Tidal keeps stopping on the NDS

Nope, totally stock Sonos, being reclocked by the NDX

Simon

Is this really surprising? Assuming the Tidal stream is not that good (for whatever reasons), in the first case (Tidal + Sonos + NDX) you allow for some buffering and, perhaps, reclocking, in front of the NDX. In the second case (Tidal + NDX) the NDX has to take care of the Tidal stream -- which we are assuming is not very good -- alone. Why would you expect Tidal + NDX to be as good as (let apart better than) Tidal + Sonos + NDX? Best, nbpf

Glad to hear from Trevor that Naim and Tidal are working on the dropout problem. Better for me tonight but still had one dropout so still neither reliable nor robust with just a mere NDS.

I'm a bit perturbed by the suggestion that only the addition of more kit (eg Sonos) seems to fix things. Let's hope the Tidal boffins can come up with proper fix.

Hi Nigelb, I hope Naim and Tidal can resolve within the limitations of the Naim streamer architecture.. Also I suspect that FLAC vs WAV aside Tidal has the potential to sound as good as locally streamed media.. so fingers crossed Naim will be able to fine tune the firmware to achieve this..

In the mean time a relatively cheap Sonos can be quite an effective work around.

Simon

Hmm, thanks; might have to plug mine back in.

Thanks Simon.

I really want Tidal to work reliably and faultlessly because I am enjoying listening to stuff yet unheard (very enlightening) and stuff heard a long time ago (very nostalgic) at the touch of an iPad. What a marvellous listening (and ergonomic) experience it is. However I should not need to buy more kit than I already own (I do not possess a Sonos) for the pleasure. NDS should be sufficient to stream Tidal faultlessly as it does with the inferior sounding Spotify. Not much time now to the end of the free trial for Naim and Tidal to get this sorted. Let's hope it is not the buffering (in)capabilities of the NDS that are at fault. That really would be an own goal!

Listened to Tidal today with no drop outs but this was only for 90 mins. I see others are still having problems.

I hope Naim are keeping the pressure on Tidal to provide a solution.

Nigelb, I absolutely agree one shouldnt need to buy additional hardware.. So fingers crossed.. FWIW since using the Sonos feeding my Naim i have not had one dropout on my humble 3.8 Mbps / 448 kbps rural ADSL access.

Simon

Thanks again Simon,

If the drop out problem IS fixed with the humble little Sonos (using a rather average ADSL connection), then the techies in Salisbury should be very, very embarrassed.

I wonder why the dropout problem was not (so) apparent during beta testing.

Any news Trevor? More delay will cause wild and ill-informed speculation (such as mine) and will turn some of us against Tidal which could and should be a great additional feature.

Nigel, I wouldn't want to embarrass anyone at Naim not least the software developers and engineers.., after all the platform architectures between Sonos and Naim could be quite different... Naim have some quite specific parameters they need to work within on their architectures... But at least it shows there is a solution, fingers crossed it can work on the current Naim architecture.

Simon

Let's be clear, I have the greatest respect for the bods in Salisbury and have praised them to the heavens for a great Tidal implementation. It is such a let down however to suffer the dropout problems which spoil the whole experience.

It is strange this problem was not evident during beta testing. It is also baffling to me how the insertion of a low level (I don't mean that disrespectfully) bit of kit like the Sonos appears to have sorted the problem - if indeed it actually has.

I too am keeping my fingers crossed and hope there is a solution within the Naim architecture.

I only see three possibilities (and, or course, combinations thereof): 1) beta testing was lousy, 2) beta testing was not lousy but Naim has released a premature firmware upgrade, 3) the quality of Tidal streams has deteriorated after succesful beta testing. Am I missing something obvious? Maybe some beta testers could explain? Best, nbpf

This is why I am always a bit conservative with upgrading to a new version.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I do not find it so strange that the insertion of a Sonos does sort the problem: it would be enough if the Tidal stream would (be bad enough to) require a buffer size that the Sonos exceeds but the NDS does not exceed to explain dropouts in a bare Naim setup but not in a Sonos + Naim setup, it seems to me. Best, nbpf 

This problem was evident in beta testing.. But Naim decided to proceed anyway with the release as I think there is a view that I share that many of the issues are Tidal related and outside of Naim's control.. And the network logs do support that. It's true I had not undertaken the Sonos experiment in beta.. but that simply might show the Sonos architecture is more able to withstand performance issues from the streaming service... But might have been interesting to share those Sonos traces with Naim. However I think it is possible that a software  change alone might not be able to remedy the issue and it might need a hardware change....which could be a dilemma for Naim.

