Official TIDAL HIFI Streaming Issues Thread

[astrostar59]

I've never managed to get Tidal to sound good on a Mac, is that what you were using?

I don't agree here. Only 3 days use so far, BUT I have tried maybe 30+ tracks I have as CD AIFF rips on my external firewire and Mac Mini v those same exact tracks on Tidal.

 

Using Audirvana+ for both ripped replay v Tidal I am struggling to notice any difference. I use a top electrostatic amp and the Stax 009s which are very transparent and fast, so any change is dead obvious.

 

TBH I did find one track so far (an Armin Van Buuren) that sounded better off Tidal than my CD ripp, though in that case the master at Tidal may be a newer / updated copy which was cleaned up a bit? Also there are numerous remastered albums on Tidal which can in some cases improve quality from the older issued CD.

 

If the files at Tidal are Flac and 1411 resolution as they claim, no compression, I guess in theory they should sound the same. Once streamed into Audirvana+ as opposed to loaded via my ext drive, what is the difference? I am really trying to avoid the subscription by LOOKING for issues and reasons to not go for it, but so far, there is no quality loss going on IMO. Maybe I will hear some in the next 3 months?

 

One thing to watch out for, is apparently not ALL music is at 1411 resolution, and they ffed you 320kps if they don't have that file yet. I think in the standalone player it tells you that, but in Audirvana+ I don't think it does. So far I have not hit any low res files yet.

The other thing is maybe the first Tidal version of Audirvana was a bit rough. The current latest sound great to me in either Tidal or playing off a drive.

My network is dead simple and I only listen to non up sampled as run an NOS R-2R DAC:

Mac Mini with LPS, ext drive and LPS - Rednet 3 AOIP - NOS DAC.

 

I wonder if the loss in sound quality experienced by others may be network related?

[astrostar59]

My Music folder, can you have more than one??

 

I want to be able to have 2 x My Music folders in Tidal, as at £20 per month it is not good to have more than one account per household. Think Tidal are missing something here?

[astrostar59]

The two machines that I listen to Tidal on are now both playing MASTER files properly, something that has not happened up until today. And I must say, the sound is really very good now. WOW, thank you Tidal !!!

 

I am not sure what they did, but now the playback settings that I have selected remain selected when a Master track is played, instead of reverting back to System Default settings which always resulted in just average audio.

 

On my non-MQA DAC playback is now showing at 96KHz instead of 44KHz, I think they have fixed MQA playback.

 

Tidal version is now: 2.1.3.226 (W:2.0.3--6) (NP:2.3.25)

 

My findings as well. I have dropped out of the head-fi thread posting my findings, too many angry folk saying it is garbage...

[astrostar59]

AudGuy: I updated yesterday afternoon BUT my version says 2.1.4 227 (W:2.0.3--6) (NP 2.3.25).And to post #774 I did not get that message when I updated what version did you upgrade to and then revert back to? I initially thought the SQ was suddenly harsh/different(MQA and non MQA) so I went to to A2+ and then ROON all was fine including upsampling to 24/192 and 3 white lights on ME2 for non MQA albums (on A2+ and I assume on ROON) and then went back to TIDAL desktop and the sound was pristine and NOW I have 3 white lights for non MQA albums which I never had before on the TIDAL desktop would only get one or two white lights so I assume the desktop is upsampling to 24/192 am I correct??.

 

I think in my setting in Tidal desktop on a Mac the MQA file is playing at 96K or 88.2K depending on the file at Tidal. I don't think the Tidal app is up sampling. In fact, there is no setting for it to do that as far as I can see. My DAC accepts up to 96K as an NOS design. I must say, playing 96K no up sampling sounds marvellous.

 

If you set auto updates in Tidal it will do it on the fly, so may lead to some confusion. But IMO the app is improving fast. I is catching up the Audirvana on Redbook. I am waiting for the Audirvana release to see how that sounds. Exciting...