Tidal Lossless Streaming

Jailbroken. Nice.

I just discovered the "import playlist" feature in Tidal, so I can pull all my stuff from Spotify. Ohhhhhh it is a good day.

someguydude said:

  I just discovered the "import playlist" feature in Tidal, so I can pull all my stuff from Spotify. Ohhhhhh it is a good day.

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I remember seeing this last week and then tried finding it again and couldn't - internet search didn't help -- where/how can I import spotify playlists in Tidal?

thefastcat said:

  I remember seeing this last week and then tried finding it again and couldn't - internet search didn't help -- where/how can I import spotify playlists in Tidal?

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In the app itself, under "playlists", top right corner
 

Ah okay - looks like that's something that the web application doesn't allow - I don't like different functionality across different app contexts!
 

I tried Tidal's 7-day trial subscription and I have mixed feelings about it.
For one, they charged me $19.99 today even though I cancelled my subscription 2 days ago. I submitted a support ticket, so we'll see what happens.

Which brings me to the point of why I cancelled my subscription: there was a lot of hang-time for me on a pretty normal Comcast-speed internet connection. I only used the service for two days because of this loading time for HiFi streaming and it was frustrating. I'm not going to pay $20 a month for a service that can't even load a few tracks before pausing for a while.

On a good note, the HiFi songs that DID work for me are indeed of at least CD quality. I have an album on CD that I accurately ripped and I recorded a song from Tidal from the same album with an iPhone recording device. When I compared the spectrograms, both were identical plus or minus gain differences.

On another tangent, even if you download a file for offline usage in iOS or Android (iOS in my case), you can't copy the file and have your computer be able to play it back. Not that it's legal to do this, but I wanted to see what would happen since the whole ~40 MB file seems to be stored on your device anyway.

miceblue said:

On another tangent, even if you download a file for offline usage in iOS or Android (iOS in my case), you can't copy the file and have your computer be able to play it back. Not that it's legal to do this, but I wanted to see what would happen since the whole ~40 MB file seems to be stored on your device anyway.

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I would HOPE you can't do that or Tidal would be in for a legal maelstrom. 
 
EDIT: as for delays and whatnot, the service is BRAND new. They couldn't have known what the server load would be before it launched, especially when you're getting fully lossless files. I can't imagine the server load. Remember that lossless means you gotta have a steady 1.5mbps going, so even little hiccups in a lot of people's connections can make it burp, and just imagine how rough that would be on their servers. 

someguydude said:

miceblue said:

On another tangent, even if you download a file for offline usage in iOS or Android (iOS in my case), you can't copy the file and have your computer be able to play it back. Not that it's legal to do this, but I wanted to see what would happen since the whole ~40 MB file seems to be stored on your device anyway.

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I would HOPE you can't do that or Tidal would be in for a legal maelstrom. 

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True. However, you are downloading the entire song/album onto your device for offline use, and as I analysed, it is of CD quality. AKA, you're downloading the song for personal use on your mobile device. On an iOS device, the container format was Apple Lossless.

I was just curious if a computer can read the data as well. Who knows, maybe I want to listen to that song for offline use too on my home rig. Tidal is offered on a PC too so I'm not sure how the legal stuff would work. AKA, I'm using the downloaded song that I obviously legally obtained from the mobile version for personal use on my personal computer.

miceblue said:

True. However, you are downloading the entire song/album onto your device for offline use, and as I analysed, it is of CD quality. AKA, you're downloading the song for personal use on your mobile device. On an iOS device, the container format was Apple Lossless.

I was just curious if a computer can read the data as well. Who knows, maybe I want to listen to that song for offline use too on my home rig. Tidal is offered on a PC too so I'm not sure how the legal stuff would work. AKA, I'm using the downloaded song that I obviously legally obtained from the mobile version for personal use on my personal computer.

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Yes but what you're missing is that you didn't buy that song. You are paying for a subscription service for ACCESS to that song. You are downloading the song on your computer so you can access it without needing a data network, but the fact remains that you do not, by any means, "own" that audio file. If you want to listen to it offline, you need the Tidal application on the device through which you will be listening to it. If you want to BUY the song, you can do that through iTunes, BandCamp, Google Play or whatever else is out there. 
 
