Official TIDAL HIFI Streaming Issues Thread

[The Computer Audiophile]

At the request of some CA Community members I have created a thread for us to discuss any streaming problems with TIDAL HIFI.

[Account Closed]

I have been having sporadic problems from day one. I keep getting this error message "...problem with Hi-Fi...could be a bandwidth issue...." I know the problem is not on my end (60 Mbps connection). Sometimes streaming is delayed, sometimes it is interrupted and other times the track will not start at all. The most annoying of course is when a track stops and restarts after a few seconds.

 

Please post similar problems here as Tidal will then be able to see the extent of the problem.

[Tnewell]

I too have been having problems with little skips and drop outs usually at the beginning of each song. I too regularly get the pop up warning about low bandwith. I have a pretty decent internet speed of 25mbps.

 

I am using the Tidal Windows player through The JRiver 20 driver. Interesting that I do not get these issues with the I phone or iPad apps using my home wifi.

 

Tom

[rodrigaj]

I am having the same problems as the previous two posters. The most irritating is the beginning dropouts as they are much longer. I get sporadic tics and pops as well and quick dropouts. I get the same message as the other posters, but I assumed that it was on their end because they start the message with "We are experiencing..."

 

I also ran into the curious greyed out phenomenon, where they originally said "streaming is only possible after purchase" and now it has changed to "the record label has not allowed streaming of this..." I contacted Tidal about the first message and then I noted that they changed it to the second message.

 

I signed up for the 30 day free trial from day one but if the dropouts persist, I'm leaving the service until they get it right.

 

The Android App is pretty bad, but I have not had the problems as I have had with the Tidal Mac App Player.

[keeper]

Not had any problems, 20Megs download, Gigabyte network into a Mac Mini, its fine.

Even Airplay through an Airport Extreme is good.

Been streaming through the Radio function all afternoon, rock solid..

[blaven]

Not had these problems, but I get pause between tracks so no Gapless playback

[calloway]

Not had these problems, but I get pause between tracks so no Gapless playback

 

last night was the second night with Tidal. the first night went great without any problem. last night ..after logging on the last track played the previous night...'hotel california' began to play. i hit the 'pause' button and IMMEDIATELY the music changed to a > 100 db white noise through both speakers that i could not shut off with the app on my ipad....i had to power down the PSU on my Lumin player...any ideas...i do not want to try again as i am afraid it will hurt the my system..

[Maynard]

I too have been having problems with little skips and drop outs usually at the beginning of each song. I too regularly get the pop up warning about low bandwith. I have a pretty decent internet speed of 25mbps.

 

I am using the Tidal Windows player through The JRiver 20 driver. Interesting that I do not get these issues with the I phone or iPad apps using my home wifi.

 

Tom

 

Tom,

Do you get the same skips and drop-outs at the beginning of a song when NOT listening through JRiver? The reason I ask is that I remember reading about some issues with the WDM driver (which just came out a couple weeks ago). People are having similar problems, and I suspect that driver is doing loopback and that's what's causing your problem. I looked on the JRiver forum to see if I could find the thread that was discussing this issue, but can't find it at the moment.

My suggestion is that you try listening to Tidal without running it through JRiver via WDM. If the skips/drop-outs go away, you've found your problem.

[flatmap]

On either the Chrome webplayer or on the Mac application, I get drop-outs mid track. There can be long pauses between tracks as well. I don't know what others do, but if I get a drop out in the middle of an aria I get up and restart the track -- which leads to a lot of getting up and down. In the ideal world, I'd just be able to listen to an opera or oratorio, start to finish.

 

I've switched over to Chrome for the remainder of the evaluation as the Mac application can't seem to handle HIFI mode for long.

 

Sometimes the Chrome webplayer will just stop playing and show a spinning icon. I've let it go on for minutes, but seems that it will just go on indefinitely.

 

I've only tried the iPhone player briefly to play downloaded albums. Will test more thoroughly but not expecting the dropouts that I'm getting with streaming. If it turns out that these streaming problems are due to throttling by American internet provider/carriers, then a similar download option may be advisable for the computer clients as well.

