|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
76.220.25.80
In Reply to: RE: Is Tidal gapless? posted by srl1 on February 13, 2015 at 17:56:31
No gaps.
Sadly also piss-poor search, so it's next to useless for classical music.
Follow Ups:
I just downloaded the PC app and used the web app with Chrome, and I can say that Tidal on my system is not gapless. Take Noriko Ogawa's Paganini Rhapsody. There are huge pauses between tracks in the supposed-to-be seamless music. It is stopping to reload on every track. For most music this is not a problem, but in classical, especially, it is fatal. Just imagine the last three movements of Beethoven's Sixth, or any other performance like Petrouchka with multiple index tracks with pauses. This is the problem that took iTunes and Spotify a while to overcome, and the solution isn't easy for lossless and hires streaming (classicsonlinehd.com has a pretty complex solution for the gapless problem).
On the plus side, Tidal seems to have a good sized classical library and it sounds very good, and when they overcome the gapless issue, my Spotify account could become unnecessary.
streaming in WiFi (5GHz) to my Apple MacBook Air. I have the album cache size set to 50MB in the OS-X app setting.I have not tried streaming from a browser as I do not have Chrome on my laptop.
I also have the SONOS Beta of TITLE app running with one or two drop-outs for a few seconds only, perhaps on ever few hours of playing.
Got another title I can test?
Edits: 02/14/15
I loaded the iOS Tidal app on my iPod, and the gaps are there but not as big as on my PC. You can try any album of the Rite of Spring that has multiple tracks for each of the two movements. The Stravinsky conducts the Rite and Firebird on Columbia is a good example on Tidal.
OK, perhaps a millisecond of hesitation between the tracks, yes you can tell when TIDAL goes to a new track and no, there is not even a hint of hesitation when playing the same Stravinsky LP on QOBUZ.
But then QOBUZ takes over 10% of the disk space (Automatique 10% de l'espace disque libre) for cache.
The gaps on the iPod are less under Tidal than either the web browser mode using Chrome or the PC app (the worst of the bunch). iTunes, Spotify, and classicsonlinehd do not exhibit any gaps or delays. I have submitted a customer support ticket to Tidal. Since it is not a bug report but it is the weekend I do not expect an answer until Monday or so.
I met the Norwegian guys who started TIDAL while they were exhibiting at the RMAF this last October and they were very familiar with QOBUZ and the technology being used for streaming so I would be surprised if they didn't what their stuff performing at least as well as QOBUZ.
That said, the search function on TIDAL is a shabby joke and I wish I had kept the business cards of they guys I met at RMAF so I could complain.
I received a prompt answer this morning from Tidal support about gapless playback:
Hello Spencer,
Thank you for contacting TIDAL customer support.
Gapless playback is a feature that will be integrated soon. We are aware of the demand for this feature, and we are sorry for the inconvenience.
Best Regards,
Colin
TIDAL Support
It will be interesting when and how they implement this feature. I'm going to keep my subscription for now because they do have most of the major classical labels covered which classicsonlinehd.com does not. Between the two, about the only thing I will have to buy is Hyperion and BluRay!
I use TIDAL mostly through the SONOS system as the have a SONOS app for TIDAL now in beta testing.
My main streamer is QOBUZ as they have a much more effective search function and for some reason now have most of the Chandos label back available again for some reason. Perhaps they paid their bills! ;-)
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: