WiMP comes to the UK/US as Tidal

[postjack]

Well, haven't found anything on Spotify that I can't get on Tidal (the same things appear to be missing on both, with a couple of exceptions, all in Tidal's favor with one glaring exception -- Prokofiev complete piano music by frederic chiu, which has been on and off Spotify). Add to that the lossless compression, and I'm switching. Only thing is, I can't get Tidal at work, so I'll probably allow a month or two transition before I quit.

Something I haven't checked yet -- is there a way to add local files to Tidal? I keep forgetting to check that when i'm at home.

No way to add local files.

[MexicanDragon]

Is anyone else glitching where, when streaming, the song will repeat the last ~3 seconds or so a time or two, and then stop playing (if in an album, won't go to the next song)?

Also, it's really spotty for me which albums will download after clicking "Offline." I've had to go switch completely offline, then back online, then flip to "Offline" on the album. This works some of the time to download things, but can't consistently do it.

Really enjoying the SQ vs Spotify Extreme, though, from the 1-2 days of listening I have on my phone.

**BRENT**

[Grahame]

Thanks to an ickStream beta that's gone live, I can now get Tidal as an input to the squeezebox ecosystem.

So now listening to gapless, lossless, synced multi-room new album goodness, streamed from the cloud, controlled by iPeng, because: technology!

[MexicanDragon]

So I'm REALLY liking Tidal. I got a 30 day subscription and about 11 days in so far, so I have a little bit to decide, but I'm thinking about canceling Spotify. Spotify has a ton of stuff, but it's just background music. Tidal has me listening to music again.

It's probably just some EQ tweak, in all actuality, but I've heard stuff in albums I hadn't heard before. That hasn't happened to me in a long time. That's usually "getting really good new headphone" territory.

I wonder if Spotify will release some higher quality stuff soon...

**BRENT**

[blessingx]

Thanks to an ickStream beta that's gone live, I can now get Tidal as an input to the squeezebox ecosystem.

So now listening to gapless, lossless, synced multi-room new album goodness, streamed from the cloud, controlled by iPeng, because: technology!

I may have questions!

[Grahame]

The Access to featured new albums, is handy for the impatient

 

[CD44hi]

I am keeping spotify for the time being: tmobile allows unlimited streaming w/o use of your "personal" data (and other apps As well but not tidal yet). This has proven most valuable during two road trips to Maine and two road trips to Florida as well. Hooray for Bluetooth sound integration in the car. [emoji341]>>[emoji336]>>[emoji344]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MexicanDragon]

I have unlimited on TMO. 10-30GB/mo is typical. <3

**BRENT**

[shellylh]

Started the 7 day trial today.  Has anyone paid for a month subscription yet?  I am wondering if there will be a foreign transaction fee every month.   My credit card has flagged the $2.00 charge (to test the credit card I assume) as an International Charge.  

 

The web browser is pretty nice.  I am not sure I want to pay $19.95/mo over spotify's $9.99/mo since most of the time I use spotify when I want "background" music.  Heck, I didn't even want to switch from Mog's 4.99/mo.   Perhaps if there was a good Logitech 3rd party app, it would be worth it.  

 

The "related artist" feature doesn't seem to be as good as on Spotify. 

 

Does anyone know how much data this will use up per hour (streaming flac)? 

Edited November 15, 2014 by shellylh

[Grahame]

Some folks have mentioned if you change the trial Url, you can get a 30 day trial rather than 7 when you sign up, maybe next time when you rotate through emails / CC's

[Grahame]

Lossless CD is 1411kbps, flac will be some fraction of that depending on the achieved data compression, then add album art, metadata, protocol overhead, etc.

You'd be better off measuring it empirically, with a network monitoring tool, and a sample listening session, with interactions, for say an hour to establish a ballpark baseline, Then multiply up using that stuff you do for a living

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, I think I'm keeping it, even at $20/month.  Just haven't figured out my usage scenario(s) yet.  My car actually does have bluetooth integration, but I'm cheap enough that I only get 2G/month on the phone, so I'd have to preload all the albums.  And when I'm in the mood for something I own, even if it's on one of the iPod classics, I realized I can still listen losslessly through iTunes.  Not sure I want to wear out my iPod classics for that, though, so I may start keeping a 1TB with me...hmmm...or maybe a whole laptop, since I'm now getting to the point of taxing the laptop too much...sorry, tl;dr+thinking out loud...

 

And yeah, I got a 30 day trial, how'd you only get a 7 day trial?

 

And yes, if I only used it as background music, I'd probably stick with Spotify too (because Pineapple Thief!), but even when I listen at work as backgrond music, I'm listening on good enough headphones that I feel I can hear the difference, so I try to stick with that too, most of the time.

[postjack]

Tidal streams at constant bit rate of 1411kbps. Roughly you could estimate 300mb an hour. Much better to download albums over wifi for offline listening.

[MexicanDragon]

They do 1411kpbs? But it's FLAC. What is going on here?

30 day trial was for people who signed up early for info(VIP access). 7 day is the standard trial. I got a 404 error when I signed up so my 30 day was "used." I messaged them and they got me set back up within half a day (it was late at night on a launch weekend.)

FWIW, I used Spotify for background music too. With Tidal, I have been actually listening to stuff while at work. I got a good 5.5-6 hours in today after a last minute mandatory OT day. I was even complimented on mymusical stylings by my neighbor (I have Grados at work), so we would up talking music for a few hours (and working a little too.)

