[pedalhead]

Have to say, I'm really enjoying some of the Tidal curated playlists this week:  
 
Space Music: Sounds from Outer Space
Space Disco: Groovy Universe
Dance to the '90s
 
Some guilty pleasures in there 

 

[zilch0md]

 
I suspect there's nothing wrong with tidal but that the problem is with your ISP. Netflix has paid, tidal has not is my theory
 
If you Americans want to know what's going on I suggest people post their city and their ISP.
 
And for those few who may not know what this crazy dutchman is talking about. Have a look:

http://youtu.be/fpbOEoRrHyU

 

I think wijnands may be correct. I'm in northern NY on a Time Warner cable system and I'm running 5ghz AC wireless. I've had absolutely superb Tidal service. No glitches or buffering whatsoever and it's been about four weeks since I started the service.

 
It might be my ISP throttling Tidal - I have no way to disprove that - but consider these observations:  
 

1. If I want to enjoy dropout-free listening, my best chance of success comes during off-peak hours.  
2. Redbook 44/16 only requires a bandwidth of 1.4 Mbps.
3. Speed tests on my iOS and Windows 7 devices alike, routinely measure a 19 to 20 Mbps download capability, even when Tidal is acting up.
4. It's not just Neflix that shows no evidence of bandwidth issues when Tidal is failing. I've started 1080p YouTube videos on all four devices, for example, and watched them buffer well ahead of playback speed. Killing those apps and restarting Tidal on any of the four devices finds it still suffering dropouts.
5. I have a friend in Sydney, who has been using a VPN service to get Tidal from the U.S. Having subscribed to Tidal early on, well ahead of me, he was enjoying trouble-free listening for several weeks and well after I first joined. He even joked that perhaps I should use the same VPN service. But then Tidal started acting up even for him, occasionally - despite the fact that he listens primarily during the middle of the night, here. 

 
None of this actually proves that Tidal is to blame, but with every other throughput-dependent application working fine, on multiple devices, including Skype, YouTube, Neftlix and other music services, I'm comfortable with pointing the finger at Tidal.  
 
Mike

 

[wijnands]

   
None of this actually proves that Tidal is to blame, but with every other throughput-dependent application working fine, on multiple devices, including Skype, YouTube, Neftlix and other music services, I'm comfortable with pointing the finger at Tidal.  
 
Mike

I get the impression that you are assuming that your ISP and the upstream treat all traffic equally. That may or may not be the case.
Fact is that us Europeans in general seem to get pretty good results. Some North-Americans as well.
 
Way I see it it's one of these
1. Tidal only has European servers. Unlikely but not impossible
2. Their north-american farms are not sized properly (yet)
3. Someone upstream from some of the users is doing something naughty. For what that might be I'd suggest you watch John's video which I posted earlier.
 
I've also nudged Tidal about this thread. Seems to me they should at least read it and possibly get actively involved.

 

[pedalhead]

It'd be interesting to know the location of the Tidal servers that USA listeners are using (presumably/hopefully, as wijnands said, they're in the USA). I just checked and mine is connecting to servers in Copenhagen. I'm based in the UK so this makes sense, although I do have a USA (not a UK) account 

.  On Windows, just run a netstat -b > temp.txt whilst streaming and search the text file for tidal.exe.  A few addresses will show up. Use this site to trace the addresses.

 

[zilch0md]

  I get the impression that you are assuming that your ISP and the upstream treat all traffic equally. That may or may not be the case.
Fact is that us Europeans in general seem to get pretty good results. Some North-Americans as well.
 
Way I see it it's one of these
1. Tidal only has European servers. Unlikely but not impossible
2. Their north-american farms are not sized properly (yet)
3. Someone upstream from some of the users is doing something naughty. For what that might be I'd suggest you watch John's video which I posted earlier.
 
I've also nudged Tidal about this thread. Seems to me they should at least read it and possibly get actively involved.

 
Oh good.
 
Here are some links Tidal can explore when they come to this thread:
 
 
https://www.facebook.com/TidalHiFi/posts/1509177086000203
 
 
https://www.facebook.com/TidalHiFi/posts/1513431798908065
 
A month later:  https://www.facebook.com/TidalHiFi/posts/1525751487676096
 
 
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/tidal-us-today-22166/index5.html#post362434
 
 
http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?mode=linear&tid=28868&pid=345663
 
 
http://lhlabs.com/force/music-streaming-services/2061-tidal-hifi-streaming-coming#36533

 

[biffsbiz]

I am out in the middle of the Sonoran Desert in the middle of nowhere. Tidal works great for me on Verizon LTE. I love it.

 

[toolio]

 
I suspect there's nothing wrong with tidal but that the problem is with your ISP. Netflix has paid, tidal has not is my theory
 
If you Americans want to know what's going on I suggest people post their city and their ISP.
 
