TIDAL hifi stream breaking up

Tidal solid for me tonight: 19 November - 6:20 pm to 7:20 pm.

Edit: Spoke too soon breaking up at 9:40 pm

Had more trouble today , so sent an update to Tina @ Tidal Support …

"Tidal experienced more issues today.

It started off OK today between 4:20pm and 5:00pm Thursday November 19th, Australian EST I played the Album
"If I Can Dream: Elvis Presley with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra” …
pressed play … every song on this album played fine, sounded great
(I experienced trouble with this album yesterday on tracks 1 “Burning Love” and track 3 “Love Me Tender”).

This was using my Auralic Aries (wired ethernet connection), ISP speed was a bit slower than normal, 7 mbps, Telstra is the ISP.

Later I tried another album I experienced trouble with yesterday …
Album : “You And Tequila (With Grace Potter) (Live At Red Rocks Amphitheatre)”
Artist : Kenny Chesney feat. Grace Potter

Unfortunately I was not so lucky with this album.

The first song, track 1 “Come Over” played fine for about 5 seconds … then started stuttering so bad that I hit pause.
Waited 5 minutes then pressed play and still had issues.
Tried the next track but it was also not able to play without terrible stuttering/freezing.

This happened at 5:30pm. Checked Speedtest, my ISP speed was lower, 6 mbps.

I had to give up on listening to Tidal again today.
Will keep you updated with issues as I find them."

Unlistenable at 11:15 pm

Edit: So I rang iinet and complained, read them Pal’s email and said it was because they were prioritising other streaming services at the expense of Tidal. They asked me to confirm with other services and we listened to some Youtube which was fine, but Tidal broke up (like a champ) through Roon and directly through Chrome.

The iinet representative suggested we change my profile back to gamer (where it was when I started experiencing the issues) and I said sure, but that’s where it was when I started experiencing the issues. She will call me back at 8pm tomorrow to check how I am going.

I feel sandwiched between Tidal and iinet; at least it’s not Roon. All I can do is continue calling iinet and leaving messages here. Are you still there @palbratelund ?

I gave up at 5:30 pm … and went back to listening to music on my home network NAS.

On a positive note I installed my fiber optic network at home OK, though I did recieve a couple of bad Cisco tranceivers that I got from eBay for my Trendnet FMC’s. Luckily I over ordered them. Powered the Auralic Aries from the 12V of my HDPlex 100W LPS and it is a nice upgrade.

I’m still here. I think I need to stress that this with priorities of other services is speculations right now as we did nothing and things suddenly turned bad. We know for certain that our traffic looks healthy and also you guys report back good bandwidth. We’re still investigating.

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Pål, thanks for the update. I appreciate it.

John

I was just checking the Naim/streaming forum which is populated mostly with Brits. They too are discussing the same dropout/stuttering performance with Tidal.

Interestingly, the dropouts tend to start at around 5-5.30pm UK time. It does suggest that regional ISPs somehow shape their service levels at such times of day when domestic data traffic begins to escalate. And Tidal streaming takes the hit?!?

Could very well be. We’re also investigating some other things with them. It seems like someone flipped a switch a week or two back and it is impacting us. We have been looking thoroughly if we flipped a switch ourselves but no suspects surfaced. :smile:

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I also noticed the same thing … my trouble yesterday was at about 5pm (4:58pm I think).

Today, I had my first trouble at 5:30pm.

Both yesterday and today, I had no trouble prior to 5pm Australian EST (Sydney) time.

Tidal experienced more issues again today (Friday 20th November 2015) … mixed results today … though finishing on a win !!! Good times :smile:

Source : Oppo BDP-103 : Fail

4: 50pm Australian EST time

This time I tried something different, using my Oppo BDP-103 … as I have setup VPN DNS server address on it (so it thinks I am in the USA instead of Australia).
It is using wired Ethernet connection.
My ISP speed test had much more slower results than normal … only about 5 mbps with Telstra as the ISP.

It started off no good today between 4:50pm and 5:20pm I tried to play the Album
Album : "If I Can Dream: Elvis Presley with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra” …
Artist : Elvis Presley
pressed play … not one song played.

Next I tried another album … the first song “Come Over” was good for about 1 minute, then stuttered , eventually froze.
Album : “Welcome to the Fishbowl"
Artist : Kenny Chesney feat. Grace Potter

Gave up on trying to use the Oppo BDP-103 to play Tidal after an hour.

