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GuitarStruck
42
Jul 5, 2019
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I attended a lecture on high resolution audio by a pioneer in the field, and he basically said that high res audio is a scam. He explained that many ultra-high resolution recordings actually sound worse than CD quality, because they mix in the noise floor which is filtered out of CD quality recordings. His words, not mine.
I've had both Tidal and Spotify. I did a lot of research and couldn't find any evidence that anyone can hear the difference between the Spotify's sound quality and Tidal. In fact, the scientific evidence points to the contrary. I have golden ears and I really care about this question, but when I went back to listen critically, I confirmed it for myself.
The main advantage of Tidal is you can pair it with Roon. (On Android, USB Audio Player Pro plays a similar role.) Depending on your platform, Roon can sometimes squeeze out a bit more fidelity by optimizing system resources for audio playback. I've tried Roon and it does seem to produce a just noticeable difference on my Mac. But it has nothing to do with the bitrate.
Long story short, I gave up Tidal and kept Spotify Premium because of its larger selection and lower price. I haven't regretted my decision.
(Edited)
Royaume
21
Jul 11, 2019
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GuitarStruckDude, something is wrong here. With 200 bucks of gear the difference between YT quality and FLAC becomes painfully clear. Seems like your chain is snapped somewhere.
GuitarStruck
42
Jul 11, 2019
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RoyaumeWhen I upgrade my DAC I'll do another comparison test.
Royaume
21
Jul 11, 2019
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GuitarStruckHahaha. Fair enough. I didnt mean to be a prick, I dont trust anyone elses word either, but with my AKG553 from an LG G6 quad DAC i can certainly tell the difference confidently 10s into any song.
I also have a HiFimeDIY dac/amp. Same deal.
The phone and small dac/amp are roughly equivalent to a Dragonfly black or red.
Stepping up to the HD800(hardwired) from the MCTH from the G6, Damn. Its so obvious. As my ears become more accustomed to my new rig going back to YT gets less and less enjoyable. The whole frequency spectrum is affected. It surprised me but I now know what quality bass is. Bass can have resolution! You have to hear it to understand.
Best of luck with the new DAC. I need to upgrade too hahaha. Its by far the weakest link in my chain too.
(Edited)
GuitarStruck
42
Jul 22, 2019
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RoyaumeOk, I promised you a comparison test of high-res audio so here it is.
To test high resolution audio, I upgraded my system to a Chord 2Qute DAC with Monolith Liquid Spark headphone amp and Ohno Audience interconnects. The DAC, headphone amp and interconnects have all received critical acclaim by professional reviewers and audiophiles, and in particular the DAC is about the closest you can get to reference quality on a budget. It's neck-and-neck with the Schiit Gungnir Multibit. I'm using an audiophile grade USB cable by Audioquest, and have kept my Audioquest Jitterbug USB decrapifier in the system. I listened on Sennheiser HD6XX headphones which had been broken in for over 100 hours.
Results:
- Tidal CD quality ("HIFI" quality) sounds better than Spotify. This is expected, since CD quality has proven audible benefits over lower resolutions.
- Moving on to high resolution, outputting a digital stream from the Tidal app on my Samsung Galaxy S10+ phone, the 192 kHz MQA tracks sound significantly worse than well-recorded CD quality tracks. They sound tonally and harmonically thinner, less dynamic and less musical, with less detail. These are the classic symptoms of excessive upsampling. In addition, I often hear shouty ringing on piano treble keys and female soprano voice. Across the board I sometimes hear low-level distortion.
- On the digital stream from the Tidal app on my Macbook, MQA tracks output at 92 kHz. These don't sound as flattened as the 192 kHz tracks played from my S10+, but overall they sound a bit worse than CD quality.
- For example on the MQA version of Michael Bublé’s My Funny Valentine on the “love” album, the track sounds clear and his voice pops into holographic 3D at 92 kHz. But the track sounded richer and clearer on CD quality, and I could hear Bublé’s voice much more distinctly.
- Since the 2Qute DAC doesn’t decode MQA and relies on the Tidal app to unpack the signal, I tried replacing the 2Qute with my Dragonfly Red, which is able to decode MQA. I output the DAC signal from the Dragonfly to the Liquid Spark headphone amplifier. The result: MQA tracks sounded acoustically passable but not exceptional, and the timing and dynamics were wonky.
(Edited)
Royaume
21
Jul 22, 2019
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GuitarStruckVery interesting! Thank you for your impressions. Please feel free to update if your ideas develop.
Personally I have never touched DSD. I do hear discernible improvement with higher resolutions with my rig. As for MQA, I only heard it once on a vastly superior rig (DCS Rossini > SPL Phonitor). Needless to say it was superlative. I believe much of it has to do with the ability of the DAC to make use of a higher bandwidth description of the analogue signal. With USB for example, a more volatile usb mode is necessary to communicate more bits, and as a result errors are much more common.
I didn't set out to write all that, but since you are taking this so seriously I thought you might be interested.
GuitarStruck
42
Jul 30, 2019
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RoyaumeSince the Liquid Spark amp seemed like a weak link in my system, I upgraded it to a Graham Slee Solo Ultra Linear, which is near-reference quality. My system is now Tidal app on Galaxy S10+ --> Audioquest Jitterbug USB decrapifier --> Audioquest Carbon USB cable --> Chord 2Qute DAC --> Cardas Quadlink 5C interconnects --> Graham Slee Solo Ultra Linear headphone amp --> Sennheiser HD6XX.
The upgrade to the amp fixed the problem with MQA where it was sounding worse than CD quality. MQA at 192 kHz decoded from the Tidal app now sounds excellent on good recordings. I can no longer distinguish MQA from CD quality, but that goes in both directions. Meaning I don't hear any clear improvement of MQA over CD quality.
On DSD high-res test tracks I can't reliably hear any difference from the identical track in CD quality. There might be some microscopic differences but they're not better or worse overall. If anything the soundstage collapses at DSD256, but that might be a limitation of my DAC.
(Edited)
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