Tidal Masters via Roon

Roon Software Discussion TIDAL
21

Sure a future update will automatically tag them somehow, but in the meantime this worked out to be pretty easy way to sort them.

22

@Radu_Popescu,
If you do a little research / reading, you will see that Roon can’t do anything about this without changes from Tidal’s end.

23

This isn’t difficult to understate
 Tidal does NOT share the Format information with Roon (yet)

And as a result, Roon does not KNOW the Format of an MQA / FLAC /AAC track from Tidal until it plays it

This is an issue that Tidal needs to fix
 Not Roon
 And that is why the complaint / feedback needs to be directed back to Tidal on this issue
 To put pressure on them to SHARE the information with Roon

1 Like
24

Roon can get the contents of the Masters “tab” in Tidal, so it can also associate it with other metadata.
It doesn’t have to determine if something is a “Master” album by playing the file; the fact that it comes from the Masters “tab” in Tidal is sufficient to tag it as such.
It’s not ideal, and of course Tidal could improve it, but it beats customers having to do this by hand, week after week, does it not?

@rolski
Thank you for the link. The thing is, Roon already knows about the Masters, as I’ve said above. Have a peek in your log file and you’ll see it gets them from https://metadata5.roonlabs.com/md/4/tidal/master/recommended/albums?uid=
 so clearly the Masters are already an apart set.
All I would like, as Michael suggested, is a visual hint, and a way to filter, which I assume might come in the form of an automatically assigned tag.

@Ronnie
Something seems to be wrong with your Shift or Caps Lock mate. Also with your understanding or my “understating” :slight_smile:

25

Have you even bothered to read the links that have been posted
or are you going to continue to post your “guesses” as to what you think may be easy or not

The Masters tab has only 443 MQA albums out of the approx 2,500 that are available
so by that alone, your suggestion would fail

Likewise, a few of the albums listed in the Tidal Masters section are not MQA
which would again cause your suggestion to fail

As stated by Roon on several occasions and as linked above
Tidal’s current API does NOT allow for easy identification of Masters / MQA
and your guesses / suggestions as to what may be “easy” are simply wrong
and more importantly, misleading to other readers

This is Tidal’s problem to fix
for their own App
as well as for their API
to allow Roon and others to access the Format information

26

@Radu_Popescu

what @Ronnie said
 :wink:

Don’t get us wrong - we all want the same thing :thumbsup: - but, as has already been discussed (almost to death !) elsewhere - the Roon team can’t really do anything effective or worthwhile at the moment, so unless Tidal either do something off their own back, or their customers pressure them, then the situation won’t improve.

27

Roland, I’m afraid I don’t appreciate either of Ronnie’s tone or his unfounded conclusions.
Fact: Roon shows Tidal masters. Not all of them? Sure. No dispute. But those that are shown could be tagged right? And new ones being added (by Tidal) would also receive the same treatment. I don’t see what could be argued here further.

Onto the API: I’ve just done a little experimenting and will contact the Roon devs directly about it but here’s what I found.
I’ve done this with Beyonce’s Lemonade album as it was the first one.
It exists in two versions from what I can tell, with IDs 59727856 and 59727869.
When retrieving the items for the album with ID 59727856, the JSON reply goes like this:

{“limit”:100,“offset”:0,“totalNumberOfItems”:12,“items”:[{“item”:{“id”:59727857,“title”:“PRAY YOU CATCH ME”,“duration”:196,“replayGain”:-4.73,“peak”:0.97174,“allowStreaming”:true,“streamReady”:true,“streamStartDate”:“2016-04-23T00:00:00.000+0000”,“premiumStreamingOnly”:false,“trackNumber”:1,“volumeNumber”:1,“version”:null,“popularity”:96,“copyright”:“© Parkwood Entertainment”,“url”:“http://www.tidal.com/track/59727857",“isrc”:“USSM11603175”,“editable”:false,“explicit”:false,“audioQuality”:"HI_RES”, [
]

Note the last part says the audioQuality is HI_RES.
For the album with ID 59727869 it replies with this:

{“limit”:100,“offset”:0,“totalNumberOfItems”:12,“items”:[{“item”:{“id”:59727870,“title”:“PRAY YOU CATCH ME”,“duration”:196,“replayGain”:-4.73,“peak”:0.971771,“allowStreaming”:true,“streamReady”:true,“streamStartDate”:“2016-04-23T00:00:00.000+0000”,“premiumStreamingOnly”:false,“trackNumber”:1,“volumeNumber”:1,“version”:null,“popularity”:82,“copyright”:“© Parkwood Entertainment”,“url”:“http://www.tidal.com/track/59727870",“isrc”:“USSM11603175”,“editable”:false,“explicit”:false,“audioQuality”:"LOSSLESS”,

audioQuality here is LOSSLESS, and as above, it goes on in similar fashion for all the remaining 11 tracks.

