Despite rebranding its 'Home' tab as 'Discover', Qobuz simply isn't as good as its rivals at introducing you to new music – and that's without taking into consideration that it doesn't have as much new music in its library. Other headers are gateways to your playlists and favourite music, as well as purchased music and offline content.ĭisappointingly, while most services have now heavily moved to a discovery model that uses algorithms to recommend new music, Qobuz has barely dipped its toe in such personalisation. ‘Panoramas’ (features on particular artists and genres) and ‘The Taste of Qobuz’ (including Qobuzisimme: music that has received an award from Qobuz’s magazine team) also feature on the home page. Rather than having the left-hand side menu widely adopted by its rivals, Qobuz uses a top-bar menu, beneath which is a banner of featured content and several sections such as ‘new releases’ and ‘Qobuz playlists’. The interface is a joy to navigate across the PC and mobile platforms, and an aesthetic leap above its rivals that nails the balance between space and content density. Our collective taste, though far-reaching, is by no means the rule, but it paints a picture. In fact, only once since January 2019 – 31 playlists ago – have all our 20 picks been available on Qobuz, with numbers ranging from a high of 19 in March to only 13 last April. New music seems a particular issue, but established records are missing, too: we put together a playlist of test tracks each month and Qobuz is always the service with the most gaps. While it's inconvenient to discover that the latest album or track by your favourite artist isn't available in hi-res on your chosen streaming service, it's downright annoying if it isn't available at all. On the flip side, however, we often find albums on Tidal, Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer that aren't available on Qobuz at all – which we would argue is a far bigger issue. Numbers rarely tell the whole story, but we regularly find hi-res albums on Qobuz that are available in only CD-quality on Tidal. Recent figures put the total number of hi-res tracks at over 2m, while Tidal claims 'only' over 1m. 0000005 % audio-geeks get the most out of our toys.Qobuz's comparatively high price has always been partly justified by its exhaustive library of hi-res music (FLAC 24-bit up to 192kHz). Your entire job is to help me and the rest of us. We spend too much time and energy agonizing over gear when we should be agonizing over recordings. But the depressing reality is that we have no control a really good recording streamed over Tidal will always beat a so-so recording streamed over Qobuz, and vice versa. I also have a dumb, but nonetheless real, skepticism toward MQA and its whole “compressed, but not really” approach. But, like others have said, I do prefer the Qobuz sound for some elusive reason. I’ve invested a decent chunk of money into my digital side on two systems, and I still find it a close call. (2) I question whether it’s decent enough, however, to reveal a difference between HiRez Qobuz files and Tidal’s MQA. (1) OP is doing something that, IMHO, more people should do: bypassing the Node 2 DAC and using it as a streamer only. Almost sounds like two different recordings when listening on Qobuz vs Tidal. The Qobuz file sounds fuller and has more presence. I listened to ’The Box’ by Roddy Ricch which is a MQA file on Tidal and CD quality on Qobuz. Not a big fan of hip hop, but decided to listen to something that is squarely in Tidal’s area of focus. The CD quality file on Qobuz sounds a LOT fuller and more natural. I’m currently listening to a track that is a MQA file on Tidal vs a CD quality file on Qobuz. In the process, I think side effects of doing this is to take out some of the presence of voices and instruments and add an artificial quality to voices and instruments. I think they have applied some equalization to boost the bass and treble. Some additional thoughts about Tidal after listening on higher quality equipment. Spotify Premium even seems to sound better than Tidal. I’ll listen a bit more to Tidal, but so far I’m not impressed at all. Tidal sounds very two dimensional and flat in its sound quality but with some harshness in the high frequencies. Round 2, Qobuz vs Tidal: So far Qobuz is clearly better than Tidal even listening through pretty cheap desktop passive speakers. My listening notes comparing Qobuz to Tidal:
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