Tidal buffering over intermittent connection

I live in a rural area, and my DSL connection is unstable.

When streaming from Tidal and the connection drops the songs stop halfway. The connection usually returns after a few seconds, but the audio buffer is consumed entirely by the time it returns.

Is it possible to control the Tidal buffer size so that it will buffer several minutes of audio, thereby bypassing any intermittent connection issues?

Hi @maoravni,

It is not possible to change Roon’s buffering behavior. It is possible, though, to lower the quality of TIDAL content which could help with playback on your network. It’s hard to say for sure if this will help depending on the severity of the network issue, but you can give this a try by going to Settings > Services, choosing TIDAL, and lowering the streaming quality to Normal.

I’ve seen this issue in several posts.

Is it somewhere on the feature request list?

Larger streaming buffers, that is.

A post was split to a new topic: Problem playing TIDAL content on HiFi or Master quality

A post was split to a new topic: Experiencing issues with TIDAL playback

Hi @maoravni,

The only feature request I currently see on this topic is here, and it isn’t quite the same as what you’re asking for:

If you’d like you can definitely open a new #roon:feature-requests topic, but ultimately resolving any networking issues would likely be the best way to get things up and running for you.

This feature request is similar to mine - we both request the possibility to buffer a significant number of seconds from the stream so that intermittent connections can be overcome.

BTW, is it possible this is already implemented?

When I start playing a track from Tidal I saw a burst of data on the network traffic. This isn’t the same behavior as when I play a local file. Unfortunately I cannot verify the data source at the moment as my core machine is busy with some backup issues and I cannot run a test and distinguish between backup and Tidal traffic.

Can you check with the devs that this is indeed Tidal behavior?

When a software company says “it can’t be changed” I feel it is more like “we don’t want to do it”. Buffering is a completely smart and reasonable way to deal with the fact the INTERNET ISNT PERFECT? So why build a system than depends upon it being perfect.

It makes more sense to build up a big buffer (with music maybe 5 minutes) what’s the harm? Run out of local space? Run out of RAM, very un likely. Video and movies do this for the very same reason.

I am shocked the answer is “we can’t” when the fact is Roon can if they wanted.

Even if it’s a licensing limit with Tidal, my guess is you could come to an agreement that would keep everyone happy.

These are not technical limitations. So why pretend they are. Why make rural users suffer, because we don’t have fiber.

Note, I am using the newest, latest STARLINK from SpaceX, and guess what?? It’s not perfect, it’s fast, but has blips. All software has to do is BUFFER and the blips would not matter to anyone, (except voip). But (voip) that’s not what I got STARLINK for, it was for music and movies.

Let’s fix buffering. Please vote for this fix, it’s critical for everyone to experience Tidal and Roon fully. Don’t let the answer (lower quality) be an acceptable answer.

Jeff

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