Official TIDAL HIFI Streaming Issues Thread

[Toolio]

Sadly, as I said above, the Chrome player doesn't work well for me. Given the fact that the only suitable playback I get is through an iPad I have a question for those here who know far more about this than I. Will there be any serious difference in sound quality between playing Tidal through an iPad connected to a DAC and playing Tidal through a PC connected to a DAC (ignoring for a moment the problems with jitter/dropouts playing through a PC)?

[DavT]

Boy, I am surprised by all the difficulty people have with Tidal. I am listening to Tidal about 60% of all my listening, even serious listening sessions and have NO dropouts, stutters, pauses or other problems. I am running an Apple Macbook pro, new 4 months ago, 8Gb i5 2.8 I think. I use the Tidal web site and did download Google Chrome as well. I run a 5 meter Audioquest Coffee USB cable into a MSB Analog Dac then straight to my Herron mono amps. It works beautifully. I only use the Macbook Pro for audio, It also has JRiver 19 and 20 I use to play downloads and ripped Redbook CD. I also have amarra on the laptop but do not use it. When I set up for tidal I just followed their recommendations. It did not work well at CD resolution until I also downloaded Chrome.

[Toolio]

Surprisingly, the story is entirely different for me today. I just spent a couple of hours listening with the exactly the same setup that was resulting in dropouts and stutters for a few days earlier in the week. No problems at all today with either Chrome or the Tidal app. I used the same recordings for comparisons, and the same computer to the same DAC on the same network. This seems to point to Tidal as the source of problems (or lack thereof). As I noted earlier, when I have problems with Tidal I have no problems with other streaming services, including Qobuz high-deft, so it is unlikely to be a fault with my network (60 meg speed). I hope things continue this way.

[ckpiv]

Thought I would give a update on my experience from my post #98 on 11/20.

 

Yesterday I completely removed the Tidal HIFI mac app with App Zapper which removed all Tidal files, caches, plist, etc. I repaired disk permissions then re-dowlowded the Tidal HIFI app. The stuttering and drop outs have virtually disappeared now even when I try to do other work on my MPB (late 2008 17" w/ 6meg ram and SSD) The overall sound is much better as well and sounds very good.

 

Not sure what the problem was on the original install as my MPB had a clean install on Yosemite but the deleting, re-downloading and reinstalling did the trick! If anyone else is having issues with the Mac app I recommend you giving this a try.

[kennyb123]

I'm about ready to give up on the TIDAL iOS app. The pauses have been driving me crazy. A much better job of buffering needs to be done, I think. It would also help there was finer control of the quality settings for streaming. A different setting should be able to be configured for WiFi and 3G/4G.

 

What's particularly frustrating is how poorly this app performs on WiFi at my office. I just clocked the download speed at 9 Mbps. I get stuttering even with quality set to high. A lot of times I find myself just listening to silence as the app just seems to give up.

 

What a shame. I love the depth and breadth of the music - and I very much appreciate the sound quality when HIFI quality is achieved reliably.

[malthunder]

Tidal now available via Squeezebox/Squeezelite/Logitech Media Server: http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2014/11/tidal-streaming-comes-to-logitech-squeezebox-and-auralic-aries/

[HiRez_Lover]

My play is sporadic at best, even with a hard wire internet connection. When it does play it sounds pretty

good but I can't see $20/mo if there are large periods of time when it doesn't stream at all.

[j dub]

You are right. The web player is much more stable than the Windows player. Been listening to the web player for the last 3 hours with no glitches.

 

Just down loaded tidal last night I have also been listening to the web player for about 5 hours with no glitches and in my opinion of all the music streaming services tidal has the best sound and comes very close to the actual cd recording.

[Jimmypowder]

Just down loaded tidal last night I have also been listening to the web player for about 5 hours with no glitches and in my opinion of all the music streaming services tidal has the best sound and comes very close to the actual cd recording.

 

Well it depends on what your listening to.

 

Tidal admits on their Facebook web page that about 80 % of their library is in lossless format .

The rest is in lossy format .