 

Disappointingly, not all of the selections are available in HIFI quality. Maybe 20-30% of the time my selections are sub-redbook level files according to the "HIFI" indicator icon. I just don't see that as being acceptable in a premium service. There are also a fair number of titles are listed in the catalog, and findable in search, which are not playable. That's a bit frustrating. I hope that Tidal can commit to rectifying both of these issues.

 

For classical albums it seems that the Artist field is sometimes mapped to composer, at other times to the orchestra, and sometimes to the soloists. Or maybe all of these fields are mapped to Artist, but only the first is displayed? If there are separate fields for orchestra, soloist, composer and etc., then it will be much easier to find what you are looking for. For example I'd like to see everything available in the catalog recorded by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, regardless of conductor or soloist. I'd like to see everything recorded by Michael Tilson Thomas, regardless of orchestra.

 

As I've mentioned before, the lack of composer field (especially) makes it very challenging to find the works you want. In some future world, I'd like to search for all versions of Shostakovich as played by a Russian orchestra or led by a Russian conductor. It would be nice to pull up all French compositions penned between 1300 AD to 1500 AD.

 

And it seems that I'd like to pull up all the recordings by English Brass bands recorded on the Chandos label. :-)

 

Improvements in exposing the rich metadata of classical recordings would do much to attract and keep Classical listeners. Of course there has to be progress towards creating a continuous listening experience as well.

 

When it's good, Tidal is very good... but there are still some sizable rocks in the road.

[maelob]

Agree with a better classical music search engine. also really annoying quick drop outs while surfing the net. i will test with ethernet connection.

i just upgraded to a 75 mbps connection so i should not have any issues

[Fridolin]

Disappointingly, not all of the selections are available in HIFI quality. Maybe 20-30% of the time my selections are sub-redbook level files according to the "HIFI" indicator icon. I just don't see that as being acceptable in a premium service. There are also a fair number of titles are listed in the catalog, and findable in search, which are not playable. That's a bit frustrating. I hope that Tidal can commit to rectifying both of these issues.

 

The problem is that you can't even filter out those sub-redbook level albums (always the whole album is concerned).

You have to play at least one title to see if the album is in HiFi quality - that's very frustrating.

You pay for HiFi but get only part of the catalog in this quality.

 

Compared to Spotifiy there are too many albums that are missing completely or not playable because of license problems. They claim to have over 20 million titles. But i think they count those you can't play, too.

[Tnewell]

Tom,

Do you get the same skips and drop-outs at the beginning of a song when NOT listening through JRiver? The reason I ask is that I remember reading about some issues with the WDM driver (which just came out a couple weeks ago). People are having similar problems, and I suspect that driver is doing loopback and that's what's causing your problem. I looked on the JRiver forum to see if I could find the thread that was discussing this issue, but can't find it at the moment.

My suggestion is that you try listening to Tidal without running it through JRiver via WDM. If the skips/drop-outs go away, you've found your problem.

 

 

I tried plugging my earphones phones into the laptop and set the output device in Tidal to the computer speakers bypassing J River. The little skips still are present. Very bad on the new Neil Young release.

 

i tend to believe the problem lies with Tidal and not J River.

 

Tom

[bpw]

Agree with a better classical music search engine. also really annoying quick drop outs while surfing the net. i will test with ethernet connection.

i just upgraded to a 75 mbps connection so i should not have any issues

 

Are you not able to search by composer or conductor? I am using Tidal through a music player which does that. The metadata is there.

[Tnewell]

I have noticed the windows version of the Tidal player is very sensitive when the computer does another task when it's playing. For example , the sound drops when my laptop screen shuts off automatically.

 

I would think that my 1 year old Dell laptop with an I3 core processor and 6 GB RAM would be powerful enough to run this program. I never experience any issues playing my files on hard drive with J River 20.

