Make sure to cancel after you sign up. Enjoy.
A$23.99 per month if you wish to continue after free trial.
Free 90 Days Trial of Tidal HiFi Plus (New Accounts Only, Payment Method Required) @ Tidal
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JAF on 09/05/2021 - 20:19 offer.tidal.com (2351 clicks)
Last edited 09/05/2021 - 20:54 by 1 other user
Last edited 09/05/2021 - 20:54 by 1 other user
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With the news that Apple Music is looking to also stream lossless audio, that would be a big blow to Tidal
Not if a lot of people don't use apple.
The sound quality is brilliant, been using for ages, usually cast to a Chromecast audio (not gapless which is my only niggle), but the desktop app is great with MQA as I have an iFi Zen Dac which can decide it for the ultimate sq (up to 9216kbps /88,000 kHz) It's an easy choice since Google Play music was retired and YouTube music is pretty sucky.
I took advantage of the previous 6 month trial for the US Tidal. Suggest getting a family plan which shouldn't be any extra during the trial
Those living in Argentina can sign up for a Tidal hifi family plan for very cheap, $2.80/month ;)
Ah yes, 88000khz, providing audible Nyquist frequencies up to… 44000khz. Given our hearing range massively tapers off past 20000khz (and keep in mind some older people can't even hear up to 20000khz), you'd have to be a literal dog to care about "ULTIMATE SQ".
Also the ifi Zen Dac measures… Quite poorly (89dB SINAD due to high harmonic distortion). If you're going to shill Tidal Masters for its apparent "extra detail", despite the evidence that Tidal Masters and MQA literally do nothing, you'd probably want to at least have a clean audio chain.
At least the device recognises the frequency and just mentioned that as it displays it in the container.
What DAC would you suggest then? This is great for the desktop setup for a sub $200 device. I've had a DAC magic but is in the other room with the CCA connected via optical. Not here to argue, the sky is the limit with audio gear but it's about having a setup that is the best bang for buck up to a budget. Agree the entire chain has to be as good as you can afford, but the headphones is probably where people should be spending the money first.
@G-rig: Go on AliExpress and grab a Tempotec Sonata HD Pro. For $50 you get 110DB SINAD and a very low THD to boot, very low jitter, decent headphone output power, and it's a literal dongle as well.
Pair that $50 dongle (if you need to) with a Magni Heresy or a Topping L30 and you're good to go.
Not that you'd need to, because while measurability is nice whether or not you can hear the difference (or care enough about the difference you hear) is a whole different story.
I have a quite pricey chain (Modius + Magni Heresy + DT1990) and I can hear a bit beyond 20000khz, but I'd be lying if I said it sounded "night and day" different from my phone's headphone jack. It's also audibly indistinguishable from my dongle, even if I test it blind.
@notmaroun: Will check out that gear on Ali expess, no doubt there is a good follow-up for a lot of this and diy stuff from the audio community. As long as the whole package is decent quality in real life as well as on paper specs. Some stuff just works well and to me this combo of mine sounds excellent.
Assume these dongles are aimed for use with laptops then? Probably not worth selling the Zen Dac but wouldn't mind comparing, would mind MQA ability still. Those mdac were pretty good DACs, new models are a bit too expensive. I've heard topping recommended on forums, as well as the mass drop thx brand stuff.
I'm pretty sure you'd hear the difference between the headphone Jack From your phone vs a DAC and headphone amp, over a slightly better DAC and headphone amp. This matrix m stage from 2012 packs a good punch for the price for harder to drive headphones, may be cleaner sounding amps but where do you stop.
@G-rig: Ah just had a look, don't use cabled headphones with my phone anymore, also pretty cumbersome since they did away with the 3.5mm headphone jack. Looks like a handy device, I used to have a cordra 2 move 9v USB DAC/amp, still handy to bypass work PC sound cards etc (and even had an iPod with Line out doc and Rock box back in the day). All a bit much effort for portable, guess the tempo tech would be handy enough to plug in at work and leave in the drawer. Have some wired yuin pk1 I still use in the office so may look at getting one.
Noticed those amps both only got analogue in, the Zen Dac and most others have Digital/USB and go analogue out to the headphone amp/monitors etc (have balanced XLR out from my dacmagic to monitors).
ps. I meant 96000kHz not 88.
@notmaroun: All that aliexpress gear is probably good on paper, I know my setup works and sounds super clean .. the amp alone is better than those 50$ ones. thick RCAs all the rest of it the iFi is a great preamp.
@G-rig: It's not just good on paper. It's been independently measured to be cleaner than your Zen DAC.
In general though headphones amps do not have a DAC built in. The Topping L30 and Magni Heresy can furthermore be used as a preamp with RCA out, so I don't know what you're on about there.
