Official TIDAL HIFI Streaming Issues Thread

[dbtom2]

I don't want to tempt fate but the Tidal app has been running and playing on my MacMini all day with zero glitches. Listened to BB King and The Temptations, Boz Scaggs, and plenty of older, old-guy music. Smooth sailing.

 

I have my notifications set to "Do Not Disturb" and when I'm in front of the screen, I watch the Apple Activity Monitor just to try to learn more about what's happening.

 

Evening Primetime will be the true test as heavy network use creates contention for bandwidth. Didn't have any issues last night with Tidal.

 

Question: Is the Aries being controlled by an iOS device? iPad? iPhone?

 

T.

[Haninger]

I don't want to tempt fate but the Tidal app has been running and playing on my MacMini all day with zero glitches. Listened to BB King and The Temptations, Boz Scaggs, and plenty of older, old-guy music. Smooth sailing.

 

I have my notifications set to "Do Not Disturb" and when I'm in front of the screen, I watch the Apple Activity Monitor just to try to learn more about what's happening.

 

Evening Primetime will be the true test as heavy network use creates contention for bandwidth. Didn't have any issues last night with Tidal.

 

Question: Is the Aries being controlled by an iOS device? iPad? iPhone?

 

T.

 

Yes, I use an iPad to control the Aries. TIDAL only stutters with certain albums.

[dbtom2]

When Tidal informed me they were in the process of moving to new servers, they advised the newest music was already on the new servers.

 

So far, it has been true, more or less, the most recent music has been playing reliably.

[Jimmypowder]

When Tidal informed me they were in the process of moving to new servers, they advised the newest music was already on the new servers.

 

So far, it has been true, more or less, the most recent music has been playing reliably.

 

For anyone who has seen the terrific movie about Facebook ,The Social Network , their motto was

we never ever go down or offline . They considered it the kiss of death for their company .

 

In the music streaming business the kiss of death will happen to those that can't stream reliably or

go offline. The same concept applies to this business model as it does to Facebook .

[dbtom2]

True. If I had known that Tidal was about to change hands, I would have waited to subscribe. The sale took me by surprise.

 

For a month after I subscribed, it was terrific. I'm hoping for those days to return.

 

After I determined that the interruptions weren't due to my local ISP or my home LAN, I submitted a ticket. It took a week to get an email reply informing me of the server relocation project. While I appreciate the information, I feel like a service provider should be more proactive about alerting customers to network difficulties. It's easier to be loyal to a service provider who is up front.

 

T.

[Fridolin]

"but promised a new app - soon!"

 

for windos 7 to or just mac?

For both, as i understood it.

 

By the way, i don't think the dropouts and stutter are a server problem. They are an app-problem.

Otherwise there couldn't be dropouts after the complete title is cached on the PC/Mac after a few seconds of streaming.

There is no network traffic any more until the next title is to be loaded (about 30 seconds before the current title ends).

Exactly at the time the new title starts loading i have a short dropout every time (without exception), not to mention the many other dropouts while the current title is playing.

 

This is true for the Mac-App and for the Chrome browser app.

[dbtom2]

I think you may be right.

 

What do you have the album cache size set at in the Tidal app settings?

[Fridolin]

It is the default value of 50 MB.

[dbtom2]

Tidal has been playing on my main system or my desktop system 12 hours a day for the last five days. Both systems are Apple, a MacMini & an iMac. I have experienced 4 or 5 pauses lasted a few seconds and restarted on their own. I have made the effort to play as much "old" music as possible.

 

I have however, received this message 8 or 9 times:

 

"We are experiencing HiFi playback problem. This may be caused by low bandwidth. You could try to switch streaming quality in settings."

 

I never change my settings from HIFI and the HIFI indicator next to the track bar hasn't been greyed out unless the song playing was a lower than 16/44/1 resolution format. Check out the song, "A Beautiful Mine" by Rjd2 (theme from Mad Men) to see that happen.

 

Whenever I see that message, "We are experiencing HIFI playback problem...," I wonder if the message is generated by the app or if it is sent by Tidal. Is that the royal "we?" As in, "How are we doing today?" Or the Tidal "we?" As in "We at Tidal are experiencing HIFI playback problems...." When it happens, the HIFI indicator never changes from white and I can't discern whether what I'm hearing is lower resolution. Just a thought.

 

I have experienced using Tidal via the new Roon player/app and it is awesome.

 

T.

[rodrigaj]

I have been seeing the "We are experiencing HIFI playback problems..." since October. I just ignore it. It is one of the many mysteries of Tidal service. Things keep improving, so I keep the service.

[dbtom2]

Need to dust off those speaker cones? Test the limits of your HIFI? Annoy your neighbors/cat/kids/wife?

 

Find the soundtrack to Mad Max: Fury Road on Tidal and crank that suckah up!!!

[steveoat]

Tidal has started to offer some Harmonia Mundi Titles. This started several weeks ago. However, there have been no additional titles added since then. This is frustrating.

As long as you are talking to them, could you ask them to include liner notes (as Naxos is doing for its streaming service) and generally to up their game on classical and jazz. As an early (November 2014) TIDAL HiFi adopter, I often feel like the black sheep in the TIDAL family because I am less interested in their mainstream offerings (not uninterested, just less so). At $20 a month, I feel I and all other TIDAL HiFi users deserve white-glove treatment.

 

Other improvements I would like to see:

 

A truly functional search feature (good grief, why can't it have a fuzzy logic spelling tool? Off by one letter? No music for you!)

