will say that cancelling my subscription last time was a real hassle, just like my trying to resubscribe right now.  Poor customer service in my opinion; we'll see if my e-mails requesting help actually made it through to them or not.  

B_limo...I use Spotify Premium on a MAC.  Things might look different if you run Windows.  At any rate, at the top of my Spotify screen there is a Help button in the toolbar.  Click on that and a Search pop-up appears with several choices including, "Your Account".  Clicking on Your Account opens an "Account Overview' window with yet another Help button.  Click on this Help and another window opens in "Support".  Try the "Solutions" box or the "Spotify Community" to describe your problem.   In this same Support window at the top there is a Solutions button.  Click on this and there are Account and Tech Support options.  I'd probably post my problem in every and all available dialog boxes until someone got back to me.  Hope this is some help.  Good luck getting back on Spotify Premium.

Okay, so I'm trying to resubscribe to Spotify Premium simply because the playlists and music selection smokes Tidal.  It seems like Jay Z is just pushing a bunch of rap crap.  Blah.

Anywho, Spotify Premium was an absolute pain to cancel, now I'm finding I can't resubscribe.  Contact support you say?  What support would that be?  The problem I am running into is that if I try to resubscribe it says my E-mail is already a registered E-mail, so my logic was to log-in then if my E-mail is already registered but I can't remember my username and login so I enter in my e-mail and they say I don't have an account... Wtf man??

Thanks, kacz.  I was not aware of those a'phile playlists.  Great suggestion.  Lots too explore.

So after having spotify premium for quite a while now I can say I'm totally satisfied. Search "audiophile" playlists. The first few will blow you away. Just go through all the songs on the list. Most those recordings are nothing short of incredible. You'll be staying up for hours and hours late into the night, not being able to stop listening. 

I use  Tidal with Roon software installed on MacMini which is connected via USB to  Marantz NA11S DAC/network player.
The integration is flawless and sound quality is really like CD one.

Ghosthouse, thanks for the heads up. Will check it out.
The Jazz for Autumn playlist is what I have been listening to for my recent experiment.
It's interesting that Spotify does indeed sound like redbook quality.

Glad you got an improvement, Jon.  Check out The Antisocial Club when you get a chance.  Maybe you will like it.

Tried both and it was no contest. Inputting the native Spotify signal to the dac followed by upsampling wins hands down.
Guess Windows was doing a hack job of digital upscaling. :)

Not at all, ghosthouse. Quite the contrary. I am actually curious as to how the 2 methods compare. :)

Hi Jon - 
I wasn't trying to one-up your method with my comments...
The Gungnir doesn't have a USB input so I have to use the MF USB/SPDIF adapter and that's what is doing the upsampling.  Mainly wrote in response to your positive comments about Spotify sound quality which opinion I share.  

Not 100% certain about current pricing for that iFi dual-headed cable.  I got my cable off Ebay from Doukmall (China) on the suggestion of Williewonka.  Since then we've become aware of a "USB Disruptor" by robpriore for $74 and his has a power supply.  Maybe that will save you a few bucks over the iFi version.  You can find his cable under DA Converters.   Hopefully the link here will work too.   

https://www.audiogon.com/listings/da-converters-usb-disruptor-kills-noisy-usb-power-improves-usb-dac...

If interested in a Spotify selection with great SQ, try The Antisocial Club. It will be under "various artists" but is an Alan Pasqua project.  Interesting music (jazz/fusion) and, as I said, good sonics.  

Ciao.

