TIDAL Again....

Could be your Internet service going thin during peaks of use in the neighbourhood.

Lossless requires greater perfection from end to end than MP3 served by e.g. Spotify.

I had the same issue with Tidal, and didn't want to upgrade my Intrernet to a point where I could rule it out.  Spotify Premium works well enough for me, as I only use them 25% of the time, at most.

Good luck.

Nick

A fair and valid point Nick, although I cannot believe that to be true in my case. My virgin broadband is 200 Mbps and I regular stream Netflix at peak times on or around the same time and that sought of stuff hogs far greater bandwidth than TIDAL.

Guys as said many times before on the forum , the current Naim firmware / Tidal performance is largely governed by latency and not bandwidth. You could have a Gig internet access, and still experience issues. The public internet can't by its nature provide latency gaurentees. You either need to use a private WAN, or make your client more immune to latency. Naim are still working on the latter with a revised streamer firmware,

Fair enough Simon so its Latency, the amount of time it takes a packet to travel from source to destination, together, latency and bandwidth define the speed and capacity of the network. Don't know where the TIDAL servers are....in Europe somewhere I presume, still other companies don't have that issue. Just to clarify then its a NAIM issue that a firmware release is going to solve then?

Tidal use web services from Amazon (AWS) and as such there are connections to AWS from all over including within the UK, other European countries and around the world. The latency will be governed by your internet access, ISP route to AWS and the AWS server responsiveness spooling the media (this varies for different media files/song tracks - as different server addresses are used). The meaningful latency for TCP communication is the round trip delay - that is the time it takes a packet to traverse from the server to the Naim streamer and back to the server again.

However as you surmise for the most part - although not always - this really is down to the way the streamer client is designed and how its TCP/IP stack and TCP/IP memory is utilised. Naim have set them selves quite tight parameters to operate within so as to get the max sound quality from their current streaming architecture. I am aware that they are developing firmware that better handles services such as Tidal. It is perhaps unfortunate it is taking a long time for that firmware to reach production sound quality and be formally released.. but better that way than not I think.

Simon

Burgy100 posted:

Sorry to bring this subject up again. I have been using TIDAL on my ND5 now for the past year and at certain times of the day it continually drops out or stops/starts. The certain times of day are when people are likely to most use it say in the early evening for instance!

Now please can I have some clarification on this subject. Is this to do with TIDAL or NAIM? If it's TIDAL, I'm gonna drop it as I refuse to pay £20 a month for a rubbish service. If it's some software or Firmware in my ND5 I would be willing to wait for NAIM to fix although reading the threads this thorny issue has been rattling around for some time.

I have no issues with Spotify whatsoever and I have looked into QoS on my router but my Virgin SuperHub does not have that option and I would agree that my home Network is not made up of the finest hardware known to man, but I manage to stream Netflix, AppleTV, Watch films from WD NAS, listen to Spotify, listen to my music via UnitServe without any issues whatsoever. So why is TIDAL such an issue? And when will NAIM sort this out if any of this is attributed to them.

Hi,

As has already been mentioned in other replies the fact that it is worse when it is in the early evenings (when the kids get online and start gaming) then it would generally indicate that it is probably an issue with the local branch of your ISPs service getting rather saturated and although the overall bandwidth might be OK the latency is being hit to the point where you're getting these dropouts and pauses.

SiS has given you a good summary of things (thanks Simon).

The software guys did a lot of work (in conjunction with the techs at TIDAL) to try to extend the tolerance to poor latency and that code is in the next firmware release and it may be that that will resolve your issue but there are other things that they have to get nailed down in that release before it is ready to go live but I'm assured it is still in progress.

Phil

Thank you Phil for the heads up its much appreciated, although you have to look at this from a users point of view. Out of all the broadband  services I have piped into my household, TIDAL is the only streaming service that plays up and I have no issue with any other. I can watch a streamed movie at peak times with no latency whatsoever so if it was down to my local branch surely my streamed movie would start and stop. Lets hope the next firmware release is very shortly.

Steve

The latest firmware update for Muso ( Firmware Version 1.5.00) seems to have largely fixed the dropouts for me.  My SU still suffers though - so could we not have this fix for the streamers at least as an interim til all the other optimisation had been done ?  I know that's probably an overly simplistic way to look at things as no doubt there are some complex interactions between optimising for latency robustness and SQ.

Borders Nick posted:

The latest firmware update for Muso ( Firmware Version 1.5.00) seems to have largely fixed the dropouts for me.  My SU still suffers though - so could we not have this fix for the streamers at least as an interim til all the other optimisation had been done ?  I know that's probably an overly simplistic way to look at things as no doubt there are some complex interactions between optimising for latency robustness and SQ.

Unfortunately there are a number of other things that are unrelated to TIDAL that are still in progress and could leave other functionality severely compromised so it's not just a case of cutting out just the TIDAL bit...