Source : Macbook Pro with Tidal MAC OS App : Success

5: 30pm Australian EST time

So, I then tried another device … my Macbook Pro (on WiFi) using the Tidal MAC OS app.
This is also using a VPN (set to be in the USA, instead of Australia).

Tried the Elvis album again (mentioned above) … not one problem! Good times !
Played the whole album OK.
That was in Tidal “High Mode”.

Repeated the test in “HiFi” mode. Again, all good.

Source : Auralic Aries : Success

7:15 pm Australian EST time

Next I tried my Auralic Aries (wired ethernet), no VPN (it is using my Telstra ISP’s DNS servers in Australia).

Just started the Elvis Presley album again… only got thru the first few songs so far …. no problem, working fine so far. Looks good.

I can assure you all that the issues are not limited to Australia, I started noticing the issue about 10 days ago in the US, now I moved for some time in Dubai and have had the same issues streaming FLAC on Tidal since last week. My ISP is Etisalat, I tried my setup at a friends house who uses another ISP and the same issues happened. Stuttering, pausing, completely unlistenable, songs start well, get two around 2/3 of the song and then it starts chopping up.

I emailed Tidal support but heard nothing back. It is perhaps more frustrating to me not to have a reliable way to get to Tidal support and also not seeing any acknowledgement on their part (official) about the status of these issues and their investigation/effort to bring things back on track.

I tried the Windows Client, Chrome browser, Aries and Roon… All choppy…

Pitty really, had no issues with Tidal for a couple of month and now suddenly it is a complete mess.

Is there any way to configure Tidal streaming to low quality (320KB) instead of FLAC in roon? This may help until Tidal get their act together and hopefully fix the broken service.

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It’s mid-afternoon on a Saturday (21-Nov). I kicked on ROON on my MacMini server and selected some U2 material which started badly in TIDAL (very slow to get started plus stutters) for the first track. I made it skip back to the beginning of the same track - after one more hiccup it latched in and has been trouble free for the couple of hours since.

Will try to listen in later in afternoon but have grandchild duty which seldom coincides with listening to music!

PS: I received a survey from TIDAL in which I outlined the performance issues encountered in recent weeks. My view is that we can rule out our in-house WiFi network or ADSL modem/router or internet bandwidth as direct or indirect causes for these consistent streaming disruptions.


That’ll teach me!! at 3pm, not 5 minutes since posting the above, the stuttering started. Only for 20-30 seconds so far, but you just know Murpy (and his “Law”) is tuned into these forums!!

I figure that to pursue this approach you just cancel the “HIFI” service on TIDAL and instead enrol in the lower resolution service. It will also be cheaper!

I am not sure what bitrate this lesser service delivers.

Tidal is unplayable for me, too. I will cancel including my family members’ subscriptions until problem is fixed.

Tidal was streaming fine for me Friday night about 11 pm for an hour and Saturday morning for 3 hours. It is now 5:15 pm on Saturday and it is stuttering badly, unlistenable. Using Roon throughout.

I started Tidal at 5pm Saturday on Auralic Aries (wired ethernet), no VPN (it is using my Telstra ISP’s DNS servers in Australia).

It is now 5:30pm, no problem, working well for last 30 minutes.

For Tidal me is erratic in Roon BUT OK with Tidal’s Mac Desktop app

Using Roon Tidal Hi-Fi FLAC tracks stutter and are unusable.

Switch to Tidal’s own app and all is OK with Hi-Fi FLAC

WTF?

“I am located in Australia … and a lot of other Aussies are being affected with Tidal
becoming unusable, so bad that they are starting to cancel Tidal subscriptions.
It is not a network issue on my home network or my ISP … so many others are
being affected as being reported on Stereonet hifi forum in Australia.”

Surely a sizeable cache and some buffer should sort the problem out (on a computer anyway)

I can’t find any buffer or cache settings for Tidal in the Tidal Mac app or in Roon?

With Qobuz it is easy to set both parameters and I do not get audio glitches

Problem isn’t limited to Australia, I live in Dubai and has no problems with Roon until about a week ago when all hell broke loose. Since then I tried everything, switching ISPs, changing routers, resetting my fiber-optical setup, QoS settings on the router, reinstalled the Tidal client, tried Chrome web interface, nothing works… One day it gives me hope then after 10-15 minutes of listening the stuttering kicks in… I even get it on low-quality playback using Tidal (320kb).

I also tried the VPN connection via US to rule out geographical reasons, same problem, worked fine a little longer but eventually the stuttering kicked in.

I hope the folks at Tidal fix this soon… Tidal’s “marriage” with Roon was the perfect scenario for me…