solepatch wrote in post #17388340
Alright so I've been switching back and forth between Tidal HI-FI and Spotify whenever I've been on the computer this weekend. If you're an audiophile and have a good pream and set of speakers or headphones(I have used both with my M-Audio BX-8a monitors and Sennheiser 404 HD headphones) there is a perceptible difference in the audio quality. The music does tend to sound a little fuller and a little warmer, I believe most people will probably notice that there is generally more bass, but my roomate didn't hear any difference in the highs although I could. It isn't a huge difference however and for some songs I didn't really hear any difference at all. I also tried listening on my roomates laptop speakers, and the earbuds I use with my phone for running. I couldn't hear a difference at all, so if you don't have access to pretty good hardware I would save your money and go with Spotify.
I tend to prefer the Spotify interface for both the PC and Android versions over Tidal's. It's mostly just an aesthetic thing but functionally the biggest advantage is that it shows the songs on each album together so that you don't have to go to each album's page to see the songs from that album. I also feel like the search function on Spotify works a bit better, it is usually able to predict what it is that I'm looking for before I get the entire title or artist name typed out. I did not find this to be the case with Tidal. I have not really tried out the discovery options on Tidal but Spotify gives you a much larger list of similar artist than Tidal does.
Spotify has a slightly better selection, for big name artist both platforms have pretty much the same stuff on offer and the big omissions from Spotify seem to be consistently missing from Tidal as well. Where spotify eeks ahead here are with artist that aren't as well known, I noticed this when going through last months BIRP.fm playlist(which anyone that is into indie artist should check out) and adding the songs I like to my playlist and Spotify had noticeably more of them. Spotify also includes singles and where the artist appears on compilation albums in their discography as well which is nice.
I would love to see a social feature like what Spotify offers in Tidal, I have a lot of friends who I agree with musically and being able to see what they are listening to is amazing. I would also love to see the listen and find feature from Tidal implemented in spotify, this is similar to Shazaam where the app can listen to a song and find it in the library. Otherwise they seem to be pretty even feature wist. A feature that I am very happy to see from Spotify is the ability to download anything you want for playback when you don't have a data/internet connection. I use this daily for my commute to and from work.
The price difference is pretty massive though, with Tidal twice as expensive as Spotify I don't think I will be making the switch. For most people I think spotify is probably the way to go just because I doubt most people have the hardware needed to hear the difference, its cheaper, a little more polished, offers a slightly larger library, and if you're going to use it with mobile you will probably be turning the bit rate down so that you don't have to sell your soul to your wireless provider. It is very cool though that the option is out there, and I hope that Spotify sees this and gets motivated to offer FLAC themselves at least for offline playback.
Alright so I've been switching back and forth between Tidal HI-FI and Spotify whenever I've been on the computer this weekend. If you're an audiophile and have a good pream and set of speakers or headphones(I have used both with my M-Audio BX-8a monitors and Sennheiser 404 HD headphones) there is a perceptible difference in the audio quality. The music does tend to sound a little fuller and a little warmer, I believe most people will probably notice that there is generally more bass, but my roomate didn't hear any difference in the highs although I could. It isn't a huge difference however and for some songs I didn't really hear any difference at all. I also tried listening on my roomates laptop speakers, and the earbuds I use with my phone for running. I couldn't hear a difference at all, so if you don't have access to pretty good hardware I would save your money and go with Spotify.
I tend to prefer the Spotify interface for both the PC and Android versions over Tidal's. It's mostly just an aesthetic thing but functionally the biggest advantage is that it shows the songs on each album together so that you don't have to go to each album's page to see the songs from that album. I also feel like the search function on Spotify works a bit better, it is usually able to predict what it is that I'm looking for before I get the entire title or artist name typed out. I did not find this to be the case with Tidal. I have not really tried out the discovery options on Tidal but Spotify gives you a much larger list of similar artist than Tidal does.
Spotify has a slightly better selection, for big name artist both platforms have pretty much the same stuff on offer and the big omissions from Spotify seem to be consistently missing from Tidal as well. Where spotify eeks ahead here are with artist that aren't as well known, I noticed this when going through last months BIRP.fm playlist(which anyone that is into indie artist should check out) and adding the songs I like to my playlist and Spotify had noticeably more of them. Spotify also includes singles and where the artist appears on compilation albums in their discography as well which is nice.
I would love to see a social feature like what Spotify offers in Tidal, I have a lot of friends who I agree with musically and being able to see what they are listening to is amazing. I would also love to see the listen and find feature from Tidal implemented in spotify, this is similar to Shazaam where the app can listen to a song and find it in the library. Otherwise they seem to be pretty even feature wist. A feature that I am very happy to see from Spotify is the ability to download anything you want for playback when you don't have a data/internet connection. I use this daily for my commute to and from work.
The price difference is pretty massive though, with Tidal twice as expensive as Spotify I don't think I will be making the switch. For most people I think spotify is probably the way to go just because I doubt most people have the hardware needed to hear the difference, its cheaper, a little more polished, offers a slightly larger library, and if you're going to use it with mobile you will probably be turning the bit rate down so that you don't have to sell your soul to your wireless provider. It is very cool though that the option is out there, and I hope that Spotify sees this and gets motivated to offer FLAC themselves at least for offline playback.
thanks for the thorough review and your opinion, i just found Tidal and can really notice a sound quality difference, i don't use it on my phone but use my USB out to a DAC on 3 separate systems , each one better and of upgraded quality and studio monitor speakers so i get the full dynamic range Tidal offers, having said that $20/month while not a lot of money seems like a lot when i can listen to most of these songs on my own library, still deciding what to do 
