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Soundquality spotify VS Qobuz, tidal, deezer?
#11
(09-Feb-2016, 00:11)streamy Wrote:
(08-Feb-2016, 12:35)jonstatt Wrote: Incidentally, I did notice that in Spark, an option for Qobuz streaming quality is Hi-res. Currently Qobuz sublime customers can use this for hi-res purchases they have previously made. Has anyone confirmed that the hi-res streaming actually works? As I mentioned earlier, I am not sure what the value is considering users will likely have all their hi-res collection permanently attached to Spark in some way anyway, but was just curious on this purely as one of the first examples of streaming devices supporting hi-res streaming formats.

Yes I can. Hires works and provides better quality, however not always and not reliably. Sometimes, often on weekends I experience dropouts when the streaming is set to hires. So lossless Flac is more reliable and set as default for now. I switch the setting in Spark to listen to hires in case Spark is not running on my Mac where I have my lossless albums stored. Another problem is that Spark only shows the last 50 purchases in the list. So no access to older purchases in Spark. Looks like Devialet programmers have only less than 50 purchased hires albums to test their implementation. Else hires is a great and leading edge service in the streaming world where lossless CD quality already counts as hi-end.
Regarding differences between Tidal and Qobuz: Many albums in Tidal are not Lossless but only MP3. You can see this in the Tidal app where the SQ and file format is indicated. Not in Spark: Here I can hear differences between Tidal and Qobuz, but mainly when Tidal has no lossless available and plays an MP3 instead. Then Qobuz is audibly better.

Interesting feedback, thank you. There is another known issue with Tidal that if you skip to a certain part of the track, like 1 minute into the track, it will more often than not, drop from CD lossless to MP3. When people are trying to do A/B comparisons they may be trying to sync up to a certain part of the track not realising it is dropping the sound quality in the process. Having said that, Qobuz is actually cheaper than Tidal over a full year if you pay for Sublime, and there are discount codes to be found for some countries if one googles.
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#12
(09-Feb-2016, 10:40)jonstatt Wrote:
(09-Feb-2016, 00:11)streamy Wrote:
(08-Feb-2016, 12:35)jonstatt Wrote: Incidentally, I did notice that in Spark, an option for Qobuz streaming quality is Hi-res. Currently Qobuz sublime customers can use this for hi-res purchases they have previously made. Has anyone confirmed that the hi-res streaming actually works? As I mentioned earlier, I am not sure what the value is considering users will likely have all their hi-res collection permanently attached to Spark in some way anyway, but was just curious on this purely as one of the first examples of streaming devices supporting hi-res streaming formats.

Yes I can. Hires works and provides better quality, however not always and not reliably. Sometimes, often on weekends I experience dropouts when the streaming is set to hires. So lossless Flac is more reliable and set as default for now. I switch the setting in Spark to listen to hires in case Spark is not running on my Mac where I have my lossless albums stored. Another problem is that Spark only shows the last 50 purchases in the list. So no access to older purchases in Spark. Looks like Devialet programmers have only less than 50 purchased hires albums to test their implementation. Else hires is a great and leading edge service in the streaming world where lossless CD quality already counts as hi-end.
Regarding differences between Tidal and Qobuz: Many albums in Tidal are not Lossless but only MP3. You can see this in the Tidal app where the SQ and file format is indicated. Not in Spark: Here I can hear differences between Tidal and Qobuz, but mainly when Tidal has no lossless available and plays an MP3 instead. Then Qobuz is audibly better.

Interesting feedback, thank you. There is another known issue with Tidal that if you skip to a certain part of the track, like 1 minute into the track, it will more often than not, drop from CD lossless to MP3. When people are trying to do A/B comparisons they may be trying to sync up to a certain part of the track not realising it is dropping the sound quality in the process. Having said that, Qobuz is actually cheaper than Tidal over a full year if you pay for Sublime, and there are discount codes to be found for some countries if one googles.

Sorry to dig out this old thread, but I have something to say about the quality issue of Tidal. I have subscribed to Tidal for nearly 2 years. The issue you mentioned about the sound quality still exists now.  But it is also simple to figure it out by downloading Tidal tracks as local audio files. There are many similar tools that can achieve this goal. I use the Audfree Tidal converter for Windows. Now this issue is no more troublesome.
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#13
Based on my experience (Tidal versus Qobuz), I prefer Qobuz.
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