Ghosthouse,
I used to have the iFi USB power that separates the power from the signal via a bihedral cable like yours until it crapped out. I guess it's time to get a new one after this recent experiment. 
I will try your method of letting the dac do the upsampling work and see how that compares with Windows.
 

jon2020 - 
I find the sound from Spotify very good too.  I'm using a split USB cable (separate signal and power legs) from MAC to a Musical Fidelity 192 USB/spdif converter that also upconverts to 24/192; from the MF192 via Stereovox coax to a Gungnir DAC; from the Gungnir via Morrow Audio RCAs (MA-3s or MA4s...don't recall) to pre-amp (or amp).  CD playback - especially ripped - can sound a little fuller bodied but for finding and listening to new music and playing things I haven't purchased yet, Spotify has been excellent.  An audio bud that had visited thought the sound of Spotify was CD-quality.  It sure ain't like listening to crappy MP3s.  
  

I am now listening to basic Spotify with Windows upscaling everything to 24/192 before outputting via USB to my iFi USB-spdif converter and thence to the coax input of the Esoteric K-01 player which is 24/192 capable. 

I have no idea how Windows does the upscaling but the sound is indeed stunning!
For those interested to try this, right click the sound icon on the taskbar -> Playback devices -> select your USB device -> 'Properties' tab -> 'Advanced' tab -> scroll down and select 24 bit/192 kHz(studio quality).

Enjoy! J. :)

Neither!

Even at home, Spotify > iBasso SPDIF Convertor > Simaudio 100D > Simaudio I-3 > Totem Rainmaker sounds pretty good to me.  

Because I travel 50% of the time, the ability to listen to my playlists/albums offline while on an airplane makes Spotify great for me. I used Tidal for about 3 days a few months back and thought the sh*tty interface wasn’t worth the increase in sound quality.

kacz - I've been a Spotify Premium subscriber for months and months now.  To me, the best $10 per month subscription ever.  I've not noticed any variation in quality of their stream based on time of day.  I have noticed that not all the available recordings are of the same quality.  Some are noticeably better than others.  Given spending $10 per month vs $20 and based on the very subtle degree of difference I heard in Tidal's own audio quality "test" (as in, "Are your ears or is your system good enough"...words to that effect) Tidal was just not worth it to me.  If comparing the non-premium, free Spotify SQ to Tidal SQ however, I could see why some might think Tidal is much better.  

Yep.  Reading Stereophile and having access to the music you are readng the reviews on uncompressed, with Tidal, is sweet.   

I can't bring myself to pay the $20 a month for Tidal. It seriously needs to be lower or they will never be able to compete and get enough people to stay strong and be able to pay for enough content. So I just upgraded to Spotify premium for $10 (well 90 days free first). The regular sound quality of Spotify is not great. But the premium is phenomenally better. I actually think Spotify lowers the bitrate though at peak times to handle the peak loads. At least on the free Spotify. A hunch I have. That drove me nuts because it seemed the sound quality would lower at certain times. So I got premium and really hope they don't do that with premium.  I'd love hi def music videos though. I might do Tidal at $15. But honestly they really drop the ball by not having a free service with ads or something, or at least needs to be easier to jump in and get going and get a feel for it before I'm having to give my credit card. 

This month's Stereophile has 56 Records to Die For, some of which are on the obscure side.

Forty of them are on TIDAL.  I'm gonna roll up my sleeves and get to listenin'.

The key to the search function is to know that you have to spell words right, and that the field in which you input your query (artist or album, for example) denotes the _output_ of your search.  So if I want to find the album Armed Forces by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, I'll enter just two distinctive words -- Elvis Armed -- in the Album search box and it will pop right up.  Less intuitive, yes, but if you know how to work it, it works....

Hands down Tidal. The difference is quality of the tracks is not subtle - it's downright obvious. On my main system (220SE with CM9S2) or on my macbook speakers. There is no contest, no ambiguity - Tidal sound better. And I'm a paying member of Spotiy Premium and Tidal Premium (not even Tidal HiFi). 

