Felixdroid was born in 1962 in Birmingham UK. From an early age he undertoo… Read Full Bio ↴Felixdroid was born in 1962 in Birmingham UK. From an early age he undertook classical piano lessons and composers such as Bach, Debussy and Satie quickly became firm favourites. Whilst attending Art School in Sheffield he was introduced to a recording studio where his appetite for new musical colours such as Cage, Reich, Stockhausen would feed his creativity and subsequently influence his work.

His current material ranges from simple acoustic piano pieces to complex electronic soundscapes.

Felixdroid is excited by the vast sonic landscape that exists and strives to embrace all influences to enhance his work.

Tidal
Felixdroid Lyrics

We have lyrics for 'Tidal' by these artists:

Alex Vargas Gather all my senses, lock 'em all away (hey) Sell off…
Ameera Heda ash-hada we kun unda warta (repeat)…
Brother I sense the darkness rolling in High tides, deep depths, cra…
Clara Luzia The waves are shiny like a mirror Seagulls are circling abo…
Demians When you throw me the stone Listen for the ripples The cur…
Diffuser Drink me like a Dixie cup and throw me out…
Gouge Out Hold My Head Out Reach For The Sun Hold My Head Out Reach Fo…
Imogen Before electric light, You paddled through the soup of darkn…
J Prince Ah mi say eye yai eye i, I need you…

J-Soul I'm just tryna vibe We could stay inside Baby just come slid…
No Age I was lying in my bed All the faces I thought…
Noah Kahan You knew me in my spiral Happiness tidal It comes and it…
Of Lioness Dead ocean Dead sky Her song; softly she sang…
Pavilions I search for sunlight in the darkest places I have known, An…
playgrounds Please tell me That this is the end Cause I can't seem To…
Protest the Hero Awake, unfazed, Morning light tells of the dawning day Jus…
Quebec Antique We are fallen angels We are children lost at sea We're drown…

Sieges Even You A faun in twilight Immaculate perfection I A god i…

The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos

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Most interesting comments from YouTube:

Ian M.

4y↑1

To solve the buffering issue on mobile, just toggle the download button for the album you are listening to after setting your download settings to master and allow on cellular. I do this often, fixes the problem and saves data anyway.

The rap also drives me nuts, but I just ignore it..

To mitigate the price I have the family plan and split it with three friends who all chip in.

Lastly, I feel like you are missing out a bit if you didn’t try MQA hardware decoding.

Love what you do man!

Al Kappaccino

4y↑6

Thanks for your impressions! I have a 5 month test period for Tidal too at the moment and I'm comparing it heavily to spotify which is still my prefered service.

I feel like Tidal is years behind in terms of features and user experience + when trying to recreate playlists on Tidal I lose around 40% of my tracks, since their library simply cannot compete.

So the one and only point for Tidal goes to higher audio quality and then again, I have a hard time hearing a difference. I recorded many songs coming from Tidal and Spotify and A/B tested them with Reaper and what I noticed is: Only on very high quality recordings e.g. Daft Punk I could in fact tell that there is a noticable difference. It had more clarity. But I feel like I would only notice this with my direct A/B switching.

Most of the other songs I listen to, no way I can tell the difference. When doing a phase-swap in Reaper I can make the difference audible, so it's definitely there but I myself cannot differentiate. So I guess I will stay with spotify for now and hopefully they up their streaming quality in the future.

My equipment for testing was: Monolith THX 887 + Geshelli ENOG2 Pro with Audeze LCD-2C & Beyerdynamics DT 880 600Ohm edition. Recording and A/B testing done with Reaper.

MAWPOW

4y↑117

Ive been using about 6 months now. I do have a couple of complaints:

1)You can't play music on one device but control it on another (like w/Spotify).

2) There's no voice recognition service integration. I can't tell Google Assistant "play [blank] on tidal" because you can't link your accounts.

3)On Android Auto, you cant pick, look up, or play songs from your car. You have to do it through your phone, which kinda defeats the purpose.

4) There's no automatic connection detection. I can't just choose to play music after I connect my headphones directly, I have to open the app in order to do so.

I think these are just cases where day-to-day use is compromised and it doesn't integrate well. Sure the higher quality is nice when I'm sitting on a desk, but if going out and about I think I'd prefer for that ease-of-use to be prioritized as well.

JP

4y↑2

I tried Tidal, but decided to revert to the old faithful - Spotify Premium. I can't tell that much of a difference between "Hifi" and Master quality over Spotify's highest quality option. I listen mostly to indie and alternative rock anyway, so there's a much larger selection on Spotify as many artists will post to that exclusively when they are small. Moreover, it has a much, much better UI and the recommended tracks / explore page are shockingly good at giving me things I like but haven't heard before. Most of the Tidal "recommended" tracks are just other songs by the same artists I already listen to.

Most importantly, I really only listen to streaming services when I am on the go - either in my car or when I'm on public transit into work. My car doesn't have good enough speakers to make use of the difference and then I use AirPods Pro for the convenience and noise cancelling on public transit, and Apple's Bluetooth doesn't transmit anything over 320 anyway so it's a useless upgrade to try and play Hifi. It takes up way more precious storage on my phone, and when I'm underground on the subway trying to play a non-downloaded track, I spend half my time listening to silence as my phone tries to download the larger file. When I'm home and want to listen to higher quality stuff, I'll go and listen to vinyl, purchase FLAC files, or I can just rip CDs and listen to that, which is high enough quality for me. Anything above CD quality is so negligibly different. Buying CDs / vinyl is also a great way to support the smaller artists I enjoy as streaming pays such a small cut to them.

I also notice that Tidal has some really weird sorting. For example, I like a band called "Ivan & Alyosha". In Tidal though, they're listed as "Ivan, Alyosha" with Ivan being one artist and Alyosha being another. So I cannot search the band by their name, I have to search the album. And if I want to shuffle their discography, I have to make a playlist of all their tracks and do it that way because shuffling either Ivan or Alyosha will give me other random tracks that have filtered into that "artist". Same thing happened with a band I like called "Hardcastle" that filters as "Paul Hardcastle" who makes completely different music and has his own full discography to comb through.

