[sajesak]

TIDAL made an announcement at the Rocky Mountain Audiofest with a listen of hardware manufacturers, including:
Sonos
Denon’s new HEOS system
Harman’s recently announced Omni speaker system
Bluesound
NAD
Meridian
Auralic
Electrocompaniet
Simple Audio
Raumfeld
Dynaudio
Audiovector
Pro-ject
Airable by Tune In Media
HiFiAkademie
ickStream.
Acrylic dice

I think this is going to be very exciting. I plan to try TIDAL as soon as it comes out in the U.S.

There is a lot of negativity and sarcasm against Tidal lately (driven by their format choices and partly because of their pricing) and I personally feel it doesn’t deserve it especially in a forum such as this where people care about music and sound quality. Tidal has always been a positive force in the industry: it was probably the first streaming service that was serious about sound quality (I still remember how much I was impressed when I first listened to it), they had throughout the years probably the best catalogue (especially for high-resolution content), they were always serious about artist loyalties and never tried to squeeze artists (Spotify), they didn’t offer music for free like a giveaway commoditizing it in-between ads (again Spotify, although I understand that now they were forced to offer a free tier in the US) and they are only doing music and not selling groceries and clothes on the side (Amazon) or computers (Apple). MQA sounds VERY good and when it came out its low-bandwidth profile was a key enabler for high resolution streaming. All in all Tidal played and plays a very positive role in the industry, I personally despise mass services like Spotify or even worst Amazon treating music like merchandise - let’s consider what will happen if these folks end-up dominating the music streaming business - and I wouldn’t trade it to save a few bucks per month.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Tidal Hifi Plus here is quite cheap (cheaper than Deezer Hifi for example and 50% less than what neighbor countries pay for Qobuz which is not available here).

Tidal has a bitperfect desktop app, Deezer and scamazon HD do not. I have several subscriptions to various services but only the ones that have Redbook or better.

For me Tidal is a good value, I have a bunch of MQA DACs and I enjoy MQA. There! I said it

 

[BS5711]

The Diablo never shows an MQA file is playing and the Gryphon does ……

I hate to admit my idiocy but I hadn’t used the Diablo in a while and I had forgotten that I had changed the firmware to a non-MQA one !!

DUH !!

I recently changed to an MQA firmware and it behaves normally in terms of the indicator light colours for MQA.

One odd thing, the Tidal Windows desktop app doesn’t seem to change if switching between MQA pass through or otherwise. My iFi Gryphon shows MQA still not FOS with pass through turned off and my Diablo shows green and blue not magenta. Seems like the MQA DAC is recognised and pass through is enabled regardless of the settings.

 

[578011]

All my life I was an offline music listener, but times change, so I thought I'll finally try some streaming, created an account on Tidal, downloaded the app to my Pixel 6a and Hiby R5 Gen II. All good and well, but there is something really wrong with this app - the playback almost always stops on both devices after one track, doesn't matter, if they're locked or not, it's also not a question of audio quality, because the same happens on low quality. Some error about connection issue and retry, but only way to play again is to close and open the app again, but it will do the same thing again and again. So I singed up to Deezer Premium and music playback works without any issue on both devices, locked or not, Hi-Fi quality or not, the same applies to YouTube Music on both devices.

And yes, I've changed all settings regarding the battery and power settings on both of the devices. I don't think my network is an issue, because it's 300 Mb fiber with very low latency, using Wi-Fi 5 router.

I've seen pretty much topics on different platforms about the unreliability of Tidal, but I'm quite surprised, that this is really so bad. Is there any solution or workaround? And has Deezer a comparable song database to Tidal? I don't need to use Tidal, I just want a reliable streaming app with lossless playback, mostly interesed in lesser known music artists (ambient, IDM, experimental, noise etc). Qobuz isn't available in my country.

 

[BobSmith8901]

All my life I was an offline music listener, but times change, so I thought I'll finally try some streaming, created an account on Tidal, downloaded the app to my Pixel 6a and Hiby R5 Gen II. All good and well, but there is something really wrong with this app - the playback almost always stops on both devices after one track, doesn't matter, if they're locked or not, it's also not a question of audio quality, because the same happens on low quality. Some error about connection issue and retry, but only way to play again is to close and open the app again, but it will do the same thing again and again. So I singed up to Deezer Premium and music playback works without any issue on both devices, locked or not, Hi-Fi quality or not, the same applies to YouTube Music on both devices.

And yes, I've changed all settings regarding the battery and power settings on both of the devices. I don't think my network is an issue, because it's 300 Mb fiber with very low latency, using Wi-Fi 5 router.

