Tidal sucks

[Cebolla]

14 hours ago, Fridolin said:

The first title (Call it Democracy) plays with AAC 320 kbps from begin to end on the Aries Mini.

The next title and all the rest of the album are in 96 kbps however.

 

Ok, looks like I  misinterpreted your post. So both the Aries Mini & Audirvana are in fact playing 320kbps for the first track and 96kbps for the rest of the tracks - therefore no difference here.

 

Hence, the only difference between the Aries Mini and Audirvana is Audirvana's problem of not supporting AACplus. Therefore Audirvana decodes TIDAL's 96kbps 44.1kHz AACplus track streams as if they were standard AAC, so produces the fallback 22.05kHz sample rate, instead of the full 44.1kHz that the AACplus supporting Aries Mini produces.

 

No new news here, after all!

 

 

I thought in that post you were referring to the 'LoFi' album as an example of those ones that you mentioned in your earlier post:

On 3/6/2018 at 1:30 PM, Fridolin said:

But to complete the confusion, my Auralic Aries Mini doesn't play them all in AAC 320 kbps 44.1 kHz. A bunch of them are displayed as AAC 96kbps 22.0 kHz again. In Audirvana the same albums all are displayed as AAC 320 kbps 44.1 kHz.

 

I understood this to mean that for some 'LoFi' albums the Aries Mini is displaying 96kbps instead of the 320kbps that Audirvana is displaying for the same album tracks. I assumed the "22.0 kHz" was a typo & you actually meant  to write 44.1 kHz - since (unlike Audirvana), the Aries Mini supports AACplus, so shouldn't be displaying 22.0 kHz for the 96 kbps streams.

Did I understand this correctly? If so, can you give us some examples of those albums (as I asked for earlier)? 

[wklie]

On 3/9/2018 at 3:54 AM, Cebolla said:

did you try the lossy version (https://listen.tidal.com/album/15563242 , Released 1985-01-01, Length 44:05)  with the Lumin and notice the same difference with the first track?

 

Yes, first track 320kbps AAC the rest are 96kbps.

[Fridolin]

20 hours ago, Cebolla said:

Ok, looks like I  misinterpreted your post. So both the Aries Mini & Audirvana are in fact playing 320kbps for the first track and 96kbps for the rest of the tracks - therefore no difference here.

 

Correct.

 

 

Here are some of my results:

 

Paolo Conte|Paris Milonga:
Audirvana:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Rest: FLAC / 44kHz
Aries Mini:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Rest: FLAC / 44kHz

 

Bruce Cockburn|The Trouble With Normal (Deluxe Edition):
Audirvana:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Rest: AAC 96  / 22kHz
Aries Mini:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Rest: AAC 96  / 44kHz

 

Jeff Lorber|Now Is The Time:
Audirvana:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    All: AAC 320 / 44kHz
Aries Mini:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    All: AAC 320 / 44kHz

 

Joan Armatrading|Live: All the Way from America:
Audirvana:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Some: AAC 96  / 22kHz (Title 3 for ex.)
Aries Mini:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Some: AAC 96  / 44kHz (Title 3 for ex.)

 

Joanne Shaw Taylor|Almost Always Never:
Audirvana:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    All: AAC 320 / 44kHz
Aries Mini:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    All: AAC 320 / 44kHz

 

Joe Bonamassa|A New Day Yesterday:
Audirvana:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Some: AAC 96  / 22kHz (Title 4 for ex.)
Aries Mini:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Some: AAC 96  / 44kHz (Title 4 for ex.)

 

Joe Bonamassa|Sloe Gin:
Audirvana:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Some: AAC 96  / 22kHz (Title 3 for ex.)
Aries Mini:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Some: AAC 96  / 44kHz (Title 3 for ex.)

 

Rodrigo y Gabriela|11:11:
Audirvana:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Some: AAC 96  / 22kHz (Title 5 for ex.)
Aries Mini:    Title 1: AAC 320 / 44kHz    Some: AAC 96  / 44kHz (Title 5 for ex.)

 

These are only a few of my examples because it is time consuming to test, but we can say:

 

- if Aries Mini shows AAC 96/44 then Audirvana shows AAC 96/22
- if Aries Mini shows AAC 320/44 then Audirvana shows AAC 320/44, too

 

- it isn't guaranteed that all titles of an album use the same coding

- coding can differ within the same album 

- it is not sufficient to test only the first title of an album
- sometimes even FLAC and AAC are mixed within an album (Paolo Conte)

 

- it is a mess, you can't rely on anything
 

 

[AudGuy]

I signed up for CD or better, not CD or worse. MQA is ok but really not much of an enticement for me as I wanted a rich selection of albums and artists to select from. If Tidal cannot survive operating the way they did, perhaps a pricing revision is in order, not that I really welcome that.

 

While I like Tidal and would miss it if it went away, I do not use it daily or even weekly sometimes so cost should reflect usage. But nobody seems to want to do that. 

 

Is this the beginning of the end ?

[Fridolin]

On 13.3.2018 at 9:21 AM, AudGuy said:

Is this the beginning of the end ?

 

I don't hope so!

[Fridolin]

Similar problems occur with MQA.

 

For example Fleetwood Mac - Tusk in various MQA variants.

Starts with 24/96 but continues with 16/41.

 

[exdmd]

Tidal is still having days when there are MQA dropouts. They were very stable for a while then when they upgraded the UI dropouts started again, fixed in one day and fine now. I even sent my Brooklyn DAC+ back to Mytek NY to make sure the problem was not related to the DAC+: it definitely is not according to Mytek.