[Billheiser]

..My assumption is that the sound from Tidal is quite "adjusted" before it even reaches your default sound device (your DAC I suspect).

Why do you assume that? I know of no evidence for or statement about that.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

Why do you assume that? I know of no evidence for or statement about that.

 
I would be rather upset if Tidal did any kind of adjusting to its audio, in addition. The whole point of getting it lossless (well, HiFi) is that you're hearing an unaltered version of the music, and that would defeat the purpose. 

 

[cuiter23]

  I don't think Tidal is written to allow you to bypass it's own DSP, or even the sound management of your OS. My assumption is that the sound from Tidal is quite "adjusted" before it even reaches your default sound device (your DAC I suspect). For me Tidal sounds good, but it is primarily to help me find new music, and to enjoy music when I can't afford to buy a ton of new material.

 
afaik Tidal sources their music directly from artists so I'm sure the "adjusted" sound is due to an outside factor (i.e. OS)

 

[Sonic Defender]

Why do you assume that? I know of no evidence for or statement about that.

All sound is adjusted by the OS to one extent or another, Tidal servers are using software to do the streaming, the software will perform some type of adjustment to the sound one way or the other, unless I am very mistaken, which is as I have said all along possible. I'm talking about normal sound processing as adjustment, not necessarily some intentional DSP, although I would not be shocked if there is some of that going on. On my phone, my Tidal app is certainly louder than my Neutron player, but that is a different thing.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  All sound is adjusted by the OS to one extent or another, Tidal servers are using software to do the streaming, the software will perform some type of adjustment to the sound one way or the other, unless I am very mistaken, which is as I have said all along possible. I'm talking about normal sound processing as adjustment, not necessarily some intentional DSP, although I would not be shocked if there is some of that going on. On my phone, my Tidal app is certainly louder than my Neutron player, but that is a different thing.

 
Like you said, volume level and sound "adjustment" are two wildly different things. Tidal and Google tend to be louder than Spotify but that doesn't mean they're "adjusting" the sound.
 
Sound isn't "adjusted" by the OS. If you have the drivers for your hardware, the audio goes straight through. You're not gonna go from Win7 to Win8 and suddenly everything sounds differently, and that's triple true if you're using an external USB audio device because then none of the internal components are touching the audio, it's just a straight digital stream being sent into the external DAC. "Normal sound processing" is one of those vague terms that doesn't actually say anything and it starts opening up arguments about literally every element in what you're listening to, right down to the OS version which is nonsense.
 
Unless you have some sort of evidence that Tidal is performing some sort of operation, I'd say this is a line of discussion that isn't worth pursuing.

 

[Sonic Defender]

^ Are you sure that the driver just bypasses any OS sound management? That is what I'm talking about. I think you may be over-simplifying things as I am quite sure there are OS sound management differences that may be noticeable. Many Mac users and Linux for that matter will claim that the way sound is handled by those OS are superior to say Windows. Now are these differences night and day? Perhaps not, but I suspect you are not completely correct in your assertion that there are no differences in OS approaches that are audible.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  ^ Are you sure that the driver just bypasses any OS sound management? That is what I'm talking about. I think you may be over-simplifying things as I am quite sure there are OS sound management differences that may be noticeable. Many Mac users and Linux for that matter will claim that the way sound is handled by those OS are superior to say Windows. Now are these differences night and day? Perhaps not, but I suspect you are not completely correct in your assertion that there are no differences in OS approaches that are audible.

 
Mac vs Windows is a bit of a different argument because you're talking about not only different OS's but very different hardware. I've used all the OS's and yeah my old MacBook Pro sounded fantastic straight out of the headphone jack but that's largely thanks to good components.
 
Windows machines often COME with sound-altering software, I know my work laptop has a Dell sound manager and my computer at home uses Realtek stuff, but as long as you turn all that crap off the OS itself shouldn't do anything discernible to your sound beyond controlling what the volume is. I would bet dollars to donuts anyone who claims their computer sounded better going from Windows to Linux had some sort of audio management suite going that they weren't aware of and the Linux install is lacking that so it sounds better.
 
