Tidal and WiMP through your software player of choice

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

​I have made some modifications to Kodi add-ons for the Tidal/WiMP streaming services. These mods allow you to send the Lossless (and Lossy) streams through your software player of choice. Mine is HQPlayer.

 

HQPlayer only supports flac internet streaming, which turns out to be a good thing because it acts as a kind of filter. Where streaming files are only available in lossy formats they won't be sent to HQPlayer.

 

Other players, such as J River and Foobar2000 will stream the lossy formats as well and it will be clear to your eyes and ears, which format is streaming for any given file.

 

I'll be grateful if any of you who are interested could test these and give me some feedback. There are two versions, one named WiMP and the other Tidal Audiophile. They both allow you to stream from either the Tidal or WiMP services; but have different code bases. You must have Kodi installed then install the addon from the .zip file. All the settings are in the addon settings and should be self explanatory, although I will write some documentation when I find the time.

 

Here is the link:

 

https://github.com/geofstro/master

 

geoff

[fordski]

Hi Geoff

 

Perfect timing!. I had just read your blog post yesterday and downloaded Kodi and enabled the Wimp/Tidal Add on and was wondering how I went from there to using HQPlayer. Your Add on posted above answered that question....I'm listening to Tidal in DSD on HQPlayer as I'm typing this. It took a bit to figure it out as I'm new to Kodi, but I got there. Thanks for posting this and I'll post some comments as I get more experience with this. Thank you!

 

Rick

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Hi Rick,

 

Thanks for your feedback. It could use some documentation and I plan to work on that. In the meantime, here are a couple of tips:

 

Because you can't use the shuffle features of Kodi, I've added:

 

Shuffle

 

… and Sample

 

As well as repeat.

 

I added the Sample feature because I tend to build long playlists to evaluate new music and I build them by adding whole albums to the playlists.

 

Sample will give you just one track from each album, each time you play the playlist. The tracks are re-shuffled each time to give you a different mix of tracks.

 

Plain shuffle will behave the usual way. If you have multiple albums in a playlist it will play all the tracks from all the albums; but they will all be shuffled.

 

Having them both turned on is redundant as it gives you the same as Sample.

 

The repeat feature is self explanatory.

 

The HQPlayer features are 1/ You must explicitly tell the addon to use HQPlayer by selecting this option

2/ Use a Ramdisk, means you've created a Ram Disk and given it the name "Ramdisk" (R: Drive on Windows), you've copied all the necessary HQPlayer files onto the Ramdisk and you want to run it from there.

 

Finally I would recommend you set-up HQPlayer with your preferred settings and make sure it plays to your DAC using those settings with files from your Hard Drive, before attempting to use HQP with this Kodi add-on.

 

You can also export those settings and give them the name "streaming.xml"

 

Save it to the Kodi temp folder, which on Mac is your user folder, the Kodi hidden folder and temp (~/.Kodi/temp/)

 

On Windows it's your user folder then AppData/Roaming/Kodi/Cache/

 

If you do that, "Tidal Audiophile" will find it and use those settings from that point on, or until you change them and re-export them.

 

I hope those tips help.

 

geoff

[IQ_AV]

Hi Rick,

 

Thanks for your feedback. It could use some documentation and I plan to work on that. In the meantime, here are a couple of tips:

 

Because you can't use the shuffle features of Kodi, I've added:

 

Shuffle

 

… and Sample

 

As well as repeat.

 

I added the Sample feature because I tend to build long playlists to evaluate new music and I build them by adding whole albums to the playlists.

 

Sample will give you just one track from each album, each time you play the playlist. The tracks are re-shuffled each time to give you a different mix of tracks.

 

Plain shuffle will behave the usual way. If you have multiple albums in a playlist it will play all the tracks from all the albums; but they will all be shuffled.

 

Having them both turned on is redundant as it gives you the same as Sample.

 

The repeat feature is self explanatory.

 

The HQPlayer features are 1/ You must explicitly tell the addon to use HQPlayer by selecting this option

2/ Use a Ramdisk, means you've created a Ram Disk and given it the name "Ramdisk" (R: Drive on Windows), you've copied all the necessary HQPlayer files onto the Ramdisk and you want to run it from there.

