Official TIDAL HIFI Streaming Issues Thread

[Abtr]

Since the latest update of the (Windows 7) Tidal app I experience a digital anomaly/glitch that is clearly audible through speakers or headphones, at about a second after the start of *each* individual track! It's getting very, very annoying. Does anybody recognize this? (I live in the Netherlands..)

[Abtr]

3 hours ago, Abtr said:

Since the latest update of the (Windows 7) Tidal app I experience a digital anomaly/glitch that is clearly audible through speakers or headphones, at about a second after the start of *each* individual track! It's getting very, very annoying. Does anybody recognize this? (I live in the Netherlands..)

 

It appears as if the gapless playback functionality is somehow broken in the latest Windows app on my PC. Each time it (automatically) starts a next track there's an audible digital glitch after one second. There's no glitch if I start a track by double clicking it. I reinstalled the app but that didn't solve the problem..

[Abtr]

I installed the latest Tidal version on my Mac Mini and there are no glitches! It must be a problem of the Windows Tidal app at least on my Windows 7 PC. I'll try it on a Windows 10 machine later.. 

[Abtr]

I installed Tidal on a PC with a fresh Windows 10 setup and I get the same glitches at the start of each track as on my Windows 7 PC. So this is definitely an issue of the latest Tidal app for Windows. Makes it unusable as far as I'm concerned.

[Abtr]

8 hours ago, Bazzer said:

I'm new to Tidal on one of their one month free trials. I'm having the same problem on my Windows 10 PC's as well ... needless to say I won't be keeping Tidal if this problem continues. I assume from what you say above this is a new problem caused by Tidals latest software update and things were ok before?

Yep. It's a problem of the latest Windows software update. Hopefully it will be fixed in the next update. I have no problems with the Mac version (yet).. 

[Abtr]

11 minutes ago, Bazzer said:

Do they do software updates very frequently or is my trial (3 weeks left) likely to expire beforehand?

Updates are fairly regular, I guess on average once every 2 or 3 months. But in this case, it would be advisable for them to release a patch ASAP.

[Abtr]

Every once in a while a Tidal stream starts producing irregular digital popping sounds. What helps at such a time is to stream a different album (switch to another Tidal server). So I'm sure it's not my 200Mb internet connection causing this. It seems the Tidal infrastructure at times can't keep up with the  worldwide load or there may be other intermittent server problems. To be honest, I'm fed up with this and other highly annoying Tidal streaming anomalies and bugs. Time to try Qobuz for lossless streaming..

[Abtr]

I think that most of Tidal's problems are related to bandwidth limitations of their servers. They can only fix this by increasing server capacity, which can be quite expensive..

[Abtr]

46 minutes ago, jaaptina said:

Some of the old Giant Sand Albums like Ramp and Storm give a burst of static at the end of the songs. It's only with these few albums and it's the same with these albums on Qobuz. Looks like a problem with the master. Or could this be a problem of my setup? 

I tried with Tidal and I hear a noise burst at the end of some (not all) tracks, so it doesn't seem to be your setup.

[Abtr]

Yesterday I installed a Tidal desktop client update for the Mac. The whole app has changed! Streaming and sound settings (which I use quite often) are several extra mouse clicks away and I'm not sure if I like the new overall look.

 

Anyway, a devastating change is that my favorites list is now ordered by *album title* (not artist) instead of by the date/time the album was added to my favorites (most recent albums on top), like it used to be. This is ridiculous! Am I supposed to know all the titles of the albums in this list? I can't find anything anymore. All the historical structure is gone, and I used to push certain (older) favorite albums to the top by removing them from my favorites and then adding them again, so my current albums of interest were always on top of the list. This simple but very convenient functionality was changed by some kid at Tidal into something utterly useless.

 

Please Tidal, at least give me the option somewhere to order my favorites again by date/time added instead of by album title. Why sort by album title??? No one orders his/her music by album title! It s*cks! At the very least, order the list by artist first and then by album title. End of rant..  

[Abtr]

54 minutes ago, Geoff1954 said:

On the "MY Albums" page you should see three faint little dots in the top right hand corner. Click on them and you get choices about how to show the collection.

