Following an invitation to World of McIntosh townhouse, Kulture Hub chilled with Tidal Hi-Fi expert Chris Nolte and McIntosh Group Experience Director Joshua Dellinger to talk about and listen to the Hi-Fi quality experience.
With Hi-Fi Tidal has ventured into creating an even higher quality listening experience for members. As a deeply art and artist based platform, the push for the Hi-Fi experience is one that gives listeners the ability to immerse themselves in sound like never before. According to Nolte,
“Hi-Fi is as close as you’ll ever get to experiencing the music the way the artist intended.”
We are in an age where our music has become increasingly digital and may lose some of its authenticity due to technical limitations. But Hi-Fi brings back the feeling of being in the same room with the instruments and sounds.
Listening to Duke Ellington and John Coltrane’s “In a sentimental mood”, on Master quality gave true value to the essence of the Jazz genre being one of constant give and take between the instruments.
With drums taking up space in the far right corner and the saxophone moving back and forward on the left, it felt like the actual artists were standing right there playing off of each other.
Mac Miller’s “The Question (feat. Lil Wayne)” samples “In a sentimental mood.” “The Question” played on Hi-Fi quality is nothing like what you’ll find on Tidal’s competitor music streaming sites.
Hi-Fi uses more data and larger bandwidth to give you more detail than ever before. Much like brush strokes on a canvas, Nolte said
“In that detail contains the emotion.”
That’s why Tidal Hi-Fi quality will ruin music for you forever in the best way.
Tidal also recommends setting aside your Airpods and experiencing Hi-Fi with higher quality headphones.
Tidal’s partner McIntosh Laboratory provides the ability to make the absolute most out of Hi-Fi recordings. McIntosh is an American manufacturer of handcrafted high-end audio equipment based out of New York.
Tidal’s entire 60 million catalogs of songs are available in Hi-Fi quality. Tidal also has 170 thousand songs in master quality authenticated (MQA.) Tidal calls these “Masters” and they are even higher quality.
Tidal is also working with Sony on Sony 360 which creates a listening experience that uses 360 degrees of your ears perception of sound. Sony 360 is expected to be released later this year.
With constant improvements, Tidal shows us there’s always more to music.