XLR is useful if you're facing ground loop/electrical interference, but if you're not than it's not going to be audibly beneficial. If you really need balanced you can get the Hidizs S9 and a cheap cable. Still measurable better than the Zen Dac. "Thick" RCA cables don't benefit your sound in any way you can hear, and it's often the case that they're internally the exact same wire gauge as a cheaper one you can just get on eBay.
If you really want optical input + a slightly more versatile DAC, then get the SMSL Sanskrit 10th MK II. Chunky name, but again still cheaper and measurably superior to the Zen Dac.
@notmaroun: That's cool. reckon you could hear the difference if you think the phones output stage is good? I had the directional thick rca left over from CD player days, doesn't hurt to use it once you've passed the digital phase. WRT the XLR's they are used in my monitor setup and work well ;)
I'm sure they're both very good setups mate, would like to try that usb one day and may order for the office environment.
All good saying that but I already have a zen dac and DACmagic so not selling for a loss to buy something that may or may not be better.
@G-rig: No no not trying to convince you, but just putting forward my perspective that the audio world is a lot more smoke and mirrors than people expect.
I can't find the damn source but I remember reading a study somewhere on Audio Engineering Society that audiophiles actually performed the worst in listening tests when compared to actual "trained listeners" and the average Joe. I'm inclined to believe this, as I've seen so much confirmation bias laden responses from "audio reviewers" and forum-goes.
The point is that in your lifetime you absolutely would never need to upgrade from your Zen Dac + DAC Magic. Even though they measure much worse when compared to the DACs and Amps of today, the actual difference is so minimal (and whether or not the difference is positive is a point of contention!) that it's not worth bothering about.
@notmaroun: Yeah mate, i think we both know good sound and have nice equipment. There is always better, so i'm happy for now with so much, as the percentage upgrade is diminishing as you alluded to. The best thing in the common are these 1990 Pros :)
Doesn't hurt to have a nice source file, where this all started ha. Not arguing, both love music and aficionados
Apple Music going lossless has been in the rumour mill for as long as I remember.
Even without their HiRes catalog, Tidal is the only provider that offers lossless streaming and I've been a happy customer for pretty much as long as Tidal offered their services in Australia.
Im pretty sure both Deezer and Qobuz now offer lossless streaming in Australia as well.
Oh nice! I need to check out Qobuz then. Last time I tried, it was EU-only.
Wouldn't be as cheap though? $24 for a single hifi is a bit hard to stomach but cheap af with trials and VPNs
any idea on the expiry date of the offer?
I'm only 2 months into my free 6 month trial of Tidal HiFi from this deal: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/601180
If you have a receiver that supports the lossless formats or a chromecast audio connected via optical then sound quality is amazing.Chromecast audio cannot decode Tidal MQA, so you “only” get Hi-Fi quality, which is still good due to lossless compression.
I think Tidal Masters sounds great, have you listened to it. You can hear a lot of extra detail that was intended in the studio recording mastering.
40 min vid.. sounds like he's not happy with it but people will complain about everything and audiophiles are extremely anal. I don't notice any distortion (dt1990 pros)
@G-rig: It's objectively worse than FLAC, which is virtually indistinguishable from LAME/OPUS/AAC in a double blind test in all but the most extreme of circumstances (and even then you require a very trained listener looping half a second of music over and over).
MQA is snake oil that makes shit worse. Tidal doesn't even stream FLAC on its "masters" anyway.
Just use Qobuz/Deezer, or stick with Spotify/Youtube Music for a larger library.
@notmaroun: Oh right, have you listened to it yourself?
I like it, and happy with hi-fi for 'cd quality' anyway. It is good the extra sounds/details but it's all subject to the artist's recording/producing anyway, which varies wildly.I've got a whole library of ripped and tagged FLAC albums with replaygain from back in the day, still use Foobar for these on the PC. Shame Foobar hasn't stayed up with the game for casting or being able to play these easily on my other speaker setup.
Youtube music sound quality is rubbish in comparison, but good for some things/channels I listen to. There isn't even a cast button from PC browser/desktop app, only when playing from phone. Google Play music was a lot better and even supported gapless casting. Never did get my own uploads working though, but too many to bother with.
@G-rig: I used Tidal for months, I ripped FLACs from Tidal directly and looked at them in a spectrum analyser… Turns out some of them weren't even FLACs, but lossy files disguised as lossless.
Qobuz is a lot better in the "FLACs being FLAC" regard.
You like it because you have confirmation bias, which I'm trying to dispel so people don't waste money off random anecdotes. This doesn't mean btw that your experience of a better sound is invalidated, just that you should be critical of why you think it sounds better to you. That being raid people have spent money on far more wasteful things, so don't let me be the arbiter of what's good for you.
While Youtube Music used to be ehh, it's now 256kbps AAC, which is audibly transparent in 99.9% of all cases.