Oh, and Spotify's integration with "year in review", Instagram stories, etc. is also really cool

All comments from YouTube:

Memberrr Berry

4y↑137

Absolutely worth it for me, I’ve been using it for 2 years and never ran into the buffer issues

KXRAN EDITS ❣

3y↑1

Still using it?

Tom Mason

4y↑69

I’ve been using Apple Music and Tidal recently, and from my experience I can say that despite what numbers suggest, there is a significant amount of songs that are missing on Tidal, which are present on Apple Music. Anyway, the quality of files is really good and the difference is definitely noticeable, despite AAC being more than acceptable. But the biggest difference that I found, is how well Apple’s service sorts music, and how easy it is to find songs and navigate through menus. I think that every service should learn from them.

VN Rays

4y↑1

Sander Hoogeland maybe this is quite late, but I think your problem is the lacking of a DAC/AMP system. Not sure about your phone, but my audeze isine20 with the cypher cable (built-in DAC) sounds so much better, with much more details in all spectrums when play on Tidal.
P/s: find a tidal Family plan guys? Much cheaper then paying it all on your own.
P/s 2: sadly due to covid, I think I need to stop using tidal, since even with a family sub, it’s still quite expensive for me, and I’ve already own a collection of >300Gbs of offline lossless files :(

Courtney King

@SMEGMAZ I think Rammstein's label only allows them to be streamed on Spotify. I've tried different music streaming platforms and they're never available to stream outside of a handful of songs.

Sander Hoogeland

Tom Mason Thanks for the reply, I don’t know those headphones. To be honest, I don’t know a lot about headphones at all, but I was just wondering what the reason was I don’t hear the amazing difference that everyone is talking about. I currently use the audio technica ath-a990z with my iPhone. I guess those aren’t good enough. Or maybe my ears aren’t. :)

Sander Hoogeland

Vasilis Tsirimokos Yeah, it is still cheaper. And if you don’t hear the difference, it is wasted money.

Vasilis Tsirimokos

@Sander Hoogeland 13,99 for tidal hifi, 6.99 for apple music. Apple music family plan 10.49, still cheaper. Location Greece.

6 More Replies...

Kyle

4y↑2

Best thing about tidal for me is that they have uncompressed video. The bitrates for their music videos are unmatched and instantly noticeable , I wish any other streaming service had video that high quality. I can't afford it outside free trials, but I respect them for what they're attempting at least.

raymond grace

4y↑6

would like to see you go more indepth into mqa and the master albums in tidal. I think that's the main selling point of their double the price premium tier. I think lots of us have questions like does master version sounds better then flac ? Is buying a dac with MQA decoding worth it ? etcetc

Ian M.

4y↑1

bassandtrebleclef

4y↑11

THANK YOU for this video. As someone on the Spotify family plan and feels meh about the quality, it's great to hear this take on it.

Mistafishman

I've used (and still use) Tidal now for ~2 years after being an Apple Music user for ~1 year before that. I think that if you have to have CD quality (and HiRes if you have the plan), Tidal is the best choice when compared to Qobuz, Amazon Music HD, and HRA. I kind of wish I chose Spotify because it still sounds great and it's connectivity with EVERYTHING is awesome. Not to mention, all of my friends use it. After using it for a while though, I LOVE the layout of Tidal. Loved tracks, albums, playlists, artists, videos; I love it. Choosing quality for streaming on Data/WiFi, download quality. I love how you can pull up the album art fullscreen (because I've had trouble dong this with Spotify).

Gabriel

5:39 that's one of the things I love about TIDAL. Not necessarily if I like a song I'm liking the entire album, or I like the artist as a whole. Sometimes I just like that particular song. I always hated that cross liking on Spotify.
Great video!

ydem2nir9tag

4y↑18

Aside from my interest in the subject matter, I sometimes watch your videos because the cinematography is amazing. This stuff is great.

Roger Huston

I've used Tidal for over 2 years. Naim and Astell & Kerns had key integrations. I wish they had a more Pandora like discovery service. You can play a track radio, but those are fixed lists.

SMEGMAZ

4y↑754

IMO nothing comes close to Spotify's discover algorithm. Having said that, Tidal doesn't have public playlists and their podcast selection is WEAK. If Spotify had better quality streams it would be fucking perfect.

SMEGMAZ

@Lucy Morrison they recently changed it, I don't like it as much now

aires NO beat

I have been using Tidal, Apple Music and Spotify, testing all 3, and each one of them have their own pros and cons... right now out of the 3 I prefer Tidal, music discovery has been incredible, found so many music that apple and Spotify never showed me, and quality and UI is great, only thing lacking in Tidal are the social features, Spotify and Apple do better in this part, but I don't care much since we are all already surrounded by so many social networks...

flosusi666

@The Iron Giant even better then Spotify for me now :)

J McC

It doesn’t though.

arcanekand

The spotify HiFi tier will be limited at the start also we don't know the price yet (I recon the price will be around the same as tidal/deezer/Qobuz)

24 More Replies...

Derek Matt

4y↑5

I really love tidal, any issues I've had withnit have been the issue of my data connection or my ancent laptop struggling to decode mqa fast enough. I came to tidal from spotify and it is a tremendous leap from the quality there. The replay gain on spotify cant be turned off which is absolutely horrifying.

Nick Reecy

4y↑59

Tidal has been my favorite music related purchase, ever. That includes money spent on headphones, speakers, concert tickets, amps, etc.

