When using the TIDAL app I am getting some noise during the first second or two of an MQA song. This appears to be related to switching into MQA mode - for example when the previous song was 16/44.1.
Setup is N6ii with E01 module.
This happens if your playlist contains both MQA and non-MQA songs. It only happens when switching into MQA mode.
Does anyone else experience this?
I just experienced the exact same issue.
@Andykong
I did some more testing last night. Here are results.
1. Using the TIDAL app, stream a normal 16/44,1 song and then play a Masters song. You will get around a second of white noise mixed into the beginning of the Masters track.
2. Using an offline playlist in the TIDAL app, play a 16/44.1 song and then stream a Masters track. You will get a slight pause when the Masters song plays. If you watch the sample rate on the display you will see it switch to 88.2 or 96kHz and then to the 3x times unfold rate. The gap happens during this switching/upsampling of sample rate.
3. Using UAPP, the symptoms are the opposite. Play a TIDAL Masters track. It plays normally. Follow this with a regular 16/44.1 song from TIDAL and you get white noise mixed into the beginning of the 16/44.1 song for about 0.5 seconds.
I have not noticed this before, I will try a reboot later, to see if it resolves this problem.
it does have the noises for some DSD64-128 switching as well with Neutron player and A02. So I think it is more like a bugs with these 3rd party apps rather than the players itself ? I like the neutron player app on A02 combo due to better airiness and bass textures
The noise issue when playing a Masters track in the TIDAL app also happens via the I2S interface, thereby when the motherboard’s DAC is bypassed.
As this also happens with UAPP, it must be some generic processing issue.
Is anyone else using the TIDAL app on their N6ii? If so, could you test playing non-MQA songs and MQA songs alternately in the TIDAL app to see if you get noise at the beginning of songs? This must be a common issue.
I just conducted some tests wrt the "noise at PCM/MQA or vice versa switching" issue. In summary, I got the noise in a very few but not all instances, and - honestly - it was not overly distracting for me.
Setup: N6ii with E02 -> balanced into Beyerdynamic Xelento, listening at my usual 32HdB and up to 40 or more HdB
Players: Original Tidal Android App, and Tidal integrated within UAPP
Created two playlists: Each one is alternating CD and MQA quality tracks a couple of times; one playlist with streaming only, one with offlined contents only. (Admittedly, one could think of a playlist that also alternates between streaming and offlined.)
In the original Tidal App, I did get this noise when switching from 16/44.1 to MQA, actually in the offline playlist. A fraction of a second (<0.5 sec) of something that sounds like mild static, low in volume. But with the streaming playlist in the Tidal App and with both playlists in UAPP, the disturbances were hardly noticeable.
I must say that all those little clicks and mutings at track/quality switchovers are much more noticeable than that noise ("white" or "static"). I suspect that with the E02 the mutings might be long enough to cover that noise; in fact, the mutings are long enough to cover the first actual sounds at a track's beginning.
Remark 1: When trying to find out whether these noises occur in Tidal streaming or offlining, I guess one should keep in mind that a streamed track gets cached while being played for the very first time (at least that's what I think to happen), and thus it will be similar to an offlined track at replays thereafter.
Remark 2: Using Tidal within UAPP brought up a lot of weird issues, UAPP stalled and even crashed on me quite often. It seems the app doesn't like to do fast forwards and other actions with the slider bar when streaming, i.e. buffering new contents and picking up at the desired position again. In this test, I wanted to listen to the first few seconds of a track and then slide forward to its last seconds.
Remark 3: Actually, I am not at all the Playlist type of person, I am the Play-an-entire-album person. So I would never have noticed this noise issue... Similar to me noticing the mute at a track's beginning only after quite some time with the N6ii. [In former days, I even had some OCD with music I cherish - I wouldn't stop a track without a manual slow fade-out, and I would listen to all four sides of a 2-LP album in a row... - getting sidetracked.]
