[bruno2009]

... decided to give up on streaming. Went from A/V Receiver to MacBook with Audirvana to an Auralic Aries Femto and a Tidal HiFi Abo (through McIntosh C52 DAC)… while I could clearly tell the higher quality each step brought it never came even close to my analog playback and it is still far from the quality my CD-Transport brings… now I have heard numerous explanations for this - the most reasonable being that Tidal uses different masters (which would also explain why the gap in SQ differs from album to album - few actually came close).

Final verdict - too little to live with, too much to die for. Yes - it sounds better than Apple and it certainly is better than expected - but still a long way from being good enough for a decent nights listening session. Thus it will always be an interesting extra which is useful for mobile use (iPhone/car/vacation) and for listening into/getting to know new stuff. But for this a simple Apple Music Abo will do the job just fine. When the music is good enough to own - just buy it on physical media add it to a decent physical music collection and play the music in adequate quality.

No need to spend thousands on streaming devices and 20€/Month on streaming service... just imagine how much great music can be bought for this…