Catalysis

From what I'm reading on the Roon forums, it appears that ASIO compatibility might be moving up the priority list. Quite how they overlooked that this would be important is rather amazing, but at least it's now firmly on their radar. Rome wasn't built in a day etc. https://community.roonlabs.com/t/asio-support-and-the-title-should-be-15-char-so-now-it-is/676

Your comment implies that an Android app is imminent. Do tell if so.

Roons appears to need a manual or at least some video tutorials, other than your very nice intro movie Chris. The problem solving via the website appears to rely on answers to user generated questions - I never like that as it isn't a structured approach and some users can chime in with incorrect answers and send one off on a red herring. I was wondering what the purple light was. I should have been more inquisitive and clicked on it :-)

One suggestion I would make is to go into Settings/Setup and make sure you have audio analysis speed off. It would seem that Roon will normalize the sound if you leave this on Fast or Normal, or at least that's my understanding. Might be worth checking this out. Let us know how you get on.

It's more than a little surprising isn't it. Although I haven't done an A-B comparison yet, my gut reaction last night was that Tidal actually sounded better through Roon than via Chrome, so it's progress. I know nothing about the ifi Micro, but is it not possible to connect with it via WASAPI?

Hi Everyone, While I still am in revelation mode about the functionality of Roon, I was more than a little surprised to discover, via their support forums, that there are currently no plans to support ASIO. The current Roon product uses WASAPI. See here - https://community.roonlabs.com/t/drivers-windows/527 My general understanding is that it would be better, on external devices with a supporting driver (which I have) to use ASIO. Although the Roon output sounds absolutely fine, what is everyone's opinion on this? Asio is something that Tidal also doesn't support, but Qobuz does and, I think, with superior results. I thought that Roon would solve this with Tidal, but apparently not. Kind regards Chris

It's the sort of product that you didn't know how much you needed until you tried it for yourself. It's just great to have one interface for both your own music collection and streaming content and then when you factor in that it all gets classified under the same metadata categories as if you owned it all, well you're moving into the awesome territory. Really nice future developments would include Qobuz compatibility and actual album liner notes and I am sure anxious to see how this works with mobile apps, presumably acting as a remote for my dac connected laptop. For now I'll be using Splashtop, which isn't perfect but a good start. It's super to see Tidal finally having a desktop interface that makes total sense. Having to shift between JRiver and Google Chrome was a right old pain, to say nothing of the inferior sound compared to Qobuz, I suspect primarily because Tidal in Chrome can't access your ASIO driver. That problem is history with Roon.

Wow! Trying is believing. I signed up within five minutes of playing with this. This is everything other apps should have been and this is only the start. 10% discount if you sign up now, in case you all think I'm bonkers not waiting until the 14 day trial ends :-) The brilliance of its metadata has to be second to none. For example in my Roy Harper selection it's sharp enough to also recommend his appearance on Have a Cigar on the Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Brilliant. Where you have box sets it even separates the track order into the actual discs, rather than the usual four pieces of cover art. The other really nice benefit is that it finally allows me to use my network player's ASIO driver with Tidal, one of my biggest complaints about that service. How cool to be able to bring up an artist listing and immediately and seamlessly play any album/track you don't own if it is on Tidal. Amazing stuff. Stunning product. Actually worth the rather hefty asking price. It seems to totally address the issues we all have with metadata and achieving a seamless interface for our collections. If they can add Qobuz compatibility I will kiss them :-)

The simple solution to it all is to have an offline desktop mode. Tidal could have saved themselves a tidal wave, if you will, of bad publicity.

While I'm pleased to finally have glitch free Tidal desktop music, the issue remains that if for any reason my bandwidth is temporarily reduced there is no offline mode to accommodate for that. Also, because I am now exploring its repertoire much deeper in the absence of the previous problems, I'm seeing that it is pretty thin compared with Qobuz, for example. Still some way to go but enough to make me a subscriber I think.

The saving grace for me right now is that on Monday I took out another two week trial of Tidal and it has streamed seamlessly without so much as a stutter - the improvement is 100% at their end as my connection speeds haven't changed at all. They clearly must have had problems with the standalone app, otherwise it would surely have been better to have stayed with that. That said, the Google Chrome app seems to work great and the interface is much better, which is all good. You're right about the initial targeting of audiophiles having now become a distant sideshow. Tidal has been purchased squarely as a bargaining chip to bring other streaming services to heel with regard to fees, the subtext being: "You better listen to our demands or we're taking our music away and onto our own service". All this altruistic hogwash about doing it for artistic freedom is not what it's about. Record companies basically were the conduit for distribution of music, but they are now essentially redundant in this online age. This is the latest episode in the transfer of power to the artist. So Tidal finds itself repurposed and, of course, the original emphasis has changed completely. All this matters not provided that the lossless streaming maintains its current seamless performance and, crucially, the repertoire begins to expand, as it is pretty thin in some key areas. Overall, however, they now have me as a subscriber, in addition to Qobuz, which has an amazing catalog of classical, jazz and European music.

That's an excellent summary of this rather shambolic event of very few words. Early comment seems generally pretty negative and broadly of the "rich making themselves richer" variety. It all smacks of applying an pseudo-altruistic "set the music free" sensibility to the whole thing when, in fact, it is so clearly all motivated by self interest. On the positive side, however, Tidal does finally appear to be streaming seamlessly here, although one has to wonder if browser based apps represen the shortest signal path.

Some very fair observations there. Right now it comes down to brand preference for me. I guess Qobuz positions itself more firmly in the audiophile camp and I certainly like its repertoire too. To date it has been the best sounding option too - plus the offline desktop mode. Tidal just doesn't feel like an audiophile product - more a mass market site that happens to do FLAC. To be more specific where are the output options with it? No ASIO?, no apparent ability to use the JRiver driver? just a one size fits all solution of their own that, to my knowledge at least, they haven't discussed publicly at all (I would be pleased to be corrected on this). Look, no one knows how the streaming space will ultimately develop, so all I'm doing is expressing some disappointment that it hasn't panned out as I expected - though I absolutely concede I have minority tastes. I can certainly accept that from today Tidal becomes a quite significant player in this field, simply because of the publicity that will now inevitably follow it. They have a lot of work to do, however, as Spotify has a tremendous head start and a vast repertoire. We can probably expect to see something of a migration of Tidal shareholder material from the other services and, as much as the aims might be apparently commendable, is the streaming consumer going to consider this a bullying tactic to drive one service ahead of all others?

It's really a question of how the service is marketed. Qobuz is squarely aimed at the audiophile and there's the feeling that its catalog and sound quality is the most important aspect. To me Tidal is a more general service that just happens to offer lossless music streaming. I'm quite happy to be proved wrong, but that's how it seems to me.

Agreed, just awful.