i just succumbed and subscribed to tidal in order to compare it to spotify. results are mixed. tidal's sound quality is unarguably better (it's not a vhs-to-dvd improvement, but significant  nonetheless) and i actually prefer its interface, which is simpler and more intuitive than spotify's, although as others have opined its search functions aren't as intelligent. tidal's library is, for my tastes, perfectly fine, about 85/% as good as spotify. however: (a) tidal's mobile platform is buggy and unreliable--lots of delays, buffers, etc.; (b) volume is significantly lower; probably a function of the flac format--i really need to crank up my phone; and (c) streaming tidal through my oppo bdp (one of its main attractions) requires use of an app on my mobile phone, which is cumbersome.
as a related aside, numerous pundits are predicting tidal's imminent demise, all citing the $20/mo. price as the weighing factor. this surprises the hell out of me--consumers don't seem to have a problem paying more than that for cable channels or sports packages + you can actually get the service for less if you prepay. there also appears to be artist backlash over the service being too "corporate," even though the same artists are getting higher royalties from tidal. others claim samsung is acquiring tidal, which sounds interesting.

Ummm, the point is that the audible difference is clear, but a lot still has to happen for ease of use. If I sit down at my rig once a week, but I listen to music every time I walk, drive, cook, or fly, the lossless part of the equation only comes into play ~5% of the time.

My "reference" rig is ready for the throughput. The rest of my life isn't ready for the inconvenience. But thanks for the critique.

Guys - tidal is ready, your system is not. Its throughput guys. If you don't build the proper infrasturcture, don't knock it. It has nothing to do with tidal.

Tidal not ready for prime time.
Albums, play lists, ease of use.
Sticking with JRivers
I'm just saying ✌️

I like the fact that the Tidal interface is relatively simple and uncluttered. Along these lines, it's also quite stable and seems to use less of my computer's resources. In contrast I find Spotify's interface to be extremely busy, highly unorthodox from a navigation standpoint, full of 'features' I don't use and never will use (yet they compete for my attention on the busy interface) and it can take a minute or more before I can play any music because the client has so much stuff to load before I can play music.

I agree that Spotify has more in the way of playlists but I find the personalization there pretty poor. Despite the fact I've 'starred' hundreds of songs, it does a poor job of driving useful music discovery for me. It's surely better in this respect than Tidal, but I see Tidal as more of a library or tool whereas Spotify suggests (but doesn't deliver on) personalization. Pandora does do a much better job at personalization, likely because they have a very strong human element in the personalization exercise and have been doing it for a very long time.

I hope Tidal does get some healthy traction. I think they deserve it - not just for the high quality sound but I really do like the interface (and I'm normally very critical of user experience and navigation frameworks).I trust their service can only get better.

I like listening to streaming music because it is easy and I love the variety. I can change my mind every two minutes and quickly find different music to listen to. Of course, listening to music stored on my hard drive offers the very best quality. However, the flexibility and sound quality of Tidal is a big listening plus for me.

I agree with the above posts that Spotify gives you more music selections and that Tidal gives you much better sound quality (uncompressed). Tidal music selections are improving but additional albums need to be added. There is a very slight delay when starting music on Tidal and another slight delay from song to song. This is not a problem for me since the sound quality is very good.

Tidal also offers various play lists you can select or you select your own album. Another advantage with Tidal is that you can select an album and then page down to see additional albums by that artist. As I stated above, Tidal Hi-Fi streaming is ONLY available on the Chrome browser.

Okay. I sometimes listen to Pandora for background music or to find out if I like a specific album or type of music.

You need to decide if the Tidal $20 per month charge is worth it. I feel the Tidal sound quality is well worth the $20. I suggest you give Tidal a try for one month and then decide.

Following off BCGator, I think as a platform Spotify is just more competent at this time. As I've said previously, Tidal very clearly sounds better. I only get to listen off my good rig on occasion, but I'm always listening in my car, off my deepblue2 in the kitchen, off my laptop while I'm traveling, and off my iphone on the go.

My hope would be that Tidal either forces Spotify to go lossless, or Tidal gets the level of robustness/connectivity that Spotify currently has. If I had the money, I'd have Tidal for reference, Spotify for mobility, and Pandora for radio. But paying for premium service for 3 services just seems a little silly.