**BRENT**

[postjack]

They do 1411kpbs? But it's FLAC. What is going on here?

30 day trial was for people who signed up early for info(VIP access). 7 day is the standard trial. I got a 404 error when I signed up so my 30 day was "used." I messaged them and they got me set back up within half a day (it was late at night on a launch weekend.)

FWIW, I used Spotify for background music too. With Tidal, I have been actually listening to stuff while at work. I got a good 5.5-6 hours in today after a last minute mandatory OT day. I was even complimented on mymusical stylings by my neighbor (I have Grados at work), so we would up talking music for a few hours (and working a little too.)

**BRENT**

CBR Flac (redbook) is 1411. Most flac are vbr, for some reason tidal prefers to stream at cbr.

[blessingx]

Strange.

[postjack]

Strange.

They did explain why somewhere but I forgot. Doesn't really matter to me, all sounds the same.

[MexicanDragon]

Well, I've downloaded and streamed a crapload of it to my phone, I guess I could check to see file sizes.

*does math*

I have 188 files taking up 4.9GB (5,299,605,503 bytes). So that averages like, what, 29 MB/song on average? (Randomly clicking details on the songs shows 14-33MB/song, so I guess that's about average).

It's not labeled as FLAC files, but wonder if I could rename something to *.FLAC to see if I could get more details.

**BRENT**

 

[shellylh]

I tried using Tidal on my Mac Mini (which I control via Screen Share).  The browser app is way too slow to load.  I installed the app and it won't play any songs, once I press play I just get a spinning circle next to HIFI.  Has anyone experienced anything like this? 

[Torpedo]

Brent, why Spotify was good just for background music and Tidal is for attentive listening? Sound quality? Music catalogue? Radio selection? I found your comment quite interesting.

[MexicanDragon]

Brent, why Spotify was good just for background music and Tidal is for attentive listening? Sound quality? Music catalogue? Radio selection? I found your comment quite interesting.

That's because I'm an interesting my, my friend. To me, it's just much more engaging. Perhaps it's an EQ difference, perhaps it's something with my phone that likes FLAC over MP3, perhaps there's some deep seeded elitist audiophile value lingering from years before I quit caring about FLAC vs MP3, where I've said MP3 is "good enough" for what I listen to. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I definitely hear more stuff and it's been more interesting. I've even heard details that I've never heard before. I don't think they aren't present in the MP3, but this is stuff I've listened to for ten years, and I've never heard it before... a second voice or tertiary instrument that was buried in the mix, blended in, but now they're pretty clear.

I have the CDs, maybe I'll lug a CD player and headphone amp to work and set up a rig to kinda see if I can hear this other stuff.

 

I tried using Tidal on my Mac Mini (which I control via Screen Share).  The browser app is way too slow to load.  I installed the app and it won't play any songs, once I press play I just get a spinning circle next to HIFI.  Has anyone experienced anything like this? 

Shelly, buy a PC.

By "install the app", are you talking Mac or phone? (I"m not aware of a non-phone app.) Did you try a different browser?

**BRENT**

[CD44hi]

I have unlimited on TMO. 10-30GB/mo is typical. <3

**BRENT**

that's great Brent. I used to have unlimited high speed data with mobile when it was like $20/ mo. But dropped it. Now it's like $30/ month? I just have 2G of high speed then throttled speed if over that.

So, did the quick math and for my use it really is not justifiable to go the $50 extra to stream tidal ($30tmo+$20tidal) vs spotify, $10.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MexicanDragon]

1) It's 40$ more (you're already paying 10$ for Spotify, so if you drop it, Tidal is just 10$ more). If you download what you want before hand, you should be good. Is there a 5-10GB option for say, 10$, that you could go to? It's possible that you could get what you *need* for 20$ more.

I still have the 20$ unlimited plan, and it's pretty nice; totally worth it. It looks like the 30$ unlimited plan includes a Rhapsody unRadio subscription, if that means anything to you. It looks like 2 extra gigs is 10$ and 4 extra is 20$.

The 10-30GB I quoted earlier is what I'll do in a month if I'm doing a LOT of streaming, mainly Netflix and downloading quite a bit of stuff on Spotify and Audible.

I guess it really depends on how much you want to have, and what you think you can live with downloading at home before you go out.

**BRENT**

[Torpedo]

Thanks for the reply, Brent. I'm one of those morons who know that on ABX blind testing won't tell a 320 from a FLAC most of the times, maybe just with very complex, very well known staff would, but somehow I feel tired soon when listening to lossy music on a good system. On a portable with average IEMs it really doesn't matter.

Looks like I'll have to investigate Wimp

[blessingx]

Out of curiosity who's using mostly mobile apps to stream any service at home on wifi to a DAC? As much as I like the larger real estate of the laptop screen, when listening seriousishly I tend to not be in front of the computer. Guess that's why the mobile UIs are important to me.

I tried using Tidal on my Mac Mini (which I control via Screen Share). The browser app is way too slow to load. I installed the app and it won't play any songs, once I press play I just get a spinning circle next to HIFI. Has anyone experienced anything like this?

I have a few times (assuming network issues on their part). Less so then when they first launched. Occasionally also they list albums they legally can't stream. Look at the recent Dylan/The Band release where (at least last I looked) they listed three versions (Spotlight, Complete, and Raw), however they only stream one. Not sure if that's related. The OS X app (if that's what you're referring to) is certainly old.

Edited November 16, 2014 by blessingx