Tidal

Well, a bit but not much. Maybe 5% more - down from about 20 just a year ago? When I transferred my huge playlist Sugarboy's Hola Hola was the only song it missed that I'd consider unmissable, most of the others were from really obscure compilations. Plus, I got to add a few Beyoncé tracks.

the premium version is the same price as the competitors and has better sound than them.

Spotify and Tidal high quality are both 320kbps so how do you suppose Tidal conjures up this better quality?

Spotify uses 3 quality ratings for streaming, all in the Ogg Vorbis format.

Hmm maybe it's all in the Ogg Vorbis (or lack of). I very much doubt I would be able to hear any difference though, no comment on anyone else's fine discernment.

I'm usually terrible at discerning stuff like this but there's a notable difference in both the desktop and iphone versions. The spotify versions sound muddier. I couldn't tell you the reason though.

well none of these services have Aaliyah S/T

tidal hi fi sounds much clearer than spotify to me

Well the hi fi should sound clearer. The mystery is why the Premium sounds clearer too.

Is it Pono-quality?

I have no idea, lol.

v much enjoying beyonce, prince, and new radiohead. but already had to uninstall/install android app again to get a track to work.

I perceive a difference in sound when A/Bing Tidal and Spotify, but it seems like it may just be a difference in volume, which would be a very scammy thing for Tidal to do. That is some Circuit City speaker salesman level bullshit.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5f/34/2b/5f342b4222a1660715259397de5a237b.jpg

some appear to detect tidal using a built in EQ. Which also seems pretty scammy. If I were an artist, I wouldn't want a default EQ to be applied to my music. Then again, maybe it is done by the publishing company on purpose to make music sound better on laptop speakers or something.

"tidal? ENHANCE"

is there a graphic equalizer like there is on Spotify? as in.. can the TIDAL 'EQ'ing be turned off/altered? if not then yeah that's a scandal! surely can't be right can it?

I tried to find an EQ in the android app, but I don't see one.

On that same app, I've listened to fewer than 10 albums and I've had to reinstall the app because Beyonce's "Hold Up" and Radiohead's "Tinker Tailor Tidal Sucks" won't play until I delete and reinstall the app. These songs were supposed to be downloaded to my phone. Thanks, Thom, Prince, and Bey!

xxp I've also been searching for a Tidal/Apple/Spotify comparison that includes measurements, but I can't find one. It's all CNET-level hand wavy codec sum-it-ups. But I think that many people agree that there's an audible difference, and that difference, which Tidal would have you believe is Lossy/lossless/bitrate/codec/etc-based, does not fit with previous experience of A/Bing bitrates and codecs. Then again, I think Pono was doing something similarly scammy, no?

Free trial is almost up and so far the lack of gapless playback between tracks is the dealbreaker.

I've been told that when playing vinyl records you have to physically turn them over after playing side a. That's insane. I'm switching to 8-track.

Also, I cannot find an article that scientifically proves that Tidal sounds better than Spotify. I'm extremely worried about being tricked into thinking that I like the way Tidal sounds, when in fact I actually like Spotify better but just don't realize this. I have a month to compare the two services, but what I really need is a peer-approved scientific journal article to tell me which one actually sounds better. There's a lot at stake here. With a $10/month difference between the two services, we're talking about my ability to retire at 65 vs. having to work in a coal mine for the rest of my life.

Please help, ILM.

There's no difference in cost for me since I pay $10/month for spotify as well. Using EQ or loudness to scam people into hearing a difference in your music streaming service would indeed involve some ethical stakes. And in the case of EQ, there's the question of whether you're hearing the music as the artist intended.

Here, this can help:
http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

Thanks, Eazy. That is a good test. But the point is that I typically would fail bitrate A/B tests, whereas the difference between Tidal and other services seems to be more pronounced. So one wonders if Tidal is doing something more to make the difference between their audio and other services' more obvious.

I'm extremely worried about being tricked into thinking that I like the way Tidal sounds, when in fact I actually like Spotify better but just don't realize this

also, if it was just EQ and you could find out the frequency response curve of the EQ, you could potentially get Spotify to sound like Tidal if you do indeed like Tidal's sound but also prefer Spotify's software.

I've been told that when playing vinyl records you have to physically turn them over after playing side a. That's insane. I'm switching to 8-track.

I do agree that it's a bit much to complain about flipping vinyl records, though! For the record, I never did, and that was happening over in the moon shaped pool thread.