These requests have been captured via my browser, and they were both made upon entering the respective album’s page, as I selected it from the results of the search in Tidal. Of course, these requests were also made before playing anything.

Now I’m not 100% sure of this because I don’t know what lossless and hi-res mean respectively, but unless Tidal means by either of these “compressed, lossy stream” then it appears these are the MQA FLAC and the plain FLAC respectively.

1 Like
28

So any file tagged with HI_RES or LOSSLESS (streamed from Tidal in this particular case) should be reported by Roon as MQA ?
What happens if Tidal releases (or has already released) some HI_RES / LOSSLESS files that aren’t MQA ?
(What happens to my local HI_RES / LOSSLESS files ?) Etc.

There are undoubtedly several other usage-case clashes, and as @brian @danny have stated before, better to implement a quality solution once, rather than an edge-case solution that has to be constantly revisited & potentially causes problems to other non-Tidal non-MQA users.

But, by all means, take it up with them though - good luck ! :thumbsup:

Perhaps not the case here as I can’t speak for Ronnie, but I would guess that his occasional frustration - which I very often share - comes from people not bothering to do any significant reading and research - which also includes trying to really understand the topic - before posting, and thinking they’re entitled to personal attention.
As a sweeping generalisation which is not aimed at anyone in particular, but as this is a largely User-driven forum, where people give their help & advice & time freely, sometimes trying to help people (repeatedly) can lead to a degree of desk-butting that leads to significant bruising !

Again, back on-topic, I think it’s clear that our (Users and Roon dev’s) dissatisfaction lays at the door of Tidal, so it’s them who need to get their house in order - just the once
 :wink:

1 Like
29

OK, let me try once more. You clearly are too busy telling me how I don’t understand nor do I research, in place of reading what I wrote.

Did I say Roon should report it as MQA? No I didn’t. I said, look, Tidal does this and that, and it’s quite unlikely that either of those streams is the lossy one, so surely one of them is plain FLAC while the other is MQA FLAC, at least at this point in time. I can only hope Tidal themselves can explain to their partners what these tags mean, and they aren’t mad enough to reuse the meaning later.

What happens to your “local HI_RES / LOSSLESS” files? Absolutely nothing. I don’t even understand how you could ask that question, it obviously doesn’t make sense, as this information comes as an HTTP reply from Tidal when querying the items in an album on Tidal. What would have have to do with your local files? How can you even ask that with a straight face?

As a software developer, I wholeheartedly agree that one solid solution is better than shoddy patches. All for it. This was the result of 10 minutes of my time to investigate what Tidal actually sends, in response to someone’s claims that Tidal doesn’t quite differentiate.

30

The part I find difficult to unserstand is that you act like you’re the only one who has thought to look at the Roon logs
as well as using other tools to investigate the Tidal streams and the information contained within them

Would it not be logical to assume that the people who built the product you use [Roon] would have carried out the same [and indeed far more detailed analysis] and have arrived at the conclusion that there is insufficient data to mark ALL the MQA Albums available within Tidal’s catalog of about 700,000 albums

The Roon guys have taken the time to post here that what we are requesting is not easy
if it was “easy” then they would have spent their time coding it, rather than posting here
and the feature would already be available

I would never assume or proclaim to know more about someone else’s product than the people who work with it 100 hours a week [probably understating it]
and then proclaim something to be “easy” when the people who truly “know” have already said that it isn’t easy
without more information forthcoming from Tidal

31

And would it not be polite to treat someone who’s going to the effort with a little respect?

Seriously, your tone is just way off. I’m used to audiophilia turning people nuts, but is there a need to be so rude too?

Now back to enjoying my Japanese military anthems and MQA.

1 Like
32

I have read the topic where Brian explains their findings.
Please note that I’m talking about something slightly different, which is to find a way to determine whether an album is a Tidal Master. Now it’s quite clear that Tidal has different IDs for the albums and further more it tags the audioQuality differently between the versions. You’re essentially telling me that this means nothing, and seem quite certain of it.
I’m simply asking whether that is indeed the case, as it seem unlikely.

@Bill_Lise was that addressed to me? I apologise if my tone seems off or I have failed to be polite. One tries, but not always manages.

2 Likes
33

Not aimed at you in the least. My apologies for the lack of clarity.

34

[quote=“Radu_Popescu, post:29, topic:22228, full:true”]
You clearly are too busy telling me how I don’t understand nor do I research, in place of reading what I wrote.[/quote]You seem quite sure of yourself ?

[quote]
Tidal does this and that, and it’s quite unlikely that either of those streams is the lossy one, so surely one of them is plain FLAC while the other is MQA FLAC, at least at this point in time.[/quote]Quite unlikely ? Surely ? At least at this point in time ? Not so sure now it seems

Aren’t there cases where a couple of files identified as Master by Tidal (perhaps by the tags you’re referring to, or perhaps not) actually aren’t MQA ?