 

Finally I would recommend you set-up HQPlayer with your preferred settings and make sure it plays to your DAC using those settings with files from your Hard Drive, before attempting to use HQP with this Kodi add-on.

 

You can also export those settings and give them the name "streaming.xml"

 

Save it to the Kodi temp folder, which on Mac is your user folder, the Kodi hidden folder and temp (~/.Kodi/temp/)

 

On Windows it's your user folder then AppData/Roaming/Kodi/Cache/

 

If you do that, "Tidal Audiophile" will find it and use those settings from that point on, or until you change them and re-export them.

 

I hope those tips help.

 

geoff

 

Geoff:

How do I enable the Tidal plug in a Debian environment such as Repbian. Your plugin could be an answer to my radarless journey to enable a music player in RPI2 to play Tidal stream.

 

Thanks,

Ahmed

[eltee00]

​I have made some modifications to Kodi add-ons for the Tidal/WiMP streaming services. These mods allow you to send the Lossless (and Lossy) streams through your software player of choice. Mine is HQPlayer.

 

HQPlayer only supports flac internet streaming, which turns out to be a good thing because it acts as a kind of filter. Where streaming files are only available in lossy formats they won't be sent to HQPlayer.

 

Other players, such as J River and Foobar2000 will stream the lossy formats as well and it will be clear to your eyes and ears, which format is streaming for any given file.

 

I'll be grateful if any of you who are interested could test these and give me some feedback. There are two versions, one named WiMP and the other Tidal Audiophile. They both allow you to stream from either the Tidal or WiMP services; but have different code bases. You must have Kodi installed then install the addon from the .zip file. All the settings are in the addon settings and should be self explanatory, although I will write some documentation when I find the time.

 

Here is the link:

 

https://github.com/geofstro/master

 

geoff

 

Hi Geoff,

 

What do I need to change to have this apply to OSX?

 

Thanks.

[fordski]

Hi Geoff,

 

What do I need to change to have this apply to OSX?

 

Thanks.

 

I'm using Geoff's plugins on Kodi on my Mac and it works great. The Ramdisk option works as well as long as it is named Ramdisk.

 

Good luck.

 

Rick

[eltee00]

I'm using Geoff's plugins on Kodi on my Mac and it works great. The Ramdisk option works as well as long as it is named Ramdisk.

 

Good luck.

 

Rick

 

I was able to install the addon to Kodi and able to play music from Tidal on Kodi but it is not playing through HQ Player. Any other settings I need to change to get HQ Player to launch with the playlist when I start playing in Kodi?

[fordski]

In the configuration settings for the Tidal Audiophile Add on if you scroll down on the screen there is an HQPlayer menu and I just selected that and it launches HQPlayer automatically and populates the playlist...

[fordski]

Hi Rick,

 

Thanks for your feedback. It could use some documentation and I plan to work on that. In the meantime, here are a couple of tips:

 

 

geoff

 

Geoff

 

I'm thrilled with what you've done here. I've got HQPlayer running in Ramdisk quite well and will try the suggestions you made (Thanks) re settings and shuffling. Amarra SQ just for punted to the curb as far as Tidal goes...

 

Rick

[Lionelh2]

I want to publicly thank Geoff for this. I have been using his Qobuz/Kodi Add-on for a while and this latest version rocks.

 

Using HQ player to upconvert Qobuz to DSD128 is just amazing sonically and given my wide range of musical tastes, having 20 million tracks at my fingertips to enjoy is mind boggling.

 

Geoff, you are a rock star in my book for bringing this to the community.

[eltee00]

Finally figured it out. Seems like autoplay only works for the latest version of HQ player, just upgraded and all is working now. Thanks Geoff for working this out.

 

Btw, is it possible to go forward and back on tracks? Right now seems like it loads the entire album and there is no way to change tracks outside of changing on HQ Player.

[fordski]

I want to publicly thank Geoff for this. I have been using his Qobuz/Kodi Add-on for a while and this latest version rocks.

 

Using HQ player to upconvert Qobuz to DSD128 is just amazing sonically and given my wide range of musical tastes, having 20 million tracks at my fingertips to enjoy is mind boggling.

