Tidal vs Qobuz - Battle of the Streaming Services 

CORRECTION: Qobuz and Tidal now can change sample rate automatically on MacOS. You do not need to manually adjust sample rate. (however this is frustratingly still the case for Apple Music)

For any Linux users watching this: PulseAudio will resample all your audio, Pipewire can be set to adjust the sample rate to whatever is playing but ALSA will always act like 'Exclusive Mode' and play bit-perfect. Both Qobuz and Tidal can be played through an app like Strawberry (a fork of Clementine) with an API key setup. Roon doesn't have a UI app on Linux, only the back end, so there aren't many other choices.

You are incorrect about direct connect to your DAC for Qobuz on Mac OS. Qobuz is allowed a direct connection to a USB DAC (I am using the Qobuz app, not just the website) and when you select your DAC within the Qobuz app, it controlls the sample rate of the DAC changing it effectively instantaniously to the sample rate and bit depth of the audio file with no third-party application required. This has been true for several years. It sounds much better than Tidal did back in the MQA days. I had no idea Tidal dropped MQA -- thank you for that excellent news!

Perhaps the best streaming service is the one we made along the way

I watched your Qobuz summary a year or so ago. Best ever coverage. Your Tidal MQA experiment was outstanding, too. Genius.

What a great explanation and comparison between those two! Been using Tidal on Windows never thought changing the exclusive mode and deselected normalize volume would change so much on the streaming quality

The whole mqa debacle turned me off to tidal permanently. I could listen 20 hours per day and never be bored with the choices available, qobuz is heaven for me!

Nice job. Perfect description of Roon and what it adds in not much space. I'm doing a streaming service showdown event for the Arizona Audio Video Club later this year. I'll reference this video and share some of your points.

Great video. One useful addition to this rating system and one that's important to me is who pays the artist more. Something to think about and maybe worth a video.

Personally subbed to Qobuz sublime. The discounts it gives for purchases is excellent and I still get to support my favorite artists.

As a lifelong music lover and audio enthusiast, I really enjoy both Tidal and Qobuz through Roon. I use a Eversolo A6 connected to a Gustard R26 and am very pleased with the results.

Awesome vid to start my Sunday off ❤

Really hope there is a follow up adding Amazon Music and deezer into the mix - would be interesting to see how they stack to more "established" services

Tidal has better selection, but I’ve run into situations where I heard distortion on tracks that wasn’t present on Qobuz. Some issue with compression I guess, but it was enough to make me wary of ever using Tidal again. Also, for me personally, as someone who listens to a lot of classical music, Qobuz is better in how it displays classical tracks and groups them (not perfect, but it at least tries to group movements of a single work together and it's usually successful. Tidal just winds up with the super long names of tracks that you see on Spotify and most other services that make navigating classical albums a pain. Qobuz makes an extra effort with classical, like Apple Music's dedicated classical app).

So happy that Tidal dropped/are dropping MQA, felt like I had to use Qobuz's "just because". Even though, if I'm being totally honest, I wasn't able to hear any difference between MQA and lossless. Will still probably activate Qobuz every now and again because it's sort of fun with variation. Thanks GS!

In regards to Qobuz getting confused when multiple artists share the same name; Tidal also has that issue, though, granted, that typically is only a problem when the artists are generally more underground.

Absolutely Stellar info. Thanks so much! I'm going with Tidal.

Tidal is killing it. Suggested tracks on Tidal is crazy good lately. I'm loving all the suggested tracks.

Excellent comparison video... loved the continuity from the Apple/Spotify video as well.

I love Qobuz because of the editorial stuff and how it’s more album focused. New way to explore music, I enjoy browsing and discovering new artists like that. Algorithm is good for mindless listening, parties, etc. But I still need to retain Spotify for the amazing recommendation algorithm when I do need that use case, and Apple Music for Spatial and the DJ mixes. Not sure what Tidal offers differently.

Easy choice. Qobuz costs 12.50€ and Tidal 20€ per month for HighRes in Germany. I tried both and Qobuz sounded a tiny little better than Tidal; not too significant. I use it over Roon and all that downsampling through the OS doesn't matter, neither does any recommendation algorithm from the services. Roon is a must-have anyway, I love it.

Fantastic timing! I recently splurged on some hifi gear and have been comparing AM, Spotify, Qobuz, and Tidal. While I really enjoy the UI and sound quality of AM, the fact that I can’t stream lossless on my windows computer and not at all on my android TV is a huge bummer. Spotify is by far the easiest to use across all platforms. I’ve found Tidal to be the superior service in terms of sound quality and finding music. It still has some drawbacks compared to Spotify. I was lucky to find out Tidal offers first responder discounts so I may be continuing to use both that and Spotify. Thank you all for the great work and I’ll continue to watch!