And for those few who may not know what this crazy dutchman is talking about. Have a look:

http://youtu.be/fpbOEoRrHyU

This is nonsense. I had a paid Tidal subscription for a month and playback issues were frequent. I'm a Canadian living in Brasil. I tried it in both countries, where there is no "Netflix has paid" garbage. All connections in both countries were a minimum of 50 megs. Tidal was so problematic that I cancelled. Qobuz, a similar service, streams just fine everywhere I go. I have been using it for about 18 months. All other streaming services, aside from Tidal, give me no problems.
 
The issue is Tidal. Plain and simple.

 

[biffsbiz]

I thought that Tidal was expanded only recently to Britain & the US. If you are streaming from a foreign country all the way to Canada or Brazil, no wonder it hiccups. Again, in the US on Verizon LTE I haven't had even one hiccup in 4 months of continuous usage.

 

[Baroninkjet]

I work with realtime stock market data, and I can tell you that overseas live connections are definitely more troublesome.

 

[stuartmc]

If the "issue" is Tidal, then there needs to be a better explanation of why.  I would think that Tidal themselves would like to get a handle on it because it will obviously effect their business and market penetration in places like the USA where there seems to be much disparity in performance.   Why does my friend Mike (Zilch0md) who lives in Texas have such problems, when me, here in New York bordering Canuckistan, have none?  If our wifi systems have comparable bandwidth and we are using the same Tidal inferface, this shouldn't be happening.  I will look into what server is feeding me as per Pedalhead's suggestion.  There has to be a bottleneck occurring in the chain before it reaches the local provider.

 

[vrapan]

This is nonsense. I had a paid Tidal subscription for a month and playback issues were frequent. I'm a Canadian living in Brasil. I tried it in both countries, where there is no "Netflix has paid" garbage. All connections in both countries were a minimum of 50 megs. Tidal was so problematic that I cancelled. Qobuz, a similar service, streams just fine everywhere I go. I have been using it for about 18 months. All other streaming services, aside from Tidal, give me no problems.

The issue is Tidal. Plain and simple.

I had the exact opposite experience. I am on 100Mb line with Virgin in UK. Qobuz takes 5-10 seconds before starting streaming anything with plenty of times were music would not start at all. Tidal was not as responsive as spotify but it was reliable and buffered for a couple of seconds before each song on hifi

 

[toolio]

I had the exact opposite experience. I am on 100Mb line with Virgin in UK. Qobuz takes 5-10 seconds before starting streaming anything with plenty of times were music would not start at all. Tidal was not as responsive as spotify but it was reliable and buffered for a couple of seconds before each song on hifi

For me, it was the opposite of your opposite, lol. There are settings to adjust the Qobuz buffer in most of their apps, I think. Mine loads the first part of a song quickly and then plays flawlessly. It takes about 30 seconds for an entire average-length song to be buffered with Qobuz after the song begins playing (it varies, of course, depending on the length of the song). The next song that plays is already fully buffered or almost fully buffered when it starts playing. When I had Tidal  the wait to start playing was long, but because at the time the app did not have a buffer indicator I can't tell you what happened after that--except that there was also a long gap between songs, indicating it wasn't buffering the next song. Of course, it is possible Tidal has improved after I stopped paying after the first month. And when I see enough indications that all is fine, I might subscribe again. I liked their selection and interface, but flawed playback is a deal killer for me. For now there are still too many complaints about that.

 

[PeterBandu]

Hello, I signed up with TIDAL but they are not for me, I live in North Thailand and have to use a VPN based in the UK and it was just taking too long with downloads or getting anything to work properly. I've signed up to TIDAL's email to let me know when the service is available here, but that's it for now.
 
Peter

 

[pedalhead]

  Hello, I signed up with TIDAL but they are not for me, I live in North Thailand and have to use a VPN based in the UK and it was just taking too long with downloads or getting anything to work properly. I've signed up to TIDAL's email to let me know when the service is available here, but that's it for now.
 
Peter

 
Sounds like your VPN probably wasn't up to the task. I have an occasional VPN service I use to the USA and I wouldn't dream of trying to stream lossless audio down it, but perhaps I'm not using the right VPN service! 

 

[pedalhead]

Has anyone on here compared Tidal to Qobuz yet? I just signed up for a month's trial of Qobuz & will see how it shapes up.  Already I'm noticing the better (although not quite gapless) track switching and quicker scanning within tracks on Qobuz, plus far shorter waits when queueing up a track. I prefer the PC app to Tidal's as well, although I know Tidal are working on that. It's clear that Qobuz doesn't have the editorial content that I like so much with Tidal...that is a big plus for T.  Sound quality-wise, I can't tell them apart...at least, once I realised the slightly soft bass impact on Qobuz was due to it defaulting to 90% volume 

.