Delay when streaming Tidal thru JRiver24

[natesmoney]

I am having an issue with a delay in sound output at the beginning of a track when I stream Tidal thru JRiver MC24. There is a 10 second delay before the sound will output thru JRiver.  This happens on the first track I play when I open Tidal and when I change tracks.  If I'm streaming from a playlist, allowing Tidal to  shuffle tracks, or listening to an album (and not changing tracks) it does not happen.

I can see that the sound path is getting to JRiver immediately. (using the eq/analyzer)  I'm using a Schiit Audio Bitfrost Dac and a dedicated Dell laptop for streaming.  Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

[ricko01]

Hi,

 

I stream Tidal into my Slim Devices Transporter and can do this via the Ickstream OR LMS plugins.

 

I have been using Tidal for many years but in recent times (say 6 months ago) I started having the same issue as you.

 

I then signed up to Deezer and through Ickstream, Deezer never had this problem but Tidal did.

 

Testing via the LMS plugin also showed the startup delay... noting that I also get large gaps at times once an album has started streaming.

 

My conclusion... its specific to Tidal and there is zip we can do about it.

 

Peter

[Cebolla]

On 11/1/2018 at 9:46 PM, natesmoney said:

I am having an issue with a delay in sound output at the beginning of a track when I stream Tidal thru JRiver MC24. There is a 10 second delay before the sound will output thru JRiver.  This happens on the first track I play when I open Tidal and when I change tracks.  If I'm streaming from a playlist, allowing Tidal to  shuffle tracks, or listening to an album (and not changing tracks) it does not happen.

I can see that the sound path is getting to JRiver immediately. (using the eq/analyzer)  I'm using a Schiit Audio Bitfrost Dac and a dedicated Dell laptop for streaming.  Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

 

It's a bit cryptic, but I believe that you are using the Windows version of the TIDAL Desktop app to do the actual streaming (& playing) of the audio file tracks from TIDAL's online server and have selected JRiver's WDM Driver as the audio output device in the TIDAL Desktop app - which would make the "sound will output thru JRiver" statement more accurate / less confusing than the "stream Tidal thru JRiver" statement.

 

If that's the case, then it looks like JRiver may be doing something to the audio signal it's receiving from the TIDAL Desktop app, via its WDM Driver, significant enough to cause the delay you are experiencing. Could you please state exactly what audio output options you have set for both the TIDAL Desktop app and JRiver, including any resampling or other DSP settings?

 

 

Presumably you have engaged JRiver's resampling or some other DSP, otherwise why not set the TIDAL Desktop app to output to the DAC's audio output device directly, rather than go through JRiver?

 

If so, have you tested if you have the same delay when switching off all of JRiver's resampling  &/or any other DSP, to see if the problem is actually the particular combination of using JRiver with its WDM Driver for input & your DAC's audio output device?

 

 

Also, can you confirm that setting the TIDAL Desktop app to output directly to your DAC's audio output device (so not going through JRiver) doesn't cause the delay problem?

 

 

[natesmoney]

Thanks for the input.  I received the answer to the problem from a site administrator at JRiver.  His reply is below:

 

This is a known quirk in the WDM driver right now. Its already fixed for the next driver release, which will actually be in 24.0.61, once that is available.