Do I just like most Tidal masters (*not* the quality, but the mastering) better??!?

Hi-

First post, go easy on me please...

I have a set-up I like a great deal. Win10 -> USB -> Schiit Modius -> Emotiva A-100 -> Paradigm Atom v5's / Sennheiser HD-6XX (and a few other rotating cans). But I also listen on Apple AirPod Pros on the go, and from my iPhone and a number of Sonos zones around my house for pure convenience.

My source material is varied. Originally I mostly listened to the EAC secure lossless FLAC rips that I'd made over the years. Then I got tired of buying CD's, so I added a Spotify (family plan, naturally). Finally I got a Tidal subscription.

When I got the Tidal subscription I found myself relistening to all kinds of recordings over and over again, reveling on my desktop setup in how wonderful it was to hear higher quality recordings. Houses of The Holy, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Pogues, Monk Alone, Mingus Ah Um, Kate Royal, the Hebrides Overture (LSO/Gardiner recording), Blue by Joni Mitchell, the new Joni Mitchell archives, Norah Jones, Madeline Peyroux, Karajan's Beethoven's 9th, and on and on. Loving to rediscover music. I'm not really into A/B testing, but for whatever reason (24/96, Masters recordings, placebo) I just found myself loving the music again, much that I listen to all the time, but some I hadn't listened to in forever. So that lasted a couple weeks (and I still love it).

Then I started listening to Tidal on Sonos (which is limited to CD quality streams) and my iPods over cellular (where I keep Tidal limited to Normal). So then I started noticing I liked a lot of songs better on Tidal. More high end sparkle. And then I noticed I preferred Tidal over my CD rips from my NAS on Sonos, and I preferred Tidal Normal (which I think is 96kbps AAC) to Spotify Extreme quality (320 kbps). And I found that insofar as my Play 3:s or Sonos Amp->in-cieling Paradigms/Vienna Acoustics Haydn Grands could resolve, I WAY prefer the sound of Tidal. I'm not formally A/B testing, but I am switching back and forth from the same track and doing my damnedest to volume match. FLAC/Spotify << Tidal no matter how much I punish Tidal rate and give the other source the best advantage I can. Started trying other settings (listening through iPhone speaker, my VW GTI over CarPlay, other crazy stuff). Still holds. Bass texture seems better, high end definition/sparkle even in terrible settings.

So is Tidal just remastering everything in a way that I happen to like? And my old CD rips are from masters that are just not as "fun" or "forward" or something? Is this pure placebo? I even tried the best I could to blind test, by sitting with my back to my system and having my kid switch back and forth from Foobar/Tidal (a bit hinky because they're both in exclusive mode so there's "grabbing control back") and between Spotify and Tidal app on my phone.

Not exactly tearing my hair out, but wondering if there's anything I'm missing besides that I just like their masters better? If so, is it widely known that they are just wholesale remastering everything?

Thanks,
John

 

First,

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/new-members-introduce-yourself

As to your musing about Tidal, it is in all likelyhood a combination of the quality of your rips,your chain, your Tidal app settings (such as volume leveling), and some things I am missing that is to account for differences you are hearing. Tidal is not in-of-itself a "mastering house". MQA, aka "masters" in Tidal, is a complicated discussion but in short there is no night and day difference excepting when the source mastering is different...again, a complicated discussion.

 

Thanks @crenca

i posted my intro, much appreciated for the prompt!

And... I get your point on how Tidal isn’ta mastering house. But are all their MQA master releases remastered (by them or by the studio)? Is there a consistent “sound” to how they are being remastered that I just prefer?

 

No. 99.9% of Tidal MQA is a batch processed re-encoding (into MQA's proprietary and lossy black box) of previously released and non lossy "Hi Res" mastering's you can stream from Qobuz, and purchase from places like 7digital and Bandcamp

Well, many if not most of MQA re-encodings cheat by bumping up volume a db or two. They also are processed with a slow min phase filter when decoded (either by software or hardware), and many with experienced ears are convinced they are using a touch of DSP to give it a bit of a u shape (so a mild boast of bass and treble). There is also reports of some grain and "digititus" with MQA that at first sounds impressive and "Incisive", but in the end is just a coloring and ultimate loss of fidelity.

However given the inconsistency in your chain(s) I suspect you just have happened upon several remastering's (real remastering's done by labels/artists) that like I said are available in real PCM Hi Res elsewhere.