Tidal Audio Launches Lossless Streaming...

We'll see. I wonder if Apple still thinks they got their money's worth from Beats? I predict that will turn out in the long run to be a frivolous purchase.

Is JayZ trying to get paid the way Dre did? Of course. Will he succeed? I think not. All the music comes from the same place. Price will ultimately win over features. There will continue to be growth in streaming services. But as people have more choice, they will gravitate towards the services that have provisioned enough infrastructure to provide smooth streaming in every environment.

Just a hunch, but I'm thinking users value performance over curated playlists.

 

I signed up a few days ago and am loving it to be honest.
But I can't figure out one thing and can't seem to find an answer.
I sometimes see albums listed that I want to play such as Bob Dylan's Shadow in the Night, but the tracks are not available for playback.
Anyone here know what's up with that.
I'm in Canada, hopefully it's not a regional issue.

-- Sanjay

 

Those albums are available to purchase, but not to stream, based on the licensing agreement between Tidal and the label.

 

tried it for a week, way too many issues with the Windows app. I'll check back when they've worked out the kinks.

 

Been using this for a month. I cant honestly tell a difference between tidal, spotify, or even pandora. If there is a difference, then its marginal.

 

This is yet the never ending kind of thing that gives me heartburn about the ever shifting sands of the digital realm... Yikes!

 

I'll weigh in here.

I've been using Tidal since the pre-release email trial opened. After using it (on Macs) in Chrome for the first week (mistakenly believing there was no desktop app), I switched to the desktop app. In several months of use, the only notable issue I've experienced is a few "low bandwidth" moments, where Hi-Fi songs would take forever to load. This has been annoying, but not devastating. If, as stated above, non-lossless files are not put through to external DACs, then I've not encountered any lossy files in all my listening. (In both of my setups, I use external DACs.)

As far as the sound quality being not up to snuff, that's not what my ears are telling me. For example, I still have my Beats subscription (I was originally a MOG subscriber), and I just cued up a few albums to compare in both Beats and Tidal, ensuring that they were the exact same edition/mastering (the 40th anniversary edition of What's Going On, for example). I'm listening on NAD HP50s through a Meridian Explorer2 DAC/Headamp. To me, the differences between Beats and Tidal are subtle, but clear (which is about what I'd expect between lossless and 320MP3s). For example, on "Inner City Blues," the vibraphone chimes are much clearer and have better decay in the Tidal stream and, likewise, the bass is fuller and more clearly articulated. And I'd previously (prior to the release of Tidal) done extensive head-to-head comparisons of Beats, Rdio, Spotify, and Google Play, finding that Beats was the best, overall -- better than Rdio and Spotify and equal to Google Play, in terms of sound quality.

So, FWIW, I think Tidal, despite some issues, does deliver on the key one of audio quality.

 

Lossy files have no issues reaching my DAC. The easy way to tell if they're lossy will be the fact that the HIFI symbol near the bottom-right of the browser window will turn dim. Here's an example of a lossy album:

https://listen.tidalhifi.com/album/4577897

 

That makes perfect sense to me and that album does cause the Hi-Fi logo to dim for me. I was referencing this earlier comment about lossy files supposedly not being sent to output devices on the Mac desktop app:

This does not appear to be true for me.

However, that being said, I keep an eye on the Hi-Fi logo whenever I select an album, and besides the example posted by Synthfreeek, I haven't come across lossy albums.

 

Fascinating! You mean that the "Sound Output" pulldown in the preferences does not disappear when you select a quality other than "HiFi"? Every Mac I have tested that on has identical behavior. Can you elaborate on what you did to "fix" that?

 

I just tested it and it DOES disappear, but I actually never noticed that before since the music still outputs through my DAC in non-Hi-Fi bitrates, even after the option disappears, presumably since the DAC was the last output selected when it was in Hi-Fi mode.

 

According to Tidal support, it's not the "last output selected" in the app. Rather, it's whatever the default sound output is set to in "Audio MIDI Setup".

 

I got a reply back from Tidal and they said that is indeed a region restriction issue.
They will attempt to remove them so they don't show if the country you are in doesn't have a license or something along that line.

-- Sanjay

 

Anybody know how to browse all albums in a genre.
When I click on a genre and select albums all I get is like 50 or so albums showing. Probably the new albums.
Isn't there some way to see and browse all the albums in a genre alphabetically or something?
I keep having to search. But sometimes just browsing shows stuff I might not know about but might be interested in.

-- Sanjay

 

Hmm. I've always taken the Audio Midi app as the opposite of being bitperfect, as all output registers as whatever you set it to regardless of what the file actually is.

 

My understanding is that if the bitrate of the file and the bitrate of the Audio Midi output match, then the output from iTunes (or Tidal) is bit perfect. You can find blogs that demonstrate iTunes is bit perfect. Barry Diament has tested this, for example.

If, however, the Audio Midi settings differ from the original file's bitrate, then Apple Core Audio will up/downsample the file to match the Midi settings, from what I understand.

If the above is incorrect, I'd welcome the correction, but that's my understanding after a lot of reading (and why I decided to stick with iTunes over Amarra or its competitors).

 

Using Core Audio, if the sample rates of the file and the output device differ, Core Audio will transparently (in terms of function) resample to match. When that happens, it's no longer bit perfect.

The same goes with bit depth. If the input file has a higher bit depth than the output device, it is quietly dithered (again, no more bit perfect).

Where players like Audirvana, Amarra, etc. excel is a library with various file types (including FLAC), sample rates and bit depths.

Back to Tidal: Because they require setting the default output device to the same device that's selected as the output device in the Tidal app, they are leveraging Core Audio to resample material that is "not HiFi" (whatever that means). My theory is that it's lossless, but with a 32kHz sample rate, which most DACs (these days) can't do.

 

I think that's exactly true. If everything you plan to listen to is 44/16 and you set it to 44/16, you're good to go. And while 99% of everything I play is 44/16, it's mostly just the way OSX works in regards to that Audio Midi setup is kinda weird IMO, so I prefer to bypass it if I can. So I let Audirvana live on top of iTunes, which works pretty well. All of the other ones I tried were indeed terrible.

 

Does anyone know if Spotify 320K is really 320K bits-per-second ... or some lower bit-rate emulating 320k quality? I tried to look into this a few months ago and I thought it was the latter but was not sure.

 

my understanding, and bear in mind this is based on information from a number of months ago, was that not all songs on Spotify are available at 320kbps regardless of what you choose in settings. I have no idea if that has since changed.

 

I tried Tidal for a couple months and was completely disappointed by it. Sound quality was OK for what content was there. They promote having HD videos, but I found very few available. (Yes I likewatching videos from time to time). I cancelled it this week.

I will stick with Beats. The sound is the good quality I was used to with MOG and I actually have come to like the interface. I don't do playlists often, but when I do , the curated lists are spot on to my tastes most of the time. The "just for you" page is uncanny in the selections it recommends to me.

 

For those that are 320k, is it really 320 kilobit-per-second data stream, or is it just "320k" quality.

 

That reminds me of the old DIRECTV tagline: "100% digital quality". Utterly meaningless.

 

I don't suppose anyone has a voucher code for Tidal do they?