[coleb13]

I am off to a promising start with this service but have noticed that the Windows desktop player seems more prone to playback glitches and occasional interruptions than the web player. I have been getting quite variable results over the last few days so I am waiting for things to settle down before I make any judgments.

[flatmap]

Are you not able to search by composer or conductor? I am using Tidal through a music player which does that. The metadata is there.

 

Based on my experience, search via the Tidal application interface will bring back results in terms of "album title", "track title", or "artist." So far as I can tell there is no separate results field for composer or conductor (or soloist, or choral director, or orchestra, etc.) . The "conductor" looks like it is generally mapped into the "artist" search results, though it is not necessarily displayed. No luck at all with "composer" unless perchance it is mapped to the album or track title.

[Tnewell]

I am off to a promising start with this service but have noticed that the Windows desktop player seems more prone to playback glitches and occasional interruptions than the web player. I have been getting quite variable results over the last few days so I am waiting for things to settle down before I make any judgments.

 

You are right. The web player is much more stable than the Windows player. Been listening to the web player for the last 3 hours with no glitches.

[Account Closed]

I too am having problems with the Windows desktop app. When screen dims there is a dip in the audio as others here have reported as well as the same audio problems as others are having. Tried with and without JR MC 20 WDM Driver and no difference. Will try the Chrome player. Thanks all.

[bobbmd]

i have not had any problems with using my mac mini(late summer 2013 version i7 with 16GB RAM through amarra SQ USB out to newest Schiit Gungnir RCA out to my system and also seinnheiser 598's to Schiit magni amp. no dropouts, a few pops crackles hisses distortions tho.TIDAL sounds almost or is as good as Qobuz. QUANTITY tho is limited on TIDAL. for example if i search on Qobuz for say RHINO RECORDS i get 65000 songs 5200 albums and 139 artists-i got NOTHING on TIDAL. some artists are limited and you get very few albums of covered music.i used to get a lot more frequent distortions using PureMusic's 'playthrough mode' and PM crashed every 10-15 songs no matter what i was streaming Qobuz or BeatsMusic so i disinstalled PM. bobbmd

[rodrigaj]

i have not had any problems with using my mac mini(late summer 2013 version i7 with 16GB RAM through amarra SQ USB out to newest Schiit Gungnir RCA out to my system and also seinnheiser 598's to Schiit magni amp. no dropouts, a few pops crackles hisses distortions tho.TIDAL sounds almost or is as good as Qobuz. QUANTITY tho is limited on TIDAL. for example if i search on Qobuz for say RHINO RECORDS i get 65000 songs 5200 albums and 139 artists-i got NOTHING on TIDAL. some artists are limited and you get very few albums of covered music.i used to get a lot more frequent distortions using PureMusic's 'playthrough mode' and PM crashed every 10-15 songs no matter what i was streaming Qobuz or BeatsMusic so i disinstalled PM. bobbmd

 

How do you get streaming Qobuz in the USA? (Your location is upstate central NY)

[bobbmd]

it was very labor intensive i kept requesting to be accepted,i went to different forums and asked and left my phone number and a fellow from Mass. called me and talked me through it.i believe Qobuz gave me a french 'address' and viola i was in and have not regretted it is really that good.i'll go back through my records and see if i can find out exactly how i did it and let you know-but just keep trying ask how on CA and other forums and keep resubmitting your request-send them emails call them etc bobbmd

[granosalis]

Can TIDAL service operates using network streamer (NAA)?

[Cebolla]

Presumably, it's up to the HQ Player / NAA to support streaming services like TIDAL, rather than the other way around. You'd best check with Signalyst or hopefully Miska can respond here.

[keeper]

How do you get streaming Qobuz in the USA? (Your location is upstate central NY)

 

You could always use a VPN service......

[bobbmd]

keeper is correct a VPN service will do it i can't exactly remember how to do it but it is somewhere else on CA it is not what i used to get Qobuz it was by email multiple times in both english and french and being very very polite and literally begging them and THEY may have used a VPN service bobbmd