Tidal - lossless audio subscription

[destrekor]

Anyone use it? Like it?

I just started my 30 day trial. I am liking the lossless streaming.


Anyone have any particular songs in mind that best test the difference between lossless and lossy music? Something that makes it as obvious as possible that something is lost going from lossless to a lossy format at 320kbps?

 

[JackBurton]

I tried it and it is good, but didn't subscribe because of 2 reasons. Small library and price. I'm not paying $20/m for music, especially for a service with such a small selection.

 

[destrekor]

I tried it and it is good, but didn't subscribe because of 2 reasons. Small library and price. I'm not paying $20/m for music, especially for a service with such a small selection.

Curious on the small library thing, perhaps it's grown significantly since you tried it? They claim over 35 or 40 million tracks, right in line with all the other major services.
It could be true, I haven't searched for that many, just some artists I wanted to hear on my new headphones in lossless to get a good feel.

As for price, yeah, I don't like the $20/m at all, it's ridiculous. Thankfully, they offer a military discount that brings it down to $11 or $12/m, which is a terrific deal and makes it comparable in price to other services, but with the bonus of superior fidelity.

I hope they make some price cuts, and continue to court record companies and artists, because I want the service to succeed. They subscriber base is still paltry compared to the big players, which is sad.

I am beginning to return to my old passion of music and am focusing on buying CDs for the artists I truly enjoy, and will be ripping lossless files. I've got 4 of the new remastered Led Zep albums on the way, so excited (IV, Physical Graffiti, Presence, and Houses of the Holy).

I'd definitely enjoy a lossless subscription, but I still want to lean less on subscription for favorite artists and more for artists where I less like the discography but do enjoy some of the selection.

 

[thomsbrain]

Is it just lossless 16/44? Or do they have 24/48+?

 

[destrekor]

Is it just lossless 16/44? Or do they have 24/48+?

They are just 16/44.1, lossless CD quality.


On that note - does anyone truly feel that 24/48 or 24/96 actually produces a positive, audible difference?

It may not be the greatest test of my own hearing, but I ripped my new Led Zeppelin IV (latest remaster) disc to FLAC, and created a 320kbps MP3 of Stairway to Heaven.
I did an ABX test with the FLAC and MP3 file in Foobar, and I got 4/8 trials correct. I was trying to focus on different parts of the song so I perhaps could have done better if I focused on the most dynamic sections (during the solos and whatnot). I do feel I was better able to differentiate the two songs for sure... but I don't know if I felt I was truly missing something massive, but it seemed one did have a slight bit more presence in the mids and lows, presenting a fuller character in the sound signature. I'm no audiophile when it comes to the super high end - I can tell bad from good, but good from great is a little beyond my listening ability at this time.

I do want to test some high-res audio and see if it just feels better to me, but overall I do kind of feel the lossless CD quality does have an edge on MP3. I'm going with the idea that ABX testing may not tell the whole story and, rather than do endless comparisons, dive all in with higher quality audio, and revisit the "normal" quality after an adjustment period.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I imagine that for some music the 24/96 would be an audible difference on the proper equipment. Probably stuff many thousands of dollars more than what I use though. Even my band room probably doesn't have the stuff to bring out the best in lossless audio.

If I had to guess I'd say that orchestral and symphony music would be most noticeable. I only say that because of the number of different instruments. At a real symphony concert you can almost pick out individual instrument rows if you have a trained ear. I imagine you could do the same with the right quality of audio file and the right listening equipment and environment. The types of music I listen to(which consists of hard rock and metal) doesn't benefit that much even between a CD and a MP3. Then again I don't have a dedicated setup for music listening or high end headphones.

 

[destrekor]

Yeah I just have a basic amp through the Xonar U7 external DAC/amp, driving a Sennheiser 598. Great sound, but not super audiophile great in the slightest.

 

[darkswordsman17]

24bit 48/96/192/384/DSD/etc is tough to say. I'd say no if we were comparing tracks that were well mixed and mastered, it'd be really tough for humans to discern major difference since 16/44.1 is quite able to offer very good sound. Unfortunately the issue is that we aren't getting that same level across the board. And sadly, I'd say that a lot of the higher res quality stuff is being gimped in the same way too (which is to say the Loudness War and some of the other modern mixing stuff is making the high res work pointless). Depends on the specific recordings though, and you're very rarely getting the same mixes of even the same albums on the different formats.

I think the high res stuff could offer a difference if it was managed that way all the way through and the mixing was just about placement and layering and things like that versus smearing everything into a relative cacophonious blur. But short of doing that yourself you don't really have that option.