I think it would have been good to mention the Sublime option of Qobuz. Can really save a lot of money if you intend on buying music as well.

I would really like to see you do a video about how to get the most out of Roon.

I had Tidal for a while but it kept presenting me with Hip Hop and Rap, both of which I don't listen to, so I went to Qobuz. I really like to own my own music files and if you get the costlier service, you often get very good discounts on your purchases. PS: The Hig Res library in Tidal is a very small percentage of the 100 million plus songs they advertise

I have an Android phone and had Tidal for a couple of years and it was great. Then i wanted to try other apps: Apple Music, Amazon, Deezer and Qobuz but they all felt different than my experience with Tidal. I think the bypassing of the Android resampling explains it all. I'm now convinced to swich back to Tidal and they lower their prices, in Mexico at least. Even better.

I started streaming through Qobuz, for 1 year. Then I turned to Tidal for 2 years. Due to recommendations from several audio reviewers I considered going back to Qobuz. I managed to compare them for one week, just before the date of prolonging Tidal of quitting was there. And there it was. Qobuz sounded better. Not a whole lot, but defnitely anyway. A singer whether male or female came one or two steps too close to the microphone it seemed when using Tidal. Qobuz sounded less immediate, but better balanced and a bit more relaxed. That was when I quit Tidal. I do use roon, by the way.

Great video. I feel that you forgot a basic thing for most users, pricing. Here in Spain, Tidal is significantly more expensive than Qobuz. Also, apart from that, most of the music that I stream, seems to have a higher bitrate on Qobuz than Tidal. Not like you are going to notice that, but still something to consider.

Very good , super informative from a guy who really knows his stuff Thank you 👍

You've earned a subscriber Cuz that was great information.

I A/B tested TIDAL vs Amazon HD for three months, and preferred the sound and cost of Amazon HD.

I agree with you about Tidal's recommendations, especially with the Daily Discovery playlist created each day.

Another great video Cam! Would like to hear what you think about Roon, Audirvana, Pine Player, etc?

Been with Tidal for a couple of years now but only recently upgraded to their top package as I have only just started getting into hi-res audio. Havent been disappointed so far, really enjoy their hi-res service.....sounds fantastic.

Nice video i liked that it was really clear and technical at the same time. I was wondering though. Do you know if android also resamples if I stream tidal audio through a DAP, the sony wm1am2 to be specific?

Great job ! I’d like to add that Qobuz is available in a smaller number of countries than Tidal (there are workarounds). I personally use both, since Qobuz has a really great Europe-centric recommendation service that is well curated and unique.

I moved from Tidal to Qobuz last year. Qobuz is cheaper, their catalog is largely identical to Tidal, and they have a more flexible/open API. The one real thing I miss from tidal is their daily auto-curated playlists and track recommendations. Qobuz recommended tracks are just awful.

The closing line of the comparison: "there really isn't much reason not to go with Tidal." Well.. there's always the fact that it costs more.

That was another great video! I sadly cannot play qobuz as it isn't available in my country. But i did buy few albums from qobuz it was a great way of supporting the artist. As someone who has a good jpop library (modern Japanese music) and some Japanese folk songs. Apple music/Spotify actually comes out on top in terms of library size. But the quality is a lot better in apple music than Spotify. I don't know if it matters to anyone just thought of mentioning it. One big reason could be apple being very popular in Japan. Also Qobuz launched in Japan this year with the help of collaboration between phillie web so I guess the jpop and jfolk library might get better as the time goes by.

These videos don't make any mention of how much artists get paid by the service per stream. For me that's a pretty big consideration and why I ended up subscribing to TIDAL. TIDAL is also compatible with Serato DJ, which is actually a pretty clutch feature.

Max kudos for using the RODE NT1 4th gen, it is such a gem microphone. Too bad it is discontinued now due to the 5th gen. I actually bought a NT1 4th gen with the Rycote shockmount openbox on eBay just last week, it's quite the vintage at this point.

Very useful thanks.

Agree 100%, Roon is amazing. I use Qobuz. I love the sound quality. I still have issues with Tidal. I don't listen to Hip-Hop yet it keeps trying to shove it down my throat. So, I'll stick to the sweet sweet quality sound that comes out of Qobuz, even if it is a bit more clunky.

