I’ve been having the Tidal skipping to the next track problem for the past couple of weeks, since the second-last build of 1.8. It was so terrible the other day that Tidal was unusable. It skipped one out of three or so tracks. I tested at the same time with Qobuz and my local library. There were no problems with either. I was also having no problems playing through the Tidal app outside of Roon.
I had tried just about everything I could think of, including connecting my dedicated core notebook directly to the router, eliminating all switches in the path, various DNSs as recommended by Roon, putting the core in a DMZ, changing from wired to Wi-Fi, fixed and non-fixed IPs, changing endpoints, turning off DSP, increasing the Roon buffer and about 10 other tricks. None worked.
I’m in Brazil with a Tidal Brazil sub. I’ve been using it with very few problems with Roon for years. I have changed nothing in my network. In fact, I have two separate internet providers and networks in my home (one 400 megs, which is the one I usually use, and one 250 megs). Both are totally wired and have excellent speeds to most of North America and Europe, when tested with speedtest.net and other speed tests). So I tried the second provider, which is on its own separate network. Same issues with only Tidal and Roon.
So here is what worked for me. I don’t know why, and I’m not sure I should have to do this. But it worked.
I started running the core notebook through a VPN to a server in Miami. I had no skipping in five hours of listening to Tidal. I then tried a server closer to home, in Brazil. No skipping. I happen to have three VPN providers—PIA, Surfshark and VPN Unlimited (don’t ask). I tried various servers with all VPN services in North and South America. No more skipping with Tidal. For some reason a few wouldn’t allow Tidal to login to my U.S. Qobuz account, so I obviously have blacklisted those. I haven’t had any Tidal skips in two days of many hours of listening. I am not running VPNs on any of my remote tablets. This doesn’t seem to be necessary.
I don’t know why this would work in helping me get rid of skipping with Roon, particularly when I am in Brazil using a Brazil Tidal Brazil account. I would welcome any plausible explanations. Sometimes I use my Roon account in Canada, and I’ll be anxious to see what happens there. However, because of Covid restrictions I haven’t been in Canada for a while, and I’m unlikely to be there soon. For now, I have programmed my core notebook to always use a VPN on boot, and I expect it to continue to work.