Attention TIDAL users - changes ahead!

[mherger]

> is there a way to integrate Tidal Connect?

Unfortunately no, there's no documentation available for this.

--

Michael

[loungelizard]

Tidal is up YAY!! I have seen stuttering on two tracks in my playlist(My MIx 3) of 40 songs and they are by Milky Chance (Daydreaming and Oh Mama). I can skip the Milky Chance song and the stuttering stops and if I go back to a Milky Chance the stuttering happens again. I am so excited, the issue is very reproducible today.
I guess I go to Tidal and report this?

The log file does not seem to have anything corelated to the event:

LOG file excerpt during the stuttering:

[20-10-19 10:49:01.2414] Slim::Player::Squeezebox2::directHeaders (544) Processing 18 headers
[20-10-19 10:49:01.2418] Slim::Player::Squeezebox2::directHeaders (550) Calling Slim::Plugin::WiMP::ProtocolHandler :arseDirectHeaders
[20-10-19 10:49:01.2439] Slim::Player::Client::streamingProgressBar (1125) url=http://sp-pr-fa.audio.tidal.com/mediatracks/CAEaKRInYzMzMzg2ODIzYWJmZDU5ODZlMjRjOGE2MTVkNzU0ND ZfNjEubXA0/0.flac?token=1603122498~MGRkNDA3ZGE1OTI3YmQ0YmFjYW IyYTgwNjllNGYyNDU4OWFkOGY3NA==, duration=undef, bitrate=854412, contentLength=21146713
[20-10-19 10:49:01.2447] Slim::Player::Client::streamingProgressBar (1166) Duration of stream set to 198.00014981063 seconds based on length of 21146713 and bitrate of 854412
[20-10-19 10:49:01.2451] Slim::Player::Squeezebox2::directHeaders (612) Got a stream type: flc bitrate: 854412 title: undef
[20-10-19 10:49:01.2456] Slim::Player::Squeezebox2::directHeaders (663) Beginning direct stream!
[20-10-19 11:08:28.9162] Slim::Utils::Cache::cleanup (169) Squeezebox Receive is still playing or being used. Let's postpone the cleanup some more. (Idle time: 2s)

I have included a log file with debug turned on as suggested by Phillipe, I highlighted the log file as per below. Confirmed that songs that stuttered yesterday stutter again today. I sent a ticket to Tidal, waiting to hear back.


================================================== ================================================== ====================================
I Select the Song that always causes stuttering, "Alaska", by Maggie Rogers. Song starts stuttering after 10 seconds Bit rate 797 kbps
================================================== ================================================== ====================================


================================================== =======================================
Now I Select next song >> , The stuttering stops and is playing "Anemone" by Slenderbodies
================================================== =======================================

[bpa]

I have included a log file with debug turned on as suggested by Phillipe, I highlighted the log file as per below. Confirmed that songs that stuttered yesterday stutter again today. I sent a ticket to Tidal, waiting to hear back.

Look likes the stream is being played "direct" by the player - which means LMS is not the issues but possibly network problems if "hard" player - if a "soft" player then maybe some processor problems.

What is the player ?
How is the player networked ?
If it is a old SB player - no additional logs available - can Tidal be run with LMS and "proxied" stream on the player ? What is the WHS system ?
If it is a Touch/Radio or Pi - then player logging should be enabled.
If it is a "bridge" player (e.g. Airplay, Chromecast, upnp) - then special logging should be enabled.

[loungelizard]

Look likes the stream is being played "direct" by the player - which means LMS is not the issues but possibly network problems if "hard" player - if a "soft" player then maybe some processor problems.

What is the player ?
How is the player networked ?
If it is a old SB player - no additional logs available - can Tidal be run with LMS and "proxied" stream on the player ? What is the WHS system ?
If it is a Touch/Radio or Pi - then player logging should be enabled.
If it is a "bridge" player (e.g. Airplay, Chromecast, upnp) - then special logging should be enabled.

I have Original squeezebox Duet in two places. Receiver connection: One is wired and one is connected to Wifi. The logs were connected on the Wifi connected receiver, but i see the same issue on both. These songs work fine on PC or iPhone. These songs cause stuttering:

https://tidal.com/browse/track/102221758 Maggie Rogers Alaska, Tidal labelled Masters.
https://tidal.com/browse/track/115083765 Milky Chance
https://tidal.com/browse/track/120207704 Milky Chance
https://tidal.com/browse/track/120207705 Milky Chance
https://tidal.com/browse/track/120207706 Milky Chance


WHS is running on Zeon X3440 at 2.53 GHz. 4G of RAM. Never see CPU usage above 2%.

