Tidal started long buffering delays

I wish I had specific guidance, I only have sympathy and some recollections. I went through about a month where I had the same exact issue with Tidal, albeit on a ROCK/NUC.

Things I tried, some combination of which eventually worked:

  1. ensuring my ROCK was on a home run to the core switch (no intermediate switches or network gear)
  2. changing DNS servers from ISP defaults to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 (and perhaps 4.4.4.4). There were lots of trials of which one should be primary and which secondary
  3. reading Roon logs and trying to interpret them
  4. replacing some of my core network gear and going through 1-3 again

I’m not trying to be facetious - this was a while ago so my recall is not great. But I spent a month troubleshooting and actually eventually got it to work, and it’s been flawless ever since. Though I’m no expert, I highly doubt the issue is the nucleus. A ROCK or other core configured the same way would likely have the identical issue. I’m confident it’s networking. But I can’t help much more. Hope that Support pick this up for you soon, though things are understandably slim in the holiday period.

Edit: I went back and found my support thread on this topic. Doubt it will be helpful for your specific issue, but perhaps. If you search for “tidal buffering” I bet you’ll find lots of similar related issues.