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Tidal Pixie Dust EQ?

Interesting. The next question is why does Tidal seem to get more complaints? Are they slower at insisting on clean versions or are other streaming services equally poor?
 
Tidal has sounded inferior to me before, on a friends naim system, by a significant amount too on some material compared to rips.

Though at home, or another friends setup, both using roon I have never been able to tell the difference, and found tidal & Qobuz equal, so kept tidal as it was cheaper. After hearing so much hype over the quality of Qobuz it wasn’t what I expected
 
If Roon levels the playing field in terms of sound quality then it can't be watermarking which is the issue with Tidal can it? That's assuming Roon brings Tidal SQ up not Qobuz down.
 
One possibility is that Roon actually fetches a different version of the track. We have no idea what license agreement Tidal have with UMG
 
With any streaming service you can never be sure that you are listening to the same version as the one on your CD, or LP for that matter. I made the swap from CD to rips some years ago, after extensive listening tests with family and friends (mainly my long suffering but highly golden eared wife) - although we both wanted CD to sound better, it simply wasn't - it was as far as we could reliably tell, the same, and we couldn't reliably tell the difference between the DAC in our CD player and the DAC in the streamer. CD player sold to a collector in HK, and we invested in better streaming, but we did re-try CD with a decent transport into the same DAC (as my wife really liked the ritual of CD playing and reading the notes) - but with the same DAC the rips consistently out performed the CD. We now use Tidal, and to be honest we gave up making comparisons ages ago, as there were no meaningful differences at all. We can play rips and Tidal tracks back to back, and the only time anyone identified a difference either way was when we compared, accidentally a 24/96 file from our server (not a CD rip, obviously) with the same album on Tidal. There was a difference though preference - actually at first we preferred the 16/44 tracks, then later felt the 24 bit files were more 'natural'. Not a difference I'd pay money for.
We now just enjoy music and don't really worry where it's coming from.
 
I have been trying audirvana the last couple of days.
It does sound different.
I think I prefer it overall.
Main point is tidal seems to sound slightly more refined.
Wife seems to agree.
I guess sounds slightly warmer but less dynaimic but does seem to reduce the weird distortion
 
The watermarking would explain it then.
I will have to try another streaming service I think.
Any recommendations? I have tried Spotify, was great to use but I found it a bit boring to listen to I guess.
Here are my notes re. Qobuz played through wi-fi to an Auralic Aries Mini using an external (TEAC UD-503) DAC:

SSD vs. stream, both via USB - initial tests suggest that they are indistinguishable (because precisely level matched?), and both very good with good recordings:
Atterberg En varmlandsrapsodi, N Jarvi, Chandos
Bloch Symphony in C sharp minor LSO, Atlas, ASV/Naxos
However, Vaughan Williams Symphony 5 Haitink has a little more presence/"body" from SSD; stream has a (very slight, but definite) edginess by comparison - could be a different (more recent, oddly) mastering

stream via USB vs. CD via coax - Marantz good as transport; CD preferred to stream by a small margin (possibly because the TEAC DAC's coaxial input is slightly better than its USB input?)
Frank Bridge: Summer - BBC NOW, Hickox, Chandos
very slightly more immediate/present from CD? a little more air, sense of the acoustic? both fine - perhaps limited by the recording, rather than the delivery medium
Sallinen 6, last movement - Malmo SO, Kamu, BIS
decidedly more presence and body to drums from CD
Kancheli ...a la Duduki ECM
*slightly* more immediate from CD, with a little more detail discernible, but stream is perfectly listenable - perhaps a little smoothed-over, except in loud passages where it is a bit harder to hear into the music (a very fine recording)

SSD via USB vs. CD via coax
Bloch Symphony in C sharp minor LSO, Atlas, ASV/Naxos
cannot hear any difference on this recording, which suggests that the DAC's coaxial input is indistinguishable from its USB input

The outcome is that differences are only detectable in direct comparisons and so slight as to be not worth worrying about. I am perfectly satisfied with Qobuz.
 
Having complained about Tidal sounding really quite harsh vs local files from SSD I now have an update.

I replaced my broadband router over the weekend with the latest TalkTalk "wifi hub". I'm now struggling to hear differences between files and Tidal streaming. Make of this what you will but the router seems to have made the difference.
 
Again, it is possible that the different router might have lead to you streaming different bit rate files. A server and player application that assesses your Internet connectivity might do this
 


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