[bpa]

I have Original squeezebox Duet in two places. Receiver connection: One is wired and one is connected to Wifi. The logs were connected on the Wifi connected receiver, but i see the same issue on both. These songs work fine on PC or iPhone. These songs cause stuttering:

https://tidal.com/browse/track/102221758 Maggie Rogers Alaska, Tidal labelled Masters.
https://tidal.com/browse/track/115083765 Milky Chance
https://tidal.com/browse/track/120207704 Milky Chance
https://tidal.com/browse/track/120207705 Milky Chance
https://tidal.com/browse/track/120207706 Milky Chance


WHS is running on Zeon X3440 at 2.53 GHz. 4G of RAM. Never see CPU usage above 2%.

Just for clarity - I understand "stuttering" to mean audio gaps in an audio stream where no audio is lost just there is added chunks of silence.

Unfortunately with SB Receiver - no additional logging is available to indicate the problem as stream is direct between station and player. The Receiver has a smallish buffer (especially compared to iPhone or PC) when playing Flac so an "uneven" network stream can result in gaps.
You should try enabling "proxied streaming" for each of the affected players. See WebUI Settings/Player/Audio/Streaming method "proxied streaming". This means network streams will first be be received by the LMS server, buffered (more than Receiver) and then sent onto Receiver. It can smooth out a "lumpy" network stream.

Another less likely possible cause could be these songs are highly compressed and require more processing compared to other songs. There are ways to check this by enabling "flac to flac" transcode on LMS to decode and re-encode Flac streams at a lower compression level.

[loungelizard]

Just for clarity - I understand "stuttering" to mean audio gaps in an audio stream where no audio is lost just there is added chunks of silence.

Unfortunately with SB Receiver - no additional logging is available to indicate the problem as stream is direct between station and player. The Receiver has a smallish buffer (especially compared to iPhone or PC) when playing Flac so an "uneven" network stream can result in gaps.
You should try enabling "proxied streaming" for each of the affected players. See WebUI Settings/Player/Audio/Streaming method "proxied streaming". This means network streams will first be be received by the LMS server, buffered (more than Receiver) and then sent onto Receiver. It can smooth out a "lumpy" network stream.

Another less likely possible cause could be these songs are highly compressed and require more processing compared to other songs. There are ways to check this by enabling "flac to flac" transcode on LMS to decode and re-encode Flac streams at a lower compression level.

Stuttering is different from buffering as buffering happens due to network issues limiting data rates. When buffering happens the song stops playing until sufficient data has been loaded and then plays normally. Stuttering is the song keeps playing but skips, speeds up, slows down, sounds like an alien.... the song keeps playing. I think it sounds very similar to when you have a blue tooth connection and have walked far away from the transmitter. I'll record something and attach it.

Tidal, in response to my ticket I raised and said to contact Squeezebox support and have a nice day!! Again, I can run FLAC files, with similar data rates, 1000 mbps, from my server and have never seen stuttering, buffering sure occasionally over the years. Why would certain songs, reliably, fail to play properly on both player/receiver combinations even after playing 30 Tidal songs in a row without stuttering?

I could just stream directly to my LG OLED TV, optical stream to my Anthem Receiver and say auf vitter sehn SB Tidal and move to Spotify like everyone in the family.

[philippe_44]

Stuttering is different from buffering as buffering happens due to network issues limiting data rates. When buffering happens the song stops playing until sufficient data has been loaded and then plays normally. Stuttering is the song keeps playing but skips, speeds up, slows down, sounds like an alien.... the song keeps playing. I think it sounds very similar to when you have a blue tooth connection and have walked far away from the transmitter. I'll record something and attach it.

Tidal, in response to my ticket I raised and said to contact Squeezebox support and have a nice day!! Again, I can run FLAC files, with similar data rates, 1000 mbps, from my server and have never seen stuttering, buffering sure occasionally over the years. Why would certain songs, reliably, fail to play properly on both player/receiver combinations even after playing 30 Tidal songs in a row without stuttering?

I could just stream directly to my LG OLED TV, optical stream to my Anthem Receiver and say auf vitter sehn SB Tidal and move to Spotify like everyone in the family.

Would be useful if you can record it because what you describe sounds more like a codec problem in the player. I'm not using Tidal much and I think my premium subscription does not let me use flac (or at least I've never been able to get the song you described played as flac).

[Martin2097]

... just learned some bad news: TIDAL is dropping support for mp3. Which means that TIDAL will no longer play the (cheaper) lossy streams over mysqueezebox.com.

I switched from Tidal to Deezer over the weekend.
Deezer works GREAT w/ mysqueezebox.com.
This was a really painless solution for this "non-computer" person.

Hopefully Deezer won't change their file type anytime soon...
Deezer seems to be the Last Man Standing.

**This website seamlessly transferred my music library from TIDAL to Deezer**
tunemymusic(dot)com/TIDAL-to-Deezer.php


Martin

(Squeezebox Touch and Boom)

[loungelizard]

Would be useful if you can record it because what you describe sounds more like a codec problem in the player. I'm not using Tidal much and I think my premium subscription does not let me use flac (or at least I've never been able to get the song you described played as flac).

Here is an recording of a song with stuttering

[philippe_44]

Here is an recording of a song with stuttering

Sounds more like a decoding problem, I think