How To Cope If Tidal Does Go Under?

[mansr]

1 minute ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Yes, but that is just who I know..I cannot imagine the majority of Roon users paid $500 just for Tidal integration. Maybe I am wrong.

I don't suppose they paid it just for the Tidal integration, but I'm sure it was a factor for some.

[PeterG]

52 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Yes, but that is just who I know..I cannot imagine the majority of Roon users paid $500 just for Tidal integration. Maybe I am wrong.

 

Just my experience, which does not include the networking value. I am a non-Tidal user who signed up for the Roon trial.  Tidal makes the music discovery function vastly more powerful than a local library. I fully expected to spend $500 on a lifetime membership, but when I realized that I would also have to buy Tidal, which I didn’t really want,  I dropped the whole idea. 

 

Just as as a thought experiment which I am not sure is possible— sign off of Todal, and then try to do music discovery. I think you’ll be disappointed

[Blake]

 

The sole reason I bought a lifetime membership for Roon is the Tidal integration.  I am happy as a clam with the Roon + Tidal combo.

 

[BigAlMc]

2 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

I just don't get it.. and I don't think it is a main selling point, at all.....I know a least 12-15 Roon users diehard without tidal accounts.

 

I'll break it down further. 

 

Roon is great. No argument. 

 

Roon DSP - personally, meh! But I suspect that's system dependent. 

 

Roon magazine feel - bravo! This is what I pay for. 

 

Roon Tidal - bravo! This is also a big part of what I pay for. The ability to discover music based on your current catalogue. Music you may not have found otherwise. That's terrific in my book and has greatly added to my collection. 

 

Is Roon worthless without Tidal? Of course not. But it's diminished in mine and many other users eyes. 

 

 

[Brinkman Ship]

3 hours ago, BigAlMc said:

 

I'll break it down further. 

 

Roon is great. No argument. 

 

Roon DSP - personally, meh! But I suspect that's system dependent. 

 

Roon magazine feel - bravo! This is what I pay for. 

 

Roon Tidal - bravo! This is also a big part of what I pay for. The ability to discover music based on your current catalogue. Music you may not have found otherwise. That's terrific in my book and has greatly added to my collection. 

 

Is Roon worthless without Tidal? Of course not. But it's diminished in mine and many other users eyes. 

 

 

I hear ya. It obvious that Roon and Tidal work great together. My point is Roon has tremendous value as a playback and management application for locally stored files. as well.

BTW, as much as I like Roon, it is not perfect, and the price is def. keeping many on the side lines.

[lesanderson]

5 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

 

BTW, as much as I like Roon, it is not perfect, and the price is def. keeping many on the side lines.

The fact that it is so awesome in so many ways while also being undeniably not perfect in so many others all at the same time is why it is so exciting to me. There is so much roon for improvement! I cannot even fathom going back to 1.4 at this point. Just imagine 2.0!

[lesanderson]

Lol, hope it is just a coincidence that they seem to be down hard everywhere right now! Is anyone able to access?

 

EDIT: Seems okay now, but roon got booted off and I could not log in via web for 10 minutes. Sorry for false alarm.. 

[daverich4]

9 hours ago, mansr said:

The sad fact is that for the vast majority, Spotify lossy compression is perfectly good enough. They simply don't care.

 

Or can’t  hear any difference.......

[beerandmusic]

This is interesting to know....so to really appreciate roon discovery, "many" rely on both subscription based tidal and subscription roon (or $500 roon)....

 

hmmmm....just when i started to contemplate buying roon.

 

 

[crenca]

2 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

Or can’t  hear any difference.......

 

And they can't. They can't because the "vast majority" don't have play back chains that resolve anything better than 160/320.  Maybe at the lower bit rate of 160, but then they don't have the listening skills and they don't want them because they are happy with their current involvement.

 

So really, Spotify has it figured out and we audiophiles who would somehow force them into a higher quality have our own issues...MQA being exhibit A

[psjug]

9 hours ago, mansr said:

The sad fact is that for the vast majority, Spotify lossy compression is perfectly good enough. They simply don't care.

 

I think the only way to get more subscribers to the "hifi" tier is to offer additional perks, like a few free/discounted downloads or vinyl copies, or concert discounts, or whatever.