That's not to say there aren't good recordings, but I've given up on trying to suss all of that out, especially since the prices they want people to spend just to find out is outrageous and generally not worth it.

Actually supposedly one good way of accessing good modern recordings is to buy Blu-rays, although you'll have to like live stuff. Best way to take advantage of that is to rip the disc (and then you can separate and convert the audio to a format your device could play more readily so that you won't be stuck relying on decoding of the sound formats, although if you have a nice quality player/receiver it might be exactly what you'd prefer; and quite a bit of the Blu-rays I believe include PCM high res stereo mixes too so it might not even take converting).

I can't comment on Tidal myself. It sounds interesting, but I'm just now getting into trying any of the music services (and went with Google's since it was $1 for 2 months and includes Youtube Red). The quality is good enough from what I've experience (but I also download the music versus streaming it), although nothing special (and is made worse by not using the high quality DAC in my phone).

 

[gus6464]

Tidal "premium" is just the CD ripped in FLAC. That's it. Nothing more nothing less. A shitty mastered track is going to sound like shit whether it's in FLAC or MP3. If you want to listen to an actual difference between a track listen to the commercial CD version vs SACD/DSD/Vinyl if available. Are these formats better than 16/44? Absolutely not, but they usually are mastered with a lot of dynamic range. Dynamic range is what truly makes a track sound good.

A good example of this is the new Adele. The CD is mastered like pure shit with no dynamic range at all. My buddy has the vinyl version and he rips all his stuff to digital so he can listen while on the go. His gear is not even super fancy and even then the vinyl rip was world's better. His rips have 3x the dynamic range of the retail CD version.

I can take his FLAC files and convert to 320k mp3 and they would still sound better than the lossless versions Tidal could offer.

 

[destrekor]

Tidal "premium" is just the CD ripped in FLAC. That's it. Nothing more nothing less. A shitty mastered track is going to sound like shit whether it's in FLAC or MP3. If you want to listen to an actual difference between a track listen to the commercial CD version vs SACD/DSD/Vinyl if available. Are these formats better than 16/44? Absolutely not, but they usually are mastered with a lot of dynamic range. Dynamic range is what truly makes a track sound good.

A good example of this is the new Adele. The CD is mastered like pure shit with no dynamic range at all. My buddy has the vinyl version and he rips all his stuff to digital so he can listen while on the go. His gear is not even super fancy and even then the vinyl rip was world's better. His rips have 3x the dynamic range of the retail CD version.

I can take his FLAC files and convert to 320k mp3 and they would still sound better than the lossless versions Tidal could offer.

Well yeah, I made direct mention that Tidal is just lossless CD audio, not hi-res.

Aside from vinyl, do you think actual hi-res sources will use a different master? Obviously vinyl will use a different master due to the very nature of the medium, but will digital hi-res be any different? At that point they aren't limited by the nature of the physical format, so would they approach it any differently? I guess this might just depend on each individual master.

In the end, if all I would be getting from hi-res is more dynamic range, I'd be on board, to hell if there is any other audible difference.

But I've also heard from some press folk that hi-res tracks could be introducing more problems in the audio, such as distortions (I think in the treble, not sure now).

I don't believe I have golden ears, but I definitely can appreciate more dynamic range. I'm sick of it.
Even the remasters of Led Zeppelin have, on average, a DR of 10 when using Dynamic Range Meter in foobar. It seems most of Coheed and Cambria's music on CD has, on average, a DR of 6 or 7. Ugh. I hate the loudness wars. Just give me more Dynamic Range and I'll be a happy camper.

 

[gus6464]

DSD does has issues with distortion which is why I just consider it a flavor of the month.

My best example for amazingly mastered music is my ABBA vinyl collection. I own a first print copy of all their albums. I have them ripped to 24/96 and the dynamic range is off the charts. Some songs hit 18 in the foobar meter.

All of the reprints that exist today whether it's vinyl or CD were done from shitty masters and not the originals. The CDs sound like absolute shit compared to the original masters as they took subpar masters then added even more loudness to them.

 

[destrekor]

What's nice is it appears that Tidal is working on offering Hi-Res through the new MQA format. Hopefully what they offer is mastered differently from the CD audio.

 

[thomsbrain]

Having done a fair bit of recording in 24/48 in big rooms and using really nice A/D/A, that was later dithered down to 16/44, what you lose in the transition is the sense of physical space. 16/44 is enough to hear an instrument clearly. 24/48+ lets you hear the room the instrument was in clearly.

Source always trumps format, though.