Signed up today for free 30 day Tidal trial.

Using 2 hdmi cables; one for my Sony S6500 Bluray player and other my Dell laptop both into my Emotiva UMC-200 Preamp.

Synched up Remastered U2 "Joshua Tree" on both and performed A vs B testing throughout this epic album.

Neither my wife or I could tell difference; the CD plays at 44.1k and Tidal at 48k as advertised. I admit, I am shocked over the quality of the streaming...

Did you do any special add-on when you did the streaming or you just went from your phone to your AVR Bluetooth stream, I'm thinking of doing a 30 day trial myself just want to know how to make sound quality better or just tidal on the phone straight to Bluetooth receiver. Sorry if my question sounds confusing.

Did not use my smart phone; logged into Tidal via my Dell laptop & connected the laptop to preamp using hdmi cable; worked like a charm. If you feed from ur phone using Bluetooth into your AVR it will compress the audio signal & defeat the purpose; hope this helps!

Is Tidal 16/48kHz or 48kbps?
I see no reason a streaming service would up the bandwidth requirements to the former from the original at 16/44.1kHz.

I don't even pretend to know about digital storage and streaming but WIKI says the TIDAL bit rate is FLAC-based 16-Bit/44.1 kHz, that's the same as a CD, right? If the rate is 48khz doesn't that require an interpretation of the data?

RBCD standard is 16/44.1 but FLAC is lossless compression meaning that it unpacks exactly the same as the original CD stream but will use somewhere around half the actual file size being transferred from Tidal to reduce bandwidth requrements.

Yes, and there is no advantage sonically and it increases the bandwidth requirements so no reason to do it.

Highly recommend the Chromecast Audio for streaming Tidal to your receiver. Connect it with optical audio then you can control the Tidal stream from your tablet or phone.

Works beautifully, feels like the future has arrived.

All I can say my Preamp stated it was 48k Hz; I don't know the technical terms, but in A/B testing Tidal matched quality of my remastered Joshua Tree CD, we had the songs synched and just flipped HDMI inputs every 10-15 seconds to compare once we balanced the volume of each output.

Also, hope Spotify as rumored matches this lossless quality. Many of us including me have Spotify built into their AVR. My primary A2050 has it

How is the sound quality I might try that myself

If you use Chomecast, how did you select artist, album or songs? On my laptop it's easy sorting through the music of course.

But I'd like to use Chomecast also if it's user friendly.. thanks

Means your dell is re-sampling the audio...

Raise the volume a bit higher and you might notice one sounds boomier and crispier than the other...

+1 for the laptop doing something strange. I've streamed to my receiver via various apps over the years and have not yet seen anything over 44.1. Well, except for the time I streamed labeled MQA albums, but that was a laptop->DAC->headphone thing.

Thx guys; perhaps I'll buy Chromecast and not use my laptop. Was only day 1 of experimenting. But regardless, to my ears there was zippo difference sampling at 44.1k and 48k Hz; must be very difficult to hear except for a Professional

Through your phone I think.

Why would you be shocked?

The data rate of a 48-kHz audio track is only <2 Mbps.

By comparison, the data rate of a 1080p60 video track is <2.8 Gbps, and the data rate of a 2160p video track is <12 Gbps.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompressed_video

http://www.ericsson.com/spotlight/me...hdtv-ericsson/

Only shocked because Pandora & Sirius/XM pale in comparison to sound quality. It's why I signed up for 30 day trial for Tidal; wanted to ensure it truly streams at CD quality

MQA is the future and it is coming fast IMO. Major media companies are adopting it quickly.

My advice to anyone is to get an MQA-enabled device.

I will bet that in two years, anything without MQA will be regarded as obsolete.

FYI... If you sign up and pre-pay the first 6 months the price drops to $16.99 a month for the HiFi service.

And that's for 1 account/device only correct not more than one device

I've been using it for a while now.
The Bluesound Node I use makes it easy and also does the MQA unfold via it's built in DAC if you use the analog output.

I believe the DragonFly (Red or Black) USB DAC will do this as well if you want to keep using with your laptop.

Enjoy

P.S. The 48k is probably the internal DAC to your laptop doing something to the output.

Totally lost; what is MQA?

Audio purists will shoot me for this... but I don't care...

It is what you hear that matters not what anyone else expects it to be...

The fact that the audio is being re-sampled doesn't automatically imply that the output audio will be bad... but audio purists and perfectionists just like to make a big deal of nothing... which in my opinion is scare mongering at best.

If you don't hear any difference, just keep what you have and enjoy yourself...

There are many out there who change audio equipment all the time, not because they don't like what they hear, but because they want to make it better... I've been there as well and I can tell you it's worse than a dog chasing its tail...

Suggest you search but here's one example I found.

http://www.whathifi.com/advice/mqa-a...can-you-get-it

Apple Music from my Apple TV via HDMI works for me quite well, and it's not lossless. It sounds the same as most CD copies. Keep in mind that digital copy on streaming might not be the same recording as the CD.

Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) is an audio codec using lossy compression and a form of file fingerprinting, intended for high fidelity digital audio internet streaming and file download.

That is one thing that is keeping me away from streaming. I want an unmolested original source. Not all titles are available in that format I understand.

Let me be clear, IME no source has a monopoly on the best sound. A CD has the best opportunity but it isn't always taken advantage of. I value my CD player, and turntable, but the convenience of Apple Music along with its near indistinguishable performance gives it far more play time.

Wikipedia quote...

Nothing wrong with that. I was expressing my reason for not streaming.

I don't stream either... but this is not for audio quality concerns but more for the fact that taking into account how much would have been paid for streaming subscription and at the end of 2 years (for example) you end up not owning anything.
Plus the streaming service won't have 100% what I like to listen to...

I have a library of +35K FLAC files, a collection of more than 2K vinyl and +/- 600 CDs. I don't have to pay a cent to listen to whatever I want in the foreseeable future.
In my opinion, I would rather spend $17 on 2 new CDs each month, or better still 3 or 4 second hand CDs.