BcGator - my results may be different as I am logged on. It may learn my tastes, not sure yet. It takes me ten minutes tops about once a week to search and add new multi-hour playlists and albums. Its pretty easy and the music is uncompressd, whch does blow spotify, pandora and what ever other mp3 service is available.

The press for the great unwashed (a/k/a folks who don't worry about the pros and cons of AIFF v. WAV formats a/k/a 99% of the marketplace) hasn't been kind to Tidal. I saw this piece on Gawker.com today:

http://gawker.com/tidal-atry-my-tortuous-trial-with-jay-zs-overpriced-sp-1697023467

{Most of the tweets quoted in the review have been omitted}

I've not used Spotify or Tidal and I briefly used Pandora, so I've no personal interest or axe to grind, but this is a particularly scathing review. I do know that not one of my 18 year old's friends I've asked about streaming options has expressed an interest in CD quality downloads. Sad thing is many/a lot/ most (?) of the people I've asked say they're happy with Apple lossy downloads.
---------------
I Tried Tidal and It Sucked
Sam Biddle
ProfileFollow

Two weeks ago, a happy-go-lucky troupe of ragtag recording artists (collective net worth: over $2,000,000,000) stood shoulder to shoulder on a stage and asked for your money. In return they would give you "TIDAL," a streaming music website and app that costs too much. I gave it a try. You should not.
Somehow, people already hate Tidal, a company that's barely had a chance to exist but has already alienated much of its market:

The quick pitch for Tidal's HiFi subscription is that it costs more than Spotify[1] so that artists can get a bigger slice of the pie. By using Tidal you are "supporting the artists" and "giving back to Madonna." Paying more for higher quality is the selling point of Tidal—it's the only point of Tidal. So it had better work!
Here is the first thing you see when you log into your Tidal account:

To someone like myself, who cares deeply about his friends, this is profoundly troubling question. Can I believe that they are not listening to their Rihanna tracks on their iPhone earbuds in premium lossless audio? Do I therefore have an ethical obligation to shill for Tidal? If my friend needs help, should I not help him?

I decline. This is what shows up next: a list of bands and people who might be among my favorites.

Why is Robinson Cano, second baseman for the Seattle Mariners, one of the first faces I see on one of the first screens of Tidal? I didn't click on Robinson Cano's face. I hadn't heard of anyone else except The Mountain Goats and Rihanna, so I picked those two. If I were really being honest with Jay Z and Madonna I would have to admit that I don't even like The Mountain Goats, but having only one favorite seemed sad.

I listened to my favorite song, "Cheers (Drink To That)" by Rihanna. Tidal says its music sounds better than that of Spotify or Rdio because it uses "lossless" file encoding, which means the songs aren't compressed before being streamed from a remote server to your laptop or phone. On paper, this means that lossless music will sound "like the producers wanted" and give you "the authentic Jack White experience." On my laptop's speakers I could not tell the difference between Rihanna belting YEAH-HEE-YA, YEAH-HEE-YA, YEAH-HEE-YA! on Tidal versus Rihanna belting YEAH-HEE-YA, YEAH-HEE-YA, YEAH-HEE-YA! on Rdio.

I tried a few other songs, and at times I thought maybe the Tidal versions sounded better, but that could just be due to me wanting the Tidal versions to sound better because I want to be someone who appreciates "how music is supposed to sound."

Tidal's search bar is annoying. When I search for "kanye " in Rdio I get a bunch of suggested songs and albums by that guy. But in Tidal, I get a bunch of confusing nonsense:

On the other hand, Tidal offered me this handy link to a web store that sells unwanted Kanye West merch from 2008:

Every time I open Tidal I see this same list of things I'm not interested in instead of something worthwhile, like "new releases," or songs by Rihanna and my other favorite band, The Mountain Goats, or people who I recognize and am familiar with because of their music and not their lifetime .310 batting averages.

