Although I'm a longtime user of HIFI Tidal - the desktop software is a poor music player, buggy, and the library is full of confusing duplicates. It's not a real music player software, it's just a browser reconfigured into a player. The redesign has made it more difficult to browse new releases...

Indeed but that is the equip that I have, so you have to scale worth to your context. At the time I had expensive cans and DAC but I'm not actually sure that I used the cans in the test, I think I just used my fairly cheap speakers.

:wink: I cannot test that because I do not have the appropriate hardware for the MQA test. However I have always been suspicious of MQA, as it streams at a much lower bitrate than HIFI I believe, which made me think they just wanted to save bandwidth costs by making you think you were getting...

I've done tests where I was played the HIFI version vs the 320kpbs version and was not able to tell the difference when I didn't know which one was playing (get someone else to play it for you). The interesting thing is I was POSITIVE I was hearing a difference before I didn't know which one I...

Does exclusive mean no other thing can use the DAC?

What setting should I use for Sound Output? Default? Or set it USB DAC?

Tidal's search is so bad. For example try to find the Hook soundtrack - you won't - but it IS on Tidal, you have to scroll through hundreds of John Williams features (even though he did the whole thing). Searching "Hook" bings nothing.

Tried it, numerous times, never could get it to work consistantly.

Sorry to say I sold my X2's. Lovely headphone no doubt, wonderfully built, lovely to look at, good sound, but the highs were just that bit too much shrill for me, too sibliant. Gave most music an edgy unrelaxed feeling for me. This bad highs effect could be corrected with a equalizer, but my...

We A/B tested it here, and both of us, after being 100% sure we could tell an obvious difference when we knew we were listening to MQA, completely and utterly failed to tell any difference in A/B tests.   The important thing in the test is to get the volume exactly the same, as the MQA files...

If it's not listed, I've noticed that's because it's not very good usually.

I can't believe there isn't a way to find Masters outside of the small selection on the masters tab. The album doesn't even say it's Master.

Thanks for reply. I recently downgraded my DAC from an expensive one to a Behringer UCA202.

Am I getting any benefit from the Masters if my DAC only is 16bit 48khz?

Am I getting any benefit from Masters if my DAC is only 16bit 48khz?

It's probably just lack of dynamic compression that was added to the CD mix of the master. It's clear now after seeing these Masters on Tidal this was happening to CD's long ago before modern loudness wars.

I compared Tidal's HIFI setting vs Master for the same track, interesting results.....   Master much quieter       Master has higher cut off freqs

Well well well....       I compared Hifi vs Master , Master setting on the same album (Coltrane Giant steps) clearly MUCH quieter than HiFi.   Also note the cutting off in HiFi above 22khz,  

Why not? Doesn't checking pass through jus remove Master setting?

Yet we can't choose HiFi anymore, if the album is in Masters, you have to listen to it in Masters. Suspicious, no? Why not give option to choose?

Re: Masters, the DAC I currently use only has 16bit 44hz output, does that mean there wouldn't be any difference for me for me from the usual Tidal HiFi?

Re: Masters, the DAC I currently use only has 16bit 44hz output, does that mean there wouldn't be any difference for me for me from the usual Tidal HiFi?

The master of silence

I'm selling my like new X2's, perfect ondition, barely used boxed, for great price £140 o.n.o. Contact me if interested.

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