I've seen pretty much topics on different platforms about the unreliability of Tidal, but I'm quite surprised, that this is really so bad. Is there any solution or workaround? And has Deezer a comparable song database to Tidal? I don't need to use Tidal, I just want a reliable streaming app with lossless playback, mostly interesed in lesser known music artists (ambient, IDM, experimental, noise etc). Qobuz isn't available in my country.

There's an R5 Gen 2 thread that you might want to ask this question too. Sounds like your network is more than capable but Tidal can be glitchy with connection issues for various reasons. If your router is 5Ghz capable, I wonder if you put both gadgets in 5Ghz only mode if the connection might be more stable.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hib...-playtime-mqa-16x-open-android.962816/page-63

 

[578011]

Thanks for the response, I don't think it is related to R5 Gen 2, because exactly the same happens on my Pixel A6, somewhere I've seen, it could be old Android issue on R5, but well, I've updated my phone to Android 14 lately, so... this should not be too old for Tidal.
Yes, my routes has both frequencies, 2,4 GHz and 5 GHz and they are both used, I try to use 5 GHz only and see what happens.

Edit: after setting it for 5 GHz only nothing changes, it's exactly the same, Pixel A6 stops after one song with connection problem message.

 

[BobSmith8901]

Thanks for the response, I don't think it is related to R5 Gen 2, because exactly the same happens on my Pixel A6, somewhere I've seen, it could be old Android issue on R5, but well, I've updated my phone to Android 14 lately, so... this should not be too old for Tidal.
Yes, my routes has both frequencies, 2,4 GHz and 5 GHz and they are both used, I try to use 5 GHz only and see what happens.

Edit: after setting it for 5 GHz only nothing changes, it's exactly the same, Pixel A6 stops after one song with connection problem message.

Yeah that's mystifying. I mean I know that connection problems are very common but disconnecting after one song consistently with two different pieces of kit might be a bit more rare but I'm sure it's happened to others.

Reddit has a pretty extensive Tidal webpage that you might find helpful. Then, I guess guess you might want to consider the dreaded "open a ticket with Tidal" option ...

https://www.reddit.com/r/TIdaL/

EDIT 2--don't go older Tidal apps as you will start getting into FLAC playback issues with your Hiby. And note that V2.86 and older is the old MQA regime, that will work but won't be the latest and greatest FLAC/MAX.

 

[578011]

I've read many topics in different places about the issues with Tidal, but most of them don't get to any real point - it just "happens" and that's all, there are no real solutions to it. And to be honest, I'm feeling a little to old to spend hours on searching for some solutions, I liked to research stuff about my PC issues 30 years ago, but now I'm tired enough from my work on my PC and I want apps and other stuff just to work

So Tidal will disappear from my phone and DAP and the subscription will be cancelled. So what's the best alternative? Deezer? As I wrote above, it works without any issues on my phone/DAP, doesn't stop and does not loose connections. Unfortunately Qobuz is not available in my country.
What are the advantages and disadvantages between Tidal and Deezer? Lossless is available on both, premium pricing is the same where I live, are their libraries comparable?

 

[milkdudd]

Because of my many playlists I was planning to return to Tidal with the yearly Best Buy subscription discount. But with that gone, so am I

 

[peterinvan]

Because of my many playlists I was planning to return to Tidal with the yearly Best Buy subscription discount. But with that gone, so am I

Before you quit Tidal, remember to export your playlists to a .CSV file that can be imported to any other streaming platform.

I used Roon for my export. The trial version does the job.

 

[milkdudd]

Before you quit Tidal, remember to export your playlists to a .CSV file that can be imported to any other streaming platform.

I used Roon for my export. The trial version does the job.

Thanks. I appreciate the advice but it seems like the playlists never really go away they just won't be in CD quality or hi-rez. If I'm wrong about that I should get moving on what you suggested. Of course your suggestion is a good idea no matter what

 

[The1Signature]

they heard us - last desktop update:

• Adding clarity to audio quality: We've heard the feedback and have made some improvements to the way we display audio quality. Now, when you click on the quality badge in the mini-player, you'll see audio information like bit depth, sample rate, and format. Note: Bit depth and sample rate are not available on MQA tracks.

 

[Xengibez]

Any update on the Tidal issue or do I just it seems have an expensive stainless steel Hiby R6 paperweight..

 

[gimmeheadroom]

There is no Tidal issue here. There might be an app issue or something else.

I listen to Tidal every day and I have zero problems. It's been that way for years.

 

[Xengibez]

There is no Tidal issue here. There might be an app issue or something else.

I listen to Tidal every day and I have zero problems. It's been that way for years.

Maybe you should read back to Joe Bloggs account of the issues regarding Hiby Daps and earlier andriod versions...