I'm talking about their hi-fi version, where the difference is insanely apparent.

Also, if service A sounds much better than service B, I'm not sure why one would spend a lot of time wondering about possible evil or deceptive reasons for this. Either find a way to tweak service B so it sounds as good as service A, decide that you don't care, or subscribe to service B at the life-changing extra cost of $120/year. I don't really see that this requires a doctoral thesis on the human sound-pereception system. Surely 30 days is enough time to figure it all out?

I've already explained why. I've also noted your particularly incurious position, cowboy, but I'll add that $120/year could mean more to some than it does to others. Pretty sure this has also already been said to you by others, though, so it may be hopeless.

Arguments like this strike me as so bizarre. You have two music services, both offering a free trial. You know what they cost, and you can spend 30 days deciding which one you like better. The difference in cost is equal to about 16 hours of work at minimum wage annually. And yet we somehow need to have other people (Science!) confirm which one is better, because we might be being tricked. No reasonable person talks like this when the subject is toilet paper.

board ain't called "I Love Toilet Paper"

Let's Anticipate The Charmin 3-Ply

lol

I definitely tend to overthink these things, but I definitely feel like I'm always being tricked when it comes to audio quality. I basically don't trust myself when doing A/B tests because a simple think like A being louder than B will fool me into thinking A is better. At the same time I do want the best audio quality, because while the differences can be subtle, they are there and definitely affect your enjoyment.

It's like when you upgrade to slightly better headphones. You don't immediately notice much of a difference necessarily, but at some point you listen to some random song you've listened to many times before and you notice some element in the music that you never noticed before and all of a sudden this song is a lot better than it used to be.

Anyway, this is why I wish there was some kind of scientific research that proves that A is better than B rather than relying on a bunch of random internet people or even worse my own senses.

I don't really trust myself to reliably evaluate the quality of anything that is perceived by my senses.

so if A was provably better but you didn't enjoy it as much as B, you would still choose A?

if you go to a party at Todd Glass' house, you might think that a live drummer playing along to recorded music with a bunch of reverb added sounds good to you at first. It'd be reasonable to worry that you aren't like Todd Glass, and you won't enjoy this particular sound all of the time and for all types of music.

so if A was provably better but you didn't enjoy it as much as B, you would still choose A?

I guess it's a matter of how much more I enjoy B, but there's no good way to measure enjoyment. So I don't know.

if enjoyment is all you want out of it, you should choose B

But you might like some other aspect of A better and wonder if some cheap trick is being applied in B that's preventing you from having what you like about both A and B using A.

or you might wonder if B is the kind of company that sells snake oil and is therefore taking $ without adding value. if company A has proven to add value, you might wonder if A could add even more value if it had B's $.

exactly

also just because I like B more now doesn't mean B is better, maybe there are some less evident aspects that make A better that only become more noticeable after repeated listens

and even if the above weren't true, you might ask for measurements about A and B because you don't treat all aspects of your consuming life (especially art, not toilet paper!) as a string of Pepsi challenges.

to be clear, "b" is penis and "a" is vagina? or vice versa?

to be clear, "a" is my penis and "b" is your penis and I am Mickey Avalon

aaaaand back to it:

16 hours of work at minimum wage annually

And yet we somehow need to have other people (Science!) confirm which one is better, because we might be being tricked.

Here's a crazy idea: spend a month listening to both services for free, decide which one you like better based on your own experience, decide whether the cost difference (which is about $120/year, or one cup of coffee at someplace that isn't Starbucks every three days) is worth it to you, act accordingly. Ulysses (cough guy who manages the Spotify lists on ILM cough): I think A is Tidal and B is Spotify. Maybe glenn can weigh in on which is better, so we get some more unbiased information.

ok ok I don't think I listen to music for much other than enjoyment but you guys obviously have more refined expectations

also just because I like B more now doesn't mean B is better, maybe there are some less evident aspects that make A better that only become more noticeable after repeated listens

moving the goalposts a bit but yeah I'm with you on this hypothetical - the longer-term enjoyment may not be scientific or provable either though

this is the most frustrating post-croup ilx experience

Ulysses (cough guy who manages the Spotify lists on ILM cough

It's not as though he's making any money from this; you make him sound like some embedded corporate flack

I'm not sure that's how I make him sound. I actually think I make him sound like the guy on ILM who manages the Spotify playlists. He recently changed his screen name, so it's possible that not everyone knows who he is. I know that I found it confusing.

i picture you with a cigarette holder, if that helps