tidal vs spotify/other streaming services

Discussion in 'Music and Recordings' started by kirayamato, Oct 25, 2015.

?

Does Tidal sound Better than Spotify/other

  1. Better (please explain)

    22 vote(s)
    45.8%
  2. pretty much the same

    25 vote(s)
    52.1%
  3. worse

    1 vote(s)
    2.1%
  1. Galm

    Galm Still looking for Little Red Riding Hood

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    I mean Roon can only see what Tidal sees, except it searches it even more poorly. So it won't have any better results than Tidal in that regard... and you also can't find tracks lol.
     
  2. DigMe

    DigMe Friend

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    Yeah tidal’s interface is amazingly bad and I cannot believe it has stayed so bad for so long.
     
  3. JustAnotherRando

    JustAnotherRando My other bike is a Ferrari

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    Huh. I switched from Tidal to Spotify a couple months ago, because of how Tidal was caught faking stats to shovel money to the owner's buddies.

    The Spotify interface has been driving me bonkers, to the extent that I'm thinking of ditching streaming altogether.
     
  4. Elnrik

    Elnrik Super Friendly

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    I would ditch streaming too, were it not for work policies. It prevents keeping 1.4T of uncompressed WAV rips on my local system or installing unknown software, whereas the network policy actually allows for streaming from known good services like Tidal.

    Here is an alternative - you could set up DynDNS or ZeroTier for your home. (ZeroTier is better imo, as it's encrypted end to end - but you have to install a client on each system that connects.) Then you could use the music server built into JRiver Media Center and then just stream home rips directly to anywhere...
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2018
  5. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    I'm happy for Qobuz for one thing: I can mostly buy music files in FLAC from them. They are promising a bigger selection than HD Tracks. I'm happy just for that since I'm not the biggest fan of streaming anymore.
     
  6. RobF

    RobF New

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    I just switched to Tidal from Spotify. I noticed a big difference in the quality so I'm going to stick with it. The interface blows massively and the suggestion algorithm is crazy bad. I've got a favorites collection filled with Classic Rock and they're suggesting Drake and Beyonce to me. WTF?
     
  7. crazychile

    crazychile Eastern Iowa's Spiciest Pepper

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    That was my issue with Tidal as well. The constant pimping of the hippity-hoppity / rap genres was too much.
     
  8. Galm

    Galm Still looking for Little Red Riding Hood

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    The bias is also hilarious when an album comes out from an owner. It dominates the new charts and top charts for way longer than it should...
     
  9. kixx

    kixx Acquaintance

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    Streaming audio quality has been bugging me for a while now. Is it at the same level as lossless on pc? What am i missing? To be or not to be ... that is the blah blah blah.
    After watching that darn video i decided to do some research and some A/B tests. Mighty interesting ... apparently nowadays, streaming platforms have normalization options to counter the loudness wars, and to determine producers to add more dynamics to the songs. This normalization "thingy" affects the quality and dynamics of songs (in various degrees over the various streaming platforms). In short, the move to "standardize" streaming audio volume (for TV as well) and drop the loudness crap, crushes some of the dynamics of songs. A mastered song that peaks over -14LUFF/-14dBFS (apparently that's spotify's and tidal's preferred streaming volume now) gets turned down, and can have some of the transients clipped so it doesn't blast your ears off - it's something about hearing health.

    Soooooo, with this knowledge on board I have listened to some tracks (nirvana, radiohead, deadmau5, metallica) on spotify and on my pc (for reference), and there IS a difference between the normalization setting on and off. With the normalization off, some of the songs are more dynamic, guitars have more bite to them, drums have more impact, cymbals have more zing, and instrument separation is better. The volume level (loud, normal, quiet) impacts the quality of the song the most. The "loud" setting definitely affects dynamics, the "normal" setting can affect sometimes (i think i picked it up on some tracks like creep and teen spirit ... not so much on deadmau5), and the "quiet" is 'bout the same with normalization off and with the lossless sources on my pc. I don't have super revealing gear and i was able to pick up some stuff between these settings ... maybe people with "uber" rigs can chime in on this?
    If you don't like to adjust the volume every so often, definitely use the normalization "on", alongside "quiet" volume level. However, this has a drawback ... you really need to crank up the volume, so a hefty rig can sometimes be necessary with power hungry cans. I think for critical listening, and people who know their tracks optimal listening level, the normalization "off" would be the best. But be careful when shuffling and/or listening on the go with the player in the pocket. I totally forgot that and got my earmuffins blasted. Hello tinnitus my old friend ... :D

    As a disclaimer, i would like to mention that i did use my phone's dB meter to "sort of" match the volume between settings so i'm not (that) influenced by loudness, and even played some pink noise tracks on spotify just to confirm that.