[firthy]

[i tried emailing Tidal about this thru their website, but I don't think it falls into one of their support categories.]

 

Has anyone else experienced this? I'm running an iMac (Yosemite) thru a music hall dac25.3 via USB. The OS sound output is set to internal speakers; Tidal desktop app set to the dac25.3. I'm assuming the app is using hog mode when playing, which it does fantastically with sound quality set to "HiFi." However, whenever a track comes up that's not hifi, the sound output defaults to my internal speakers. It resumes through the dac25.3 when a hifi stream is available again. If I set Tidal's sound quality to anything less than HiFi, it plays thru the internal speakers, regardless of my sound output selection.

 

The fix so far seems to be to set the OS sound output to the dac25.3, but I rather much prefer letting the software hog the DAC since I have other music players I use often. Fortunately, I haven't encountered many less-than-hifi streams but when I do, it's a let down.

 

Does anyone have any insight into whether this is a problem with my setup, or with the Tidal app? Or if it's even intentional on Tidal's part?

[jiminlogansquare]

firthy, I experience the same. I applied the same work-around you did, although this does seem like a bug and not a feature.

[kennyb123]

firthy, I experience the same. I applied the same work-around you did, although this does seem like a bug and not a feature.

 

I experience the same and agree that it's a bug.

[Catalysis]

Have been very interested in the diverse range of experiences of TIDAL users.

 

As a long time Qobuz subscriber, I was so looking forward to the arrival of this new service. Never intended for it to replace Qobuz, but saw them working together to cover certain gaps in the repertoire of each service.

 

In practice I have decided not to continue with TIDAL, until it gets its act together a lot better than at present.

 

My user experience was negative on numerous fronts. The worst problem, without question, being a total lack of offline mode for the desktop app. This is something that Qobuz does as standard and it offers the very best, problem free, solution as opposed to relying on streaming the entire time. As others have indicated, this gives patchy results at best. Subjectively, I find the sound quality very inferior to Qobuz and I wonder how much of that is packet errors due to the seemingly poor execution of the streaming itself.

 

Whereas I can stream Qobuz without interruption, TIDAL just does not offer the same seamless reproduction, with all the stuttering etc. that you will already have read enough about in this thread.

 

I also hate that for repertoire that I continuously play, it is eating up an unnecessarily high amount of my monthly bandwidth allowance. I want to be able to store the most frequently played items offline and this really puts a glass ceiling on the usefulness of TIDAL.

 

And before anyone tells me to change internet service provider, out here in the boonies we have few choices, all the same as the other in terms of the service limitations.

 

The point is that it all works seamlessly with Qobuz, which also allows me a wide range of output options, including ASIO. TIDAL seems to have its own one size fits all output solution. I just don't like that and enjoy the flexibility of Qobuz in allowing me a wide range of options.

 

This is a more subjective comment, but I find the ergonomics of the TIDAL desktop GUI not terribly intuitive and cluttered with all kinds of recommended playlists that I have zero interest in, thank you very much.

 

It all adds up to a profoundly disappointing launch. How could they have imagined that no offline mode for desktop was a winner? Beyond belief quite honestly.

 

Will continue to monitor things and will dip my toes in the water again once the obvious fixes and enhancements are in place.

[jhwalker]

Have been very interested in the diverse range of experiences of TIDAL users.

 

As a long time Qobuz subscriber, I was so looking forward to the arrival of this new service. Never intended for it to replace Qobuz, but saw them working together to cover certain gaps in the repertoire of each service.

 

In practice I have decided not to continue with TIDAL, until it gets its act together a lot better than at present.

 

My user experience was negative on numerous fronts. The worst problem, without question, being a total lack of offline mode for the desktop app. This is something that Qobuz does as standard and it offers the very best, problem free, solution as opposed to relying on streaming the entire time. As others have indicated, this gives patchy results at best. Subjectively, I find the sound quality very inferior to Qobuz and I wonder how much of that is packet errors due to the seemingly poor execution of the streaming itself.

 

Whereas I can stream Qobuz without interruption, TIDAL just does not offer the same seamless reproduction, with all the stuttering etc. that you will already have read enough about in this thread.

