Hello, everybody, I’ve been thinking to move on from my Spotify subscription to move to Tidal or Deezer. I want to try out HIFI audio, but still get a good and stable experience. Are there any suggestions for which one I should pick? Could you also tell about your experience with those apps, or are there any other you would recommend more?
Unless you have expensive equipment, you will get no quality improvement over 360bit from Spotify. No flagship phone or Bluetooth headphones have high enough quality for various reasons. So without dedicated equipment, they’re not worth paying more than you do for Spotify now.
And even if you have the equipment, whether your ears can discern the difference is debatable. And even if you can discern the difference, whether it’s a noticeable improvement is another matter. And even if is a noticeable improvement, that doesn’t necessarily mean your enjoyment of the music is any higher - sure, you may be able to make out some additional instruments or some nuances you didn’t pick up before, but that doesn’t mean the emotional response that’s invoked in you is any higher. At least in my case, I found that in the end, it didn’t really matter - the enjoyment that I got from listening to lossless audio via audiophile gear wasn’t really much different from the enjoyment I got from HQ streaming music via regular gear. At least, the inconvenience wasn’t really worth the gains.
IMO, music is about emotions and mood. Some of my fondest memories of music can be traced back to crackly radio on a cheap 2-in-1 set and making mixtapes, or catching the FM waves whilst driving and discovering some legit good tracks, many of which are still part of my regular playlists.
even if you have the g, whether your ears can discern the difference is debatable
You can test if you can tell the difference!
IMO everybody who’s considering Tidal or another hifi platform should take this test first. If it turns out you can’t tell the difference at 128kbps then you really shouldn’t bother.
My personal recommendation: FLAC torrents and rebuild a library like the good old days. But I know that’s just me.
Dunno where you stand on all things Apple, but Apple Music is truly stable and has Hi-Fi (lossless). Works on both iOS and Android. Queuing and other specifics might irk you at first - just bear in mind it’s different from Spotify in that it favours albums over playlists and algo-generated content. TIDAL’s fine and the sound quality rumours you’ve heard are all true, but still has a bit of ironing out to do. Deezer used to be great, but now it’s expensive AF. Just export your library through tunemymusic.com or soundiiz.com first and feel free to explore whatever tickles your fancy.
Ditto on Apple Music. Lossless at no extra cost with a much better UX than all except maybe Spotify. Wasn’t a fan of Tidal’s UX compared to Spotify and Apple Music, and Deezer still has this weird hard limit of 2,000 tracks on playlists. For comparison, Spotify has a 10,000 track limit and Apple Music has none (not to be confused with the 100k song library limit).
My main reason for sticking with Apple Music lately was the library management, particularly when syncing local songs. I have some music I got from Bandcamp that is not on streaming at all. On Spotify, you can’t have them alongside your liked songs, while on Apple Music, they’re treated as part of your music library and therefore much more streamlined than Spotify’s.
Spotify is unfortunately on track to completely destroy its UX. They are also horrendously slow at implementing highly requested features. Competition seems to be finally creeping up though.
I’ve been very happy with Tidal. I prefer the UX to the Spotify app but it is lacking some functionality like Spotify Connect. It’s also nice that they pay artists more, and that none of my subscription fees are feeding into a $200 million contract for Joe Rogan.
If you use Google Home/Assistant, Tidal doesn’t integrate well. It does integrate with Alexa.
As far as audio quality, I’m reasonably certain that I’d be unable to discern between the top tiers of any of the current services in a blind A/B test.
I love Tidal for the audio quality and have no plans to go back to Spotify (unless they release a competitive hi-fi service). That said, the Tidal app (UI design, error frequency, AC/AA integration, etc) is not as polished and well-made as something like Spotify, and the lack of unification between playback on different devices was a bit of a letdown at first (I.e., you can play different tracks on different devices at the same time; you can’t use your phone as a remote control for playback on your desktop app).
