Anyone have any experience of Tidal music streaming service?

[badsoden]

I have a new device coming soon that has Tidal streaming capabilities and wondered what it was like. Can anyone with experience of it let me know their thoughts?

[struth]

i have read about it. you can get an android app using it though i think only chrome browser is compatable. and you can get it on desktop as well. lossless streaming cd quality music and video. told it sounds very good although a bit slow.

forgot to add it costs £20 a month.

[badsoden]

So its a similar offering to Qobuz and at the same price. I wonder how their libraries compare. I might stick with Spotify and maybe give the trial of Tidal a go when I get the the new streamer.

[struth]

yep it would be very expensive unless you get to download and keep music. 240 quid a year is a lot to me when a film site is about 70.

[lovejoy]

If you go here http://test.tidalhifi.com/ , there is a listening test - 5 tracks in both lossless and lossy formats - If you can pick out the lossless from the lossy consistently, you can get a free 2 week subscription (1 week if you can't tell the difference).

I like Tidal. The interface is nicely done, navigation is good and exploring new music from reading biogs and related artists is a bit more polished than what Spotify offers. Sound quality is great as you would imagine in lossless mode, although even in MP3 mode I find it far better than Spotify which I've pretty much given up on these days as I just find my attention wandering as I'm trying to listen to stuff - I begin to wonder whether my brain is picking up on the audio watermarking that Spotify uses.
Overall I think Spotify has the largest catalogue over both Tidal and Qobuz, but for audio quality and navigation, I'd choose Tidal. The Qobuz desktop app seems a bit buggy (and keeps reverting to French). Still, I'm enjoying listening to Qobuz at the moment having got a free 2 month subscription having bought a ticket for Sound & Vision in Bristol online.

[r100]

funny, there is a german service called Wimp (yes !) which has the same test.. http://www.hifisoundtesten.de/intro

Has anyone here passed the test ? :eyebrows:

[MCRU]

I have a new device coming soon that has Tidal streaming capabilities and wondered what it was like. Can anyone with experience of it let me know their thoughts?

Its superb. Sound quality is brilliant, lots of choice, cost does not interest me as I have read people whinging about paying £20 a month, its worth every penny as far as I am concerned. :)

[roob]

funny, there is a german service called Wimp (yes !) which has the same test.. http://www.hifisoundtesten.de/intro


I believe they are the same.
I have had Tidal for a month now and it's very good, SQ is excellent and a step up from Spotify Premium imho

[RichB]

If anyone can tell the difference between this at it's highest def and 320k MP3 then I'll stand tapping

[r100]

that's reassuring ;)

[MCRU]

If anyone can tell the difference between this at it's highest def and 320k MP3 then I'll stand tapping

Dude

Who really gives a shit, its all about convenience, sound quality is important for sure but who really cares if 24/96 sounds better than 24/192 or crappy MP3 sounds better than apple lossless.

For me Tidal does sound great, someone else may say it sound crap, in the end its all about the music.

[r100]

I think he was talking about the online test. Try it an let us know.

[AlexM]

I am a subscriber, and I've got to say that it really is very good indeed. I can see that I will be buying many less CDs than I used to, and I was a dyed in the wool media collector up until this point. The catalogue seems pretty wide, and I am enjoying the curated play lists. For me the clincher is the integration with my squeezebox platform. It works very well with the sb touch and my four SB classics\sb booms dotted around the place. Playback is glitch free and I haven't had any problems supporting playback reliably over my (admittedly very fast) broadband connection and LAN. Sound quality is excellent, as you would expect given the lossless nature of the streams. I note that not all of their library is yet available in so-called 'hires' - some content appears to be 320k MP3.

I haven't really used the offline content mode of the app, and I'm not really interested in streaming from a mobile or tablet currently. I hope that in time I will be able to control play out via the SBT from the web player and ickstream, and the ability to seek backwards and forwards... It will be close to ideal for my needs at that point.

I've cancelled my Spotify premium account now.. £20 is a little spendy given the lower us pricing (20 USD), but I'm impressed so far, and its still early days.

Regards,
Alex

[badsoden]

Thanks for your input guys I will give the trial a go and see what I think.

I didn't realise there was a Squeezebox plugin. I can't see it in the 3rd party plugin section is it only available from the slimdevices forum?

Ok I see it! I need ickstream!

[AlexM]

Squeezebox/LMS plug-in setup instructions are linked from http://wiki.ickstream.com/index.php/Open_Beta_Squeezebox

Ickstream is the streaming transport used by tidal and other music services. The at form is in open beta so it is a work in progress, but it works very well for me so far and I'm using an obsolete Intel - based Linux NAS appliance for LMS, so my confidence wasn't high. One of the lead Ickstream developers is 'Pippin', who wrote the iPeng LMS front end, so the squeezebox platform is well served notwithstanding it is out of manufacture.

Cheers,
Alex

[badsoden]

Thanks for that.

I was about to give up on Squeezebox and sell all my kit but the recent issues with the BBC radio feeds reminded me what a great community it is and what a valuable resource to have supporting the devices. It was such a shame it was dropped!

[badsoden]

Either my ears are better than I thought or its a very good marketing ploy! 14 days free trial!! :smoking:

http://test.tidalhifi.com/

I'd be interested to know if anyone actually doesn't get it right?

[Riislingen]

Yes, Wimp owns Tidal. I subscribe to both Spotify and Wimp Hifi, which is the same as Tidal - all lossless.

I believe Tidal was Wimps (it's Norwegian) move into US and UK territory. Funnily enough Tidal launched here in Denmark two days ago, so thoughts are now around them merging all into the Tidal brand.

[SLS]

Its superb. Sound quality is brilliant, lots of choice, cost does not interest me as I have read people whinging about paying £20 a month, its worth every penny as far as I am concerned. :)

Prefer Qobuz as it effectively downloads, so no gaps or breaks in CD streaming, which I found a problem with Tidal. £20 is silly cheap for the amount I would have spent on downloads.