Why are album titles and playlist descriptions frequently truncated ("After The Blues: Tribute to Jaso...")?

Why did the volume go down to a whisper on the Tidal iPhone app, causing me to no longer be able to really hear "Cheers (Drink To That)" by Rihanna on my phone?

Why do songs on Tidal sometimes just not play at all? What if I were throwing a party and wanted to listen to the "Beyond Bluegrass: A New Wester..." playlist, but the music won't play, and all of the new friends I've made with the promise of true, high-quality sound as it was meant to be heard walk out on me?

Why would anyone pay $20 per month to beta test Jay Z's Super Sweet Celeb Streaming Service when Rdio and Spotify don't have any of these problems and are cheaper? Tidal costs too much: Even the free trial I received felt like a ripoff.

Gator: totally. I'll use Pandora when I want background music that I don't have to select.

Just wanted to point out how spoiled and complain-y we are (me included) when we just can't be bothered to pick out an album to play, after we've been provided access to nearly all the music that's ever been digitized.

Seriously Cymbop, you never sit down to listen and think to yourself, "I'd like to revisit a particular time period and discover songs I may have missed"? Or maybe hear songs from only a particular era, but want them randomly chosen because you're mentally focused on other tasks and just want to be surprised? That has never happened to you?

I do that all the time. Other people must, or you wouldn't have Time/Life doing all those infomercials selling bundles of 800 CDs filled with 46,000 songs from the '60s/70s/etc. I think there's a lot of interest in playlists that capture particular time periods in music history.

You're absolutely wrong Cerrot, I stand by my previous message. Those 4-5 playlists aren't hundreds of songs long, they're 35-45 songs long. And if you do a search under Elton John, as you suggest, the results return exactly 4 playlists that have anything to do with the 1970s. Just did it myself, looking at it onscreen right now.

If you do a search under Mama Cass, again as you suggest, you get exactly 3 playlists...2 of which are for songs from 2015, and one which has over 400 songs but any connection to the 1970s is purely random - it includes songs from Benny Goodman and Bruno Mars. Bruno Mars wasn't even alive in the 1970s. Go ahead, try it yourself, you'll see what I'm seeing. Did you actually do any of the searches you suggest, before typing your last message?

I'm not saying Tidal is a poor service, I'm simply explaining to you why it's not head-scratching why everyone with access to an internet connection hasn't signed up. Having bitrate isn't enough, they also have to have the library AND the interface and search algorithms to access it. Some days, I've worked so hard my brain is fried, I don't know who I want to listen to, I want to sort of just listen to random radio from a particular time period and maybe re-discover songs I'd forgotten about. We're talking about decade-related playlists...I'm not asking it to make up a playlist of artists who enjoy playing Scrabble on weekends while wearing rasberry berets. A decade-playlist isn't rocket science.

But, Cerrot, it's so _inconvenient_ to have to _think_ of the name of the artist or album I want to hear. ;-)

That is not accurate about Tidal and the 70s search. That would yeild just 4-5 playlists but they can be 40 hours long, so youre talking 100-200 tracks. The way to search is to type in a specific artist of the search, IE say, Elton John (70's) or Mama Cass, etc.... then see what coms up. That will keep you busy for months.

Oh... they're there.

I can see a lot of reasons why Spotify users haven't migrated.

Do this, just for one example...pretend you want to explore the decade of the 1970s and put "70s" in the search box of Tidal, and then do the same in Spotify. If you put "70s" in the Spotify search box you get lots of playlists with great 70s music, whether you want disco, glam rock, AM radio hits, etc. That same search on Tidal gets you around 5 or 6 limited playlists of actual songs by their original artists. The rest are made up of tribute-band songs...great hits done by someone nobody has ever heard of. That's just one example. Go ahead and try it...the 3rd playlist shown is not of original artists, the 4th isn't even 70s songs. One of the lists is "Woman of Rock", including Alanis Morisette...had she even hit puberty by the end of the '70s?