 

I also hate that for repertoire that I continuously play, it is eating up an unnecessarily high amount of my monthly bandwidth allowance. I want to be able to store the most frequently played items offline and this really puts a glass ceiling on the usefulness of TIDAL.

 

And before anyone tells me to change internet service provider, out here in the boonies we have few choices, all the same as the other in terms of the service limitations.

 

The point is that it all works seamlessly with Qobuz, which also allows me a wide range of output options, including ASIO. TIDAL seems to have its own one size fits all output solution. I just don't like that and enjoy the flexibility of Qobuz in allowing me a wide range of options.

 

This is a more subjective comment, but I find the ergonomics of the TIDAL desktop GUI not terribly intuitive and cluttered with all kinds of recommended playlists that I have zero interest in, thank you very much.

 

It all adds up to a profoundly disappointing launch. How could they have imagined that no offline mode for desktop was a winner? Beyond belief quite honestly.

 

Will continue to monitor things and will dip my toes in the water again once the obvious fixes and enhancements are in place.

 

My thoughts, exactly.

[Toolio]

Have been very interested in the diverse range of experiences of TIDAL users.

 

As a long time Qobuz subscriber, I was so looking forward to the arrival of this new service. Never intended for it to replace Qobuz, but saw them working together to cover certain gaps in the repertoire of each service.

 

In practice I have decided not to continue with TIDAL, until it gets its act together a lot better than at present.

 

My user experience was negative on numerous fronts. The worst problem, without question, being a total lack of offline mode for the desktop app. This is something that Qobuz does as standard and it offers the very best, problem free, solution as opposed to relying on streaming the entire time. As others have indicated, this gives patchy results at best. Subjectively, I find the sound quality very inferior to Qobuz and I wonder how much of that is packet errors due to the seemingly poor execution of the streaming itself.

 

Whereas I can stream Qobuz without interruption, TIDAL just does not offer the same seamless reproduction, with all the stuttering etc. that you will already have read enough about in this thread.

 

I also hate that for repertoire that I continuously play, it is eating up an unnecessarily high amount of my monthly bandwidth allowance. I want to be able to store the most frequently played items offline and this really puts a glass ceiling on the usefulness of TIDAL.

 

And before anyone tells me to change internet service provider, out here in the boonies we have few choices, all the same as the other in terms of the service limitations.

 

The point is that it all works seamlessly with Qobuz, which also allows me a wide range of output options, including ASIO. TIDAL seems to have its own one size fits all output solution. I just don't like that and enjoy the flexibility of Qobuz in allowing me a wide range of options.

 

This is a more subjective comment, but I find the ergonomics of the TIDAL desktop GUI not terribly intuitive and cluttered with all kinds of recommended playlists that I have zero interest in, thank you very much.

 

It all adds up to a profoundly disappointing launch. How could they have imagined that no offline mode for desktop was a winner? Beyond belief quite honestly.

 

Will continue to monitor things and will dip my toes in the water again once the obvious fixes and enhancements are in place.

 

I pretty much agree as well. And it is definitely not your internet provider. I have tried Tidal with four different providers in two different countries--all with speeds higher than 50 megs. I have the same problems with dropouts and stuttering with all providers. Needless to say, this also involves several different computers. If I switch to Qobuz, hassle-free listening. The problem is at Tidal's end. It also seems to be worse on some days than on others, worse at some times than at others. I mentioned a few days ago that the problems seemed to be gone, but a couple of days later they were back for me. Perhaps not as bad, but back all the same.

[jiminlogansquare]

Today I updated Amarra sQ to version 2.0. The issues I previously reported when using Amarra sQ with TIDAL (clicks and dropouts) have so far not been happening with the update. I am using TIDAL desktop application on a Mac Mini.

