Tidal's sound quality (potential watermark audibility)

<edit to remove inaccurate measurement! Will re-measure>
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I listened to another Tidal album: https://tidal.com/track/1365738

Forgive my recorder still being set at the parsimonious 16/48 setting; I expect the dither noise I see in this spectrogram to be my recorder's addition (something to check later, as I'm curious now), but this EMI recording (part of Sony's music group) doesn't appear to exhibit any watermarking. It seems whatever watermarking Sony implemented (as suggested above, if they actually implemented anything) seems much more innocuous than UMG.

I will move on to UMG now. And as an aside: aren't stringed instrument harmonics beautiful??

 

I suggest you try using MusConv.com service. They are capable of the the task across different platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, YouTube, Deezer, Tidal, Pandora, Groove.

 

Ok, so doing a back and forth with digital downloads of the 2015 Rush remasters, compared to the Tidal copies of same albums, I'm noticing a lack of the watermarking on the Tidal versions. Particularly noticeable on Mystic Rhythms from Power Windows.

 

Sorry to revive the thread but does anyone know more definitively what the state of this is watermarking is now (and may be going forwards?) Some (Universal) tracks on Tidal (Hifi) still seem to have the watermarking or other "oddities" in the tracks. Others seem to be fine.

I never realized there was watermarking until now, but even the "Master" tracks on Tidal have always sounded off to me regardless of what chain I used (or didn't use) beyond just "streaming" vs because CDs/vinyl. Now I know why.

What do people use for streaming now?

 

Watermarking is still present for all UMG music. It does seem like the new algorithm seems to be more gentle, but it's still very much audible.

I've talked to some engineers who've worked on UMG published albums and they were oblivious to this issue.