![tidal vs spotify tidal vs spotify](https://www.tunesfun.com/images/spotify-music-converter/tidal-vs-spotify.png)
“We have to train the audience to demand higher quality if we are to expect them to appreciate it.”įor the average consumer, audio quality remains an afterthought. “Looking at a poster of Van Gogh is great, but seeing the art up close is a completely different experience,” he elaborates. Rather than blaming the platform, Campeau suggests that the change needs to start from a consumer level. “The audience has been trained through convenience to seek the easiest option, which for the moment is Spotify.”Ĭampeau acknowledges that improvements to the audio quality of streaming services could be made, however, he believes that it is still acceptable for the majority who aren’t exposed to high fidelity audio. “It would be wonderful if the listener in general were to seek that kind of experience which is included in high-resolution audio.”Ĭampeau’s beliefs echo those of Tétaz – “We live in a culture that demands quick and easy,” he explains. “My intention is to make a sound as beautiful and clear as I can make it,” he says. Melbourne-based musician and producer Brian Campeau is somewhat bothered by the low fidelity. While it will likely be a niche market, Tétaz believes that the audiophile community will prevail.įor many working within the music industry, the quality of platforms like Spotify is underwhelming. While Spotify appeals to the average listener, “within that, there’s always going to be a proportion of people that care about audio quality,” he maintains.
![tidal vs spotify tidal vs spotify](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/akEEnGRi6bj6DMWfhksFnd.jpg)
When asked if he believes whether the hi-res audio business model is still relevant, Tétaz feels confident there will always be a market for it. Tétaz himself, however, is “obsessed” by hi-res audio.
![tidal vs spotify tidal vs spotify](https://return2.net/content/images/size/w1000/2021/01/spotify-vs-tidal-sound-quality_header.png)
“ care more about convenience and price than they do about quality and that is still true today,” affirms Tétaz. This phenomenon is mirrored in the streaming age, where services like Spotify offer an entire smorgasbord of music, albeit in rather low quality. “Even though the quality was horrible, people still downloaded entire libraries of music,” he says. Tétaz cites the success of peer-to-peer platforms like Napster and Limewire in the heyday of the ‘00s as a key example. Instead, Tétaz regards accessibility and ease of use to be the driving factors for music consumption. Does this therefore indicate that high-resolution audio is drifting into obsolescence?Ĭharles Tétaz, Vice President of Asia Sales Marketing at leading audio company Focusrite believes that for the average consumer, quality isn’t part of the equation. Neil Young still continues to rant about low-quality audio, however, his antagonistic approach comes off as “old man yells at cloud” commentary. Young’s attempt to bring hi-res audio to the masses, however, was a notorious commercial failure, discontinued after just two years of production.įast forward to 2020 and Spotify positions itself as the world’s leading streaming service, charioting MP3 files for mass consumption. In 2015, Neil Young sought to ignite a revolution against the MP3 by launching his own hi-res audio player, Pono.
![tidal vs spotify tidal vs spotify](http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03-28-at-18.25.44.png)
Ultra high-resolution audio provided by services like Tidal are significantly more detailed again, reaching 9,216 kbps. That said, Spotify’s labelling of an MP3 as “very high quality” rubbed me up the wrong way.Ĭomparatively, uncompressed CD-quality is almost 29 times higher – sitting at 1,411 kbps. I come from an audio engineering background, but I don’t consider myself an “audiophile” by any means.
#Tidal vs spotify free#
For those using their free plan, the quality is capped drastically lower at 160kbps.
#Tidal vs spotify 320kbps#
I quickly entered the Spotify menu to check the sound settings, and was astounded to find that the “very high quality” that the Premium service boasts is a measly 320kbps MP3 encoded file. For an album that I knew front to back, these differences – though subtle – were enough to pique my interest. By the time I reached the third track, I sensed something was wrong: the instrumentation on the explosive opener “Somewhat Damaged” didn’t sound as intelligible the atmospheric “The Day the World Went Away” lacked a certain airiness the brittle piano on “The Frail” sounded duller. Revisiting the album on Spotify, however, was a different experience. As a teenager, I played this double album to death on my Discman to the point where I can still vividly recall every subtlety that Trent Reznor meticulously laid down. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself listening to an old favourite from my adolescence, Nine Inch Nails’ 1999 opus The Fragile.