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TIDAL Lossless Streaming Service

Has anyone else tried lossless streaming from Tidal? I've been a Spotify user for a while now. The catalog available is pretty stunning, and 320kbps is listenable, but I'm not satisfied with lossy material for serious listening.

Tidal launched a couple of weeks ago, streaming a lossless catalog in FLAC to a web-based player. They have a large catalog and the same kinds of curated playlists that Spotify offers.

I am clinging to my Squeezebox Touch until it dies, so I was not interested in a PC-based approach to stream the service. A user community, however, has created a SBT plugin called Ickstream that allows the Touch to play nicely with Tidal. It took me about an hour to get subscribed to Tidal (first seven days free) and get Ickstream implemented on my Touch.

Sound-wise, running into a PS Audio PWD II, Tidal is clearly more three-dimensional, tonally rich and satisfying than Spotify. Compared to FLAC rips from my hard-drive, however, it is lacking just a little bit of detail retrieval and seems a bit noisier in the spaces between the notes. The difference is small but definite.

So, I'm ditching Spotify in favor of Tidal. $20/mo is worth it to me to have damn-near best-available fidelity on damn-near every album I ever want to hear. And I can download unlimited mp3's to my phone for travel. Would love to hear your experiences.
cymbop
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
Sorry, Davt, your rationalizations for appropriating intellectual property don't fly. Besides the questionable ethics, they are false.
music was free everywhere. Streamed on something called a RADIO. I never paid for listening to a radio, I just endured ads.
You did pay for the music you heard on the radio. The cost of the ads that supported the medium were rolled into the cost of the products.
Radio stations didn't pay artists to play their music.
Artists were, and continue to be, paid royalties for their work that is played on the radio through entities called performance rights organizations such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.

I don't have any data to back up my suspicion, but I believe that one of the reasons that tickets to live performances for popular music have become so outrageously expensive is that since they are no longer paid much of anything for their recorded content, they are making up the lost income in other ways. Me, I'd rather pay $10 for recorded content and $25 for a live show than get the recorded content for free and pay $100 for the live show. I assume you get paid for your work and musicians deserve to get paid for theirs.
tortilladc
121 posts
 
I currently have a subscription to Rdio (320kpbs) and have been trying out Tidal for the past month or so. In the past I've used Rhapsody.

Sound quality of Tidal is clearly superior to Rdio. That's the only pro.

Interface is antiquated and sluggish, discovery is nearly non-existent, social element is non-existent. Catalog isn't very deep. Mobile app is terrible.

I think they should have pushed the launch to shore up more label deals and roll out something more competitive. It doesn't look like anyone would have beat them to market with the "hi-res" streaming claim anyways.



johsti's avatar
johsti
102 posts
 
Dbarger - I also thought something sounded off with Tidal the first time I played it with the Mac application. I didn't hear an improvement over premium Spotify. I opened audio midi and found the sampling rate was set for 48kHz. When I changed that to 44.1kHz, it sounded much better. Hope this helps others who have been underwhelmed with Tidal on their Mac.

Deezer sounds like a great alternative, but I don't have Sonos.
roggae
95 posts
 
i've been using tidal as per cymbop's suggestion. pretty satisfied. some music i like is not available but not a major swath. now i just need to upgrade my dac. suggestions? currently using a vdac.
mcanaday
168 posts
 
In response to the comment above about setting the sampling rate to 44.1, this raises a question for me: I'm planning to get a Sonos Connect box to stream Tidal (or possibly Deezer Elite). I am planning to either get the Wyred4Sound modified Sonos unit, or use Empirical Audio's Synchro-Mesh with a stock Sonos unit to help with jitter from Sonos. Either route enables me to select a sampling rate up to 96 kHz (which is usually recommended). I am wondering if, given that Tidal is 44.1, if I should actually select that sampling rate for the Wyred4Sound modified Sonos or with the settings for the Synchro-Mesh clocking device. My DAC, by the way, is the Bryston BDA-1. And I am not planning on using Sonos for much else besides streaming lossless cd quality. Any idea what I should do? thanks! Margot
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