Tidal connect availability

I guess that when you sell product you are aware of that, and despite of the never ending complaints you still go on and improve your products…I do hope dCS believe in their products, including Mosaic.

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In that context It is interesting that Spotify ran a market test on hi-res streaming ( however hi-res is defined) a few years ago in California. It appears that the take-up must have been low enough for them not to develop the idea any further. They are only interested in the big numbers and I mean tens of millions of paying customers. There are not tens of millions of customers who even know what hi-res is ( ask your neighbours :smiley:) let alone want to pay a premium for the privilege. Spotify had a paying customer base of 144,000,000 in October 2020. That’s what I call a mass market.

Enjoy your turkey :yum:.

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Waouh…Fanciful rumination and sausage-making in the same post…I wonder what your wife put in the turkey today, but it gave you writing inspiration :joy:

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Whatever Greg and his family have been eating — if it leads to posts like his, I’m all for it, and would send supplies if needed :slight_smile:

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Pete, I had no idea. Thanks for sharing that. You know, I am genuinely amazed and pleased that we have the full-res/hi-res options we do have in Qobuz, Tidal, Blue Coast, Sound Liaison, NativeDSD, HDTracks, ProStudioMasters, AmazonHD, etc. And yes, 144mm, that is a helluva market. Lot of gorilla there.

I’ve been with Spotify for many years, with Roon for 1 year.

I can assure you that Roon’s recommendation algorithms cannot match Spotify. I’ll give an example.

When you have a playlist of a musical style in Roon, for example Jazz, and the last song on that list is for example Diana Krall, the next suggested song will be a female jazz singer and all subsequent songs will be the same. That is, it only analyzes the last song played. This in Sptify does not happen. Spotify not only looks at the latest song but looks at the entire playlist, and all suggested music will be varied, not just female jazz singers.

This is a very basic example just for comment.

Nobody forces anything to anyone

This argument is your opinion.

I think Roon needs Spotify but I don’t think Spotify needs Roon.

I honestly don’t care why Spotify didn’t want to join Roon. If I were the president of Spotify and the fact of joining Roon lost all the suggestion algorithms that have cost me so much, I would not join. This is one of the problems of integrating with Roon or another platform, which loses native functionalities. This is why the “Connect” function is so important. It’s just my vision and opinion.

I like to use my sound equipment to listen to music, not to use music to listen to my sound equipment. That is why I give so much importance to technology to discover and listen to music and not the other way around.

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Greg, just for the record, I have been trying to find links to this story but I think that it was mainly covered in AudioStream which is no more. I don’t think that what were mainly informal exchanges about it will be found in what Stereophile has chosen to archive from that defunct website.

However I now believe that the test was for lossless rather then hi-res per se. Nevertheless even this appears not to have had much appeal to their Calif. test market. I also recall that the story came about at roughly the same time as HD Tracks were contemplating an all MQA streaming service ( also shelved indefinitely). That was in 2017.

Pete, The Verge has a piece from '17 about Spotify testing Lossless;

Personally, I don’t see any downside to dCS supporting Tidal Connect as well, but not at the expense of other more critical (useful?) R&D expenditure.

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Interesting. You see this as a shortcoming, while I see it as a strength. When I let Roon Radio start, I actually want it to pick up from where I left off, with more of the same. Further, even if I saw this as a detriment, I don’t tend to play from genre playlists, and so am not concerned about Roon analyzing a full playlist. Finally, Roon’s machine learning (heavily. criticized when first rolled out, and rightly so) is cumulative, and not dependent on simply the latest thing I have listened to. I find it extremely effective for the way I listen to music. You don’t. That’s okay. We’re different.

I understand your point, but your example, like mine, is specific to your desires. Ergo, all the more reason not to have Spotify or Roon or anyone else be the lone dominant offering.

I believe you wrote this earlier:

I dream of the day when Spitify broadcasts in high quality because that will kill the multiple applications. The “Connect” option is the most comfortable for everyone.

Forgive me, but that sounds like you want to take other people’s choices away. Like others here, I am happy to see more functionality like Tidal Connect in dCS equipment, but not at the expense of dCS-specific development, or at the expense of other market offerings. And, please don’t take this personally because it’s not personal: I don’t want you defining my UI.

Thanks Anup. I see that The Verge concludes that the difference is hard to discern given the pop music samples provided. I guess that the same might go for Thrash Metal or recordings of steam trains. Actually well done 320kB/S can sound very good indeed . Do I have to have my stripes torn off and sword broken in front of the dCS community members now?

I don’t mind what dCS adds to Mosaic as there will always be things that I will never use. But, as you say, it should not be at the expense of things that the majority require.

BTW, I don’t think that I “get” Tidal Connect. I have read their online blurb and as far as I can work out it means that if I wanted to stream Tidal from a phone using Blue Tooth the receiving device with Tidal Connect would actually play from the internet stream. Are there other advantages or have I misunderstood it all ( I am far too old to understand these new fangled things)? Mosaic already plays Tidal “from the cloud”, as they put it, so where is the advantage to dCS owners?

Pete, I don’t have a Tidal Connect capable devices at home (yet), but I presume it works exactly like Spotify Connect (which dCS does support of course); the Tidal app running on your PC/Mac or Phone acts purely as a control-point only, the actual music is streamed off the ‘net directly into the component in pretty much exactly the same way that Mosaic controls ‘net playback or Tidal/Qobuz/Deezer.

I’m not the biggest fan of the Tidal App, but it’s significantly more manoeuvrable and responsive through their listed artists, albums and playlists than Mosaic - which, IMHO, is really only useful if you’re rapidly scanning through new music etc, and or rely on Tidal’s recommendations.

The Review Board will inform you of its decision. :wink: But seriously, I agree. 320kbps doesn’t have to be horrible. And for casual or background or portable listening, it can be serviceable. But a poor or brick-walled recording certainly won’t sound any better for it, and superb recordings can be diminished by it.

English is not my mother tongue and it happens to me many times that I do not express myself very well and it is not understood what I want to say.

I’m not saying that Spotify should have a monopoly on removing other apps. I say that for me it is better to have only one application and not four. If Spotify broadcasts music in high quality, for me it ends with Roon, Tidal, Qobuz and Mosaic (control aside). If Tidal has the “connect” option, then more native options. I’m just saying that.

Fair enough, and I’d say you’re doing very well for English not being your first language. Better than a lot of my fellow citizens. :wink:

A world of uniformity instead of a world of creativity…hopefully it is still a choice…long live to many apps especially the one not yet invented :wink:

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