The overall quality of the high resolution masters varies considerably from one title to another, and there is simply no "tracking" of the original source of the files made available. In my experience, Qobuz has superior sound quality in many cases, in particular in classical / baroque / opera, as the files have not been "normalized" or boosted for more customer impact, which I think Tidal does in some cases (so in practice sometimes Tidal sounds 'louder', but not better) Smooth integration with Audirvana puts Qobuz on par with Tidal, and it makes it very easy to use with a Kef LS50W system for example, but it really shines in USB or LAN connection, so a sound comparison between Qobuz and Tidal should probably use exactly the same chain of software, cables, speakers, etc. Qobuz has a much poorer customer support than Tidal, and this can be very frustrating for customers, but it allows for a lot more technical tweaks for the more technology-oriented users For anyone interested in classical music at all, there is simply no equivalent, and the cost of €20 for Hifi (CD quality) or €25 for Sublime (CD+Hi-Res) is a steal if you think about it.
Having used Qobuz and Tidal for several years (4 and 2 years respectively), I can say that classical music is almost absent from Tidal, whereas Qobuz can really offer a wealth of versions from all major publishers, so exploring a composer or an opus in Qobuz is a real treat for the music lover, student, or musician. On the (very) positive side - As far as depth of catalogue goes, Qobuz has (by far) the best classical and jazz catalogue. In addition, some titles "disappear" of the main library for no particular reason, and sometimes they re-"appear" in the library, so maintaining a collection of playlists can be challenging sometimes. Qobuz tends to keep several variations and successive remasters of the same titles, which makes very cumbersome and annoying for the subscribers.
Qobuz is a much more "messy" than Tidal, e.g.
In practice, the titles released in high resolution are those published by the main music publishers, and they should be roughly be the same for Qobuz and Tidal (or other services, obviously). Those BNF titles have been digitized in a a rushed studio, and they sound terrible, even compared to vinyl rips published on Youtube. Qobuz has a terrible quality control, and many of the so-called "masters" that are on the service are actually poor quality digital captures published by the french national library (BNF), from when it had its entire vinyl library digitized by a Belgian company about 5 or 6 years ago. A few comments regarding Qobuz from a hifi perspective:
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