Popular Post merge03 Posted December 19, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted December 19, 2019 Spent some time last night comparing three tracks on Tidal and Qobuz with music that I own in CD and HiRez formats. I was very surprised by how far the Tidal tracks differed from what is on our hard drive. The Qobuz tracks were essentially indistinguishable from the purchased tracks on the hard drive (in both CD and HiRez). Since the source streamer is an Aurender N10, I expected them all to sound the same. The Aurender caches the data on a SSD prior to playback. The Tidal tracks seemed to be juiced, they were louder and seemed to be boosted in the low end. Maybe even a little congested. Since the player software and hardware involved in both cases is the same I wouldn't expect settings to come into play (or at least be the same for all three). I ended up spending more time trying to hear any differences between Hard Disk and Qobuz. Without spending more time at it, I didn't hear much of any difference between those two (Qobuz vs Hard disk). The three tracks used were Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" (Atlantic 50 years version), Ella Fitzgerald - The Lady is a Tramp (Rodgers & Hart Songbook version), Steely Dan "Hey Nineteen" from Gaucho. It's funny how Tidal was so different, in all cases and all resolutions (CD 44.1 included). I was careful to select the same version of the three album choices. That was 6 tracks total, CD/HiRez, CD/MQA, CD/HiRez (well 5 tracks in truth as Qobuz doesn't have a CD quality version of Gaucho, only two 24/96 versions 1983 and 1993). Of course I expected some weirdness with Tidal's MQA tracks. But the three MQA tracks were 48KHz, and I think that first unfold is in Aurender's software. Either way, the Tidal CD def tracks were so far off, and all in the same manner. All the Tidal tracks had the same sonic signature to them. The Berkeley DAC isn't MQA, so I had to really base the comparison on the CD quality tracks across all three and then compare Qobuz against my HiRez on disk. Where I found Qobuz to be almost (if not entirely) indistinguishable from hard disk playback. Hope others find this helpful. Aurender N-10, Berkeley DAC, Analog pre-amp, full Class A monoblock amps and Dunlavy speakers. The Front end uses regenerated AC from a PS Audio P-10, while the amps are each on their own home run. Jud and Mihnea 2 Link to comment
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