BobSmith8901
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Tidal Lossless Streaming
- Thread starter Baroninkjet
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highlightshadow
100+ Head-Fier
Made a pleasant discovery with Tidal this past couple weeks.
Been using Spotify for years now. Typically in the past whenever i tried Tidal on lossless through a trial i didn't think i could hear much benefit.
Not the case anymore.... i'm now a total Tidal convert (using Hifi tier for CD level quality not the full Hifi+) but the amount of bass extension and overall clarity now is really apparant
A/Bing some of my most listened to tracks i was genuinly shocked at the difference -- not subtle in the slightest. The Tidal versions feel so much more open across the board.
Either tidal's gone great or Spotify have really gone terrible on their encoding now
Been using Spotify for years now. Typically in the past whenever i tried Tidal on lossless through a trial i didn't think i could hear much benefit.
Not the case anymore.... i'm now a total Tidal convert (using Hifi tier for CD level quality not the full Hifi+) but the amount of bass extension and overall clarity now is really apparant
A/Bing some of my most listened to tracks i was genuinly shocked at the difference -- not subtle in the slightest. The Tidal versions feel so much more open across the board.
Either tidal's gone great or Spotify have really gone terrible on their encoding now
gimmeheadroom
Headphoneus Supremus
BobSmith8901
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Installed the new USB Audio Player Pro (UAPP) beta 6.1.3.8 and its embedded Tidal now functions 100% on my Shanling M6 Pro 21 w/Android 7.1.1 (firmware 1.29).
--FLAC 16/44.1 check
--FLAC 24/96 check
--FLAC 24/192 check
--MQA (all bit/sample rates I can find) check
Everything plays now with the beta. Been waiting for this for a long time, on this machine, in the Tidal FLAC regime.
On the other hand, on this particular machine, Tidal Android app (latest 2.93 beta) is still hobbled by MQA artifacts even with a firmware update which fixed the FLAC but not the MQA.
--FLAC 16/44.1 check
--FLAC 24/96 check
--FLAC 24/192 check
--MQA (all bit/sample rates I can find) check
Everything plays now with the beta. Been waiting for this for a long time, on this machine, in the Tidal FLAC regime.
On the other hand, on this particular machine, Tidal Android app (latest 2.93 beta) is still hobbled by MQA artifacts even with a firmware update which fixed the FLAC but not the MQA.
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Audiophiliac
100+ Head-Fier
I got my post removed from Audirvana forums for saying that compressing then streaming won't sound better was being mean and acting like I own the place.
After a lot of years using Audirvana 3.5.50 on MacOS today I have moved definitively to Tidal desktop app. Audirvana doesn't work well with MQA files and some others HiRes FLAC Tidal albums/songs and Tidal with exclusive mode enabled does it perfectly. I am using an external DAC (Mojo 2) and I have not found what more or better Audirvana is doing with the Tidal streaming than Tidal App is not doing. My ears do not appreciate the difference. I only listen through streaming, Tidal HiFi Plus.
@almarti actually I've been thinking about returning to Audirvana, but since Tidal app works so well, the only reason is to play local files, but in such case current licensing scheme is not acceptable for me. From my expirence, especially with Mojo 2 if you are Tidal strictly user, there is nothing that Audirvana can offer with 2 exceptions: upsampling and EQ plugins, but since Mojo 2 has its own brilliant DSP you are left with upsampling only. As time passes by I tend to use less and less of upsampling except for same very specific cases and those are handled outside of Audirvana (using M-Scaler is one such case).
milkdudd
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I've been using Qobuz happily but planned to return to Tidal with the Best Buy prepaid yearly discount but that's not available anymore. Does anyone know of a discount if I prepay for the whole year?
Absolutely and fully agree with you. Now I am trying to learn how to setup the right EQ in Mojo 2 for Mr Speakers Ether Flow (DCA Ether Flow) that fits with classical and progressive 70-80'2 rock and some jazz guitar. Your feedback on this is very welcome as well. Thanks a lot
@almarti can't help you there since I have never heard Ether Flow cans and secondly I am not an EQ master like other members here. I would strongy suggest asking this question on Mojo 2 and Ether Flow topics on this forum. You may also check Tonebooster VST plugin if your headphones are supported. While Tidal app does not support those plugins other players do and it may be a starting point before diving into world of color balls with Mojo 2 DSP.
Audiophiliac
100+ Head-Fier
Wow, I can't believe anyone can't hear a problem with the Tidal desktop app. I find that almost any real file player sounds better than that. Compared to the Tidal app, Foobar2k is almost as good as Audirvana. I just prefer being picky and choosing Audirvana clearly for my reference. The Tidal support on top of file playing supremacy is "sick", how good that is to finally get for stuff I haven't even heard yet, compared to radio and then streaming. Streaming from FLAC from Tidal really is almost as good as playing the file locally would be, although after saying that, I'll disagree. It works better saying streaming FLAC sucks, so that it's really not bad at all.
Don't forget, only uncompressed local files can qualify as being reference, anything else has to try to be indistinguishable, if you bother caring about anything else. Besides that, you'll still need a dedicated I2S line to you DAC not to keep from getting worse than what the original CD players gave us, sigh. But there also was always something suspect about reading confidently from CD's vs reads from a SSD, as EAC supported. I still hear a bit of noise from reads from a mechanical drive. My theory that a thumb drive should be quieter than a fast SSD I can't hear, but should be a sound theory. My 2tb usb ssd with a cable was cheaper and way faster than a 1tb thumb stick though, while still only requiring usb power, so ok, I went for it. Hmm, I don't think I could say it's better than the slower USB stick soundwise, though. Nope, I can't say it is theoretically, so it automatically can't be reference.
Don't forget, only uncompressed local files can qualify as being reference, anything else has to try to be indistinguishable, if you bother caring about anything else. Besides that, you'll still need a dedicated I2S line to you DAC not to keep from getting worse than what the original CD players gave us, sigh. But there also was always something suspect about reading confidently from CD's vs reads from a SSD, as EAC supported. I still hear a bit of noise from reads from a mechanical drive. My theory that a thumb drive should be quieter than a fast SSD I can't hear, but should be a sound theory. My 2tb usb ssd with a cable was cheaper and way faster than a 1tb thumb stick though, while still only requiring usb power, so ok, I went for it. Hmm, I don't think I could say it's better than the slower USB stick soundwise, though. Nope, I can't say it is theoretically, so it automatically can't be reference.
Broquen
100+ Head-Fier
I have to say that I'm very happy since I left quite apart cables, and why not say it too, most of high-end stuff.
It can sound weird (and I suppose that few people will agree with me here), but I'm getting 90% of the performance when listening to Tidal + Sony WH-1000XM5 using LDAC, compared to e.g. my Focal Clears MG or other expensive stuff (in fact, I enjoy more the XM5s).
The XM5s stock sound is very organic, and the drivers are very capable, but it's also horrible, very muddy and unbalanced.
The thing is that you can get a very high-end-ish sound profile (with some limitations, of course) using EQ, and that the EQ profile is stored in the cans, so you hear the same sound despite the BT source. In addition, this type of cans include both tailor-made DAC and AMP... And all of this, at the end, means freedom in more aspects that I first suspected.
People should give this a real try. The XM5s at least, when properly EQd, sound much better than their price would suggest, and Tidal is a very good source most of the times.
It can sound weird (and I suppose that few people will agree with me here), but I'm getting 90% of the performance when listening to Tidal + Sony WH-1000XM5 using LDAC, compared to e.g. my Focal Clears MG or other expensive stuff (in fact, I enjoy more the XM5s).
The XM5s stock sound is very organic, and the drivers are very capable, but it's also horrible, very muddy and unbalanced.
The thing is that you can get a very high-end-ish sound profile (with some limitations, of course) using EQ, and that the EQ profile is stored in the cans, so you hear the same sound despite the BT source. In addition, this type of cans include both tailor-made DAC and AMP... And all of this, at the end, means freedom in more aspects that I first suspected.
People should give this a real try. The XM5s at least, when properly EQd, sound much better than their price would suggest, and Tidal is a very good source most of the times.
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Audiophiliac
100+ Head-Fier
Lots of headphones make it seem like that must be the hard part about designing headphones, the EQ.
I use Sonarworks, and it comes with a system-wide virtual driver, that lets you have your headphones corrected EQ using default audio, and therefore it works in everything, Chrome, games, Tidal app, everything. It takes a tiny hit in transparency using the virtual driver vs a plugin only, but how many apps let you use a plugin? Sonarworks gives 100% of apps corrected EQ.
I still disagree with the Tidal app source sounding ok at all, though. The only streaming app that didn't sound like garbage to me, was Qobuz, it was surprisingly not bad at all. It was also cheaper than Tidal, and has 0 MQA garbage lying about giving me higher res, and actually sounding worse than the original 44.1khz would have. Higher rez on Qobuz immediately sounded like higher res properly. However, the option to browse for new stuff I've never heard before was like 2 screens long, and didn't change over my 2 months there. Also, my single personal custom playlist had nothing to do with any of my favorites, all sucked, and didn't change. No, maybe it did, once a week, but it still all sucked. That's the way Tidal won, on their standard non-MQA plan to keep it from sounding worse. 8 different custom playlists based on different styles of my favorites, rotating every couple of days. I totally love that part. I was even going to stick to it on the basic res plan, but happily, the MQA scam went bankrupt, and the MQA tracks are gradually getting replaced by the proper higher res versions, so I'm back on the sadly $20 but higher res plan. I'm finding maybe 60% of tracks are restored to proper higher res, at this time, but it's getting better. I don't know why they don't fix it all in a day, the first thing the amateur hackers learn is writing scripts that could replace all MQA tracks with the original versions in probably less than 2 hours even on a pair of single mechanical drives...
Brain Damage
100+ Head-Fier
As a former Tidal user and present Qobuz user, I find Audirvana to be a better player than the native Qobuz desktop app as I can surf the Internet and use various programs simultaneously whilst streaming/playing local hi-res files through Audirvana; whereas, the desktop Qobuz app cuts out/experiences glitches if I try to multitask. Interesting, and good to know that Tidal's desktop app doesn't do this on the off-chance I ever return to Tidal.
Happy New Year everyone
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