 

The other way would be to limit what you get for $10/mo, e.g. limited number of streams or limited number of playing devices.  But I can't see that flying now that so many are used to the way it is.

[lesanderson]

13 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

This is interesting to know....so to really appreciate roon discovery, "many" rely on both subscription based tidal and subscription roon (or $500 roon)....

 

hmmmm....just when i started to contemplate buying roon.

 

 

Isn't part of the idea to discover music you don't already have? 

[beerandmusic]

3 minutes ago, lesanderson said:

Isn't part of the idea to discover music you don't already have? 

youtube and google is free...then buy for local storage if you feel worthy to own...at least that is my method....i don't want to budget 2 subscriptions for that...i am low income..

 

I also buy estate music for pennies, and have learned a LOT of music that way.

[lesanderson]

2 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

youtube and google is free...then buy for local storage if you feel worthy to own...at least that is my method....i don't want to budget 2 subscriptions for that...i am low income.

 

I hear you. Roon is never going to be the cheapest solution, but playing an album in your local library and then having roon choose music based on that album after it ends, from a library with 46 million tracks is nice. 

[lesanderson]

16 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

And they can't. They can't because the "vast majority" don't have play back chains that resolve anything better than 160/320.  Maybe at the lower bit rate of 160, but then they don't have the listening skills and they don't want them because they are happy with their current involvement.

 

So really, Spotify has it figured out and we audiophiles who would somehow force them into a higher quality have our own issues...MQA being exhibit A

I sit 3ft away from Focal Solo6 be driven by a microrendu/Mytek Brooklyn and I have a hard time hearing the difference in an true ABX. 

 

Now tell me which one is which, and I will tell you TIDAL sounds better every time.

[mansr]

19 minutes ago, crenca said:

And they can't. They can't because the "vast majority" don't have play back chains that resolve anything better than 160/320.  Maybe at the lower bit rate of 160, but then they don't have the listening skills and they don't want them because they are happy with their current involvement.

It's actually more about knowing what to listen for. An Android phone and some half-decent headphones are plenty if you know what mp3 artefacts sound like. Perhaps possessing that knowledge is more curse than blessing. After all, if the goal is musical enjoyment, does it matter how we achieve it?

[arglebargle]

I'm a student and on a budget but when Roon came due recently it was a no brainer.  I'd rather cook a meal from scratch while listening to my music than pay that same $$ to eat out, so that's my rationalization for the expense.

 

I could cook up a listening workflow where auditioning stuff on Youtube or Spotify was not too clunky but it's not how I want to spend my time. Same reason I switched to roon from BubbleUP + HQPlayer Embedded, it worked cleanly and let me get on with listening. 

 

I would probably continue to subscribe to Roon without Tidal, but I admit I might be tempted to spend the money on a decent Android tablet and that slick looking HQPlayer control app instead. If It existed when I signed up for Roon I may never have bothered. 

[beerandmusic]

3 minutes ago, arglebargle said:

I'm a student and on a budget but when Roon came due recently it was a no brainer.  I'd rather cook a meal from scratch while listening to my music than pay that same $$ to eat out, so that's my rationalization for the expense.

 

I could cook up a listening workflow where auditioning stuff on Youtube or Spotify was not too clunky but it's not how I want to spend my time. Same reason I switched to roon from BubbleUP + HQPlayer Embedded, it worked cleanly and let me get on with listening. 

 

I would probably continue to subscribe to Roon without Tidal, but I admit I might be tempted to spend the money on a decent Android tablet and that slick looking HQPlayer control app instead. If It existed when I signed up for Roon I may never have bothered. 

 

yea, i have to admit i do budget dining/drinking out and some travel now that we are retired... but I wouldn't budget subscription music player, but i do own hqplayer and jriver.

[Rexp]

4 hours ago, crenca said:

 

And they can't. They can't because the "vast majority" don't have play back chains that resolve anything better than 160/320.  Maybe at the lower bit rate of 160, but then they don't have the listening skills and they don't want them because they are happy with their current involvement.