 

Tags for classical and jazz that make sense. Ensemble, conductor, soloist(s), composer, piece, movement for classical. Leader, group name, album and song for jazz. That would be enough.

[[email protected]]

I am using Chrome / windows7 to stream Tidal. I have installed Audio EQ and the HTML5 plug-ins for Chrome, but I cannot get the EQ to work.

 

does Tidal use HTML5?

 

any suggestions?

 

thanks

[jiminlogansquare]

Tidal has started to offer some Harmonia Mundi Titles. This started several weeks ago. However, there have been no additional titles added since then. This is frustrating.

 

I have more or less stopped listening to Classical using TIDAL. Instead, I am subscribing to a second service, ClassicsOnlineHD, from Naxos, which specializes in just Classical music and is superior in every way to TIDAL for that genre. All at least CD quality (16/44), many at higher resolutions. They even have some titles streaming at 24/192. It is an extra $15/month expense, but based on my use and enjoyment worth every cent. Plus they have a free 28-day trial; give it a try. But all that said, I still love TIDAL for other genres. Maybe I am just less picky about them!

[rodrigaj]

I have more or less stopped listening to Classical using TIDAL. Instead, I am subscribing to a second service, ClassicsOnlineHD, from Naxos, which specializes in just Classical music and is superior in every way to TIDAL for that genre. All at least CD quality (16/44), many at higher resolutions. They even have some titles streaming at 24/192. It is an extra $15/month expense, but based on my use and enjoyment worth every cent. Plus they have a free 28-day trial; give it a try. But all that said, I still love TIDAL for other genres. Maybe I am just less picky about them!

 

How is the service? Is it reliable? Any dropouts?

[jiminlogansquare]

In one month of almost daily use, 100% reliability with zero dropouts. Sometimes the first track on an album will stall, requiring me to stop and restart playback; but that has happened only a handful of times and is a de minimis issue.

[[email protected]]

Tidal search:

 

Why do I get the message "Album unavailable for streaming" and all tracks greyed out when I find an album. E.g. Mark Knofler - Tracker

[jiminlogansquare]

The story I have heard that makes the most sense is that TIDAL has different distribution rights in different countries under contracts TIDAL has negotiated with the rights holders. However, it would be burdensome to have customized catalogs for each country. So, the catalog includes every recording available in any jurisdiction, but they can actually stream to you only that part of the catalogue for which they have the legal/contractual right to do so for YOUR particular country (which they establish by looking at the IP address associated with the device you are using to access TIDAL). A VPN that tunnels you to a foreign IP address might "fool" TIDAL into offering a different subset of its catalog, but I have not tested that hypothesis.

[rodrigaj]

Tidal search:

 

Why do I get the message "Album unavailable for streaming" and all tracks greyed out when I find an album. E.g. Mark Knofler - Tracker

 

I asked Tidal that in October. This is their response:

 

"The greyed out tracks are ones that will eventually be available once the legalities have been situated between TIDAL and the record labels."

[dbtom2]

In Tidal I have discovered that the message "Album Not Available" isn't always accurate.

 

Try selecting it a second or third time or more after getting the message. Selecting the album name text below the album art rather than the album art itself seems to work best for me. I can't say if it's an Apple app thing, or my un-evolved mouse clicking skills, but for me it has paid off being persistent.

 

ClassicsOnLine HD has been terrific. Great library.

[realhifi]

In Tidal I have discovered that the message "Album Not Available" isn't always accurate.

 

Try selecting it a second or third time or more after getting the message. Selecting the album name text below the album art rather than the album art itself seems to work best for me. I can't say if it's an Apple app thing, or my un-evolved mouse clicking skills, but for me it has paid off being persistent.

 

ClassicsOnLine HD has been terrific. Great library.

 

The newly improved ClassicsOnline service does look very nice! Sound quality good?

That is one service I could consider using.

[dbtom2]

The newly improved ClassicsOnline service does look very nice! Sound quality good?

That is one service I could consider using.

 

try the free trial and see for yourself. On my

Mac, a player named Orastream operates in the background to deliver?/playback? The music. You will download that when you sign up. It confused me at first. I used both the app from classics online and a webpage to play the tracks. No discernible diffeence (to my untrained older ears) in sound quality.

 

Have no idea if Orastream integrates into home music servers like sonos or aurilac, etc.

 

Yes. I have found the quality to be very good on newer recordings.

 

However, I also heard tape hiss on an older high-res recording that was offered as 24 bit/ 96khz resolution. If you look a few pages back in this thread I gave the name of the recording.

 

Tom

[jiminlogansquare]

I have created a thread for discussing ClassicsOnline HD over here: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/showpost.php?p=421083

 

So we can take our OT discussions over there.

[bobbmd]

has anyone experienced this problem: i listen to TIDAL via my ipad connect to a sennheiser rs 195, when i go to 'my music'(ie my playlists) some playlists will not play the message says 'this playlist is empty' yet when i go my macmini and access the mac app or browser app that same playlist is full of the albums/songs i added and they play thru my system

i have had no problems with TIDAL otherwise either with wireless phones or via sonicstream sq+ to schiit gungnir and magni-crystal clear sound no dropouts static etc same goes for Qobuz Spotify or BM

[rodrigaj]

I have been a customer since the (pre JayZ) introduction to the USA in October. I finally dropped Tidal this morning. I really wanted them to succeed, but while their service has improved, the intermittent dropouts continued.

 

I always said I would give them 6 months. I gave them 7. Speaking as an audiophile, I think the JayZ purchase was a setback.