Phil

Is TIDAL setting TCP_NODELAY on their sockets and doing large socket writes? Is the Naim Streamer software setting TCP_QUICKACK or similar to ensure the streaming client isn't delaying ACKs back to TIDAL?

Hi Roo, the commands you mention are API instructions for TCP stacks - typically on Linux - and so it is quite probable the Naim TCP implementation uses different primitives - but I would expect TCP_NODELAY to set the TCP Push flag.. However from looking at Wireshark I can see  the TCP Push flag is used when an instant acknowledgement is required - such as an instruction packet for control etc. The media transfer uses regular TCP segment windowing - however if the TCP data arrives at the streamer really quickly - then I notice the streamer seems to wait until the negotiated windows are full - it then acknowledges the data and closes the windows sizes down for a short time before the streamer renegotiates the the window size with the sender. This you tend to see on local streaming

If the transfer is slower there is more of an ebb and flow of TCP segment acknowledgements - typically you will see this with Tidal ... but when there is latency congestion - then data can be resent inappropriately and then discarded or the application buffer exhausts whilst the TCP is trying to re-establish the flow. I understand that Naim have been optimising the TCP stack code to get faster TCP flow control signalling.

Yeah - what Simon said ..... 

roo posted:

Is TIDAL setting TCP_NODELAY on their sockets and doing large socket writes? Is the Naim Streamer software setting TCP_QUICKACK or similar to ensure the streaming client isn't delaying ACKs back to TIDAL?

Hi Roo,

As we have a commercial agreement with TIDAL then it's not possible for me to discuss any of the 'inner workings' of how they have their streaming set up.

Phil

Borders Nick posted:

Yeah - what Simon said ..... 

*chuckle*

Phil

Tidal have just released a new update. i suppose the Naim app will automatically be updated as well. It may help a few folks here.   I must be one of the lucky ones never  having had any  problems.

+1, never ever had any dropout or interruption. I'm using a standard Technicolor cable modem only, 30Mb connection. That's it. And living in the middle of a large city, so lot's of people gaming in the surrounding. 

So it's either your local infrastructure or ISP. Tidal is stable and so is my NDX. 

I have very similar problems, with dropouts during the evening on Tidal. During the day the service is fine. No other problems with my home network or NDS. This has been going on for a very long time now and I am considering cancelling my Tidal subscription. However, I am generally impressed with the quality from Tidal and the  selection of music available, so I am reluctant to do this, especially if there is a solution on the horizon.

Andrew

I am using a £30 Google Chromecast in the meantime for Tidal until the next firmware update for the NDS. At least there are very few dropouts.

Not quite in the same vein as I have no real issues with my internet access or playback, although at the moment I only use Spotify, but will probably switch to Tidal when my new gear arrives.

Anyway, I digress. I had Sky Q installed a couple of weeks ago with no effective difference in internet speed, approximately 30 Mbps. However, I just checked out the WiFi speed using WiFi SweetSpot and was surprised to see it running at 100 Mbps which is about double Sky's previous offering. I guess the new router spits those packets out much more effectively.

Was going to say that the Remastered 1967 - 70 Blue album was sounding even more lovely except for two things: the router is hard wired to the amp and the wife's out so the volume is cranked up! ��

andarkian posted:

Not quite in the same vein as I have no real issues with my internet access or playback, although at the moment I only use Spotify, but will probably switch to Tidal when my new gear arrives.

Anyway, I digress. I had Sky Q installed a couple of weeks ago with no effective difference in internet speed, approximately 30 Mbps. However, I just checked out the WiFi speed using WiFi SweetSpot and was surprised to see it running at 100 Mbps which is about double Sky's previous offering. I guess the new router spits those packets out much more effectively.

Was going to say that the Remastered 1967 - 70 Blue album was sounding even more lovely except for two things: the router is hard wired to the amp and the wife's out so the volume is cranked up! ��

I guess the 5 Ghz channel might have something to do with it!

Has any progress been made with this?  I recently re subscribed to Tidal after having no problems during my free trial.  Unfortunately I can't get Tidal to stream via my Unitiqute 2 for more tha 20 mins without it dropping out and clearing the playlist!  It happens no matter what the time of day and I guess it's due to latency problems although I have a wired connection to 70Mbps fibre.

i have dropouts non stop then did not have them and did have them and did not have them and now i am having them....

go figure....

Tidal just doesn't drop out here, on a 4MB ADSL line. Just the luck of the draw, I guess.

My current solution is to 'cast' Tidal via bluetooth from my Ipad or Smartphone Tidal app to the Unitiqute 2, this works perfectly with no dropouts.  So, given that I'd be using the Naim app on one of these devices anyway, this would appear to be the best way to listen to Tidal at the moment.  There's been a lot of technical comment about latency etc but given that my tablet and smartphone have no problem streaming Hi Fi quality Tidal from a WiFi source that's connected to the router via powerlines, I suspect that the problem lies in the Naim Tidal firmware ?

Oh don't worry, the firmware update was promised for Christmas.