Al Kappaccino

4y↑6

NoivernMPA

there is something wrong with your ears, because sound difference is easily noticeable even with less expensive gear

TechCloud

4y↑11

Good review Josh. I am using Tidal and Spotify and yes I also feel that Tidal is expensive for what it is. Yes Tidal has higher res music as compared to spotify but spotify does not sound bad either but I still wish that spotify has the high res music option as well so that I do not have to maintain two streaming services. The Roon player from roonlabs has nice features and it is integrated with Tidal and Qobuz but I am not willing to spend $699 for a piece of software with few added features just to overcome the short comings in the Tidal software.

Noel Collado Selva

4y↑2

@Elloli aah well Spotify isn't stoping you from seeking better quality sources and they certainly didn't promise it. If it's good enough for most people let people have their fun

Elloli

@Noel Collado Selva it makes me sad to see so many extremely badly recorded music which could've been wonderful

Noel Collado Selva

@Elloli so what?

Elloli

@Noel Collado Selva there really are alot of horribly recorded music on Spotify, even alot of big peeps got some heavily distorted music/nothing is seperated so it just sounds like a distorted mess of noise

Noel Collado Selva

@Elloli 🙄

2 More Replies...

Conor K

I've had Tidal for 4 months. It has responded really well to my searches and now recommends based on my tastes. i'm doing MQA and I've had no problems with buffering. Excellent sound quality.
I suggest doing a flurry of searches in the beginning so the engine can figure out what you like.

Daru

4y↑239

Quality over spotify is very noticeable. I quit using spotify after few years for this.

Taylor M

@Tomiply Listen to any song by Muse on Tidal in your car. The master quality tracks (their entire catalogue) is bordering on mind-blowing. Instrument separation and clarity is remarkable. Clear edge over Spotify by a noticeable margin

DieTabbi

Which hardware for the sound do you use?

Melech Ha'olam

3y↑1

There is a big difference, but tidal doesn't have the same kind of music as apple and Spotify. Like tidal has far more rap and r&b which makes sense being that jay z owns it and supports rap and r&b artists. But let's say you want to hear Jewish, Israeli, Indian, Arabic, Chinese, etc. Plus they don't have much dance either or electronica. So quality is better, but I rather not pay more for less music when the quality of sound difference is marginally better than the rest. So make sure the value is there and not get sucked in simply Bec the sound is better but not find your favorite songs. It also doesn't have as good Discovery and personalization taste recommendations like Spotify and Amazon

matt mines

Tidal is actually has tons of bugs? Like a lot

Дэвид Pomo

3y↑1

@Phill G that's what I'm using right now

27 More Replies...

Jamie Smith

Thanks Josh! This info-vid was a long time coming. I still haven't committed to any Hi-Rez streamer for all you've mentioned. I did actually just purchased an HD Radio tuner! It's user friendly too! Not like streaming.
I was just at CanJam and got to familiarize myself with a few music streaming companies. You are correct. Just looking for songs can be a challenge? Too many streamers expect their users to already know cover art for example? Never mind single release material that Prince has left a library of!
Rewinding, like you noted isn't intuitive either.. Or referencing to review at a later time is a chore.
I'm waiting for streaming devices to allow some sort of easy playlist function like YT Music allows, with Bluetooth options. On top of that, there's a fee and very little options to download entire recordings?
I think a Zip-Drive already loaded with a few known select Hi-Rez CD/Lp recordings is a better, more efficient way of getting artist to listener. You wouldn't have to be irritated with skips or drop offs for your money either! After All, high technology is supposed to make things simpler/easier!?

Scott Valdes

Ive done a side by side test with YouTube music, spotify, and Tidal on the highest kbps and lowest on the exact same tracks, making sure a particular track was not a remaster and vice versa, across all platforms and YT Music was noticeably better than Tidal and Tidal was better than Spotify. The only feature that matters to me is which stream actually sounds the best. Weather one platform has better features than the other is totally secondary. I'm going with YT music.

Manard H

I've had Tidal for years now and agree with your comments. I would like to see a grouping option for the hearted music and a list too. Overall, I like the direction of the evolution of the product.

Gregor Kluth

4y↑507

I am using Tidal for 4 months now and never had pausing issues when using mobile network

Tendai Mhiripiri

It pauses when I use WiFi because we have Plusnet, the crappiest WiFi.

cool28990

I had pausing issues.

benozzy003

Using ot for over a year maybe once I had a pausing issue but I was in the middle of the woods

fredyh357

Get to the point man I rather read the people’s comments and get there opinions 11 mins to tell us what’s better apple or tidal!! Comon man!

Christian Moranchel

I had this issue quite frequently on my iPhone 11 pro max and xs max before that. Recently switched to Android and no issues whatsoever.

30 More Replies...

Can Olum

4y↑9

I use Audirvana which can integrate with Tidal and as an album listener, not a track/single seeker, I'm really happy with Tidal. I also have Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer and Idagio; if I had to pick one, that'd be Tidal!

Can Olum

@Anders Ljungberg Unfortunately we don't have Amazon music here in Turkey. I wish I could try their HD option to compare with Tidal master quality albums.

Anders Ljungberg

Amazon music ?

Timothy Kush

Ive been using Spotify for around 10 year now or so? I really rely on it as I listen to music most of the day and it really hasnt let me down, though it isnt without some smaller quirks such as when listening to radio it often pauses. The playlists are fantastic, its recommendations are really really good and over the years Ive built quite a playlist of favorites that I can come back to anytime. My one thought on switching to Tidal for higher quality music is 1) can you really notice a difference without using a portable dap/amp (I am in the field alot) and 2) what is the difference like compared to Spotify (ie 5% better? 10% better?).

Black Chewy

4y↑4

Absolutely love Tidal! If you love music and really listen for sound quality, it’s the ticket.
Now, I also use Tidal embedded in a program called Roon. That takes Tidal to another level! Audiophile territory. It’s a little expensive but I’m really into music and I can currently afford it so there you go.

Brimz

4y↑1

For those having pausing issues while playing 'Master', it really depends on your network and data plan. Some will experience pausing and some not. I recommend setting it to HiFi and downloading 'Master' available songs.