Anecdotal evidence: I was going insane at how bassy my se846 were through my laptop, it was making a lot of audio very difficult to listen to. I wasn't sure where the culprit was, far as I could tell nothing was out of the ordinary. After some digging, I found ANOTHER piece of software installed by Dolby that was doing some artificial "theatre" effect that bloofed out the bass and put some phony "surround" effects on. Soon as I turned that off everything was well.
 
Remember we're talking digital signals here, not analog. You have an mp3/FLAC/whatever, it's just a sequence of 0's and 1's. The OS shouldn't be imparting any alteration to that, so any changes would happen at the DAC and amplification level, and that's more of a hardware issue than a software issue. AFAIK the only thing an OS can do to the sound is change the bitrate/range that the sound device uses, going from 16/44.1 to 32/192 and what have you, and that's pretty inaudible.

 

[Sonic Defender]

  Remember we're talking digital signals here, not analog. You have an mp3/FLAC/whatever, it's just a sequence of 0's and 1's. The OS shouldn't be imparting any alteration to that, so any changes would happen at the DAC and amplification level, and that's more of a hardware issue than a software issue. AFAIK the only thing an OS can do to the sound is change the bitrate/range that the sound device uses, going from 16/44.1 to 32/192 and what have you, and that's pretty inaudible.

Makes sense so for those taking stream into a software package so I would have to agree. This of course does not apply if you use the Tidal app as we have no way of knowing what if any DSP they use.

 

[Nalor]

I'm a Tidal user myself.
 
It is very possible that there is some post processing being done. Sound cards and DSP in the loops might be altering the sound to "sound better" on the speakers for the device, like a laptop.  Its why so many people end up using USB DAC's, as it gets most of the built in sound processing out of the way. I hope this helps.

 

[rigo]

I too am taking advantage of the 4 for 1 deal. Couldn't pass it up. I can tell the difference on some. Especially, Massive Attack's "Mezanine" Album. I use it as my reference.

4 for deal? What is it ?

 

[SomeGuyDude]

4 for deal? What is it ?

 
On Black Friday Tidal offered 4 months for the price of 1 for former customers. Definitely a solid deal, and their catalog has improved so much I made the switch, cancelled everything else.

 

[Billheiser]

Makes sense so for those taking stream into a software package so I would have to agree. This of course does not apply if you use the Tidal app as we have no way of knowing what if any DSP they use.

You keep changing what you are saying. Now you are implying that Tidal pre-applies DSP. Unless you have information or evidence for this, you should stop spreading baseless suspicions.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  Makes sense so for those taking stream into a software package so I would have to agree. This of course does not apply if you use the Tidal app as we have no way of knowing what if any DSP they use.

 
Wait... so what was your point? Earlier you were saying that Tidal adjusts the sound, now you're saying it doesn't apply if you use their app? I'm confused.

 

[cuiter23]

I've sent an e-mail to Tidal regarding this. This doesn't bother me since I don't hear a difference between my CD rips and Tidal but hopefully it will clear up some controversies on here.
 
Let's see if they will get back to me.

 

[bazelio]

 
Remember we're talking digital signals here, not analog. You have an mp3/FLAC/whatever, it's just a sequence of 0's and 1's. The OS shouldn't be imparting any alteration to that, so any changes would happen at the DAC and amplification level, and that's more of a hardware issue than a software issue. AFAIK the only thing an OS can do to the sound is change the bitrate/range that the sound device uses, going from 16/44.1 to 32/192 and what have you, and that's pretty inaudible.

 
Ah, but the quality of the source does indeed matter - although not the OS.  But, for example, a dedicated PCIe card like the JCAT allows you to turn off bus power and make the 1's/0's truly just a data transfer.  It definitely makes an audible difference.  In fact, you can probably even discern audible differences between different cards (e.g. JCAT vs SoTM).