Simon

If you wanted to try out the free Tidal trial then there was no option but to update the software. If this problem is eventually fixed by software improvements then there will I am sure be a firmware fix we can all benefit from. However by that time the free trial might well be over.

Let's hope Salisbury recognise your findings using Sonos/Naim producing a more reliable streaming architecture - it might provide some clues as to a fix within a Naim-only architecture.

Or is this teaching Grandmother to suck eggs?

Very understandable. In particular, when upgrades cannot be reverted. I very much understand that a software can (does) have deficiencies (I am myself a software developer). And (therefore) I am very skeptical when someone claims that there is no reason not to perform a (non-revertable) firmware upgrade: in fact there are, I believe, very good ones. Best, nbpf

I know at least a couple of engineers in Naim who I was in communication with who were very much aware of the issues and constraints they are needing to work within with Tidal..however I hope Naim don't mind me saying the development support from Tidal was perhaps not really where it should have ideally been... Perhaps now the software is out in the field there is more support and attention from Tidal... and Trevor's recent postings suggest I think this is now the case.

Simon

There was one evening during Beta testing when Tidal conked out completely. I thought it was my setup so tested everything but just couldn't make it work. I gave up, went to bed, and the next morning it was working happily again. But there is nothing to say, if it stops 'Dont worry, your system is fine, it's just that Tidal has conked out again'. 

Just imagine if you were relying on Tidal: you get your friends round, press play and nothing happens. They look at you and say.... You paid £15k for this rubbish..... 

To to be credible, it has to be 100% (or virtually 100%) solid, which at the moment it most certainly is not. 

While the implementation is great, I've given up on it because as well as being decidedly flaky, the sound quaility is no match for CD rips on my NAS, or Internet radio come to that. 

Interesting. Since about one and an half years I have a subscription for the digital concert hall (DCH). In the beginnig I was experiencing dropouts and poor video quality when streaming concerts from the archive but the quality of live concerts was always flawless. I have tried to trace the route to the available servers at differnt times, to select different servers and to upgrade my internet connection and LAN but that bottom line was the same: live replay was fine and replay from the archive was not enjoyable. In the meanwhile both live concerts and archive concerts are fine and my IP, LAN and network setup are still the same. I do not think it makes very much sense to blame either Naim, Tidal or the beta-testers (or, in my case, the DCH, my internet provider or myself) for this state of things. But I think that, exactly because of these many uncertainties, it is particularly important that software-based solutions are flexible, easily upgradeable and easily revertable. Best, nbpf 

Hardware constraints is one of the reasons why I have been arguing that implementing streaming client functionalities at the firmware level is a problematic approach. Costs and maintainability are other reasons.

If Naim had an open server platform between their end devices and our routers, it would be Tidal (Qobuz, BBC, ...) that would be responsible, in the first line, for providing suitable plugins for their streaming services on that open platform, not Naim.

This approach would have a number of other advantages as well and allow Naim to focus on what they are particularly good at, I believe.

I think something , somewhere must have been fixed. The last few days i didnt have any dropouts on my UQ2 here in the Netherlands.

3 months ago i fed my UQ2 with a bluesound with never experienced one dropout with Tidal.

Now streaming directly to the UQ2 And the last few day are ok, and soundquality is better then with the bluesound.

Hope it will be fixed for everybody.

Not sure we are quite there yet. This afternoon I listened to three tracks on Tidal and it quit on me all together. It seems I lost the entire connection which could mean it was an internet problem rather than a problem with Tidal.

I managed to reconnect after a few seconds and the strange thing is the SQ appeared to have improved from the reconnection. I wonder if there is a technical explanation for this or if it is simply my mind (or rather my ears) playing tricks on me.

It does seem that 4.00/5.00pm UK time is a tricky time for Tidal. I wonder if traffic on certain Tidal servers peaks around this time.

So many questions!

Just tried Naim/Tidal app and exhibits same stop/start behaviour As reported earlier in this thread. Tidal app fine. Recap....using iPad as control. I guess solution still under investigation With Naim/Tidal.