Thank you for the very good video

Also, on windows you don't need to use wasapi exclusive mode on qobuz. You can go into your audio settings, choose your output device and change the bit rate. For example, I don't have anything that's higher than 192kHz so I have my k9 pro output set to "32 bit, 192000 Hz (Studio Qualtiy)" as the format.

Was very happy when Qobuz recently came to Canada, but was immediately disappointed to find out that many of the hi res albums I want to buy simply aren't available to Canadians through their service.

Same name artists are an issue on Tidal too. I had personally requested to fix an artist on Tidal which was fixed.

Great video as always! Is MQA completely gone on Tidal now? I gave up on it a few months back. I saw that they were rolling out FLAC as a replacement, but then also heard that brand new releases were still being added in MQA and that the rollout was generally quite patchy and had potentially stalled. What sort of percentage of the library is actually available in FLAC? I’d be interested to try Tidal again if most of the library has now switched over. Always enjoyed the UI, recommendations etc.

I'd be interested to see a video on high res audio in general and when (or if) it makes sense. I read an article by Chris Montgomery aka xiphmont (of ogg vorbis fame) who wrote an article "24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense" which argues that higher bitrate is useless and higher sample rate can actually be detrimental. The original article on the xiph site isn't accessible any longer, but it seems to have been reuploaded, or you can use the way back machine.

Using Qobuz I can download booklets. Ok, not for all albums. But for me (maybe I´m oldfashioned) that is a big plus and imortant feature. So I stay with Qobuz.

Fantastic review as usual. Thank you! As Roon user, from an absolutely pure sound quality perspective. I am not sure I understood if there is an advantage to Tidal or Qobuz when using Roon. I watched the video three times but I’m not sure I got the answer to that. The only thing I could assume at the end is that the overall functionality and songs recommendations edge went to Tidal but from the pure, pure sound quality perspective using Roon, are they equal? Can only assume it is?

Roon will add both and give great recommendations.

This video came at the perfect moment in my life! I'm missing Tidal (spotify only nowdays) mostly for the other audio quality options, but i had some issues with the app on Windows. This hole situation got me thinking: should i give Qobuz a second try? Well, hope this video help with that 😅

Next level stuff lad.

Why not Amazon Music to the comparison ? I've listened to both services and they are identical using the same track sample rates played bitperfect via a Bluesound Node 21 and PS Audio DirectStream Sr. DAC (MK1).

On Qobuz for MacOS you do not need to change or force the quality in the OS. This application uses API from CoreAudio to manage audio output settings, so the application will automatically set the audio device according to the quality of the track. Open the Audio Device setting on Mac and play tracks from Qobuz with different quality, you will see that the frequency will automatically change.

Tidal on Mac has exclusive mode in the settings that will auto-change bit and sample when on. Careful with volume though. Make sure to lower the volume in the app itself.

I like Tidal for all the reasons you mentioned. UNFORTUNATELY tidal connect is a NIGHTMARE when streaming to any good DACs. Tidal is constantly crashing or distorting my music when streaming to My Axxess Forte 1. My friends have same problem, and my Hifi Dealer also have many disgruntled Tidal users with similar issues. Therefore we all use Qobuz. No streaming issues what so ever.

super interesting video because I have always found difficult to chose between Qobuz and Tidal. I also use it a lot on my Android phone so really there is no advantage for me not to move to Tidal which is a better platform. Thanks

@GoldenSound Given your proclivity for thorough and balanced reviews, would you ever consider doing a vid on the difference between sound and music, and where they diverge, especially for an audiophile? It probably exists multiple places elsewhere on the Net, but your opinions would be particularly valuable to me due to your wide-ranging experience with high-end gear and a variety of sources. It's more of a philosophical debate, but I'm afraid the audiophile hobby will always be at risk for chasing sound over music. Thank you for your efforts and consideration!

Glad to hear your comments on Tidals Dolby Atmos Music . Qobuz lack of Android apps selected devices only. and should you not do a vid on Roon by itself as I cannot get my head round why I would pay a subscription for roon ,maybe you can put me straight. Thanks for the vid

Well done. Can you please consoder adding a follow-up video with the usability of those streaming services insidie hi-fi streamers/receivers? I want to add a streamer in my hi-fi sistem but most of them seem not to work with Apple Music lossless. Thanks

I'd love a video comparing Audirvana and Roon.

Very good info, thank you. I have a questions, is using tidal via a chromebook losless capable? 🤔

I've run both Qobuz and Tidal on macOS and they both have "exclusive mode" to an external dac (at least to my iFI Zen v2), bypassing the need to alter MIDI

Bitperfect output should be supported even if it's irrelevant to many due to practicality like volume control, eq, multiple sound sources,...