    These are some of the references and info regarding this ... maybe it helps you understand better than my shit explaining. Or who knows, it might all be a placebo and i think i hear differences :confused::eek::oops:



    http://productionadvice.co.uk/spotify-reduced-loudness/

    http://productionadvice.co.uk/no-lufs-targets/
     
  10. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    Not for classical music, or other cases where music may span multiple tracks. In that case, you wouldn't want normalization to be adjusted to individual tracks, but to the entire musical piece (e.g. four movements of a symphony).
     
  11. kixx

    kixx Acquaintance

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    I was kind off thinking about the safety aspect of it. On quite a few occasions i had my ears blown by the next track, as my queue is erratic at best. Try "across the stars" (+3.75 dB gain) followed by ... dunno ... pink lemonade (-13.4 dB gain) ... that's a whoppin 17dB variance in volume, guaranteed to make you taste the rainbow :confused::confused:

    It kinda came out wrong, not the way i was imagining it, but i decided to go with the flow and not edit it ... |\/|
     
  12. Erikdayo

    Erikdayo Friend

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    Normalizing by album would be so much more convenient. I use Apple Music, and that option doesn't appear to be available. Sometimes normalizing by track is very problematic. I've had little ambient interludes be way louder than everything else.
     
  13. msommers

    msommers High on Epipens

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    Started with Tidal and now use Spotify. I find the suggested Playlists or Daily Mixes to be very enjoyable and a one-click option to discover new tunes.

    Tidal sucked balls to find new music that I would actually like. Lil'____ suggestions relentlessly are not really my jam.
     
  14. AllanMarcus

    AllanMarcus Friend

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    By the way, apple streams using AAC, not MP3, so you cannot directly compare the bit rates. AAC 256 probably compares with MP3 320, but the "translation" isn't straight forward. Bottomline is that these two compression formats are different at the same bit rate, so it's not a standard you can use for "apples to apples" comparisons.
     
  15. Gruss Gott

    Gruss Gott Almost "Made"

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    I use tidal but also have google play and spotify - i did some informal testing and consistently picked tidal so I've kept the subscription (had a 3 month trial). As for the tidal complaints:

    (1.) I want to care Tidal faked numbers, but I don't because I'm not sure why I should

    (2.) I don't really use the UI that much - I use amazon or google if I want predictions, and I generally use beatport to find new music in a genre.

    (3.) Catalog - so far, Tidal has had just about everything I've ever asked it for - maybe about 5% they don't have (or has since been removed

    So Tidal is only my player - I use it to go right to my playlist and never see any of the other stuff ... for me it's a great service and I especially like that it's dark-themed on my laptop as most of my serious listening is at night.
     
  16. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Only classical music, but I just found this: IDAGIO - https://www.idagio.com/.
    Seems to be available in Canada and US has a huge library and is streaming FLAC lossless. 14 free trial and $9.99 a month in Canada. \half the price of Tidal.
    I would love to ditch Tidal for this but there is one problem: I am so hooked on Roon with Bryston BDP-2 as an endpoint that I cannot imagine going back to PC. But if I could find the way to stream IDAGIO through Roon I would be off tidal in 5 minutes.
     
  17. mkozlows

    mkozlows Friend

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    I subscribed to Idagio (you can actually try it out for a 1-day trial without even entering in your credit card, so no hassle other than downloading the app). It's got a great UI for classical music -- compositions and performances are first-class entities, the way that albums and tracks are on other services. So if you search for like "beethoven symphony", in addition to getting a list of CDs that match, you also get a (short) list of compositions that match. And if you click on one of them, it shows you the available recordings of that symphony, with conductor and orchestra and date. (The web UI even lets you filter on them; the mobile UI makes you scroll through the list, although you can sort by date or popularity.)

    Catalog is decent, if still missing some obvious things. I've been running it through the Chromecast Audio (SPDIF into a DAC) from Android, and that works well, with the caveat that the CCA doesn't support gapless.
     
  18. nishan99

    nishan99 Friend

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    Been listening to Deezer Hifi (lossless FLAC) after being used to Spotify premium. It's noticeably darker and smoother than the lossy Spotify, I am not sure I am liking that or not :|. Too smooth.

    Then I downloaded some FLAC and play them with Foobar and noticed the same darkness and smoothness :|.
    Is that what lossless files sound like?. Or maybe I am used to the bright and etched lossy files :S.

    Nevertheless I will keep listening for the upcoming free month trial then will decide if I am going to switch or not, right now I am not convinced at all.

    Deezer is the only streaming service with lossless playback that is available at where I live, and its hifi plan is just newly released here too so stop judging me already :)
     
  19. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    Deezer is a good service, no need to apologize for using it.
     
  20. msommers

    msommers High on Epipens

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    No one is listening to Spotify for the quality. Their new content/automatic playlist/radio algorithms are probably the best in the industry.
     

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