I'm sure once their library gets bigger, and they hire someone who was alive in the 1970s to make sure their '70s playlists don't have Alanis Morisette on them, they'll hit their stride and you'll see people flock there in droves. I just don't think they're there yet.

Still in love with Tidal here. And while the suggestions, artist radio, and interface of Spotify are super-convenient, imagine going back five years in time with the following offer:

Them: We'll give you CD-quality access to 85% of the recorded albums in the history of music, for $20 a month.

Me: Yeah, well, it sucks if it won't pick out the music I want to listen to for me.

I'd look like a real a**hole, wouldn't I?

Sounds great, Bcgator. I am in love with Tidal and scratching my head that more have not embraced it. I haven't purchased a CD since tidal (I was spending $100-$200 every moth on CD's).

Poke around some of the playlists some of the users have put together. There are s e 3,4 and 10-15 hour playlists. I have been discovering new music daily...

Late reply, but Cerrot I am using the downloaded app. The issues I've had have occurred while using the app, not a browser. It's run fine off and on the last few days, only had to restart a couple of times.

It absolutely does sound better than Spotify, though I prefer Spotify's interface and access to various playlists. Just seems like more content on Spotify...not just in absolute terms, but more different ways to find new content. But the sound quality has Spotify beat.

After some procrastination I got around to trying Tidal yesterday. I had been relying heavily on Spotify for the last year or so for digital, when I'm too lazy to spin my vinly. Well, I'm now quite sold on the Tidal $20 a month offering and have made the switch. A few main points:

1) The sound quality difference is clear, particularly clear on some tracks which I'm intimately familiar with. I now think I've been silly to play with an uncompressed solution up until now. It's really quite a breakthrough to get uncompressed streaming - a bit of a revelation really.

2) I actually prefer Tidal's interface to Spotify. It's cleaner, less busy, less 'c$%p" everywhere. I just hope Tidal doesn't try to copy every Spotify feature. The interface and feature set is perfectly fine as-is.

3) Catalog feels like it may be less than Spotify's, but to Cerrot's point above, it's surely getting better, so that should fix itself over time.

4) There seems to be some stability issues with Tidal, but I've had plenty of crazy stability issues with Spotify's client too. If anything I expect to be happier in this respect with Tidal as it has fewer 'stuff' going on (For example, Spotify keeps suggesting to me what my FB friends are listening to. I actually don't give a what some random friend is listening to). If anything Tidal feels a bit more stable through Chrome vs. using a standalone client - it's possibly consuming a lot less computer resources and it really feels, looks and works quite fluidly.

5) As 2bgeorge noted above, the key downside I'm experiencing is that I was using Spotify's iPad app as a remote for my desktop (source). Strangely it took Spotify eons to actually launch that feature, but it is great (It has some stability issues too, but generally works ok). I began to leave feedback to Tidal about this on their Help site and there was a recent/related response from them noting that they are working hard and fast on this feature, so that's good to hear.

Overall, despite kinks (there are always some tradeoffs) Tidal feels like a no-brainer for any audiophile. Frankly, if one is an audiophile and cares about quality I can't really see how Spotify could be a consideration anymore. I feel a bit foolish not to have switched from Spotify to Tidal earlier.

I do like tidal even at standard version ($9.95/mth) but on trial now and given a choice probably keep it.The selection of newer releases is rather alright compared to the older selections, so this may still work partially for me.

I feel besides resolution issue, each provider has a different sonic flavor (not talking about absolute resolution). Spotify has a bit livelier sound as compared to Deezer (Elite), more relaxed.

Does anyone share my thoughts of just jumping from providers around every month or so.

IMO, if you are primarily listen to the similar selections through any service, then it makes sense to get the music stored as your own collection.

I am wanting to discover and rediscover both old and new music.