I’m sorry but this is just the plain, hard truth about Tidal & Streaming Services

I know that a lot of people have read my articles about MQA, Qobuz, Tidal and streaming in general. You already know that in my opinion, music of any sort sounds worse played back directly from a Mac/ PC, even with a USB DAC in between.

I’ve now had quite a bit of time to listen to both Qobuz & Tidal in detail. In the meantime, I have also listened to an SACD, Blu Ray Audio & DVD Audio. I also went to the trouble of listening to DSD music played back from the Onkyo High-Res player in iOS.

The SACD and the DSD files win hands down in musicality, and “sparkle”. DSD is beautiful, simply beautiful. It took me ~20 years to play that SACD, but it was worth it (Celine Dion).

My Frustration

My frustration (and this is why I wrote this article), is that whether played through the Sonos Wifi or Airplay 1/2, files streamed locally from my old Mac Mini sound significantly, significantly better than Tidal.

Let me say that again. I have listened to a lot of Tidal in the past few days. I have also listened to Qobuz for a few weeks…

Music of any quality (I have…