New albums missing on Roon's TIDAL

I agree. I actually quit TIDAL a few months back because of this lag issue with major releases and just signed back up Jan 1 and as a lifetime Roon membership, Roon is far more important to me than TIDAL and with a headless mac setup and a VNC for my iPad which does not always work well with apps… TIDAL may not just be for me until 100% real time is possible, although I hear the lag is getting better. I may just cancel TIDAL and play local files until this issue can be resolved, no disrespect meant, just paying $20 a month and not being sure if all new releases are being added concerns me…@danny, @brian, @palbratelund.

We just had a meeting with @palbratelund and the team over at TIDAL on how to fix this problem permanently. There will always be a lag, but in the common cases every week, we should be able to turn this into minutes/hours instead of days/weeks.

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Carl and I have moderated this thread. Please observe the forum guidelines (FAQ in menu) when posting.

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Thanks for the update on this as well. I just fired up Roon looking for the new David Bowie and was disappointed to see it wasn’t there. WIll clearing the cache get it for me?

Edit: Nope. Clearing the cache got me other new releases from today, but no Bowie. Sigh.

With all do respect, I think we should expect real time sync. At 10 pm on release day we should expect to see new releases if we manually clear the cache. These aren’t free products.

@fritzg: Unfortunately, in many cases TIDAL can’t tell anyone about a release until it goes out to the public, including its partners. This is a requirement from the record labels.

So you can “expect” it to be real time sync, but it is impossible with the current business model where Roon and TIDAL are 2 different companies… and there is no plan or desire for us to merge into one.

Right now the sync can be a few days off. We want to get that to be a few minutes off. But that will take some work to achieve. We have no schedule for release yet.

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So, how did Roon know about the release “Straight Outta Compton”, but not David Bowie’s “BlackStar”? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

From what I understand, Roon does not see the new releases until after they come out. I noted that one release from January 8 has been synced and another has not. I guess wanting to know the technical details is boring.

But I will move on. Good to know we should not expect new releases to show up day of release.

Please do keep us posted when this is fixed. Because I probably will cancel TIDAL until it works and will have no way to know when it does.

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TIDAL gives us full database dumps on a periodic basis. We then take those dumps and process them into a large virtual library. It’s kinda like a big import of everything they have. There are thousands of places where things can go wrong.

Technical details can be interesting, but this is really low level stuff. You’ve seen us post technical details often, and I’m not shy about being open with you guys, however, to explain these details would be monumental.

Just know we are working on it, and it will get better.

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[quote=“danny, post:33, topic:6628”]Unfortunately, in many cases TIDAL can’t tell anyone about a release until it goes out to the public, including its partners. This is a requirement from the record labels.
[/quote]
Different labels / albums = Different release criteria, it’s a comersial constraint which affects:

  • When Tidal update their systems.
  • When Tidal publish their updated data.

Then Roon asynchronously to Tidal:

  • Ingests all of the Tidal data
  • Cross references it with all the metadata Roon has access to.
  • Builds the matrix
  • Validates the results
  • Publishes to its subscribers

Roon performs this entire process every few days. Due to the huge amount of data being processed it is not possible to significantly reduce the cycle time.

Now that said, the Roon devs know that the current latency leads to issues with new releases, and a ‘fast track’ auxiliary process is also required to manage new releases. This process does not exist at present, hence the recent discussions with Tidal to identify what can practically be achieved with collaboration.

EDIT: I drafted my reply before Danny re-posted.

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Carl pretty much nailed it.

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If this situation really bothers people - and I suppose it might be frustrating if it’s what you’re relying on for your music and need latest releases - maybe as a special case workaround you could just keep a ‘live’ panel into Tidals new releases? Not pretty, but probably prettier than forcing users out of Roon and into an external ap/VNC? Just an idea as a temporary fix if the real solutions a huge deal.

I only had this situation once and it didn’t bother me really, but I guess people just expect real-time everything these days…

The lag is being worked on and has to do with how Roon processes our metadata. If there are releases you simply cannot wait on, it is entirely possible to play those through the TIDAL client in the meantime.

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And whilst this discussion rumbles on … let’s not forget David Bowie - In Memoriam.

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Yes @palbratelund , but for some reason the Tidal app still doesn’t do gapless playback (which is critical for some album listening) and also the iPad app doesn’t allow playback to your stereo, but only through the iPad which makes it tough for people who have a headless setup… just a couple things I believe Tidal needs to improve on.

Clients are gapless. Have you updated in the last 6 months? :wink:

That’s great news I didn’t realize, it’s not gapless on the Oppo app player when I last played… how about the iPad app to have playback to your stereo and not just iPad (like Spotify has).

What terrible news to wakeup too… I’m shocked. :frowning:

Our clients are gapless. Not all partners, but that’s down to their own implementations, or the limitations of the third-party solutions they may run. But TIDAL clients on desktop and mobile are gapless. And of course - in Roon.

And regarding Spotify Connect - we were considering the same type of solution but ditched it. There are many solutions coming now that does this better than that. Google Cast is one. Roon Ready.

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David Bowie. R.I.P.

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