Prelude :

There are audio samples at the bottom of this post. I still recommend everyone downloads and tries both platforms for themselves, as my audio ran through my converters and preamps. But, my audio is volume matched so if you are going to do this type of comparison, always volume match.

I love music and always want to play back my favorite songs in the best manner possible, wherever, whenever possible. I believe streaming has been a great option and have adored my Spotify Premium account for a while now. When Tidal arrived I was excited to try the new lossless HiFi flac 1411 option. So, I went to http://www.tidal.com and started a free trial. I was not excited about having to give over my credit card info for a free trial, but I proceeded anyways.

Right off the bat even the basic “High” setting is audibly louder than Spotify. I noticed it clipped my converters, but I didn’t really hear any clipping. But, louder is not better, it’s just, louder…

Either way I don’t like seeing red ever, especially since I have very expensive and rare speakers, so the audio engineer in me simply volume matched Spotify to Tidal by turning Tidal down to where they sound the same (see photograph 1).

To me, they sound identical, and rightfully so. Both premium accounts offer 320kbps playback. If you employ a premium account of either company they will both be $9, once again, rightfully so. Unfortunately at the moment Tidals catalog is smaller compared to Spotify but they offer videos.

But I want the best audio… And, since Tidal offers this 1411 flac, I went full speed ahead and signed up for the free trial of HIFI service. After an hour or so of listening and switching back and forth between services, I decided to develop a test. Throughout my test I decided to ignore the Spotify and Tidal basic (free) accounts. The quality is undeniably better hands down to simply pay for a premium versus free account on either streaming service. Honestly for me the service in scrutiny is the HiFi 1411 flac Tidal option. It’s a whopping $20 a month vs the $9 premium accounts…

I put Tidals volume output back where it initially was and setup a Pro Tools Session at 196khz 24bit. I unplugged my main speakers and plugged the interface output cables into my interface inputs (see the pencil drawing). I set the input level to 30 (just a rough level to get it in without clipping) and recorded my results. I used John Mayers “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”.

Right off the bat you can see how much louder both Tidal files came in. Other than that everything else looks comfortably the same. So Here are my notes on input/output results. I got these results based on 2 very specific moments; The 1st beat (guitar note) and 2nd beat (kick drum hit). The output level is what my meter showed on average in Apogee Maestro, the input level is exactly what the TL Master Meter showed from the recording in protools at those moments. The guitar notes provide a nice soft complex wav form, while the kick drum provides a more aggressive transient character wav form.

The next series of pictures are screenshots of the second beat (kick hit). I then zoomed into its transient and took shots of that. I’m not so sure how conclusive this is going to be, we are at the mercy of my converters here really. At the sample level we are really splitting hairs but I figured someone would appreciate a microscopic-level-look into this.

I volume matched the tracks in protools and have published a short little shootout just to see if anyone can really tell the difference. I do recommend that everyone at least tries both of these streaming services to come up with their own conclusions, but I highly recommend you volume match as I did in the beginning.

The following files are for the blind test.The volume of my recordings are low, but volume was not my goal, consistency, transparency, and quality were my goals. The audio files have been “shuffled” per se. Can you tell which is better, or which is which? Leave a comment in the poll 🙂

http://www.tyfymusic.com/spotifyvstidal/Sample3.wav