@notmaroun: I struggled to tell a difference with tidal masters vs hifi as well, and have a proper setup that can properly decode them with a decent amp / really good speakers etc.
That said, it was noticeably better than spotify / apple music.
@gavincato: Yeah fair enough, I wouldn't or haven't tried using Tidal to rip cds, the idea of it is to stream everything so you don't need to bother.
Back in the day I ripped everything with EAC to FLAC —best and organised pretty meticulously using CD Tag, applied replaygain in foobar etc. Sure there are other codecs, but I don't see The point of AAC unless you're an apple person with all Apple devices. Actually I got some Sony bt headphone (for convenience) and it has DLAC which works well with Android, lower latency than most combos with Bluetooth. AAC generally doesn't sound as good on Android phones, which is why I never bought airpods (good ergo but lose some features and sq on Android, plus overpriced anyway).
Masters comes with hi-fi anyway, I just consider it a bonus and nice to have, good seeing the DAC light change to purple, just using as a preamp.
I decided at the start if I was spending the time ripping hundreds of CDs that FLAC was the go instead of lossy codecs, just so at least you know you have the best. Can easily (and have) then converted to MP3s as well. Apps like FLAC frontend and other stuff from The 2000s did the job well.
That old argument that one can't hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC has been around forever, It's hard listening to anything less than 256kbps vbr, and you'd just rip at 320 anyway, file sizes and storage isn't really an issue these days. At least if the file is lossless and The highest quality it's one less thing to worry about.
Over recent months, Warners (on Tidal) have been replacing a lot of their previously available lossless RedBook CD catalogue content with solely MQA versions, and are no longer offering the original lossless flacs for many popular titles. Previously you could usually select/choose between the two versions.
MQA is NOTHING like 'studio masters quality' … do a search for "Neil Young removes all his music from tidal" for a hint of what MQA actually is.I actually like MQA a lot … especially for older titles from the 60's etc it's a great clean-up mechanism, but the concept that it is a new product that allows for greater bandwidth and is far more acoustically accurate (and akin to Studio tracking) is a complete furphy.
@mutantx: What, so you used to have two versions, a cd quality (@ 1411kbps or 16-Bit / 44.1 kHz) and Master Quality audio ("reflects the original source and can stream up to 9216 kbps or 24-Bit / 192 kHz (typically 96 kHz / 24 bit))?.
I assumed if you didn't have an MQA rendering device (DAC etc), you'd be defaulting to the cd quality version? Still better than 320mbps mp3s - whether Hifi is worth double the price over Premium is up to the individual.
Anyway as I said $2.80 for Hifi Family per month is a great deal (vpn)
Thanks mate was looking to try this out, 90 days a huge bonus
Thanks mate…I'll give a try!
Amazing find OP thank you ♥️
Thanks! My tidal HiFi is running out in a few days, will make a new account with this offer!
Still going on the 6 month offer.
Yes the sound quality is good
The interface on android TV is not so goodWell idk what I'm doing, but this is 100% captcha for me.
as the OP says, "Make sure to cancel after you sign up. Enjoy."
I'd recommend that you take screen shots of this cancellation. Otherwise, you might get to enjoy my experience of being billed by Tidal for month after month after having cancelled (yes, yes, I should have kept better track of my credit card statements). Absolutely no joy with getting a refund despite them accepting that I had not been using the service since my 'free' trial had ended. Never again, no matter how good the 'offer'.
Oh, would be nice if they paid tax in Australia as well, but they are hardly alone amongst the streaming services in not choosing to pay Australian tax on their Australian revenues.
Yes, I had this too. I had to contact my bank and cancel the payment agreement with Tidal.
will make use of a virtual revolut :) hopefully I did the same 6 months ago
Off topic but how do you find the experience of using revolut and do you think paying a subscription is worth it ?
I was lucky to get the free upgrade a while ago. I suppose it's worth it if you do a lot of online subscriptions as it's hard to keep track of everything and as some mentioned even if you've cancelled at times you still get charged.
There's other neo banks offering this service too that are better than revolut in my opinionIs revolut a subscription service?
It cancels as soon as you hit the button, have done it several times, but have heard of people saying they have troubles with continued billing. I tend to believe people with first hand experience so hopefully you sort it out. Just sign in using Argentina it's cheap af anyway
I've never had a problem with Tidal and have done almost a dozen free trials. Always pay with PayPal and cancel on tidal AND remove it from the recurring subscription section in PayPal. That eliminates any way for them to charge you after the trial ends.
yes, and another good trick is variations or your email address (applies to the main one not sure about others)
Are they doing the same thing spotify does where you can't reuse the same credit card ?
For new members, as long as it's a diff email address
the link you are trying to claim is no longer valid!!! dag nabbit
Thanks OP. This deal came just in time since my last trial deal finished a couple of weeks ago. 🙏
Does the referral link provide an additional 30 days on top of the free 90 days?