[quote]I can only hope Tidal themselves can explain to their partners what these tags mean, and they aren’t mad enough to reuse the meaning later.[/quote]Again, positing, speculating. I think as a software developer, you’ve probably seen madder things - but that’s only a guess on my part !

[quote]What happens to your “local HI_RES / LOSSLESS” files? Absolutely nothing. I don’t even understand how you could ask that question, it obviously doesn’t make sense, as this information comes as an HTTP reply from Tidal when querying the items in an album on Tidal. What would have have to do with your local files? How can you even ask that with a straight face?[/quote]Firstly, note that that particular comment was in brackets - or are you too busy telling me how I don’t understand
oh
wait


Do you know how the queries / coding’s written in Roon ? Perhaps their queries are one-time & complex, rather than spread through the code. I think I linked to a reply from Brian where he said it was difficult
for reasons that neither I nor you know.

[quote]As a software developer, I wholeheartedly agree that one solid solution is better than shoddy patches. All for it. This was the result of 10 minutes of my time to investigate what Tidal actually sends, in response to someone’s claims that Tidal doesn’t quite differentiate.[/quote]But you’re suggesting that Roon code & roll-out a patch to cope with today’s situation, knowing that - if Tidal fix this mess - Roon will have to apply another patch later ?

I think I may have mentioned, can’t remember where, that we’re all wanting the same thing - a robust fix to this problem. Probably once, rather than often.
Anyway, I think that’s what we all want, so I hope that’s what we’ll get, somehow, somewhen.

Genuinely - good luck on trying to convince the Roon dev’s to introduce a patch - all I have to do is sit back & wait for an update or ten - looking forward to it already !

35

Are italics a hipster version of ALLCAPS?

This level of hostility makes Japanese military anthems sounds like AKB48.

2 Likes
36

Yes Roland that is what the Roon guys have said and on several occasions now
but I feel sure that we’ll see a new solution within 15 minutes of these new “revelations” being communicated to Roon :confounded:

37

@Bill_Lise
Eh ?
Italics are a form of emphasis, or a method of adding “tone” to text-based communication. Google it. :wink:

Hostility ?! It seems that most are being unfailingly polite and patient, however, your opinion may be different. Everyone’s entitled to theirs, just not their own facts.

Right, time to get off this computer & enjoy the music (as the weather’s too sh*tty to go out in) !
Happy Sunday everyone !

38

Roland,

It might be just me, but yes, LOSSLESS is “quite unlikely” to be used to refer to a lossy compressed format.
I might also venture as far as to say that HI_RES is just about as unlikely to be used to deceive the API user.
Is my folly already showing through?
As to your other comments
 I don’t know how the queries are written in Roon, and yes, you have linked it, and for the 3rd time, I have carefully read what he’s saying there. You might want to read it again yourself, and note he’s open to ideas and help - he specifically asks us to let them know if we see a Masters filter appearing within a genre, as it would indicate an API change on Tidal’s side.

I’m afraid that despite being polite enough for me, Roland, you come across as dead set on telling me off. That might not be your intention though. I’m just trying here.

I won’t even bother to dignify Ronnie’s latest reply.

Thank you @Bill_Lise for taking the trouble of being supportive.

1 Like
39

Also unless I’m missing something it seems like there’s no way to search only the Masters list? Searches appear to be global even when you’re in the Masters section. So you’re forced to scroll from screen to screen to find a title, not ideal.

40

There are a few dimensions involved in determining that something “is MQA”:

  • Whether an MQA version is available at all
  • Your location–not all tracks play in same quality in all places
  • Your account type
  • Whether it’s streamable as MQA today, since streaming rights change day to day.

We’re not going to tag files based on less than all of the information. Then all we’d be providing is a “could be MQA” indicator that was sometimes wrong in both directions.

I don’t see a way to tag files as MQA precisely without having a way to go from the rights data we have access to, to a decision-making procedure that would determine whether, in a given region, for a given user account, on a given day, this track is going to play as MQA or not.

We have a mechanism for figuring out which content we are allowed to display and which content we are allowed to offer for playback–but we don’t have a mechanism for determining quality prior to the moment of playback. This is the thing TIDAL would need to improve.

We are not very interested in a partial/imprecise solution to this. It’s not a good product for us to be building–it will create confusion and support load, as people will be pointing to all of the situations where the imprecise solution gets it wrong (false positives and false negatives) and expecting us to take responsibility for fixing it.

We’re happy to do this right with TIDAL’s cooperation, but doing something desperate to get it sort of right some of the time doesn’t seem like a good path forward.

14 Likes