Tidal HiFi vs Apple Music Lossless Quality Comparison

Tidal HiFi vs Apple Music Lossless

If you care about audio quality, then you would want at least CD quality audio files from your music streaming service.

Not to be confused from HiFi Plus, Tidal HiFi plan uses FLAC format codec which is equivalent to CD quality. A true music purist don’t actually want the Tidal HiFi Plus plan as it uses Master Quality Audio (MQA) for its increasing library which is in theory higher in bitrate, up to 9216 kbps, but is a lossy format.

Apple Music on the other hand uses its own lossless format codec called ALAC. However compared to FLAC, it’s lower in sampling and is only 16-bit instead of 24-bit. To normal listeners and without hi-fidelity audio equipment, you likely won’t notice any difference. Apple Music does offer its lossless format as part of it’s regular subscription so you are not paying extra for it. You can select lossless quality in your app settings.

Because FLAC is closer to studio masters, in theory, Tidal’s HiFi plan using FLAC lossless audio codec is better in audio quality than Apple Music’s lossless music tracks.