[Law87]

edit

 

[canali]

i am new to streaming...just started spotify and enjoy the variety it offers me vs itunes.
trying to find ways to improve the audio out thru my android lg nexus 5 smartphone
(considering adding dac/amp but am unsure).
 
but anyway...back to your question: some can tell a diff..others not so much.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/7/8872115/apple-music-tidal-spotify-audio-quality-test
 
so if you're using your phone it seems that it can render the better quality resolution of tidal somewhat nil.
 
excerpt:
 
The results were very, very surprising to me.

 

It was generally random across the board, though Spotify fared slightly worse than Apple Music and Tidal overall. In roughly 29 percent of the tests, subjects couldn't tell any notable difference at all. Tidal — which wants you to pay more for lossless quality — most definitely didn't take the crown, and in several cases, subjects actually identified it as the worst-sounding of the three.

What are the takeaways? Having been a longtime Tidal subscriber and run blind tests on my laptop between Tidal and Spotify in the past, it seems possible that the difference in quality is particularly irrelevant when you're using your phone — maybe it's one thing to use better components, headphones, and speakers, but a phone's hardware creates a baseline that renders Tidal's advantage totally useless. (That's good news if you mostly listen to streaming music on your phone, since Tidal's lossless service is $10 more per month.)

 

[dragion]

  i am new to streaming...just started spotify and enjoy the variety it offers me vs itunes.
trying to find ways to improve the audio out thru my android lg nexus 5 smartphone
(considering adding dac/amp but am unsure).
 
but anyway...back to your question: some can tell a diff..others not so much.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/7/8872115/apple-music-tidal-spotify-audio-quality-test
 
so if you're using your phone it seems that it can render the better quality resolution of tidal somewhat nil.
 
excerpt:
 
The results were very, very surprising to me.

 

It was generally random across the board, though Spotify fared slightly worse than Apple Music and Tidal overall. In roughly 29 percent of the tests, subjects couldn't tell any notable difference at all. Tidal — which wants you to pay more for lossless quality — most definitely didn't take the crown, and in several cases, subjects actually identified it as the worst-sounding of the three.

What are the takeaways? Having been a longtime Tidal subscriber and run blind tests on my laptop between Tidal and Spotify in the past, it seems possible that the difference in quality is particularly irrelevant when you're using your phone — maybe it's one thing to use better components, headphones, and speakers, but a phone's hardware creates a baseline that renders Tidal's advantage totally useless. (That's good news if you mostly listen to streaming music on your phone, since Tidal's lossless service is $10 more per month.)

Not so sure this is the case for me...I have the LG V10. It's got an ESS Sabre 9018C2M digital to analog converter chip inside, as well as a 9602C headphone amplifier. I can definitely hear the difference with Tidal's HiFi audio.

 

[hogger129]

I need to see a blind test study before I would believe anyone could hear a difference between "high resolution" and the same thing at CD quality.  So far, I have not been able to find a single one.