[AutumnCrown]

I've been comparing various digital services. I know that Itunes is in aac and Amazon mp3 is, well, mp3. 

Even Tidal's lowest option seems to me to have a warmer, more neutral sound and better instrument separation, and sounds more like a FLAC file than the much higher bit rates itunes and Amazon mp3. Why is there such an easily audible difference between these formats in Tidal's favor?
 
It's not inherent to aac because Itunes doesn't have it.

 

[pixelwitch]

It seems highly improbable that the superiority you're suggesting is the case. 96kbps with any codec (even HE-AAC or Opus) is not going to be transparent for a good proportion of cases, whereas AAC (especially Apple AAC) at 256kbps and MP3 at 320kbps are proven to be (with the exception of a few killer samples here and there, which are exceedingly rare, and even still audible to very few). What this means is your tidal streams are objectively less like FLAC files than the alternatives.
 
Perhaps you could attempt capturing these streams with the same track (with less than 30 seconds to prevent potential copyright violation) and judging your preference blindly? Having a friend play them for you without you looking  is also a good approach, if possible. If the results are randomly distributed (i.e. there is no clear preference between sources) then this preference is not likely to be due to the sound itself, if you blatantly prefer your tidal streams then it means one of two things:
 
1) You prefer the presence of these artifacts
 
Which is perfectly possible, you may have grown up listening to 128kbps mp3s generated with immature encoders and become accustomed to them.
 
2) Tidal have access to different and superior masters
 
This would be apparent even with low bitrate lossy encoding, given the efficiency of modern codecs and 96 kbps not actually being *that* low for stereo audio. But then this would be unlikely given how huge their library is and the cost of remastering. Even if the source material is superior in that it has been attenuated as not to clip when encoded lossily, Apple's mastered for iTunes spec requires this, and issues tools for its prediction.

 

[dmbr]

Better masters?

 

[AutumnCrown]

I'd be interested in other's experiences of the Tidal sound signature vs. other digital audio.

 

[JoshMo]

I agree with @pixelwitch, I dont think any of these have a "sound signature". They are all delivering the same music at different bit rates. As far as I can tell the same song streaming from different sources sounds the same. Now resolution is a different story...