 

Geoff, you are a rock star in my book for bringing this to the community.

 

I second that, Thanks Geoff!

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Geoff:

How do I enable the Tidal plug in a Debian environment such as Repbian. Your plugin could be an answer to my radarless journey to enable a music player in RPI2 to play Tidal stream.

 

Thanks,

Ahmed

 

Hi Ahmed,

 

It would really help if you can test this on Linux. Theoretically it should work; but I'm afraid I don't have a Linux box to hand to test it on.

 

The procedure should be the same as Mac and Windows:

 

Install Kodi, install the Tidal Audiophile add-on from within Kodi by installing from the .zip file in the link. Then just configure the addon settings.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Geoff

 

I'm thrilled with what you've done here. I've got HQPlayer running in Ramdisk quite well and will try the suggestions you made (Thanks) re settings and shuffling. Amarra SQ just for punted to the curb as far as Tidal goes...

 

Rick

 

You're welcome and thank again for the kind remarks.

 

The reason you need to explicitly select the option to use HQPlayer, is to allow the use of other players, like J River and Foobar. If HQPlayer option is deselected and one of those players is chosen as the default for .m3u8 files, the playlists/albums will open in that player.

 

HQPlayer is definitely my preferred player; but it might not be everybody's.

 

So this is not just for HQPlayer. You might want to try it with one of these other players, to improve the sound of the lossy streams, for example.

 

geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Finally figured it out. Seems like autoplay only works for the latest version of HQ player, just upgraded and all is working now. Thanks Geoff for working this out.

 

Btw, is it possible to go forward and back on tracks? Right now seems like it loads the entire album and there is no way to change tracks outside of changing on HQ Player.

 

If you mean, go forward/backward in time within a track, this can only be done within HQP once the tracks are handed to HQP. If you mean go to a previous or subsequent track within a playlist/album, just click that track in the list of tracks within Kodi or tap on the track you want to play within the Kodi/XBMC remote app to play one specific track.

 

There are limitations of what can be done once the playlist/album has been handed over to HQPlayer (or other player of choice). If you want to start playing the album/playlist from a particular track onwards, for example, you will need to do that within HQP or edit your playlist accordingly within Tidal to exclude certain tracks.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Hi Geoff,

 

What do I need to change to have this apply to OSX?

 

Thanks.

 

This is cross platform. Just install Kodi for OSX then install the add-on plugin.audio.tidalplus.zip file within Kodi from the link I provided.

 

The procedure is the same for all platforms.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I was able to install the addon to Kodi and able to play music from Tidal on Kodi but it is not playing through HQ Player. Any other settings I need to change to get HQ Player to launch with the playlist when I start playing in Kodi?

 

You have to right-click on the addon name within Kodi, choose addon settings and scroll down until you see the Use HQPlayer option. Select it and from then on the Tidal streams will be sent to HQPlayer.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I second that, Thanks Geoff!

 

If any of you are planning to be in Munich for the High-End show and want to buy me a beer, I'll in Halle 4 D33

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I want to publicly thank Geoff for this. I have been using his Qobuz/Kodi Add-on for a while and this latest version rocks.

 

Using HQ player to upconvert Qobuz to DSD128 is just amazing sonically and given my wide range of musical tastes, having 20 million tracks at my fingertips to enjoy is mind boggling.

 

Geoff, you are a rock star in my book for bringing this to the community.

 

Thank you so much for the kind words Lionel!

[ted_b]

Geoff,

Wow, thanks for this. I haven't stuck my toe in Kodi yet, but the whole concept (via your blog) sounds very promising. I am in the midst of reviewing George's newest DAC, the e12, and it caused me to relook Jussi's HQPlayer (since the e12 is not friendly with Jplay so I reconfig'd my dual pc setup into a single i7 pc for the time being). I am hooked, and now want to try the Tidal add-on (I have Tidal via my Rendu, etc but would love to hear it via HQplayer). I have my music on a Synology NAS, and a Windows WS2012 AO'd w/HQPlayer points to it.