[IQ_AV]

I did not have a chance to look at this thread till now. I am playing TIDAL through the windows app on a 64 bit Win7 using the ASIO driver to connect to my DacMagicPlus. Listening through TIDAL had been a torture for the past three days. My PC s hardwired to a Gigabyte LAN and I have charter 30MBPS with about 26MBPS effective download speed. I am listening to Enigma and Willie Nelson and it does not matter, still get horrible experience, as if I am listening to an AM radio. I will try out the Chrome player as many of you have suggested, but the patience is running thin at this point.

[IQ_AV]

I did not have a chance to look at this thread till now. I am playing TIDAL through the windows app on a 64 bit Win7 using the ASIO driver to connect to my DacMagicPlus. Listening through TIDAL had been a torture for the past three days. My PC s hardwired to a Gigabyte LAN and I have charter 30MBPS with about 26MBPS effective download speed. I am listening to Enigma and Willie Nelson and it does not matter, still get horrible experience, as if I am listening to an AM radio. I will try out the Chrome player as many of you have suggested, but the patience is running thin at this point.

I have used Chrome and the web player and the result is remarkably better. I still hear some skips, that are quite infrequent.

[Toolio]

I've just discovered some more annoying Tidal behavior. If I stream from my iPad via AirPlay to my AirPlay-equipped Denon receiver, every time the song changes Tidal refuses to play through the Denon. I get a message saying that the device is already in use. This does not happen with any other streaming service from my iPad to the Denon, including Qobuz, Spotify, Google Music, Rdio or Beats. (All of which I either use now or have used in the past with this receiver.) It also doesn't happen if I stream to an Apple TV via AirPlay with Tidal. This seems to be specific to Tidal and the Denon. It is almost as though the Denon thinks Tidal is trying to start a new instance of streaming with every song. Has anyone experienced anything similar with an airplay receiver?

[Toolio]

I just cancelled after paying for Tidal for one month. I am tired of dropouts. This service is not ready for prime time. Back to Qobuz.

[rodrigaj]

I just cancelled after paying for Tidal for one month. I am tired of dropouts. This service is not ready for prime time. Back to Qobuz.

 

I wish Qobuz was available in the USA.

 

The frustrating thing about Tidal is that it is not consistent. Just when you think the problems are gone, they begin all over again. Today I was listening and the track queue just stopped. I had to go back one track and hit play and the rest of the queued songs played without any interruptions.

 

But what I find most annoying is the number of times I get the message to try another option besides HIFI. They don't seem to have enough servers to handle the traffic brought on by the HIFI choice.

[Toolio]

I wish Qobuz was available in the USA.

 

 

Although technically it isn't, it is quite easy just to subscribe. I'm a Canadian living in Brazil and had no problem subscribing to Qobuz. I'm even paying with a Canadian credit card. Just use a VPN to sign up from one of the the countries in which they offer service. After that no VPN is needed to play music, but if you have problems you can email them and they will make it right. Just make sure you choose one of the English language countries or you may end up with the interface in French or another language. Mine is in French. If you google the topic you can discover how others have signed up from the U.S. But you should be aware they seem to be having a bit of a financial struggle at the moment, so I wouldn't buy an annual plan, even though it offers cost savings.

[monteverdi]

Tidal is not working for me. As I have a slow internet connection I can listen to Tidal in HiFi mode only after 11pm or sometimes in the morning. MP3 (high) stream mostly works but that sound quality does not justify 20$/month.

P.S.:

Also not so many Monteverdi recordings on Tidal!

[rodrigaj]

Although technically it isn't, it is quite easy just to subscribe. I'm a Canadian living in Brazil and had no problem subscribing to Qobuz. I'm even paying with a Canadian credit card. Just use a VPN to sign up from one of the the countries in which they offer service. After that no VPN is needed to play music, but if you have problems you can email them and they will make it right. Just make sure you choose one of the English language countries or you may end up with the interface in French or another language. Mine is in French. If you google the topic you can discover how others have signed up from the U.S. But you should be aware they seem to be having a bit of a financial struggle at the moment, so I wouldn't buy an annual plan, even though it offers cost savings.

 

Yes, I knew about the proxy "method". I'll probably go that route if my Tidal problems continue.

[Forehaven]

Ditto, using VPN for Qubuz and Highresaudio.