REECE 313

i did the same thing

Vector Sigma

I just want TIDAL to be available on PS4, XB1, etc. I listen to music a lot... in fact, mostly, I think... while gaming. Would love to listen to HQ/Master tracks on consoles! :)

Léo Paulhan

For classical music, I use Idagio which is definitely above all the crowd from my experience. You can find so much performers for the same music, select the musical style that you want, the era... I haven't found better classical music streaming service since then. I really recommand this app for those who are passionate. :)

Jonathan Sl

4y↑7

Respect dude, you got grit being able to use a service like Google play music ✊

Cybon

Their recommended autoplay (the songs that play after your queue) are just fantastic, I find really good music that way, and they even play some really obscure stuff and for some reason it just works.

Edward Dodge

4y↑2

Been using Tidal for a year. Streaming problems from the phone can be alleviated a bit if you set your playlist to download. Virtually everything I listen to a lot is downloaded to my phone and I can even use it in airplane mode.

Jared Tibayan

I tried tidal for my experience it was pretty decent although their recommendations is not as enjoyable as spotify but the user interface is really good compared to apple music and also the music and video player is pretty good but i really wish they remove the "recommended for you" button in the player and instead replace it with a lyrics button. If im being honest i really can't find any difference of their HiFi and master audio quality between their normal and high audio quality its pretty much the same. This streaming service had a decent or good performance but i would say this streaming service is not worth it for my opinion. 4.8/10

Milo Molnár

Album recommendations are better on Tidal.

John Sanders

Hi Josh! Love your reviews! I have had Tidal for 2 months now and prefer the song selection and sound quality to Amazon and Apple music! Tidal boats about having lossless and flac music but all I see are remaster recordings which sound great and I assume this is what they mean by lossless and flac audio recordings? The only gripe I have is sometimes when I'm switching between songs it takes a long time to cue up, so I give up, log off and log back on to listen to the song I want at the time..other than this, great service, a little pricey but cheaper than going out and buying all these cds, just not practical anymore!

Sturdza

I would add to the feature request list the ability to sort a playlist on mobile and the ability to search inside a playlist. Hopefully if that mqa rep is reading comments will relay our concerns to Tidal

Amphibax

I used tidal for some time but I switched to spotify just because we started a family plan. Both have their pros and cons with tidal the I really preferred the UI on mobile and they had better sound quality (didn't matter that much for me), so spotify has way better recommendations and automatically created playlists.

Butter Chuggins

4y↑3

Joshua Valore... the only audio guy on youtube who makes videos that sound great. Thank you for not scratching my earholes, good sir.

Carlos Ruiz

6:15 YES, this is exactly something I really disliked about it, especially when you have something like Apple Music and you just add a single song from an album but you can search for it using the name or the artist because it's on your library.

Anne Abbey

4y↑1

Tidal is the streaming service for audiophiles, with a high-res version that lets you listen in CD quality or better. I like it. I sometimes use Teatube app and some other free apps that are less popular.

Stephen Menor

Hey Josh. Since you're talking about streaming platforms, I was wondering what your thoughts are on daps. Do you use daps? Or do you just use your smartphone for portable audio?

Timothy Shouldice

4y↑9

I love Tidal and quite enjoy their MQA content. Overall their classical selection is terrible compared to Spotify. I have to keep both services for now.

Timothy Shouldice

@David You're right. For some reason the search engine wasn't finding the content I was looking for. I now use Roon over Tidal and it searches Tidal for me and I've found their classical selection now to be excellent.

David

I disagree. Never had a problem with their classical selection. What have you found lacking?

Roman Sokhan

Off topic: I really thankful for your music suggestions as well as Glass Animals and Yosi Horikawa. Can you please give more music examples in your videos. Thanks again. It's also good for comparison to understand the sound...

Jascha Oakes

I love Tidal it’s the best music app imho. My only issue is classical music it’s very hard to find things. This comes down to artists vs players vs conductors vs orchestra. EQ would be great

Andreas Lomaka

For me there is only one differentiating factor of Tidal that makes this service indispensable: integration. The way it is implemented in software like USB Audio Player Pro in Android, Plex and most importantly, Roon is brilliant and unique. This is the only audiophile friendly service with a global reach that has these options and this makes it a must in our niche hobby.

Bootney Lee

Tidal is far superior to recommendations now. I'm hearing tunes I haven't heard since I was a wee lad and at spectacular quality through my Bluesound Node. 👍

devi dasa

The buffering is crazy-making...and it blows my mind, as a Tidal user for two years, that I'm still dealing with it. I started a Quboz month trial this morning ($15 per month vs Tidal's $20). I prefer the Quboz UI so far...although I use Roon to solve the UI challenges. I will test the mobile buffering later today and if the buffering is gone, I'm gone from Tidal. Tidal's MQA library is expanding nicely for jazz and classical...and I love the sound quality. Quboz HiRes library is impressive too.

Calvin Sy

Absolutely Excellent Sound Quality! I love Tidal

Brandon Burr

Been a tidal premium subscriber for years and I wish spotify would offer a lossless streaming option. Their recommended options for songs and albums, and mixes of random songs based on different artists is better. I would dump tidal if ever spotify offers the option. Another important feature Josh didn't mention which I use is offloading a song or album to your device to play later in your car, headphone or system. A useful feature that doesn't consume much data, sounds terrifc but does take up some of your space on your phone/device. Overall I agree. Tidal provides excellent lossless quality music over my system, car and headphone rig😀

TheDaskful

You should try the Roon Player! I've been a Foobar user for many years and I made the switch recently because it has enhanced my listening experience in ways I didn't know possible. It has "endpoints" that allows you to stream your music library on any device with their own separate streams. I've also enjoyed the Roon radio for music discovery logged in on either Qobuz or Tidal. There are a bunch more things to it, like the built-in Audeze profiles. It's a bit on the pricey side, but I don't think there are others like it if you have enough audio equipment in the house and want to essentially streamline everything. I would be interested in seeing your thoughts about it!

