I have the opportunity to subscribe to Tidal for 3 months for the Hifi Plus tier for just $2.00 flat. This top tier featured Dolby Atmos amongst other things.
I am currently on Apple Music subscription for nearly a year. Yesterday evening, I decided to do a little A/B listening comparison between the 2 platforms using a familiar track, Post Malone “Sunflower” and to my surprise, there is a distinct difference in terms of the dynamics and level of loudness (Not sure about the Tidal app has this normalisation feature or not, need to check it out).
The track played louder with more bass on Apple Music whereas Tidal played softer with cleaner bass. The keyword here is “cleaner”, tighter bass. To compensate, I’ll need to increase my master volume to about +6dB than I would normally hear to really appreciate it. A possible explanation for the track to play louder and more “bassy” probably has to do with normalisation of the level and the higher compression. The Dolby Atmos sounded more realistic on Tidal compared to Apple Music imo. I personally prefer Tidal but the cost is 2 times the monthly subscription rate of Apple Music.
Question is, which platform do you prefer and why?