Tidal falling short

Hello,

I've been asked the same, but directed my request to TIdal's support...That's the answer I've got:

We are adding new music daily. You can also request music with the request form.

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/.../TIDAL-Music-Request

I hope this help.

Regards,

Arik

I would be interested to hear from anyone who had requested music to Tidal, and how long it took for Tidal to make available assuming they did so.

Simon

For me it's not useful, I don't see my self dealing with too many requests, and there is too many...

I contacted Tidal support in the very early days about the limited choice of classical music and about the poor metadata for classical albums.  I received a similar reply to that above, but as far as I can see there hasn't been much improvement.  Given the phenomenal bargains that can be had on CD box sets, plus occasional deals on high resolution downloads from Linn, Hyperion, Qobuz, etc., I'm very undecided whether to continue with Tidal once the trial ends.  

I'm quite surprised by the limited albums available from some artists.

My early searches of the more popular resulted in most if not all their albums, including semi bootlegs and live albums. Furthther into the less popular the less the results. Sound is as CD rips for me.

Will I keep it? Probably not.

With the recent wobbles with Radio Paradise, glitches and worse on Tidal, this type of streaming is looking less and less like a viable playback method.

"I'm quite surprised by the limited albums available from some artists.

My early searches of the more popular resulted in most if not all their albums, including semi bootlegs and live albums. Furthther into the less popular the less the results. Sound is as CD rips for me.

Will I keep it? Probably not.

With the recent wobbles with Radio Paradise, glitches and worse on Tidal, this type of streaming is looking less and less like a viable playback method."

Although the listed up, I don't see any better quality way  to stream music than Tidal, A huge selection, in a push of a button.

Nevertheless, Tidal existing a few month only, I assume it will get better and better, consider the MQA technology to be launched soon.

That's the future, I'm more optimist

relmirih posted:

"I'm quite surprised by the limited albums available from some artists.

My early searches of the more popular resulted in most if not all their albums, including semi bootlegs and live albums. Furthther into the less popular the less the results. Sound is as CD rips for me.

Will I keep it? Probably not.

With the recent wobbles with Radio Paradise, glitches and worse on Tidal, this type of streaming is looking less and less like a viable playback method."

Although the listed up, I don't see any better quality way  to stream music than Tidal, A huge selection, in a push of a button.

Nevertheless, Tidal existing a few month only, I assume it will get better and better, consider the MQA technology to be launched soon.

That's the future, I'm more optimist

Delivering MQA seems like a waste of time to me.  Why do we need a lossy hi-res format?  I'd rather have lossless CD quality than lossy hi-res.  Lossless hi-res might interest some, but even that doesn't really interest me, given the premium that will no doubt be attached to such an offering.  

Tidal needs to cater well for the masses to have a business, but at that level what does it offer over Spotify, aside from a few exclusives?  Ok, they have the mighty Taylor Swift, and less mighty Prince, exclusively....ish.  But for their £20 per month top tier offering they need to cater for enthusiasts really really well; I doubt most fans of niki menagerie, or Justin Baby, will be paying £20 per month for their services.    

The brand seems lost to me, they want high-end customers, but without the high-end orientated content and attitude.

I'm not sure why folks have decided MQA is a lossy compression scheme, nor why it is assumes that CD 16/44.1 digital files will be "converted" and repackaged as MQA.

As I read it, the MQA encoding process goes back to the original master and losslessly encodes it into a format that can be encapsulated as FLAC or WAV and then streamed. At the receive end, if the receiving codec understands MQA, it is decoded and rendered as a full quality file; if not, it is decoded as a normal CD quality FLAC or WAV. This latter CD-quality stream would be lossy compared to the full (re-)encoding as MQA , true...but that does not imply (to me at least) anything other than backwards compatibility. Since the MQA encode stage uses the original masters (as is expected to be the revenue generating part of the entire stream), it is not likely worth the trouble or expense to re-encode a file that is only Redbook to begin with, as FLAC and WAV already do that perfectly.

