Nice system for a student! I am a big believer in Tidal I think it sounds fantastic and indeed pretty indistinguishable from cd's in my system. I was always finding myself antsy and dissatisfied listening to stuff on Spotify so for me Tidal was really a revelation. Certainly well worth $10 a month I am happy to pay the regular $20 per month rate.
Who has tried "TIDAL" vs other streaming applications?
Hello, I'm new to Audiogon, this is my first posting into Forums.
I enjoy streaming audio from my PC and have been using Spotify for a number of years now (college student discount to premium $5 a month). I just recently stumbled upon a App called TIDAL, that streams Lossless 16/44.1FLAC with their "HI-FI" subscription (Student $10 a month). Since I can queue up Spotify and Tidal at the same time, I was able to do an A/B and used Dire Straits Brothers in Arms. I noticed that TIDAL indeed sounds better to me but am convinced none of my family members could tell a difference. I then did an A/B with TIDAL and the actual Brothers in Arms CD, to my surprise TIDAL sounded scary close, if not just as good as the CD! This is hard for me to believe, I think I'm just trying to justify the extra cost of TIDAL on a crazy tight student budget, maybe its a placebo effect? I need to drop one of the services, but which one? I would appreciate your thoughts please... Thank you!
My system:
PC = Gaming Rig I built myself, using dedicated high quality audio card.
Krell KAV 400xi integrated
Sonus Faber Electa's with Sunfire HRS Sub
Cambridge AZUR 840C CDP/DAC
Luxman T117 Tuner
Sony SCD - C2000ES SACD Player
Kimber Silver Streak throughout
I enjoy streaming audio from my PC and have been using Spotify for a number of years now (college student discount to premium $5 a month). I just recently stumbled upon a App called TIDAL, that streams Lossless 16/44.1FLAC with their "HI-FI" subscription (Student $10 a month). Since I can queue up Spotify and Tidal at the same time, I was able to do an A/B and used Dire Straits Brothers in Arms. I noticed that TIDAL indeed sounds better to me but am convinced none of my family members could tell a difference. I then did an A/B with TIDAL and the actual Brothers in Arms CD, to my surprise TIDAL sounded scary close, if not just as good as the CD! This is hard for me to believe, I think I'm just trying to justify the extra cost of TIDAL on a crazy tight student budget, maybe its a placebo effect? I need to drop one of the services, but which one? I would appreciate your thoughts please... Thank you!
My system:
PC = Gaming Rig I built myself, using dedicated high quality audio card.
Krell KAV 400xi integrated
Sonus Faber Electa's with Sunfire HRS Sub
Cambridge AZUR 840C CDP/DAC
Luxman T117 Tuner
Sony SCD - C2000ES SACD Player
Kimber Silver Streak throughout
Showing 10 responses by jond
@grannyring Roon looks interesting I use, and like, Sonos but really only use it for Tidal and streaming my own music. Roon might be a better option for me but can it be configured wirelessly? The only example given on the Roon site is with an apple device, I use Windows and don't want to mess around with itunes or any of that stuff. My own music is on a Synology NAS. How would I make it work? Feel free to PM me if you prefer not trying to hijack grm's thread. Thanks! |
I would have to agree with cerrot on all counts above 320kbps just does not cut it. The Lightning DS app I use displays the sample rate of what’s playing though it varies it’s usually in the 1000kbps range with Tidal as well as my own recordings that are flac. I have some recordings in my collection that are mp3, mostly live recordings people have sent me, and the first time I put one on through my Aries I was like hmmm that doesn’t sound great and I glance over and sure enough 320kbps. Just not good enough. Ghosthouse you might want to retry your experiment and leave the V-link out and see what the results are just for fun. And regarding Tidal being buggy I also agree its about your internet connection. One thing that really helped me was moving it to the 5ghz band, the 2.4ghz band is just too crowded in my urban environment. |
Ghosthouse I just don't see how compressing a signal and shaving off bits, or however it's done sorry not an engineer, can't make it worse sounding. If compression is lossy then there is a loss of information right? It seems to make common sense that a lossless recording is going to sound better than a lossy recording. I am not talking about any sort of upsampling or high rez here. I listen to redbook cd and my Dac doesn't upsample. The difference between mp3's and flacs or wav files isn't just noticeable its pretty glaring. |
Ghosthouse no recording engineer records at 320kbps, the info in the larger box is in fact there and compressed to fit the smaller box not the other way around. You've basically made the point I was attempting to make for me. These days most recording are done at 24/96 is not higher then downsampled to redbook and further for mp3 so the larger box always has more data. |
Ghosthouse as soon as I wrote my last post I in fact started thinking about remasters. And in terms of recordings made from analog tape and transferred to digital it's as they said in the early days of cd to paraphrase.....'This recording my reveal limitations in the source material'. That being said analog tape is capable of capturing a ton of information, just look at the current revival of reel to reel and analog tape recorders/players. So yes absolutely the original source material matters greatly and not all reissues/remasters are created equally. But that's not really the fault of the digital medium but rather the implementation. Source material being equal a higher resolution recording will sound better than a compressed or downsampled recording. I think we are basically thinking along the same lines and broadly agreeing. And I am enjoying Bill Evans on Tidal as I write this so thank you! |
This was posted in another thread it's a bit vague but seems relevant. http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/6972/high-resolution-audio-you-can-hear-me-now?id=%2D13... I don't to hi-rez at all myself. |