Thank you very much! Boy that's a relief. I can even reverse historical order. Brilliant!

[Abtr]

A recent update from Tidal (Windows app) changed my Streaming Audio Quality setting from Master to High (Best compromise between data usage and sound quality). I think that is criminal. 

[Abtr]

1 minute ago, Geoff1954 said:

Criminal? I don't like it either. But just change it back. (This is not the first time a Tidal update has done this.)

I never experienced this before in my 1.5 years as Tidal user. And I pay for Hifi/Master quality. 

[Abtr]

2 minutes ago, Geoff1954 said:

So change it back. Or end your Tidal membership. But save charges of "criminality" for issues that merit it.
Have a good day.

Throttling my data usage (and that of thousands of other Tidal users) saves Tidal money. 

[Abtr]

54 minutes ago, AMR/iFi audio said:

Naah, it's not that bad.

 

I don't think this is a simple mistake, especially if it happened multiple times before. All Tidal updates are perfectly capable of reinstalling my DAC, and WASAPI settings, so I don't see how they can't keep track of my payed-for Streaming Audio Quality. The money saved by this practice may not show up in the books.. 

[Abtr]

8 hours ago, Em2016 said:

Yeh I noticed this too since updating a few days ago. I've launched Tidal desktop today again and it switched back to "High" from "HiFi".

 

Drop them an email at [email protected]

 

They are very good with support. They might not know if nobody reports anything.

Same here. This is very annoying. I now have to check audio quality after each new launch. Email sent. 

[Abtr]

Tidal acknowledges the problem:

"Yes - it seems that the latest update caused everyone's streaming settings to be reset. ... When you reset the app data, it helps to clear out any bugs."

 

My audio quality setting changed again  today to High (third time) after some server or wifi problem. The Tidal app even notified me this time with the message:  "Change will take effect from the next playback."

 

So I should reset the Tidal app data. I asked what that would do and how it could help, but I got no answer to that. Did anyone here ever reset the app data (Menu > Help > Troubleshooting > Reset App Data)?

[Abtr]

23 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The whole thing about changing the users' quality settings is a trick streaming services have used for a long time. It's pretty bad and shows that even they think their customers can't hear a difference between the quality levels. 

 

If Tidal needed to reset the app for a real reason, they could always save this setting and reapply it after the update. Not rocket science. 

Exactly. And I was doing some blind listening tests when I found out. With the low res stream I suddenly couldn't replicate a previous result where I picked some binary condition correctly 15 times in 15 tests.

[Abtr]

23 hours ago, Abtr said:

Exactly. And I was doing some blind listening tests when I found out. With the low res stream I suddenly couldn't replicate a previous result where I picked some binary condition correctly 15 times in 15 tests.

Today, checking the streaming settings of the Tidal app, I noticed that my DAC settings were changed from WASAPI exclusive mode to a default system controlled mode. I noticed this before but thought it was my own mistake. Changing streaming quality or changing DAC settings or both might have caused my failure to replicate said listening test results.

[Abtr]

And again my DAC settings changed. This is ridiculous. I'll try resetting the Tidal app data..

[Abtr]

Resetting the app data didn't solve the problem. I got a server error twice and each time the DAC settings changed to system controlled mode. This is truly outlandish. Tidal must fix this very quickly or they lose me as a customer.

 

I must say that I use the new Windows10 USB Audio Class 2.0 drivers with an RME ADI-2 DAC, which only worked at all with Tidal in exclusive WASAPI mode since a couple of weeks. It seems that Tidal's UAC2 implementation for Windows10 is buggy. You may not have this problem with Windows7 using the manufacturer's driver for your DAC..

[Abtr]

It seems the Autoplay function stopped working since the last update of the Tidal app for Windows10, at least it stopped working on my PC.. 

[Abtr]

OK, I reset the 'app data' and Autoplay works again which is nice. Nevertheless, updates changing/disabling user settings is a bug or a design flaw of the software that should be fixed.

[Abtr]

1 hour ago, jcn3 said:

anyone else run into tidal issues within the last few minutes?  suddenly won't work with tidal or via the website.

You may have to 'reset the app data'. Here's how you do that: