Tidal Lossless Streaming

[swspiers]

I just signed up for the 7 day trial, and like a few others I have mixed thoughts.  It's just way too soon for me to really conclude anything, except I will most likely pay for the monthly subscription for a month or so at least.  They did have "Variations on a Theme" by Om, and I have to admit it sounded great.  I've just used Spotify for so long for casual listening, plus my 2+ TB of media, that I have to wonder if Tidal fills a need, or even a want at this point.

 

[AnAnalogSpirit]

I Had the opportunity to spend some more listening time with TIDAL this evening... I finally got a USG OTG Cable for my Galaxy S4 to pair with my E17 DAC/Amp, so I've now heard the difference between straight headphone out and with a DAC/Amp. Doubly exciting BC it was the first time I used USB digital out from my shiny new android device. The report: Tidal sounds fantastic on portable 4GLTE or WiFi. Walking around the house hooked up to Tidal trying new music, delving into nice remastered classics, and even just letting the playlist go random, I'm having a good, high quality experience. I had dropouts on the very first day, but my T-Mobile account was overdue and in addition I was throttled due to having already chewed through my fast 2GB LTE data. I have "fixed" both of those issues and increased my LTE cap to max. I think I'm all set. Enjoying Tidal. Haven't used it on the PC yet, though...

 

[dcginc]

  I will be very interested to know which Hardware manufacturer (DAC or Music server) are working with Tidal/WiMP (& Qobuz) to integrate Tidal’s (& Qobuz) lossless streaming service into their Hardware so that we can stream CD Quality (16/44 Flac)  music without the need for a PC/Mac, and.. without using Airplay) 

agreed. curious to know what hardware mfg'ers will endorse the hi Def streaming services. I have a PS Audio PWD MkI and I see over on the PSA community forum, PSA says they currently do not know how their Directstream DAC (or any of their hardware) can stream TIDAL. Wondering if it is time to 'hit the bid' on the PWD, and opt for Auralic Aries which purportedly does stream hi def services. Thoughts?

 

[miceblue]

I'm not quite sure this is exactly what you were referring to, but still interesting nonetheless.
http://lhlabs.com/force/geekpulse/2268-new-streaming-music-mode

Hi, Force

I have this idea and several key corner stones for a long time. Since I'm the official subscriber of Tidal, I will use it as part of my reference to fine tune another mode besides TCM and FRM.

Let's call it SMM (Streaming Music Mode).

What we have in the plate usually in streaming music?
1. Lower sampling rate (44.1K or 48K)
2. Much more jitter especially the software player doesn't care that much
3. Sometimes sound stage got quite compressed and very unnatural in both high and low ends.
...

It is not an easy job to FIX all these. But I just want you to know. I will work on it. Which will involve tweak digital filter, special buffer mechanism and some preemptive jitter forecast algorithm....
When ever it is ready, I will release as 1V5 firmware for ALL Geek Pulse and Geek Soul.

For now, we have a dedicated team focus on shipping your Geek Pulse/LPS.

When you got it, enjoy! Then stay tuned for the even better firmware there.



Larry

 

[tuna47]

From tidal great customer service always answer in one day answer to % lossless
##- Please type your reply above this line -##

Your request (1375) has been updated. To add additional comments, reply to this email.

TIDAL Supp
TIDAL Support [EM] (TIDAL)
Nov 11 08:42

Hi,

About 85% is HiFi, but on iOS we are a little behind with converting some albums to ALAC from FLAC, as that is iOS' way to stream HiFi. So when you click play on an album that is fairly new, and it is not HiFi, this album is bumped in a que to be converted to ALAC, after a few days the album should be playable in HiFi if it is playable in HiFi on your pc/mac already.

Best Regards,

Erik
TIDAL Support

Tunick1
Tunick1
Nov 10 19:47

What percent of the albums are lossless sometimes my HIFI is gray not white

Sent from Charlie's iPad

TIDAL Supp
TIDAL Support [EM] (TIDAL)
Nov 06 12:33

Hello Tunick1,

Thank you for contacting TIDAL Support. There is no plan to change the price, but we appreciate the feedback. If you want to stop your account please log into www.tidalhifi.com

Best Regards,

Erik
TIDAL Support

Tunick1
Tunick1
Nov 05 19:41

i love your service but the price is too expensive you should be maybe $15 until you get going At that price I would belong
Tunick1@comcast.net

This email is a service from TIDAL. Delivered by Zendesk.
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[dabotsonline]

I heard rumours a few months ago that Qobuz are suffering from financial difficulties. Whilst they currently offer gapless playback and digital booklets, I wonder if they'll have to cut back on future improvement if the rumours are indeed true.

What is interesting is how quickly Aspiro have managed to build hardware partnerships for TIDAL after seemingly being ambivalent during the roll-out of WiMP. We'll see in the next few months whether they can improve the core performance of the service, and I e-mailed them with my own questions (their e-mail support is very responsive when the messages get through, but seems to have a very strict spam filter so I had to send to all the below addresses):

general AT tidalsupport DOT zendesk DOT com,
kristin DOT eldnes AT tidalhifi DOT com,
service AT tidalhifi DOT com,  
support AT tidalhifi DOT com

Dear all,

Firstly, I've signed up to the 30-day TIDAL trial and it's excellent! Congratulations to you all for your hard work.

1. The Pulselocker streaming service available through the 'Splyce' iOS app has a large catalogue of niche dance music and some interesting playback effects for mobile DJing. However, I would love to see TIDAL support in the 'DJ Player' iOS app ( http://djplayerapp.com ) with its fully-featured timecode support, and I feel that its developer, Gábor Szántó, might be interested in a partnership. I would also love to see TIDAL support in desktop-based DJ apps: Traktor, Serato, Virtual DJ, Cross, djay, Deckadance etc. Is there any possibility of this?

2. I notice that you have AirPlay support in your iOS app - what about Google Cast support in your iOS and Android apps? Will you also be updating your Android app to support Android TV? What about Apple TV, Xbox One, Playstation 4?

3. Lots of mobile operators are now rolling out LTE-Advanced, and CEntrance - not to mention Sony, Denon and OPPO - are aggressively expanding their range of portable DACs. Genelec and JBL Professional have recently made exciting announcements, and I'm sure CES and NAMM in January will reveal yet more products promoting great audio quality.

I note that Deezer has just launched in the US with their 'Elite' service in collaboration with Sonos and featuring the same streaming as yourselves: 16-bit/44.1kHz CD-Quality. This is the same fidelity that Qobuz use in other countries and, crucially, they also offer up to 24-bit/192kHz digital downloads if the studio masters were recorded in such resolution (as do HDTracks, Pono Music etc).

However, do you have plans to offer *streaming* at 24-bit/192kHz at some point soon? What about streaming of 5.1 and Dolby Atmos?

4. Also, it is expected that Google Music Key and YouTube Music Key will offer hi-fi sound with HD music videos very soon, building upon their existing Play Music All-Access service. There are also rumours that Apple will leverage the Beats Music editorial curation to launch a new hi-fi music service in concert with the Grammys next February, perhaps including streaming. Spotify have gone on record to say that they are watching all these developments closely and will be prepared to raise their bitrate above 320kbps when necessary.

How do you intend to differentiate the TIDAL proposition amongst this landscape of keen and extremely well-funded competitors?

Kind regards,

Nicholas Polydor (based in the UK)

And their response (via general AT tidalsupport DOT zendesk DOT com ):

Hi Nicholas,

Thank you for your feedback.

1. We are talking to a lot of both hardware and software manufacturers, but I can unfortunately not reveal any names before it is official. I will anyways forward your request to our Partner Team.

2. We are working on Chromecast support in our Android app. No timeline to share yet.

3. We have already done some testing with 24bit/96kHz together with Bluesound at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest - works well. No ETA.

4. We believe in our own service, but we will welcome other streaming services as well. Competition is healthy.

I hope I was able to assist you sufficiently.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions.

Best,
Fredrik

Has anyone seen any reports of the 24-bit/96kHz streaming collaboration with Bluesound at RMAF 2014? I've searched and found the following tangential mentions:

PRIMER: ROCKY MOUNTAIN AUDIO FEST 2014

... word on the street is that we will see 96kHz/24-bit streaming in late 2015. This is huge.

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/primer-rocky-mountain-audio-fest-2014/

The Tide is in...And Tidal Lossless Streaming is Rockin' This Boat

Redbook masters
Submitted by tidalpal on November 6, 2014 - 1:03am

How can giving you access to 2.5-3 million albums in redbook quality, masters coming directly from the mastering houses (we don't rip anything) for $20/mth be a rip-off?

To clarify
Submitted by tidalpal on November 6, 2014 - 1:08am

The lossless option in 44.1/16 is available on all our clients. Our clients not including Windows Phone as there is no native lossless codec there yet and we use the native media renderers in the platforms normally.

This means
- Lossless in Chrome. We will add more browsers but Chome is so far the best at letting us do some memory management in the background to optimize playback. This is also a good option for Linux. (FLAC)
- Lossless in PC/Mac client. This option is still the most robust for sending to an external DAC, unless you have some other re-routing going on in OSX or Windows. (FLAC)
- Lossless in Android (FLAC)
- Lossless in iOS (ALAC).

When you write hi-rez, even though I would like that to be true already, we are streaming lossless redbook 44.1kHz/16bit. In my world, the high-resolution world starts at 88.2kHz/24bit, or perhaps more common 96/24. We have also demonstrated streaming at these rates, but there's still quite a bit on the business side before this is a fully released product, Tyll.

WiMP
Submitted by tidalpal on November 6, 2014 - 1:41am

TIDAL is the same as the WiMP HiFi product in EU. Not only Bluesound & NAD, but these were communicated as partners at launch with many more to come already: Anthem, Airable by Tune In Media, Astell & Kern, Audeze, Audiovector, AudioQuest, Auralic, Aurender, Bel Canto, Dan D'Agostino, Definitive Technology, Denon HEOS, DTS Play-Fi, Dynaudio, Electrocompaniet, Harman Omni, HiFiAkademie, ickStream, JH Audio, Linn, McIntosh, Meridian, MartinLogan, Paradigm, Polk, Pro-ject, PS Audio, Raumfeld, Simple Audio, Sonos, Steinway Lyngdorf, Wren Sound Systems.

 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/tide-inand-tidal-lossless-streaming-rockin-boat

 

[Baroninkjet]

My understanding is that Chromecast is limited to 192bps, fwiw.

 

[dabotsonline]

  My understanding is that Chromecast is limited to 192bps, fwiw.

 
Interesting.
 
"For most Chromecast-friendly apps, streaming quality maxes out 192kbps"
 
http://readwrite.com/2014/04/10/google-chromecast-music-apps-home-audio
 
Hopefully newer devices that support the Google Cast protocol - i.e. the second-generation Chromecast that was recently revealed in an FCC document, and all Android TV from the Nexus Player onwards - will support higher bitrates when the HDMI connector or lead in plugged into a preamp or receiver to conduct the decoding.

 

[iamjohnm]

I did a few tests with my Sony MDR-7506 headphones and studio monitors. From what I noticed it is lossless however it is still not as good as lossless from a CD rip. Probably due to some sort of compression from streaming. But it is pretty close. Great service it seems, cool they are giving out a week free trial..



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[miceblue]

I did a few tests with my Sony MDR-7506 headphones and studio monitors. From what I noticed it is lossless however it is still not as good as lossless from a CD rip. Probably due to some sort of compression from streaming. But it is pretty close. Great service it seems, cool they are giving out a week free trial..

CD-rip of Lindsey Stirling's debut album (track 1, Electric Daisy Violin)


Tidal on HiFi mode:

^ Background noise is due to my recorder and added gain without clipping in Audacity

They look pretty darn identical to me.
Fun song to listen to

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxIOUJ7by6U[/video]

 

[iamjohnm]

I did the test using my ears.  They can look identical and still sound and feel different.  It's like mixing a song, your ears are more important than the numbers.  It wasn't a huge difference but the Tital tracks sounded muddier to me.  

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  I did the test using my ears.  They can look identical and still sound and feel different.  It's like mixing a song, your ears are more important than the numbers.  It wasn't a huge difference but the Tital tracks sounded muddier to me.  

 
But remember, your perception can rather easily be influenced by psychological factors. Person A who is dead set sure that Tidal streaming will sound crystal clear compared to their 320MP3s might rave about how transparent and spacious Tidal is, and person B who is dead set sure that direct CD rips will sound better will think Tidal sounds muddy, even if in both cases they can't actually hear a dang thing.

 

[iamjohnm]

I was actually wanting them to sound the same, but it was a big but small difference between the two to for me.  Go listen for yourself and see what you hear.  Everyone will have a difference experience. 

 

[iamjohnm]

One thing I forgot to mention that I noticed earlier, I have my own music on Tidal, I didn't even know my distributor gave it to them but awesome.  But some of the tracks I gave to one my distributors only take 320 MP3 and it was on there.  So it is possible some tracks on there are not lossless.  

 

[SomeGuyDude]

I don't have anything on disc, actually. I went to all digital some time ago. All I know is that through my SE846's  and LCD-2's things sound clearer than ever.