 

So really, Spotify has it figured out and we audiophiles who would somehow force them into a higher quality have our own issues...MQA being exhibit A

No, they can't because there is NO wothwhile difference to hear. I'm surprised as someone as sceptical as you are about the hifi industry doesn't realise this.

[diecaster]

36 minutes ago, Rexp said:

No, they can't because there is NO wothwhile difference to hear. I'm surprised as someone as sceptical as you are about the hifi industry doesn't realise this.

 

For your ears, maybe. 

[sdolezalek]

It surprises me that Tidal has done so little with variable pricing.  We subscribe to cable and satellite TV and chose a range of packages that can massively increase the monthly cost.  We subscribe to online sports packages to stream via video.  Why does a one size fits all price have to be the only answer for music? Yes, it complicates things but I'd be willing both to pay more but I'd also subscribe for a lot less (my guess is that 75% of Tidal content is of no interest to me and that the 25% that interests me is of no interest to others).  Why have us pay for the entire catalog when we don't actually want it?  Why not charge also based on the number of titles in our library?  If I like it enough to keep it, make me pay half/one-third of what I'd pay for the CD.  

 

There are a lot of ways hi-res streaming can be priced more creatively than it has been.  In an era where we individually price tickets to sporting events, to concerts, to hotel room, to airline tickets, etc.; we can certainly write software that more creatively and profitably prices streamed music.  Streaming is the way of the future; we just having figured out the right pricing model yet.  

 

Has anyone looked at this from the other side? How much money do the artists/music publishers loose if Tidal goes out of business? I don't think we are going back to a purchase model, so the entire industry better figure out a way to make streaming profitable. 

[beerandmusic]

25 minutes ago, sdolezalek said:

It surprises me that Tidal has done so little with variable pricing.  We subscribe to cable and satellite TV and chose a range of packages that can massively increase the monthly cost.  We subscribe to online sports packages to stream via video.  Why does a one size fits all price have to be the only answer for music? Yes, it complicates things but I'd be willing both to pay more but I'd also subscribe for a lot less (my guess is that 75% of Tidal content is of no interest to me and that the 25% that interests me is of no interest to others).  Why have us pay for the entire catalog when we don't actually want it?  Why not charge also based on the number of titles in our library?  If I like it enough to keep it, make me pay half/one-third of what I'd pay for the CD.  

 

There are a lot of ways hi-res streaming can be priced more creatively than it has been.  In an era where we individually price tickets to sporting events, to concerts, to hotel room, to airline tickets, etc.; we can certainly write software that more creatively and profitably prices streamed music.  Streaming is the way of the future; we just having figured out the right pricing model yet.  

 

Has anyone looked at this from the other side? How much money do the artists/music publishers loose if Tidal goes out of business? I don't think we are going back to a purchase model, so the entire industry better figure out a way to make streaming profitable. 

 

it will probably be just like before tidal...mp3 for streaming....streaming will never die....my guess though is that either google or amazon will support higher res sooner or later.

[TubeLover]

Just for reference, and a plan B, given that people have brought up Deezer and especially Qbuzz. What is the sound quality of Deezer like, and how large is their music catalog? 

 

I seem to recall a number of CA members here in the US finding ways to access Qbuzz. How can one make that work?

 

JC

[TubeLover]

Of course, Tidal going under would make my, perfectly good,  $2,500.00 network/streaming player useless for anything except accessing my digital library. It only supports Tidal.

 

JC

 

 

[BigAlMc]

On 17/05/2018 at 5:40 PM, BigAlMc said:

Feedback on Roon forum re my question on creating an extract:

 

If Tidal goes the Tidal albums you have would not be playable.
To export an xls list of Tidal albums on a pc or Mac.

Go to the three lines top left
Select albums
Click on focus
Click on the right arrow of the focus screen
Select format
Select Tidal

Then click outside the white windows to get back to the album view that should now be your Tidal albums, there should be a green Tidal focus button centre top of screen?

Select one album via a long click
Top left it says one album selected, this is a drop down, change to select all
Top of screen there are three vertical dots, click and select export xls

 

Just did this and it worked like a dream. 

 

812 Tidal albums. That's a great few months for Amazon if Tidal does indeed tank!

 

But I can sleep easy now knowing that at least all the good investigative work is not lost.