TIDAL: Too Much Lossy Music for $20/month

[Azriel]

Hey Guys,
Does anyone else here use the Tidal streaming service? I've had it for a few years now, and am starting to loose faith in it. It cost $20/month, which I think is a small fortune. However, in exchange for that, you are *supposed* to get access to a large library of all lossless music, touted as CD quality. However, I have found that a substantial portion of their library is in fact highly compressed, and of rather poor sound quality.

An example of this is pretty much everything by Tangerine Dream, an artist of which I happen to be a rather big fan. They have literally dozens of albums, but all the main ones are compressed and sound very poor, even when listened to through Google Chrome, which is capable of delivering lossless sound. The same thing applies to much of the Yes catalog, including Close to the Edge, which is truly shameful!

You can tell when you're getting full quality because the HIFI light is lit next to the volume control on the bottom right of the screen. Of course you can also tell just by listening, by whether or not it sounds like mud.

Has anyone else run into this? I don't understand why some music is digitized at full quality, while other music is in this highly compressed version? For $20/month, I think the entire library should be full quality. What rationale would they use to decide who deserves full quality and who doesn't? Sounds kinda like discrimination to me. Hell, if I wanted compressed music, I could listen to Spotify for free! I don't get it.

They don't have an app for Roku or blu-ray players, and the app on my phone doesn't work right either, saying it's not authorized, even though the phone clearly says it is. I've also had frequent dropouts on the website, having to refresh the page to re-establish communication with the server. Overall, I find it rather expensive, of poor sound quality, and extremely limited functionality. Me thinks it might be time to put my money elsewhere.

What do you guys think? What have been your experiences with this service?

-Jon

 

[transmaster]

Apparently you are not alone.

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/sound-quality-problems-with-tidal-streaming-service.478516/

The Yamaha AVR I have ordered supports Deezer, and Tidal natively. I have been looking at Deezer it is supposed to be better, and it is cheaper than Tidal.

 

[Alobar]

There should be an indicator on the app or Web site player that will say which levels of compression are in use for each track. I have been having similar issues with Spotify too . granted it is only 320kbps but that doesn't seem to be the case for some of the music. I don't have any way to know what they are streaming and when we are paying for the service we should know what it is we are paying for. This is yet another gripe I have with streaming,

 

[RichPA]

I have both Deezer and Tidal. Deezer is good, but has the same issue - not all albums are CD quality. On the whole, I prefer Tidal.

 

[transmaster]

All I have is Apple Music and 9 TB's of music and such on HDD's so I figure I am fixed for music.

 

[Condorsat]

Rears it's head again.

IMHO ... if the recording (version) provided to the streaming service is outstanding ... the stream will be outstanding ... if the recording is mediocre ... the stream will be mediocre.

 

[Condorsat]

Hey Guys,
Does anyone else here use the Tidal streaming service? I've had it for a few years now, and am starting to loose faith in it. It cost $20/month, which I think is a small fortune.

I use Tidal .... the 320k AAC version. But lets use the Lossless $20 per month as an example.

Even during the Vinyl dollar bin days (defunct now) ... I spent $80 per month on average for records. Many were only played a couple of times in the last 17 years and are shelf Queens.
Guess it depends on how you look at it ... but streaming has always seemed like a bargain to me. Not the end all, be all ... but the best value for dollar spent per listen.

 

[RamblinE]

Tidal gives college students $10/off fyi

 

[evoroadster]

I've had Tidal for awhile now and have not had any problems with streaming HiFi when using a MacAir running Chrome. I do however have drop outs etc when running Windows 10 on a Samsung laptop. Condorstat's comment is also how I feel. If you are a Veteran Lossless on Tidal is $13/month which makes it a killer deal.

 

[transmaster]

It is funny I was talking to a Audiophile type and when I mentioned all of the terabytes of music files I had on hard drives he totally dismissed me as some sort of social deviant because I did not have physical copies.

 

[CKDC]

FWIW, I tried Yes' Close to the Edge using the Tidal app in my ipad, and the "Hifi" light was out.

But, using the Bluesound app and Bluesound Node 2, it came up as MQA.

Probably not what you want to hear but you might need a better means of streaming.

(I do not have time at present to listen to either version to compare quality.)

Also, keep in mind, streaming services play what they are given by the record company. I doubt it, but I wonder if record companies give different quality versions to different streaming services.

 

[E-Stat]

An example of this is pretty much everything by Tangerine Dream, an artist of which I happen to be a rather big fan.

Hmmm. I'm listening to The Very Best and all of those tracks are indeed "HIFI". What do you get with that one?

The same thing applies to much of the Yes catalog, including Close to the Edge, which is truly shameful!

Not only is Close to the Edge "HIFI", it is MQA encoded, aka "MASTER". Something's not working right at your end. Perhaps you should check settings. Mine works peachy keen running on the server, through LMS via a Raspberry Pi player or iPhone.

Your issues may be connectivity related.