I would also think that Meridian would wish to protect their brand and avoid encoding inferior masters in a new format whose entire purpose is to offer clearly discernible audio improvements. So Tidal, for example, might have to flag higher-than-CD-quality source albums, drawing our attention to the "better" experience they will offer due to the MQA encoding. This is a guess, of course, but it's not just a FLAC vs WAV (vs MP3) format war...

Would love to hear any comments or corrections on where I'm going off the rails!

Regards alan

alan33 posted:

I'm not sure why folks have decided MQA is a lossy compression scheme, nor why it is assumes that CD 16/44.1 digital files will be "converted" and repackaged as MQA.

As I read it, the MQA encoding process goes back to the original master and losslessly encodes it into a format that can be encapsulated as FLAC or WAV and then streamed. At the receive end, if the receiving codec understands MQA, it is decoded and rendered as a full quality file; if not, it is decoded as a normal CD quality FLAC or WAV. This latter CD-quality stream would be lossy compared to the full (re-)encoding as MQA , true...but that does not imply (to me at least) anything other than backwards compatibility. Since the MQA encode stage uses the original masters (as is expected to be the revenue generating part of the entire stream), it is not likely worth the trouble or expense to re-encode a file that is only Redbook to begin with, as FLAC and WAV already do that perfectly.

I would also think that Meridian would wish to protect their brand and avoid encoding inferior masters in a new format whose entire purpose is to offer clearly discernible audio improvements. So Tidal, for example, might have to flag higher-than-CD-quality source albums, drawing our attention to the "better" experience they will offer due to the MQA encoding. This is a guess, of course, but it's not just a FLAC vs WAV (vs MP3) format war...

Would love to hear any comments or corrections on where I'm going off the rails!

Regards alan

MQA is very clever, in theory, seemingly successful in practice, but lossless, despite the file format, or package it's delivered in, it is not.  There is deconstruction, data-loss, and reconstruction in the process as I understand it.  It is claimed to sound better than uncompressed high-res PCM and DSD, and maybe the mathematics are that clever, I am just not quite convinced.  Ultimately I still see a compromise to solve an issue, i.e file size, which for some is still a very real issue if they fancy streaming high-res.

This article seems to explain the tech in some depth, though I am no where near knowledgeable enough to judge its credibility.  I expect Simon will shed some light on it eventually, and no doubt correct both of us.

http://www.theabsolutesound.co...ond-high-resolution/

I fully agree on the poor metadata for classical music but with respect to the variety of classical albums I have mixed views. To be precise I checked last week several albums available on the Primephonic site, which I would be willing to purchase (Primephonic is dedicated to classical and has rather good metadata and associated search) and each and every one of them was available on Tidal albeit under not always perfect metadata. On the other hand I have also spotted stuff missing like the Ticciati Schumann Symphonies by Linn where Tidal seems to have only some tracks, not the whole album. 

To be fair to Tidal, several times recently they've had most or all of the short listed recordings in CD Review's Bulding a Library.  The poor metadata, where in some cases not even the work is identified, is the bigger issue for me.  This is one of the advantages of Roon which adds its own metadata to Tidal albums.

SongStream posted:

alan33 posted:

Would love to hear any comments or corrections on where I'm going off the rails

MQA is very clever, in theory, seemingly successful in practice, but lossless, despite the file format, or package it's delivered in, it is not.  <snip>

http://www.theabsolutesound.co...ond-high-resolution/

Hmm...we don't read things the same way I guess. Certainly Meridian claim it to be lossless on their website and press releases, although they don't bother to encode the full frequency / amplitude phase space defined by the sampling frequency and the bit depth, just the portion where musical signals exist. A quick quote from the article you cite also supports this interpretation:

In short, the combination of folding the sample rate linearly with an encoding kernel that reflects the signal greatly reduces the number of bits required to correctly capture the entire musical signal.

I guess my issue would have been better raised as "lossy compared to what?"  This is a digital encoding method that includes a step to compress the file size. It is, perhaps, "lossy" (or, better, "imperfect") compared to an idealized analog source, but it is not "lossy" in the sense that MP3 encoding creates a smaller, compressed data file out of a Redbook file by throwing some digital information away as well as employing digital compression techniques. 

Regards alan