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Having had a Spotify Premium account for many years now and never been entirely happy that I was getting the most out of the speakers in my listening room I took advantage of the Tidal subscription offer and did a month’s trial of their HiFi subscription over Christmas. My initial findings are below and I’d be very interested if anyone else has carried out a similar exercise.

Executive Summary:

To save you reading all of the below, my conclusions and findings are as follows:

  • Tidal HiFi > FLAC >> Spotify Premium but only on high-end set ups.
  • Arcam’s 15 year old DACs are noticeably better than the DAC in Sonos’ Port
  • Tidal & Sonos is unstable for large (greater than 3 Zone set ups)

As a result of point three above, and the fact that it only offered an advantage in 1/8th of my set up I shall not be renewing my Tidal subscription as it does not offer (me) sufficient value for money.

System:

8 Sonos Zones on S2 consisting of: Play:1, 2x One SL (paired), One (2nd Gen), Play:3, Five, Move, Amp, Port with a Boost connected to my router and NAS box.

Listening Room uses the Port connected via both digital & Line Out to an Arcam AVR 350. Speakers are Quad 22L fronts, (plus rears, centre although these weren’t used for the tests) and a sub. The Arcam was either using PCM decoding or Stereo with no other filters / effects applied.

NAS box has all my CDs ripped as FLACs

Observations & Findings:

Tidal HiFi vs Spotify vs FLAC:

In my listening room I made a playlist consisting of some of my usual listening tracks (Massive Attack - Mezzannine, Annie Lennox’s In the Bleak Midwinter, Coldplay - Clocks (and others), Sigur Ros - Hoppipolla, various opera tracks), each one being added 3 times, once from Spotify, once from Tidal and once as FLAC from the NAS box.

My wife and I listened extensively to each track in turn (i.e. 3 times) but the source was randomised each time. She was definitely listening to the tracks “blind” as I was switching between the tracks on my phone where she couldn’t see where the source was, and I did my best to avoid looking.

We independently came to the same conclusion, which was that Tidal offered the best listening experience, closely followed by FLAC, then Spotify. That Spotify came last was not a great surprise, but I didn’t expect to detect a difference between FLAC and Tidal HiFi. There wasn’t much, and some tracks FLAC was preferred, but overall Tidal HiFi was the better option and there was a definite improvement over Spotify’s native bitrate.

However this was not as apparent (if at all) in the other zones, which backs up other’s findings (here) and shows that you need non-Sonos products to get a benefit from Tidal’s HiFi bitrates

Digital vs Line Out on Port:

I then tested, using Tidal HiFi, to see if I could tell the difference between the Digital and line out by listening to the same song and switching between sources on the Arcam.

Again there was a clear winner: Digital.

Tidal Stability:

Sadly, this was particularly disappointing. When playing to just a single zone (Listening Room) it streamed fine with no drop-outs, but when other rooms were linked there were incredibly annoying dropouts, particularly at the start of a track. This perhaps mirrors other’s experiences (here) although I never recall seeing a message. Could this be a bandwidth issue? I’ve not got to the bottom of it, yet.

Hi.  On the last point.  As I type I have Tidal HiFi playing on five zones without problems, and regularly do the same with FLAC files from my NAS and from Amazon HD.  (I only have Tidal HiFi for a month’s trial to hear what Dolby Atmos music sounded like through my Arc HT system).

So I think your problem is local.  Do you use SonosNet mode?

So I think your problem is local.  Do you use SonosNet mode?

Thanks John,

I suspect you’re right about it being a local problem, but having had a bit of a play around with the Sonos WiFi channels and not seen any noticeable difference, nor with a reboot of the various bits, I’m a little at a loss as to where to go next to solve the problem.

All zones are connected wirelessly, with the Boost and NAS box wired directly to the Sky supplied router.

The best thing might be to submit a system diagnostic after you have had problems, and post the confirmation number back here or call Sonos with it.  Alternatively you can view the network matrix by getting the IP address of a player (not the Boost) and typing the following into a browser, substituting the player IP:

http://ipaddress:1400/support/review.

Then click the Network Matrix link.

If you want to post a screenshot then we can take a look.

Thanks John,

Here’s a screenshot of the Network Matrix:

Is it sufficiently legible?

Joel

Hi. it’s perfectly legible and there isn’t really anything to cause great alarm.  There is some wireless interference affecting the Boost.  Is the Boost very close to the router?  You should keep it at least 3 feet away if practically possible.

You say the Boost is wired directly to the Sky router - there is no switch involved?

I know you have been trying different options for the SonosNet channel, but for this matrix what is it set to?  And which channel is your router using for the 2.4GHz band?  Is the channel width set to 20MHz?

 

Boost and router are both wired into a switch (forgive me) which are both in a pile of cables under the stairs. Not on top of each other but probably not 3’ away either.

Wireless network currently set to Channel 6, Sonos to 1.

(Co)incidentally, we’ve had problems when the Move when our WiFi range extender is switched on, with a message about networks (can’t remember the wording, sorry) such that we’ve had to turn the extender off to use the Move as part of our SonosNetwork

In a pile of cables under the stairs isn't an ideal location. 

As an experiment, I think you might try bringing the Boost out into the open. If Sonos' performance improves then you can decide whether you need to find a more permanent solution. 

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