[xeizo]

You can use Strawberry music player in Linux, it can stream Tidal FLAC and sounds excellent

 

[Maxpain]

I know and I have used strawberry to stream Tidal. Since I removed and purged pulse audio strawberry does not play audio with ALSA. But that's something I will figure out somehow...the problem is that 30% of those streaming services are the suggested personal lists and the weekly playlists with new songs. You miss all that with strawberry...but for just searching songs on Tidal is spot on indeed!

I also use strawberry as my primary media player to listen to my flac's stored in external hard drive. In general strawberry is very ''audiophile'' oriented.

 

[xeizo]

Yes, Strawberry is very nice, I used to use it predecessor Clementine a lot when I was more active with Linux. But I have started to run Strawberry on Windows now. No Tidal playlists is a con, one has to do personal playlists, but on the other hand it's possible to mix with local files. Also, fetching the whole catalogue of a certain artist etc works fine, makes it easier to select songs for a playlist. It also fetches the content very fast.

As far as usability, Spotify is hands down the best for casual listening, it's a pity it's only Ogg 320kbps for the Premium service.

 

[Maxpain]

Well I know...and of course Tidal supports hifi tier in web player too so I can listen on Linux too. But spotify supports only 160kbps in its web player. That's unacceptable for a paid account with premium. I also use 60% spotify and 40% Tidal so its not that I can just use tidal...Spotify its clearly better at everything except sound quality.

 

[xeizo]

You can install the full Spotify client on any Linux distribution using Snap:

https://www.spotify.com/se/download/linux/

 

[Maxpain]

I know but spotify client does not play audio when I don't have pulse audio installed. It just fast forward songs without any sound. Terminal giving some errors about spotify not being able to access my alsa.conf file.

 

[xeizo]

One workaround is to use Pulseaudio anyway, but set conversion quality to the highest(10), default samplerate to 96000 and bitformat to s24le in pulseaudio.conf. Definetely makes Pulse sound better.

 

[Maxpain]

My dac can handle S32_le...I have also configured pulse to not re sample anything and just play audio at 44.100 the native sample rate of spotify. The conversion quality its about the re sampling I assume?

 

[xeizo]

Yes, it's resampling but pulseaudio is a complex audio path so I would say it's best to set it at it's highest unless you have a very weak computer. And most DAC:s have sharp filters at 44.1kHz. Resampling to 96kHz may force the DAC to use a slower filter which sometimes sounds better and sometimes not. It's worth experimenting.

 

[Maxpain]

Is there a plug in or a player that can stream spotify like strawberry does with Tidal? Or maybe a way to control Spotify from the webplayer to an external device like a media player? That way you can have all the nice spotify environment but not its player.

 

[xeizo]

Spotify Connect is built inside Spotify, I can connect to my stereo, my home theater, my TV, my Google Home, my Chromecast from PC, smartphone or tablet. Have never tried it from the webplayer though but it should work the same.

 

[xeizo]

Ironic enough so did Strawberrys predecessor Clementine have a working Spotify Plugin. Tidal is better in that type of player though.

 

[Maxpain]

Does Clementine still supports the Spotify Plugin? Last time I tried Clementine was not not an ongoing project and it couldn't be updated by the repositories.

I think that Librespot plug in does not work any more.

 

[xeizo]

Does Clementine still supports the Spotify Plugin? Last time I tried Clementine was not not an ongoing project and it couldn't be updated by the repositories.

I think that Librespot plug in does not work any more.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work, Spotify has changed it's API:s and protocols several times since Clementine was last updated, I have been able to follow Spotifys changes in the form of my A/V-receiver which sometimes have had Spotify stop working. The next day there has always been a new firmware for the receiver, and Spotify has continued to work until the next significant change.

 

[Maxpain]

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work, Spotify has changed it's API:s and protocols several times since Clementine was last updated, I have been able to follow Spotifys changes in the form of my A/V-receiver which sometimes have had Spotify stop working. The next day there has always been a new firmware for the receiver, and Spotify has continued to work until the next significant change.

That's true, yesterday I tried Clementine and I coudn't even install the spotify plug in. A solution would be to use Strawberry to stream Tidal lossles with ALSA and also use Pulseaudio for Spotify desktop client that I know it works. Perhaps with a little tweaking in the pulse/daemon.conf file. I belive that even with pulse installed Strawberry uses just ALSA if to output if you choose that?

Although the problem its not with Spotify only almost all snaps seems to have a problem with ALSA and output no sound. Terminal indicates that the snap can not access /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf file so its no surprise that it crashes. Maybe with some research I will find a solution to that too.