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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Actually this is a good deal. Curation on tidal is good, meaning they have cool playlists handpicked by people. In the past when I used it it was with questionable MQA encoding, which had a lot of controversy. But 24/192khz flac, If you care about audio quality is a better offer than Qobuz.
Can't go wrong for the price. But I think the main driver should be audio quality. Because FLAC files (esp 24/192khz) can be very data hungry, for those who use it mobile only. So you need to be careful with that. You can use lower sample rates and higher bitrate mp3 as well if my memory serves well. But that defeats a bit the purpose of what Tidal stands for
But 24-bit audio is useless for playback. The difference is literally inaudible. In fact, the application of dynamic range compression during the mixing/mastering process has a far greater impact on perceptible audio quality than sample rate or bitrate does (the placebo effect notwithstanding).
If you care about audio quality, seek out album masters and music that is well-recorded and not dynamically crushed to oblivion. The bitrate isn't really all that important, in the greater scheme of things.
I partially agree with you. Yes mixing and mastering is far more important than bitrate. However if I let my gf listen to a identical song both in normal 16/44khz and 24 bit version, she can hear difference. Now is it night and day ? Not always, but subtle Improvement can matter when enjoying music.
Literally the only difference between 16 bit and 24 bit is that the latter has a lower noise floor, which is really only useful for sound production - It doesn't translate to any increase in meaningful detail or dynamic range when dealing with playback.
16-bit was chosen as the defacto standard for CDs and digital music precisely because it contains more than enough dynamic range for human hearing.
Any difference your gf hears is due to the placebo effect rather than any inherent difference in the actual audio.