 

Questions from my listening chair:

1) What is the ipad interface when playing Tidal on Windows HQplayer? Kodi/XBMC's? Tidal's? HQPlayer via Remote Desktop app (which is how I currently use HQPlayer)?

2) what is the ipad interface when playing locally stored music in this setup? Remote Desktop app (since Tidal/Kodi isn't being used)? Kodi (calling HQplayer)?

 

Thx

Ted

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Questions from my listening chair:

1) What is the ipad interface when playing Tidal on Windows HQplayer? Kodi/XBMC's? Tidal's? HQPlayer via Remote Desktop app (which is how I currently use HQPlayer)?

2) what is the ipad interface when playing locally stored music in this setup? Remote Desktop app (since Tidal/Kodi isn't being used)? Kodi (calling HQplayer)?

 

Hi Ted,

 

The remote interface is the free xbmc remote app from the app store (they haven't renamed this app to kodi remote yet)

 

You'll need to enable control of kodi via http in Services - Settings in the Kodi app on the desktop. You can set a username and password here if you wish. These of course must then also be set to the corresponding values within the xbmc remote app. You can also set the http port to 80 or 8080. The json port is usually 9090.

 

You will need to set the ip address of your desktop Kodi app within the xbmc remote apps connection settings and give the Kodi instance on your desktop app a meaningful name in the xbmc remote app (Helps you recognise it when you have more than one instance of Kodi running on different machines and want to access them all from the same xbmc remote app.)

 

If you also set zero conf within the Kodi desktop app under services settings, you should just be able to tell the remote xbmc app to find this instance of Kodi and it will fill in the above values automatically.

 

Now to your second question. Locally stored files are a different question. I have another addon for the Subsonic music server, which works in a similar way. It's a little more complicated because you also need to install Subsonic on your desktop machine (it's written in Java, so it's also cross platform).

 

Subsonic allows you to play local files as well as serve those files to yourself remotely (thus creating your own Qobuz or Tidal service for your own use when travelling). My addon allows you to play DSD files as well as all PCM formats locally. (DSD is not supported remotely for obvious reasons).

 

Let me know if you're interested in this.

 

For Mac users only, I'm also working on some scripts that allow iTunes to interface to HQPlayer. It's coming along nicely; but will take a while longer (At least until after Easter).

 

geoff

[fordski]

Hi Geoff I'm enjoying listening to Tidal here, it's never sounded better. One thing I'm noticing is when I load an album or playlist it opens up HQPlayer as expected but only loads 7 or 8 songs regardless of the number of actually songs in the album or playlist. Am I missing a setting somewhere?

[ericuco]

I am not able to get this working on my Linux (Ubuntu Studio) computer.

 

Here is what I have done so far:

 

1) Create a Tidal account & select an album

2) Installed Kodi & Geoffrey's add-on

3) Within Kodi, checked the add-on settings & checked Use HQ Player

3) I can select the album from Tidal and it starts "playing" - no sound

4) HQ Player is not starting up which I thought was the procedure. I manually started up HQ Player but the album is not showing up in the playlist panel.

 

This is all new to me so any assistance is appreciated.

[bobbmd]

Geoff: Can you or someone else explain how this HQ player works? How can I play TIDAL or Qobuz through it?

I downloaded the trial it acquired my itunes library but nothing plays.

I have late 2012 mac mini i7 with 16gb RAM and use a Schiit Gungnir DAC.

Do i have to buy a Schiit Loki to upsample to dsd? And will HQplayer upsample TIDAL and Qobuz?

I assume I don't need to use Amarra Sq.

When I went to audio MIDI setup all of a sudden i have something called Soundflower 2ch and 64ch in left hand corner,what is that?

Lastly i have no idea what all those different setup options are and don't understand the their pdf manual at all.

Is there some simple way to get this to work-I really just want to hear if it is that much better than Amarra Sq.

Thanks

[Lionelh2]

Hi Geoff I'm enjoying listening to Tidal here, it's never sounded better. One thing I'm noticing is when I load an album or playlist it opens up HQPlayer as expected but only loads 7 or 8 songs regardless of the number of actually songs in the album or playlist. Am I missing a setting somewhere?

 

I'm seeing the same behavior on the Qobuz version. Geoff is aware of it.