How good is Tidal? Tidal vs. your musical collection?
- Thread starter caesar
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I've noticed that, if you have a specially selected ("curated", as you put it) collection of CDs, Tidal might not have the absolute best in terms of sound quality, because usually they'll only have the latest and greatest "remastered" versions of albums, while the preferred version might be from an earlier CD.
That said, to discover new music, Tidal is the absolute champ, specially when in used in conjunction with Roon.
So, the ideal is to have your music collection + Tidal for convenience, and to use a system that will allow you to visualize both easily (like Roon does).
That said, to discover new music, Tidal is the absolute champ, specially when in used in conjunction with Roon.
So, the ideal is to have your music collection + Tidal for convenience, and to use a system that will allow you to visualize both easily (like Roon does).
IMO the SQ of Tidal is very close to CD quality. I use it to try out new artists and albums and it has saved me a lot of money by not having to purchase marginal releases with only a couple of good tracks. I still purchase the releases I know I will listen to on a regular basis as I prefer to own music and not rent it.
One other point about Tidal (and Spotify) is that they often offer extended or expanded versions of albums offered on Amazon.
One other point about Tidal (and Spotify) is that they often offer extended or expanded versions of albums offered on Amazon.
As far as I am concerned, Tidal is mandatory to have for any audiophile. XM/Sirius have horrible sound quality (much worse than FM). Tidal on the other hand sounds superb. I have completely stopped buying CDs once I subscribed to it.
Hi
My music purchases have gone from about $200 (mostly used CD on Amazon ) /month to only paying the $20/month Tidal fee... Seems that if I were to live 100 more years I will still be ahead in the count
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I still scream at the "loudness war" on pop and sometime but not that often on Classical. Else the SQ from TIdal is just fine. I value these days performance over Ultimate SQ. Tidal is as good as the CD if you have it to compare and I am getting this on a crappy Internet connection that maxes out at 2 Mb/s
The real kicker is to continue to mesh your music collection with Tidal by using ROON. Some still fuss and curse about ROON' (real) weaknesses when it comes to classical music and that it misses once a while, a few albums in a person collection. ROON is not perfect but remains one of the greatest tool around to enjoy Music as opposed to sound. The search for best sound is a pleasure in itself and on the scale of absolute value as worthy as the search for music. It happens however that for me, Music is what I seek and ROON has served me and I believe will serve any Music Lover, whether an audiophile or not. If a person is after music and value the immense pleasure of listening to it and to listen to as much music as humanly possible and enjoy it too.. ROON is close to a must. All that with the usual qualifiers. You know: YMMV, IMHO, etc
My music purchases have gone from about $200 (mostly used CD on Amazon ) /month to only paying the $20/month Tidal fee... Seems that if I were to live 100 more years I will still be ahead in the count
.I still scream at the "loudness war" on pop and sometime but not that often on Classical. Else the SQ from TIdal is just fine. I value these days performance over Ultimate SQ. Tidal is as good as the CD if you have it to compare and I am getting this on a crappy Internet connection that maxes out at 2 Mb/s
The real kicker is to continue to mesh your music collection with Tidal by using ROON. Some still fuss and curse about ROON' (real) weaknesses when it comes to classical music and that it misses once a while, a few albums in a person collection. ROON is not perfect but remains one of the greatest tool around to enjoy Music as opposed to sound. The search for best sound is a pleasure in itself and on the scale of absolute value as worthy as the search for music. It happens however that for me, Music is what I seek and ROON has served me and I believe will serve any Music Lover, whether an audiophile or not. If a person is after music and value the immense pleasure of listening to it and to listen to as much music as humanly possible and enjoy it too.. ROON is close to a must. All that with the usual qualifiers. You know: YMMV, IMHO, etc
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I like the stations they have based on genre's, just pick one and when you hear a song you really like you can favorite it to add to your collection.
I use ROON (lifer) and it integrates my 8000 album local collection with TIDAL
Tidal charges $9.99 over here for the full monty service.. best money I have ever spent.. flesh out my discographies , new music etc..SQ is superb.. I just hope it survives..I will be devastated if it doesnt as 50% of the music I listen to is tidal basedd
Tidal charges $9.99 over here for the full monty service.. best money I have ever spent.. flesh out my discographies , new music etc..SQ is superb.. I just hope it survives..I will be devastated if it doesnt as 50% of the music I listen to is tidal basedd
This.
If you see under cover of the blatant Jay Z focused marketing, it is an excellent service. The Android app let's you store music in CD quality on the phone, which is great on the move and in the office (no need for 4G or Wi-Fi).
Tidal and Roon comes as mandatory for the best experience. In my latest test, Mac computer connected to the DAC via USB vs the music server (Antipodes) experience was revelatory. Listening to the Tidal (via Roon) with server pushed performance much further. The difference was huge. Similar thing happened with TotalDac acting as server. Both locked with Roon ready protocol...
So is DBS. Bandwidth from satellite is very expensive relative to over the air ground station (FM). Total channel capacity is 4 Mbit/sec that is then divided using stat muxing for each station. In English it means every channel gets different bit rate depending on what is priority at the time. A sports channel will for example get much higher bit rate than some music channel. Typical bit rates are therefore from 16 to 64 kbps with average mostly in the 40 kbits/ec. Audio bandwidth is first chopped down and then at playback, SBR is used to resynthesize them. In English
, it means the highs are artificial. See this post on actual bit rates/channel: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,64686.0.htmlDigital (HD) FM does compress a lot too but to my ears, it is still far more listenable than XM/Sirius. Each station is independent of the other so one can't screw up the quality of the other. Sub channels can have lower bit rate so usually the primary one is the best. Compared to analog FM, there is better frequency response and channel separation and of course, absence of multipath and noise. But you do get more compression artifacts.
Do you have experience otherwise?
XM/Sirius data rate is less than 100 kbps, so worse than the original iTunes Store
For discovering new music, anything but Tidal.
For best experience and peace of mind and comfort zone, mentally and physically; my own physical music collection anytime over Tidal.
_________
Google Everything that's wrong with Tidal, do some serious research, and see if it fits through your own musical alley.
In this lifetime I will never subscribe to Tidal, even with CD quality. I have some principles that I respect too much.
Tidal doesn't have most of the music I like, the artists I like, the philosophy I like.
• http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/why-tidal-is-doomed-to-fail/
• http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/why-tidal-is-doomed-to-fail/2/
• http://www.techradar.com/news/audio/here-s-a-big-list-of-everything-that-s-wrong-with-tidal-1289875
I only share my personal opinion with you because you asked all of us.
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