TheDaskful

@jaKz9 You're spending that to listen to streaming services. You're paying Roon for their software. There are many free alternative software to listen to your music for free and that's okay, too. Depending on how you utilize it, $10 a month may or may not be worth it for you.

jaKz9

Sure, spending 119 a year to listen to music

Alan Barnard

4y↑1

When you take expectation bias out of the equation, 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis and 256 kbps AAC are nearly indistinguishable from lossless FLAC, even on very expensive systems. Considering this, as well as the far superior Spotify user experience, Tidal is a hard sell. I’m also not a fan of MQA, which as a proprietary technology provides little, if any, advantage over already established open alternatives.

E5m

4y↑1

I agree. I have high end B&W 800 series speakers and a dedicated DAC/Amp for my headphones and I can't tell a difference between a 320kbps MP3 and CD/Flac.

Gustavo Vitor

tidal é a última opção. o serviço é muito caro e oferece o que o apple music oferece. a diferença é que o apple é bem melhor. a vantagem é a ux bem mais elaborada.

3:15 este álbum é muito bom! Real Love é uma das melhores. uma balada melancólica. Carly faz tudo pelo pop e não tem seu reconhecimento. Grande artista!

Chris Noto

4y↑1

Good review! That album/song search issue sounds annoying! As a Spotify user for the last several years, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that service. They don’t do HQ audio, but I find their quality good enough for most of my listening. I find their recommendation engine to be top notch, bringing me exciting stuff every week, some newly published, other things from the backlist that I had not been aware of previously. Thanks again! Keep up the good work! 🔥

iKaGe01

Spotify is just as good as High in Tidal (make sure normalisation is off in Spotify). There is no difference to my ears to a 320kbps Ogg to a FLAC

R3TT1CH

4y↑1

Tidal just completely falls apart for me as soon as you want to listen to something that's not mainstream in the west. Especially J-Pop and K-Pop is pretty much non existent on Tidal. Apple Music has by far the widest variety of music selection when it comes to international genre, especially eastern music. Tidal is a good addon to your existing music consumption but couldn't replace them.

i Bee Amazin

Depends on what equipment you have. In my car I can tell the difference between spotify and Tidal every time because I have a 4,000 watt system and $2,500 in speakers (1 10" sub), I am not that guy who has so much bass you can't enjoy the music, I never understood that I want clear music. I don't want to let the whole world know I am driving by. When I transferred my Spotify playlist of 1800 songs to Tidal it didn't have 16 songs. Things like the office theme song were what were left off, with a few smaller artist having some of their songs, but not all. On spotify I notice that the music sounds bad (harsh on the ears) if I go passed about 25/50 on the volume, with Tidal (HiFi, if you are not getting HiFi then don't bother) it is clear all the way to 50/50 and never gives me the harshness in my ears I get on Spotify.

Jeremy Baker

Just offering my personal experience with tidal. I haven't had hardly any studders when streaming master quality tracks. Actually I experienced a considerable amount more on Spotify and Google play music/ YouTube music

Flint Bits

FWIW, I believe they separate the songs and albums to appeal to both older and younger listeners. Older folks (and audiophiles) tend to listen to the entire album, while the younger generation will just like a song or two from an album and move on. I agree to your sentiment that it can be annoying, but on the flip side I also enjoy it. John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band is a great listen front to back, but I don't want any of the individual songs in my liked songs.

Nick van Kreij

Please give it a try on your Svs Ultra Towers! I own them and feed by a Parasound Halo integrated amp. You definitely hear a huge difference! The Exclusive mode bump the SQ even higher !

When do you gonna compare the ultra towers to other speakers, so curious since I own them :)

Axel Gómez

4y↑2

I really love Tidal, with the student discount i get it with 50% off, before I was using Spotify and with the music I really enjoyed I was always curious if i was missing details and extra sounds in the higher quality versions, so I ended up searching for those songs in flac form. The moment i started using Tidal I knew that at least all of the library is going to be CD quality and some in 24bit quality. Just for the save in time and convenience I think it is worth it and I'll continue to use it.

Ryan Flanagan

@Axel Gómez It is not possible to hear the difference. If you are hearing a difference, it's far far more likely that there are differences in the files you are comparing.

Ryan Flanagan

@Jamie Smith 24 bit is exactly that, for recording. It doesn't make any difference if you listen to it at 16bits or 24, there is no perceivable difference. If you hear a difference, it's a difference in the files, not the fact that there are 8 extra bits. You may be able to hear subtle differences in very particular parts of recordings.

Axel Gómez

@Ryan Flanagan it is noticeable with nice equipment and a little of ear training, I can hear the difference in well mastered songs and the more times you listen to that song. Most of the times I can hear new details when the song pops randomly in my playlist in the least predictable time, those moments are golden.

Axel Gómez

@NadavEverything is minimum at 16 bit 44.1khz, at 1411 kbps, and there are lots of albums in 24 bits 96khz with variable kbps.

Jamie Smith

4y↑2

@Ryan Flanagan Firstly, the original classic recordings are analog. Most new recordings are under loudness wars formulations! Hi-Rez mp3 files! I'm beginning to think it's all hype at this point? The source material has to be recorded in HD 24 bit+ or Hi-Rez to be authentic.

2 More Replies...

Vasilis Tsirimokos

4y↑1

I have tried Spotify, tidal hifi, youtube music and Apple music.
Personally I believe that Apple music has by far the best ui. Being able to add only the tracks you like from an album keeps your library very well organized. Music discovery is also very good. The chromecast addition is also very important.
Spotify's sound quality is bad, although Spotify connect is a nice feature.
Tidal catalog is not great, ui is descent, but I have experienced some lagging in streaming. Soundwise, regarding the hifi subscription, I do not find a real difference compared to Apple music, at least with my gear (dali zensor 5ax, Dali io4, sennheiser pxc 550, sennheiser hd569, lg g7).
YouTube music is a mess and has poor quality. If it wasn't bundled with YouTube premium I wouldn't be paying for it.
Deezer ui seems pretty nice, I installed the free version for now. I will test the hifi version in the future.