It's a "well no duh" situation because otherwise all anyone would need to do is get one month of Tidal, download absolutely everything they are interested in, cancel the subscription, and now they just have a few thousand dollars worth of music they got for $20. Or hell you could do it with the 7 day trial. Good work, you just stole several hundred albums for free. 

someguydude said:

Yes but what you're missing is that you didn't buy that song. You are paying for a subscription service for ACCESS to that song. You are downloading the song on your computer so you can access it without needing a data network, but the fact remains that you do not, by any means, "own" that audio file. If you want to listen to it offline, you need the Tidal application on the device through which you will be listening to it. If you want to BUY the song, you can do that through iTunes, BandCamp, Google Play or whatever else is out there. 

It's a "well no duh" situation because otherwise all anyone would need to do is get one month of Tidal, download absolutely everything they are interested in, cancel the subscription, and now they just have a few thousand dollars worth of music they got for $20. Or hell you could do it with the 7 day trial. Good work, you just stole several hundred albums for free. 

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Ah I see what you mean now. That makes sense.

I also have mixed feelings, I have the 30 days trial, first when I downloaded the program to my macbook, it didnt like my Snow leopard, NO HIFI option, so I had to upgrade to Lion, was lucky that my macbook 2007 (upgraded with 4G ram and ssd) could upgrade to Lion. Once upgraded I was able to select HIFI. Great, so I started listening to music, and all of a sudden when trying to browse the net with Safari, I get constant hick ups. With Chrome a little less but still do it, then I upgraded my service to 75 mbps and still doing it. So I checked my router and I get between 40 to 60 mbps, that should be enough but no I am still having issues. So I decided to buy a CAT 6 cable for a wired connection. That will be my last try, hopefully I get stable streaming. But to be honest, the whole thing is getting annoying. I know I need to buy a computer soon, but man the whole system is touchy. If you are goin to require a super fast above average internet connection and the latest state of the art computer, you will loose a lot of clients.
So far not satisfied.

maelob said:

I also have mixed feelings, I have the 30 days trial, first when I downloaded the program to my macbook, it didnt like my Snow leopard, NO HIFI option, so I had to upgrade to Lion, was lucky that my macbook 2007 (upgraded with 4G ram and ssd) could upgrade to Lion. Once upgraded I was able to select HIFI. Great, so I started listening to music, and all of a sudden when trying to browse the net with Safari, I get constant hick ups. With Chrome a little less but still do it, then I upgraded my service to 75 mbps and still doing it. So I checked my router and I get between 40 to 60 mbps, that should be enough but no I am still having issues. So I decided to buy a CAT 6 cable for a wired connection. That will be my last try, hopefully I get stable streaming. But to be honest, the whole thing is getting annoying. I know I need to buy a computer soon, but man the whole system is touchy. If you are goin to require a super fast above average internet connection and the latest state of the art computer, you will loose a lot of clients.
So far not satisfied.

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Sorry to hear you are having problems
For what it's worth, and not trying to rub it in, just sharing my experience, I have had zero problems with my PC with either the downloadable app or the web player, using HIFI option. I am using the cheapo rented wireless router my cable provider gives out. No dropouts or skips either. I wonder if Apple doesn't play well with Tidal?

blueshound24 said:

   
Sorry to hear you are having problems
For what it's worth, and not trying to rub it in, just sharing my experience, I have had zero problems with my PC with either the downloadable app or the web player, using HIFI option. I am using the cheapo rented wireless router my cable provider gives out. No dropouts or skips either. I wonder if Apple doesn't play well with Tidal?

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Also I think my internet speeds are 5 up, and 30 down.

I use it through my iPad music out of power port to dac then amp use he560 the sound difference is easy to hear compared to spotify premium
I fixed the lag time between songs by adding a 2 second overlap too songs

I am using Tidal on a n Imac without any issues. i will be loading ti to my macbook as well