Tidal is too slow very often - why we have no buffering?

I’m the only who is suffering the issue?
Why Roon doesn’t buffer music? I think even 10 sec buffer would be enough.
I have 5G internet so not perfect but still - no other problems apart Tidal.
With 400/50 Mbs I wouldn’t expect a single issue. Unfortunetely Tidal is the only Roon-friendly service available in my country.
I just check with Olly Alexander last album. I guess Tidal mobile app has buffering - 3 track without na issue. Tidal web player (so no Roon at all) and Roon - pauses (web) or skipped track since first track to the last one (Roon).
Some days there is everything great. Sometimes (most of the time recently) like today I have to use my local files only.
I have 8.8.8.8 DNS now. Last router firmware, router and Rock were restarted. I even connected my Roon computer to my router instead of repeater - which should be good anyway.
I think I will use Roon only with local files and Tidal on my smartphone :confused:
Router: Fritz 6850 5G, streamer Wiim Ultra

4 Likes

The problem is probably not with the internet connection to Tidal, which Roon does buffer, but more likely with the local network.

Roon has higher demands on the local network than Tidal and the local buffers are small to enable synchronized multi-room. There’s more on the technical reasons here:

And if you want official support for the problems, you should go to the Support area of the forum and click the Get Help button, because Roon support doesn’t monitor the user discussions here in Roon Software Discussion

3 Likes

I have recently seen this for a couple of days on a fully Ethernet network streaming between two 10Gb switches with 1Gb download speed (120Mb upload) . I could easily play DSD upscaled files locally but a lot of Tidal songs skipped with the message that things were loading slowly.

It has cleared up now, it was painful to play albums through Tidal when the issue was happening.

2 Likes

Just had this issue on fully wired network. Played the same album via Qobuz with no issues.

1 Like

Well I have removed my Qobuz and Tidal accounts from Roon due to Roon slowdowns and better reliability with them out of the system.

These days I maintain a new empty family plan TIDAL account which I only use for Listen Later and to sample music that I might actually buy. Roon is more reliable for me this way, but TIDAL still has its moments where it doesn’t want to work reliably.

4 Likes

Well the truth is I feel like I completely stole the idea from you, @anon77144803 and maybe @mjw

Not sure I will be going back though as Roon has been much more reliable and speedier without the additional 30-40k of track’s in my library

Now I have Listen Later I can sample to my pleasure

I will check some dns solution.
I found a lot of complains related to Tidal on my providers forum.
DNS:

https://dns.watch:

84.200.69.80
84.200.70.40

https://dns.sb:

185.222.222.222
45.11.45.11

and then we can compare

ping sp-ad-fa.audio.tidal.com

Long ago someone checked the Roon network traffic and posted screenshots showing that streaming media was loaded in bursts and buffered on the server, IIRC. It’s logical too because with variable internet speeds it would otherwise probably fail a lot.

That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to fail on the Internet uplink, I just meant that I’d rule out local issues first, because as we know that’s by far the most common cause.

FWIW I got intermittent speed issues with my Apple TV recently, on a wired connection using the same cable between switch and ATV that I had always used without issues. Changed the cable and everything was fine again. So there’s always this possibility and similar ones.

1 Like

grc.com has an excellent free Windows tool called DNS Benchmark that can be quite useful in testing DNS speed responses, but it won’t help if your provider has a slow connection to the Tidal CDN

2 Likes

Sadly when tidal blows up for me is late on a Friday or Saturday. Skips to next songs etc, fine again in the morning. I am assuming load their end, my network is running fine when it goes belly up

2 Likes

The last time for me was Friday and Saturday as well

1 Like

Well I removed Roon from the whole equation and no issues at all. :exploding_head:

1 Like

Well that is a step further than I want to go for now.
I have plenty of options for when Roon play’s up, and eventually I might well just move to one of those like you have.
Overall I still enjoy Roon, but because I paid once and went lifetime I am more forgiving than If I was annual or monthly.
There are definitely times over the last couple of years when I would have cancelled a monthly plan

2 Likes

If something I pay for doesn’t perform as I expect it goes, regardless of what I paid. But I have been yearly with Roon for 8 years. I think I have invested enough now. It’s a law of diminishing returns and time to quit.

1 Like

I believe it has everything to do with your network. Moved last year from copper phoneline (40Mb download max) to glasfiber (currently > 600 Mb/sec). TIDAL, Qobuz, Roon, it works excellent.

Really… I have 10Gb fiber from my Router to my Roon server and endpoint.

Are you going to tell me it is too fast next?
99% of the time it works perfectly (I can also play from Qobuz at 24/192 when Tidal fails), but when it isn’t working perfectly it is unusable, yet I can play local files at DSD256 with no issue.
Maybe you should read more of the posts before adding comments like that.

1 Like

Speed doesn’t guarantee reliability.

That said RAAT does seem pretty frail, even though I have rock solid performance and all my endpoints are wifi. Knock on wood!

1 Like

My point is that for some high quality WiFi is good enough, and for others Ethernet (and fiber) are everywhere because they want total stability and 10000% more bandwidth than needed

Anything that relies on third party servers has potential for CDN and server issues so cannot be guaranteed regardless of how good or fast your network is.

You cannot make a statement like that without knowing what the individual situation of each user and their capabilities and networks are. I say that as someone that has managed wide area networks with multiple thousands of devices on them.

No you are not the only one.
Sense is much better with buffering. Not as good with other things though.

I’d have to mortgage the house for speeds like that . Mine is 50 mbs up and down. I run anything on it without a blip. Netflix 4K included…

I am just changing ISP and the best offering is 1 Gb and that is a lot pricey .

I am not convinced that for music you need high speeds, stability is far more important