Adam Herbert

3y↑4

Tidal combined with Roon is a game changer. I left Spotify after many years for Tidal with no regrets.

Thanh Vy Võ

True. Tidal is the best.

rings 4

I really like Tidal, however once you create a playlist and shuffle through it plays like the same 10 or so songs. Can be frustrating especially if you're working out

Selim Subaşı

I really tried to love tidal for 3-4 months but after long time of not discovering new things (also android app is so buggy that makes me sick to use)
even when i tried to discover new stuff from a songs radio (it keeps playing same songs from my everyday playlist or songs without any common point i dont want to hear rap music when i listen avantgarde metal ffs) i returned to spotify and im really happy about that decision .
Whether you pick spotify or tidal or anything else you will compromise from at least one aspect of your experience sadly.

TheDarkKratoz

Question! MQA audio requires specific hardware to "properly unfold" it, did you use any special DAC to get the "full" MQA experience? Or were you just using Master quality through non-MQA certified hardware?

I ask, because I used to use Tidal, but I decided to switch from Tidal to Deezer. I gave up High Res, but I can still stream lossless 16/44 for $5 less. I found MQA through my V40 (which apparently fully "unfolds" MQA files) either was a different enough master to be incomparable to the original track through a FLAC (the people behind MQA are known to legitimately remaster some songs during their re-encoding process) or that I didn't find enough of a difference in the non-remastered tracks to warrant the extra money.

Laughing Man

4y↑16

Tidal is criminally underrated. It's sad that when all major video platforms are pushing 4k 60fps and even 8k video, every music service except Tidal is still pushing 20 year old lossy codecs on us.

vibe

@Kimoon Nam I know but tidal is tagging 16-bit music as master, now they are releasing MQA encoded 16-bit.

Kimoon Nam

@vibe CD is 16 bit

vibe

now they call 16bit music as master lol

Kimoon Nam

@Bat Scaped Even Flac is so much better than crappy AAC or MP3 isn't it?

Bat Scaped

3y↑1

Most of the songs in Tidal not yet master (loseless). Still a lot hifi (flac). For the best sound quality just buy cd Disc, much clearer than any streaming music.

Ismael

4y↑1

Great review Josh, although your intro music is always louder than your review. I used to have complaints about Spotify but now there is almost nothing as good as their UI. Specially the search button. Tapp it twice and the keyboard pops up. Mind blowing! Unfortunately your search is separat on every device, wich doesn't make sense. Don't use Tidal because R&B is not my preferred music, although I'm not proud of using Spotify and streaming in general is becoming an issue in how it shapes futre musicians that have to grow on these platforms.

Jeff White

The main difference between Tidal and more "mainstream" streaming services is that Tidal streams in a much higher quality format. So as long as it has a comprehensive selection and performs properly, the main question is, "Is streaming higher quality files worth the extra money?" But Josh didn't really answer that question.
If pausing actually IS a significant problem, then the service is just plain unacceptable, and it's not worth any price, even a dollar a year.

soulshinobi

I would loving having notes as well, I've thought about that several times listening to Spotify, which already has a better GUI.

andrecuri

4y↑4

I love it. The sound quality is awesome!

The HERO Family

4y↑1

Youtube music does it for me. It has a massive library. Nearly every artist has a yt vevo or other page on yt. Plus underground artist.

Crypto Onion

4y↑2

i have the hifi subscription and it runs directly through Audirvana Plus. Sounds great.
My only complaint is that they often drop albums that I have in my favorites and I don't know it until I try to play it

Liviu Preda

None of them are perfect and we have no choice to choose between them, but I'm happy there is competition.
Great review and appreciate your input.
It sounds like you'd enjoy Spotify the most out of them. Have you tried it yet? If yes, what do you think? Maybe a future video?

Jason Koester

4y↑20

I use Amazon music with the HD FLAC package myself. I have tried YouTube music, Spotify, and tidal. Spotify has great selection but still no flac and I hate the new interface they started using. YouTube is lowest quality but decent selection of music but once again poor UI and no desktop app at all, you have to use a webpage. Tidal (as of mid 2019 when I tried it) was missing quite a bit of my music. It didn't even have Metallica. And I was not a fan of it's UI either.

And on tidal you pay $15 a month for 16 bit FLAC and have to pay $20 if you want 24 bit. Which is a lot especially considering that when I tried tidal, I'd say only about half of songs were available in 16 bit FLAC and probably more like 5% were available in 24 bit. Amazon music not only has better pricing at $15 a month for all FLAC, 24 bit included, (only $13 a month if you already have Amazon prime) but it also has more songs in flac. I'd say 90% of my songs on Amazon are available in at least 16 bit flac and probably like 15-20% in 24 bit flac.

Also the interface on Amazon is better than any other app I've tried. YouTube is probably the worst, then tidal, then Spotify, then Amazon wins by a mile. The only complaint I have about Amazon music is the desktop app occasionally crashes on my PC and I have to take 5 seconds to restart it and it picks up exactly where it left off. Otherwise I think it is the best of any I've tried and good enough I don't feel the need to try any more.

Danny F

4y↑1

I like Amazon Music FLAC on my Audeze

HyperOpticalSaint

4y↑4

I think you have lots of things mixed up here, there is no simple 24 bit FLAC on tidal, they are not simple 24bit 88.2/96khz PCM, they are MQA file with some loss compression in part of the file that gets uncompressed by Tidal app, this I know for sure. As for amazon HD's 24 bit, I am not sure the source, the only traditional media use 24/96 or 24/192 are DVD-Audio. Would nice to see Tidal get real 24/96 or 24/192 or DSD instead of MQA, which is just marketing tool.