I've used both. Tidal seems to work better for me. RU-vid music is my go to because they have music that's very obscure and regional although the quality can be suspicious.

Great explanation 👍 what are ur thoughts on usb audio player Pro is there a video of urs on that?

Hi awesome review again 😒😂 But if you just get the first tear of Tidal r u getting lossless/hi-res? 🙏🏾

My iBasso DC04 pro comes with it's own app that will play anything lossless or at whatever bitrate it comes in. Works just like that Tidal thing but for all players on my phone. I'm sure other dongle dacs have those as well. Anyway Usb Audio Player Pro is a great app. Of course when you just use the app as a controller to your streamer, android is not an issue.

Wow! My Triangle Borea speakers here, great!!!

Tidal does offer exclusive mode on MacOS, allowing lossless streaming

Yeah i just recently bought the Bowers & Wilkins headphones as a nice treat for myself. I noticed that it supports up Hi Res audio so i looked for a Hi Res streaming service as i was kinda getting bored of using Spotify. So far i have been blown away when i started using Qobuz. On spotify all i ever seen was the daily mixes of the genres i listen to but was getting bored of that as it began to feel dull, but my experience using so far is really good. I know i will in the future get a sound system to match the HiRes sound as well but now now. I'm just half way through my free sub to Qobuz. Do think that i should still try Tidal? Plus another thing i do like about Qobuz it takes me out of my comfort zone with new music that i would never listen to on spotify because it may not be in any of the playlists their. I guess what im trying to say is that im enjoying my experience so far. Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated. Plus the price for Hi Res audio Qobuz seams to a slightly better choice

Still one big downside to Qobuz is the lack of a Connect service to seemlessly stream to eg. a Bluesound Node. The community has wanted this for years and there was at some point rumours that they were working on it…

The only thing that it's wrong in this video it's that Qobuz can do the same thing that Tidal makes to avoid the Android compression. Even can be seen in my DAC, when a file it's bigger than 48khz the light turn green, and it does that on my phone too

I love Tidal. Does everything i want it to do. Very happy with the service

I took a Qobuz subscription a few years back since they were the only service offering consistent Hires quality, with Tidal as the only competitor lagging behind due to their decision to use MQA. I stick with it now since a) I anyway have an extensive own music library in Roon that I can stream anywhere using Roon ARC and use streaming as an add-on and b) because it is 45% cheaper than Tidal where I live (169 CHF for a yearly plan vs 300 CHF per year for Tidal). One thing I was missing in this video btw was a true audio quality comparison. I did some comparisons myself a few years back and found Qobuz consistently superior in that regard, but that is probably because Tidal still was using MQA at the time. Finally, would be interesting to see which tracks you were missing in Qobuz so I can check if Qobuz has the license here locally. I have found their library indeed lacking a bit: for example, I cannot find most albums by American postrock band Tortoise in their library.

Not sure about everywhere else but in my region (Switzerland) one month of Qobuz costs 15 CHF and Tidal 25 CHF, same high quality level. Huge difference honestly. Cost is also an important decision factor. Thanks for the video

I subscribe to Apple Music for mobile/whole home/family (included in my Apple One Family package) & Qobuz. I was a Tidal subscriber but Qobuz is almost half the price compared to Tidal HiFi Plus here in Canada.

Would have loved a SQ comparison of the same tracks on both services...

MusicBee and FLAC for me!

At 5:58, he mentions the need to have volume at max on iOS devices to achieve lossless playback. Why is that so? I don't understand. If I reduce the volume to 85% on my iPhone even when I have an external USB-C DAC connected to it, am I no longer getting lossless playback? And when I increase the volume to 100%, I start to get 'lossless' playback? WTF? I never thought volume had anything to do with lossless playback. I always thought it was more things like resampling of audio, bit rate, sampling freqeuncy, etc. that mattered...

I dropped Qobuz in favor of Tidal based on the issue I had with Qobuz on desktop (Mac) and mobile. Both Qobuz apps were playing EQed sound with the extensive drop in the mid range. That made vocals and brass sound silly.

