About a year ago I switched from Spotify to Tidal for the better bitrate/sound quality.
The choice of music on Tidal has never been as good as that from Spotify but their algorithm for finding things you might like, based on what you tell them you like on signup added to what you listen to is better than the way Spotify works, I think.
I got increasingly annoyed with Tidal though, about the non-mainstream albums I wanted to listen to that just weren’t there to stream.
I’m already an Amazon Prime customer and Amazon Music is a little cheaper than Tidal or Spotify (for Prime customers) with a vast amount more music available to stream and mostly at either HD (CD quality) or Master (24-bit) quality.
I tried it out for 30 days free and now I’ve cancelled my Tidal subscription in favour of Amazon Music.
Cancel My Subscription To The Revolution..
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I have a keen interest in these things. Tidal offer MQA, which had the potential to be a very good idea, but broadband internet sort of made it a redundant solution to a no-longer-existent problem.
I’d love to think that Tidal were sticking it to The Man, but it is really a bit rubbish. When my 3-month free offer ran out, I did not renew it.
(Arthur raises his hand at the back of the classroom, blushing and hoping everyone else secretly wants Mr Fenton the same question. ‘MQA?’, he ponders to himself, ‘Did I miss the week we covered that? What is it?’)
Do you remember HDCD (High Definition Compatible Digital) which turned standard 16-bit 44.1kHz CDs into 20-bit 44.1kHz if the CD player had the decoder chip (by Pacific Microsonics)? Neil Young was a fan. Microsoft bought HDCD and killed it off.
Well, MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) is a bit like that. It was developed by Meridian Audio in Huntingdon.
MQA takes a 24-bit signal at high (up to 384kHz) sampling frequency and jumbles it up. It retains the 16-bit 44.1kHz lossless part so that standard decoders can play it. It adds the extra bits to make it 24-bit 44.1kHz lossless if the MQA decoder is present. And, here’s the clever bit, encodes everything above 44.1kHz lossily to reduce the data rate. So you end up with Hi-Res playback at a streaming data rate not much more than CD standard lossless.
Trouble is, Apple, Amazon et al launched Hi-Res Lossless streaming and broadband internet became standard. So there was no need to squeeze hi-res audio down a narrow pipe. Apple Music Lossless launched in May 2021, MQA went into administration in April 2023.
I don’t remember it, no, @fentonsteve…
Interesting! I had heard of HDCD but never knew that’s how it worked.
HDCD is a bit simpler than that. The Red Book CD spec has some ‘spare’ bits on the disc for error correction, auxilliary data, or whatever. HDCD uses those for 4 extra bits of audio data.
So MQA is a bit like HDCD with knobs on.
It was always going to fail IMHO, just a question of when. Meridian were working on it for years, as far back ago as when I went there for an interview. I turned them down ‘cos the pay was rubbish, and went and did hi-res “mp3” players instead. No, I didn’t work for Fiio!
Fiio? What’s that?
(joking)
Been saying it for a while – if you have already sold your soul to Bezos (like what I have done) Amazon Music is the best choice currently available.
And , of course, all in MQA (that may need fact checking)
Cloth eared Freddy remains amazed people can sonically tell the difference.
I have tried them all and have stuck with Qobuz as my hi res option. With the proviso that I have a family subscription to Spotify for my son’s that I use too to fill in any gaps.
Qobuz – often touted as having the best choice of classical music compared to the other services. Would you agree, @Razor-Boy?
Don’t know about the Razor, but I certainly agree about classical music. Their weekly new releases list is full of treasures you wouldn’t otherwise discover.
All my Sonoi (including the two Ikea ones) can now handle hi-res, which makes sense of the chunky Qobuz subscription, but I’m really not sure my old ears can tell the difference between that and Spotify.
And if you’re signed up to Qobuz streaming, you get a chunky discount on paid-for downloads.
H’mmm – need to have a think…
I’m afraid that classical isn’t really my thing so would be unwise of me to provide a view on that.
As per Mike’s comment, I can concur on the sound that comes through the Sonos speakers and Qobuz sounds epic on the headphones too.
Sound quality is important to me, but so is choice of stuff available to stream.
And price is not an insignificant factor either.
I was a big Spotify user but recently found that songs often skipped when played through Sonos, so I decided to go full out for Apple Music. I’ve converted most of my Spotify playlists to Apple using Soundiz (which is great) and, of course, it’s lossless. Having resisted Apple Music for quite a while I now love it. I also use Tidal, mainly because it’s linked to my Roon account, plus it has probably the best app of all the streaming services. I’ve also used Amazon but their app is pretty poor and music discovery is weak, IMHO.
Agreed that Tidal’s app is superior, when it’s working correctly, to both Spotify and Amazon Music. It’s very good at working out what you like and suggesting new releases for you that you maybe wouldn’t otherwise know about, but I’ve encountered a few glitches in recent months with the Tidal app requiring it to be shut down and restarted.
Amazon is frankly the worst app of the three by a long way, unless you already know just what you wish to hear. After the thread here on Modal music, I searched on Amazon Music for George Russell and there were about 20 albums to choose from. Maybe it’s suggested albums will improve as I use it more but the chance of it suggesting something by George Russell to a new user must be absolute zero. Maybe I’ll have to find another means of discovering new/new-to-me stuff besides the niche radio shows I’m already using.
I agree the Amazon Music app is woeful. I only subscribed because we have a couple of Echo Dots, but when I use the phone app it often cuts out halfway through a song, or can’t find certain albums, or stops playing albums halfway, etc etc.
I’m just using the Windows app on my laptop here. No dropouts or the like, just clunky and awkward to use.
I don’t do streamed music on my phone.
Same here. I switched from Tidal to Amazon a few months ago because I thought it sounded just as good, my wife thought it sounded better, it had at least as good a selection of music and because we have Prime already we went from paying £20 a month to an annual payment of either £79.99 or £89.99, I forget which. Either way it’s a considerable saving as well.
Related question as I’m also thinking of changing from Tidal to Amazon Music (as I’m a Prime subscriber it makes sense.) I listen through a Sonos system, using small Sonos 1 speakers. Will the service I use make any difference to sound quality as everything goes through the Sonos app anyway?