Jason Koester

4y↑1

@TheBandicoot
For me it's good enough for on-the-go listening. Since I'm normally just listening at work (which is loud and noisy) with only 1 earbud in anyways. And then at home I have a topping d30 DAC with a SMSL THX 888 paired with a couple headphones that I listen to music and movies and game on. I have the Sennheiser 58x and the Philips X2HR as my mains currently with a thx panda and an argon mk3 on the way

TheBandicoot

4y↑3

Sounds great, but if you’re using a smartphone it’s a wasted venture. Smartphones DACs are incredibly cheap and sh*t compared to even a low tier Walkman. Invest in a decent Hi Res player and good IEMs or headphones, you’ll realise that an iPhone and AirPods aren’t that impressive.

Anders Ljungberg

4y↑1

Youtube music uses different codecs depending on whether you are listening to your computer or mobile phone. if it's like regular Youtube

MAWPOW

4y↑117

Gregory Frassetti

@Spazza42 and @Mario Barrio who overwhelmed this thread. You both make valid points. What I wonder about Spazza42 is how do you "discover" your music before you buy? I wouldn't want to purchase a entire album for just a few great songs. Like Mario said as well, dacs with a cellphone can equal a dap, my dongle works for me. I also can't carry a dap as I carry two cellphones and my pants pockets can't carry around another device lol. With streaming you also have the advantage of listening to almost anything anywhere whenever the mood hits you. What happens when your limited collection of songs on the dap doesn't have that song or album on it?
I have Tidal now as a testbed against Google Play Music and I like the sound quality from Tidal way more. And then I discovered UAPP app and with my Dragonfly dac it's "properly" decoding the music and wow the sound quality is amazing.

All I can truly say is don't knock it till you try it. Plus to truly support the artists you have to discover the artists. Have fun with your music.

Miguel Barrio

4y↑1

@TheBandicoot I think you need to try yourself a Chord Mojo with an iPhone and compare that with a DAP. It outperforms my Sony NW-ZX2, period.

As for why they are still on the market... There's a market for everything! You can find a Nakamichi ZX9 cassette deck for $3k on ebay... All manners of A&K DAPs for tons of money. I still think there's no value there.

Miguel Barrio

4y↑1

@TheBandicoot I buy all the music I like. With streaming services, I can try before I buy. And with Qobuz Sublime+ I can also buy hires at a discount (Sublime+ has paid for itself many times over, since I would have bought the music from HDTracks or the like anyway).

But as long as you have the subscription you can stream really high quality music on the go without having to load all that music in your phone or DAP. My library would not fit in any phone or DAP anyway.

As for vinyl, I would not bother to rip it - it's just too much work IMHO. I have some 600 albums on vinyl but have not had a vinyl setup for a while...

TheBandicoot

Miguel Barrio They’re dead, but there’s still dozens on the market? Dedicated products that are designed for one purpose will always outperform all-purpose tech like an iPhone. Like I’ve said, if you stream then I get the issue with DAPs. A lot of people don’t stream, a lot do. If your phone does what you need it to do then happy days, but I wouldn’t claim that a smartphone can perform as well as a DAP like the Sony WM1A, it just can’t. The WM1A can power a set of quality cans no problem, meanwhile a smartphone will top out with mediocre IEMs, audio quality will be even worse if people opt for wireless headphones which is what the market is attempting to push towards.

People pay for convenience over quality

Miguel Barrio

@TheBandicoot One more point: The biggest case against DAPs in my view is you cannot stream TIDAL, Qobuz, or anything else over anything other than a wifi network. With my phone I can be anywhere and stream anything from TIDAL, Qobuz, Apple Music (which I get for free with my cell plan), Spotify, SoundCloud, Mixcloud, and others... This is a giant reason why DAPs are dead in my opinion.

16 More Replies...

Christian Moranchel

4y↑1

That’s the reason I left tidal as well. Anytime I tried using it on mobile I’d get random stops constantly. Thought maybe it was my signal or something but I’m able to play games and watch videos on YouTube on high quality with no issues.

Shoaib Ahmed

Is there a difference between bit perfect mode (exclusive mode) and non exclusive mode? And what is the best Bit rate settings in windows sound settings when not using exclusive mode in tidal.?

Ixta

Hey Josh, could you compare the Drop Panda and the B&W PX7? I think this is a better head to head comparison than the Drop and the Bose you did.

malteadotas4

3y↑1

if you don't have the adequate equipment, ie. audiophile grade headphones/speakers, a proper amplifier and a good DAC, you won't get to appreciate Tidal's true capabilities.

Omar Jimenez

YouTube music is my main. I have used Tidal for many years and honestly can't notice much of a difference in sound quality between the two. Part of me is embarrassed because I feel like I should. I have a pair of Sennheiser HD 6xx's, Chromebook, Tidal HiFi account, Bravo Audio v2 amp, Grace Design budget dac & LG V30

JP

4y↑2

Lou Dupa

Excellent review! The only way Tidal is worth anything is through the Roon interface. At that point between the higher cost of Tidal and the $699 lifetime ($119/year) for Roon I just couldn’t justify the sound quality difference. To compound the problem MQA is just a royalty play for Meridian that I wouldn’t support ever...

ZealousGGSky

4y↑6

Maybe next vid you can do a tutorial on how to setup foobar
your foobar looks gorgeous compared to mine
Great content as always!

Antoine P

This was interesting, but for comparison you really need to check out Spotify as it’s the dominant platform over a third of your (music streaming) viewers are using. So dominant they have twice the market share of the next largest... Apple Music.

Alper Sarıtaş

Once in my life I've been so happy to live in a country that has an economic crisis. Tidal in Turkey is just 1$, and the premium is 2$.