 

[Azriel]

Not to revive an old thread, but figured I'd add one thing I forgot to mention. Aside from the inconsistent quality, one thing I have noticed consistently, is the audio always cuts off momentarily between tracks. For most pop/top 40 shlock this isn't a huge deal, but for classical music is a real problem, as reverb tails get mutilated. Just listen to Helmut Walcha's J.S. Bach Organ Works. At the end of the Passacaglia on disc 2, track 2, it is supposed to connect seamlessly to the Fugue on track 3. I own this set on CD and am intimately familiar with it. Instead, the end is just hacked off, no reverb tail at all, just a nasty abrupt stop, followed by 3 seconds of silence. A phenomenal performance desecrated.

I find in situations where I have the physical copy to compare it to, the CD wins every time. Guess it's not quite as lossless as I thought.

 

[tubeyea]

Number 1, Why in gods name are you using a browser when you can use the tidal PC app? Almost all discontent with tidal streaming quality can usually be traced to a lack of oversight on the part of the user and properly setting up the preferences. An adaptive streaming setting in conjunction with a questionable download speed capability will do it every time. Color me skeptical on this issue, I've never experienced this issue with much of the same media you have mentioned.

Number 2. I'm not surprised that you would prefer a CD copy in hand over a lossless stream, the real value of lossless steaming rears its head when you don't have that hard media in hand. After all, who among us have million of songs, thousands upon thousands of copy's of hard media at their disposal? That would be no one.

Number 3. Tidal is well worth $19.99, it's even more of a value with my veterans discount now factored in. $11.99 for lossless streaming, it's not even a question.

 

[+48V]

Aside from the inconsistent quality, one thing I have noticed consistently, is the audio always cuts off momentarily between tracks.

That would be the lack of gapless playback. Typically (for the services that offer gapless (Spotify & Tidal)), it's only available via their mobile app. So if you are using their web player or desktop app you will experience 2-4 sec. gaps between tracks. This goes for hand-off streamers like Echos and Chromecast Audio--they break gapless playback.

Spotify offers gapless playback via their mobile app and it works reasonably well. Tidal's gapless implementation however is/was very wonky and hit or miss. I read somewhere that Tidal had pulled gapless from their app. ? Anyway, if you have a tablet or phone, install Tidal's mobile app and see what what happens for you there.

For most pop/top 40 shlock this isn't a huge deal, but for classical music is a real problem, as reverb tails get mutilated.

Personally, track gaps (dead air) annoy the hell out of me regardless of genre. But yeah, on classical it's a dead nut must. It's a buzz kill mood breaker on any album/playlist. So presently, for me, Spotify is the way to go.

 

[AlTinkster92]

Shucks, never knew us Vets get a discount on Tidal, been a subscriber for a few years at full price...

 

[MurrayLives]

Shucks, never knew us Vets get a discount on Tidal, been a subscriber for a few years at full price...

It's a shame they aren't more up-front about it.

Part of the math I use in justifying the $60 a quarter Third Man record club is being able to get Tidal hi-fi for $5 a month. if someone's paying full price for Tidal, it's a no-brainer to join TMR, with it being a little tougher to justify for a vet who maybe doesn't like Jack White and his whole thing.

 

[Alobar]

IMHO ... if the recording (version) provided to the streaming service is outstanding ... the stream will be outstanding ... if the recording is mediocre ... the stream will be mediocre.

That is conventional wisdom, and normally I would agree, except there are times when I have discovered what the OP is talking about, at least with Spotify's 320kbps stream. A while back my older brother was in town and wanted to listen to my L200's. He had them in his care for 30 years so knew what to expect. He is sort of a piano geek and he wanted to stream some Richard Clayderman who, at least according to my brother is quite renowned so one would think his music would be recorded pretty top notch. By the first 10 seconds I KNEW something was amiss. So did my brother. It just sounded like crap and there was no reason for it I could tell, just didn't come close in sound quality to most other lossy music I have heard, even some of the old 128K. We switched tracks a few times and then gave up on that album and went to something else which sounded as good as 320K probably can. There have been other instances of this as well and I have to say I don't stream very much.

What I HATE is that there is no way of knowing what I am getting and is it all 320K or is most of it or what? They should have a indicator as to what they are streaming so we know if we are getting our money's worth.

 

[Wildcat]

It is funny I was talking to a Audiophile type and when I mentioned all of the terabytes of music files I had on hard drives he totally dismissed me as some sort of social deviant because I did not have physical copies.

That is actually quite amusing, since at the last two audiophile shows I attended, just about all of the digital playback came from music servers. I can only remember CD in one room (Hegel) since they were touting the Mohican CD player. Otherwise, digital was played from a server of some kind or in many cases, streamed from Tidal.

I know some audiophiles are stuck in the past, so, there is that...

 

[transmaster]

The Gentleman in question had a huge collection of records. In terms of total hours of music I actually had more "music" on a couple of hard drives then his entire collection mostly in FLAC, and I have 4 more of at least a 1TB. which is available to me at a mouse click.