As someone who has recently tried switching from Tidal to Qobuz in the new year, I think this is a pretty spot on comparison and I completely agree that Tidal is the best option. Tidal has a much more extensive and relevant library to me - when trying to port some of my playlists across, Qobuz was ending up missing out massive portions of playlists and and one case Qobus only had two songs for a particular artist while Tidal had pretty much the entire back catalogue. I also found the lack of loudness equalisation on Qobus to be a bit strange - fair enough if people want to hear their music exactly as it is but it's been very jarring having track volumes switch so drastically. I much prefer the overall usability of Tidal too - I can organise my music much better there, their apps/programmes are better and discovering new music has been much easier there too. Tidal definitely isn't perfect but it's definitely getting better with time and I think it's the service which fits my own needs best by a pretty substantial margin.

3:00 small correction, Apple Music also compresses your music, but using lossless compression. Still saves bandwidth compared to raw.

Thank you very much for explaining these two streaming aps...I have nain mu so 2 streaming sound system....so is tidal is the best?

I like what they do because it makes downloading lossless music much easier nowadays and you don't have to look for the CDs or the whole albums. I just set my DAC to a higher sampling rate and bit depth in order to avoid resampling loss and software volume control dynamic range loss.

I love Qobuz for classical music in particular.

Am using tidal very happy with it

I currently have just subbed to Qobuz having previously had Spotify for a couple of years and am halfway through a trial with Tidal. Why did I go with Qobuz? Sound really, and, one of the most important things you didn't mention: Gapless playback - not to be confused with the 'Gapless' feature offered by Spotify that takes out a gap between 'songs'. I'm talking about playing a work (opera is a good example...and the often mentioned Dark Side of the Moon) that is recorded continuously and then has tracks as access points. Spotify won't play gapless consistently, Qobuz does via it's own app. and via Playfi streamer on all the 'difficult' albums I have (try Beethoven Live, 32 variations, Kissin...some of the 33 tracks are as little as 11 secs long!).Tidal is a mixed picture - ok via it's own app. but dodgy via Playfi and HEOS. So it's Qobuz. One thing that both Tidal and Qobuz do extremely badly for classical is track info. On albums featuring more than one composer we are never told which track or work is written by which composer! This simply is not good enough.

question about volume level when streaming qobuz from an ios device are talking volume on the iphone or in the qobuz app and is qobuz connect going to happen?

So I just tried transferring my 4157 favourite (i.e. "liked") tracks from Spotify to both of these services; Tidal found 95% of them whereas Qobuz 77%. I guess that means Tidal is a much better match for me. I'm not too concerned price-wise either as I doubt I'll be able to get the most out of hi-res audio anyway so even Tidal's cheaper tier will be sufficient for me.

Thought I listen to RU-vid Music and occationally Amazon Music, I mostly listen to my own music collection that I purchased over the years. I have my purchased music on several drives as backups. I can listen to them without fear that they will disappear or be cancelled. Steaming is good but I don't own the music. Tidal and Qobuz are good but i would be paying for music I already own. Still it is fun to watch and listen to music on RU-vid. Yes I know they don't have the same audio quality as Tidal or Qobuz but that is ok with me. Streaming music is like the old time FM but now you pay to hear it.

I've used Tidal for a bit, they are missing some songs from smaller international artists. And they are real artist with millions of streams on other platforms, not that small.

You are very wrong about Tidal on macOS. It does indeed support AUTOMATIC output sample rate switching. If you select the exclusive option for the output device in the Tidal app, (you can access this by clicking on the speaker icon on the playing pane on the bottom of the screen and select 'more settings' beside the output device) then output sample rate is automatically adjusted, no fiddling with the Audio Midi Setup required. In fact, if you have the Audio Midi Setup utility open you can see the sample rate being automatically changed. PS I'm being told that Qobuz does similarly so it seems you're wrong on both counts.

I loved the level of detail you covered.. I have way too many music streaming subscriptions .. Apple, Amazon, RU-vid, Tidal .. I'm also a Roon user, as well as Plex/Plexamp (because Roon Arc fails my needs with CarPlay). I suppose I have at least rationalised a little and dropped Deezer and Spotify and Tidal's recent price drop makes ignoring Qobuz a no brainer for me. I'm currently dealing with the nuances of streaming ATMOS mixes through to Sonos, annoying little quirks in that! Funny thing, I remember the introduction of stereo being a big deal 😀

Plz do a review of the Triangle Borea BR08 behind you.

Ive notice a lot of music i listen to is available in Dolby Atmos on apple but not available on tidal but the hifi quality is better on tidal

but what about using hi-ress wireless? Is there any difference in streaming quality between tidal and qobuz regarding Android and windows? I plan on buying an LDAC headphone, so that's my concern

It makes my heart happy that MQA went belly up. Lying as business model shouldn’t be rewarded.