KXRAN EDITS ❣

Whatttttt

josh t

Yes, I have it Josh (tidal premium); of course, no service is perfect; but I find it to have most of the songs in the genre's I look for, and I too found suggested for you, helpful. But I've had them for a few months. Sound quality is worth it alone; to me the MQA is unique. Again, I've debated having this vs Spotify premium mostly; but as for now, I like this service. Again, not perfect, and agree with all, and I mean all, your complaints and things to fix foresure! Great review, Josh. 👌🏼💯

jackelofnar

4y↑17

I found tidal good in theory but I listen to a lot of Asian music especially Japanese rock and heavy metal which has no artists. I've been forced back to Spotify

Praveen Sharma

I listen to Chinese (ROC and HK). It's there and the only option for good quality music

EverythingisFire

Ah, I figured. Spotify is excellent for metal. Think I'll try Amazon HD.

François Lemoignan

3y↑1

@Ta mask its getting better recently honestly, for example they finally got hold of Metallica and I think all albums are available in Master quality🙂

Dimas A

Idk how but they sell one time accounts for that much

Chibi

@Dimas A Bro wtf how

2 More Replies...

Prod. by Chris

I'm late to the party BUT I've been using Tidal for the last two years. I previously used Apple Music and I'm glad I made the switch... not only cuz of the audio experience but from what I've seen compared to other top streaming platforms, Tidal pays more per stream than the competition.

Prod. by Chris

One complaint I do have tho is the software. It's either the software or the servers, but there's several times it takes at least a minute to load albums, playlists, etc.

Prod. by Chris

Thanks for the playlist link BTW, you gained a sub 👍🏼

sherlock holmes

3y↑1

Roon + Tidal or Qobuz or both == Premium Goodness!

inrevolt

I have been using it for about 2.5 years and have gathered quite a big collection and the most frustrating thing is when you switch between your playlist and home or explore for example and then go back to your playlist it puts you at the top again and not the spot you where when leaving. I literally have to scroll for 30 seconds straight in order to get back to where I was before. The other thing that bothers me is when I listen on my se100 and mark tracks to download I have to open up my downloaded playlist in order for it do download. I have left the house many times just marking tracks for download and then not being able to listen because I forgot to explicitly open up that playlist again. Its just really painful to use sometimes compared to other services and that is amplified even more on smartphones and especially players. Qualitiy is really good tho, just like you said.

CG

The song pausing might be carrier dependent. I have Verizon and AT&T and I’m able to stream Master Quality tracks and albums over the network just fine. I don’t experience any pausing between tracks.

MyTerryw

I find tidal very good but probably because I tend to use it 90percent of time via roon except in the car. The only issue with that is sometimes stuff released on tidal via app is not seen in roon or available a few hours or days later when you add music, this does not always happen and it is to do with how tidal allows link to roon I believe. I may give Qobuz a try at some point as want to add an external dac which probably won’t play mqa so tidal may not be for me as only paying for one sub, subject to content that is.

VaultF

My only complaint with Tidal it's you cannot download your music over the app on PC. I understand the concerns over pirating and stuff. I still think they should find a way to make it happen. I sometimes game online and my best music is on Tidal and I lag when it buffers each song.

Bossy Bill

Spotify allows me to globally block Explicit content.
With Tidal I have to go through multiple steps (like navigate to the 'track station') just to block a single track.
Also with Tidal, i find some of their playlists are overtly political.

tremot

Never pauses or buffers for me. I personally use Tidal on PC and UAPP for Android. Amazing quality, and most music you could want is on there. For a price of a CD or vinyl record, it'a good if you have the gear to appreciate better than 320kbps quality.

Alvin Chan

It's good if you support money hungry corporations that love DRM on flawed "lossless" formats. FLAC is still the best lossless format while taking up barely any space. Probably the reason why I chose Deezer over Tidal!

Big Herb

4y↑378

no comparison with Spotify?? especially since you recommend the standard tier which is basically a direct competitor of spotify

Flying Pigs CO

At least spotify doesn't crash constantly, not let you play certain songs, not let you login with your account, not let you download certain songs, etc.

ScoFoZo

@Joshua Valour you're telling me you're presumably the most popular audiophile youtuber and you haven't had experience with spotify? lmao WHAT

chefgav1

@Mrrdrrr I agree it did feel a bit sponsored as well

Sergey Coder

Spotify - it's not about quality.

Ta mask

4y↑1

it is very rap focused, I am a country listener and it is pretty boring to discover songs

25 More Replies...

Panithi Saktrakulkla

I also the standard $10. Should the premium be $15, it will be more attractive.
I use Audirvana in Mac, it has options to add plugins.

V4Now

I never been a fan of music streaming service, always preferred a direct download.
I appreciate flac. More thanks too it though. I recommend the albums Moondog and Kind of Blue👍🏾

David J

The sound quality difference is very noticeable. After being on tidal for a month on a free trial (it was to watch lemonade), trying to go back to Spotify was VERY difficult and caused me to switch to Tidal permanently.

asthmaticrhino

4y↑1

Hey Josh totally unrelated but have you considered doing a head to head of the more popular "audiophile" (I say that in quotes just cuz I see them pop up on forums) true wireless earbuds?

I keep seeing recommendations for the Cambridge Audio M1, Lypertek Tevi and of course the Sennheiser Momentum and Sony WF-1000s. Id be interested to see where they compare relative to each other in sound signature, with the full understanding that they're wireless and gonna suffer some drawbacks in sound quality.

Diatonic5th

Been using Tidal for 2 years now and love it. Never had a single buffering issue.

Mario Medrano

Diatonic5th Which service provider are you using? I’ve had occasional hiccups but considering either AT&T or Visible

Mark Ramdarass

Would love to see you do a 2021 review including Airpods max aka 3D sound as Tida supports it

polofunk

4y↑1

I've had tidal for over 2 years no issues i love it.

huggy turtle

Thanks for the review. One thing I am worried about is the cancellation experience. People in forums have said that Tidal continued charging them after they cancelled or how the monthly charges would reappear after a few months.

JPR

huggy turtle I’ve never had this issue with tidal. I only use it whenever they email me about discounts and offers.

Currently they gave me a deal of 6 months of the Master Quality for only one payment of $5.

Spotify is better in terms of navigating through menus, but Tidal audio quality is the best I’ve heard.

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