Now that I completed a first (rough) translation of the below Norwegian article, I will republish it in this post. ENJOY!
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A Norwegian hifi magazine - Stereo+ - had two of its staff members listen to Tidal MQA vs Qobuz hi res. They both prefer Qobuz hi res but the second reviewer says that despite the listener fatigue he experienced with MQA, but not with Qobuz, the larger Tidal catalogue that covers more of his playlists would probably make Tidal a winner for him.
Also interstingly the magazine tried to get industry people to say something for or against MQA, but they all refused to go public because they had affiliations in one way or another - I suppose - with either MQA or its direct competitors. So the article doesn't manage to dig deep other than it seems to confirm that uncompressed hi res sounds better than MQA-altered music when played through very good kit. So hi res for the audiophiles and MQA for the masses with kit that can't expose the shortcomings of MQA.
Here are the two pages in Norwegian (coming).
Link to magazine:
https://joom.ag/f14I/p14
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This is about 25% of the text in a rough translation - the rest is forthcoming.
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Report
QOBUZ vs TIDAL
Sometimes this job is so all-encompassing that I walk directly from bed to job, and right from job to bed. Please don’t misunderstand this, fundamentally we are doing quite well, and especially these days when we have begun to test the two most interesting streaming services against each other.
Text: Håvard Holmedal
For us it is not crucial which of today’s streaming services the individual user chooses. We hope that the choice isn’t made on the basis of the technology behind, but rather based on how well you like the end result. Some people think Qobuz sounds the best, other people have continued to go with Tidal. Subscribe to the service you like, the one which has a good selection of the music that you prefer and which suits your current collection of hifi kit the best.
Still we can’t pretend not to notice that the discussion with FLAC on one side and MQA on the other has developed somewhat in the same direction as the discussions about electric cars or conventional cars, for or against wind mills or whether 5g infects you with Covid 19 or not. The entrenchments are beginning to become too deep.
Not all that simple, after all
Well, we will try to find some clear-cut ways that we may use to hear actual differences in sound quality, but it is easier said than done and much more difficult than it appears when we read how the members of various on-line fora describe this. There the opinions are surprisingly black and white depending on which camp you belong to or which trench you have dug for yourself. Stereo+ cannot enter the fray but must remain neutral until we have gone through this in an orderly fashion and have talked to professional people on both sides, in particular those working in the studio business.
We cannot take for granted that what is shown in a video on YouTube comes from a neutral source, or whether it has commercial ties. The sources must be verified and that takes a bit of time.
If you are in the know, you are disqualified
MQA has been at the receiving end of extraordinarily hard criticism lately, and the cause of that criticism isn’t difficult to understand. MQA is transparent to an exceedingly small degree and perhaps not all that good at communicating, either. Clever marketing specialists turn out not to be quite as adept at technology and they promise more than they can keep. But what are the intelligent people behind the smoke screen of marketing communication actually saying, and how do they explain their technology?
What we have been able to find out so far is that the full picture is a bit more complex than it appears at face value, and that there are some good communicators out there who are not necessarily free from having ties to the line of trade.
We need to talk to some people
What we have discovered so far is that most people who knows a thing or two, are disqualified in one way or another, and that the rest of them choose to remain anonymous. In particular those people with by far the strongest opinions would very much like to hide their identities. This tells us that they may have connections, agendas and affiliations that thay won’t disclose. It makes it difficult to get reliable information i.e. about MQA, but we are going to continue. Follow us on our websites for more articles about MQA, lossless codecs and Qobuz.
Roy tested Tidal vs Qobuz
During the last few days I have tried to reach a preliminary assessment result of hi-res Qobuz streaming against MQA in Tidal. I will have to say first that I have only managed to make the first step of unfolding MQA as my DAC isn’t MQA certifies. However, I have had full MQA-capable converters here earlier and my present DAC sounds better than they did even when with MQA files. A first impression is that the differences are very small and that different masters may often have a far bigger impact on the sound quality than whether it is MQA on Tidal or Qobuz 24/192 that I am listening to. Still there are differences. Qobuz seems to have a little more air around the instruments. It has a bit ore energy at the top and the sound is a little more well-defined. Perhaps the MQA sound is easier to like because it sees to be a bit softer around the edges than Qobuz, but at the same time the sound from the French streaming service appears to be a little more dynamic and transparent, so that the sound seems a little more controlled and so more pleasant to listen to over long listening sessions. Even though MQA brags that precisely de-blurring and dynamics are their strong suits, it is my experince that Qobuz is even better at exactly these aspects. Therefore it is my belief that played on a well-balanced and transparent stereo Qobuz will prevail with most people, but despite this the differences are not bigger than Tidal with its big music selection may be a good enough reason to stay with Tidal as a streaming service rather than moving to Qobuz. However, many things suggest that Qobuz are secretly planning an expansion of its catalogue, and since also Spotify is about to introduce cd quality to its streaming service, many audiophiles may end up leaving Tidal for either Qobuz or Spotify.
Håvard tested Tidal vs Qobuz
Although it is a bit early to reach water-tight conclusions before we have met the rest of the editorial staff and have challenged each other in blind tests, my preliminary experience is that at times there are big advantages on individual tracks but that this is because it is a question of two different masters. The more alike the tracks are the greater the chance is that we are listening to the same [master] track. I own several DACs that can take the MQA through a full unfolding and I manage everything via Roon on an Apple computer controlled from an iPad.
While at work, I listened to Qobuz for a whole day using a set of high end headphones, and this actually never happened before. As a rule, listener’s fatigue sets in af a couple of hours with MQA and I sense that i ought to take a break, but with Qobuz it was not just a matter of holding out, but even at the end of the day, I wanted to listen to more music.
In direct comparison the differences are a little less pronounced than I thought that they would be, but nonetheless i think that Qobuz sounds better. The sound seems clearer, the holographic image of the sound is better, it sounds a little more relaxed over time, and on individual tracks there is a bit more energy. Like Roy I think that MQA is a tiny bit softer. It is difficult to say exactly why this is, but regardless of this, it something that can help tone down the treble on a set of bright speakers somewhat, and perhaps help the main impression to be better, and the sound simpler to live with than through Qobuz.
But then we came to the aspect of music selections. I copied my playlists from Tidal [to Qobuz], and pretty much everything went wrong. A number of tracks vanished, and in other cases I got a different recording by the same artist. I am rather on the verge of stating that Tidal is my favorite music service, because the music experience that I want is not primarily about what sounds 1 percent better, but about where I can find all the music that I enjoy. Still, my guess is that I will keep both for a while to see what happens with regard to music content on Qobuz.
Spotify is lurking in the background
We have never had access to more music content than now. It is inexpensive and incredibly good quality. We all remember the time when we only had access to highly compressed MP3 or AAC files, and at that time we rather played our cds or vinyls to death, and only used the streaming services on our mobile phones or as background music on the mobile phone or on the Bluetooth speakers on the terrace. MP3 is not good enough for discerning hifi use.
Spotify has finally realized this, and they have already given notice that they will provide cd quality for their customers. We believe that this will happen right after the summer holiday but no date has been announced to us and they keep this under close wraps. Even though they won’t provide hi res music, their selection of music and their user experience are both so good that in the future they must still be reckoned with as a major music streaming supplier also for the hifi segment.
