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Topic: Tidal (Read 44943 times) previous topic - next topic
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Tidal

I just stumbled upon a new website which offers lossless music streaming!

http://www.tidalhifi.com/us

I was really excited to find this, and their library is very extensive. I've come to find it even has the local rapper I had perform at a party at my house.

Is it really lossless? I waveform-inverted caps against my CDs and I'm getting mixed results. Some songs I tested, namely Incubus' "Drive", Korn's "A.D.I.D.A.S." and PFV's "The Virus" came to be a perfect match. Both versions of Linkin Park's non-special edition Hybrid Theory were mastered differently than my CD (My CD had more dynamic range). Some songs I tested, like Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" and Lady Gaga's "G.U.Y." were mostly similar, but left audible intermittent artifacts in the 2k-4k range. Tyga's "Make It Nasty", which I obtained from iTunes, also had similar artifacts in addition the expected AAC compression differential.

After a 7-day free trial, a subscription is $19.99 a month.
Project Leader of DDResampled

Tidal

Reply #1 –
I don't see the point. Give me a 80-96kbps opus stream and I'm a happy camper. Lossless is best left to storage and local/LAN playback. Streaming it over the internet just seems like a waste of bandwidth unless you are ripping the stream, which would be a copyright violation in most cases.

Tidal

Reply #2 –
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Tidal

Reply #3 –
Quote
I don't see the point. Give me a 80-96kbps opus stream and I'm a happy camper. Lossless is best left to storage and local/LAN playback. Streaming it over the internet just seems like a waste of bandwidth unless you are ripping the stream, which would be a copyright violation in most cases.

+1

Tidal

Reply #4 –
If the bandwidth is available, why not?

I know from the last test that 96kbps isn't transparent to me.

I don't have a problem with higher bitrate lossy, but I know that (maybe apart from something like lossyWAV) no lossy is universally transparent on all possible signals, so why not stream lossless if possible?

Depends on cost of course. And various other factors which mean that, despite using Spotify sometimes, I prefer my own CD rips whenever and where ever possible. Those problems (different mastering, unpredictable availability, missing titles) would impact lossless streaming as much as lossy. But I doubt many people think like this.

Cheers,
David.

Tidal

Reply #5 –
With the way my internet connection speed fluctuates, I think I'll stick with decent-quality lossy for now.

Tidal

Reply #6 –
You have to congratulate them on their marketing...
http://test.tidalhifi.com/?utm_source=Outb...=Tidal%20Launch

It told me I got 4 our of 5 correct, and deserved a free trial. Interesting, given that I just guessed, and every A and B version of every track they played appeared to be full bandwidth (yes, of course I cheated  ). Then it linked me to the free trial that's available to all.

EDIT: they say the comparison is between lossless and 320kbps AAC. Is the latter full bandwidth? Would anyone on the planet expect to be able to tell these apart?!

Cheers,
David.

Tidal

Reply #8 –
I got one out of five, just guessing since my browser didn't make any sound.  They only offered me a 7 day trial, although they did suggest I check my equipment and try again

Tidal

Reply #9 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
If the bandwidth is available, why not?


This is the curmudgeon in me coming out, but bandwidth on the internet is not infinite. Wasting it for no tangible gain just rubs me the wrong way. If it's your local LAN then by all means, you're not affecting anyone else by streaming lossless between machines on your LAN. But, on the internet it's the difference between a 10Gbps link being able to handle 6600 lossless streams or 100,000 lossy streams. If it takes 128kbps opus to be transparent to you then fine, but anything above that transparent threshold is just wasting bandwidth.

Another pet peeve is people streaming video on a TV/computer no one is watching.. I want to punch something when I see that.

Tidal

Reply #10 –
Does internet bandwidth work like that? If I use a little less, there's more left over for everyone else?

This seems to contradict the real-world experience of years on line, which is: the more I use, the more everyone else uses, and the more bandwidth is provided overall. And it costs less. And the extra bandwidth enables new use cases than no one thought they needed when there was less bandwidth.


If you want to talk irritating waste, it's badly written webpages which seem to assume you have a fibre connection, while delivering information that could have appeared within one second over a 56k modem. That's a waste - of my time, at least. Then again, fibre is only £2 per month, so...

Cheers,
David.

Tidal

Reply #11 –
Quote from: CyberTootie on
Some songs I tested, like Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" and Lady Gaga's "G.U.Y." were mostly similar, but left audible intermittent artifacts in the 2k-4k range. Tyga's "Make It Nasty", which I obtained from iTunes, also had similar artifacts in addition the expected AAC compression differential.

All three of those artists are distributed by UMG (Universal Music Group), which has been known to add audible watermarking to some files that they distribute to third-party online vendors, including "lossless" files - see here:

http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=89818
"Not sure what the question is, but the answer is probably no."

Tidal

Reply #12 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
If you want to talk irritating waste, it's badly written webpages which seem to assume you have a fibre connection, while delivering information that could have appeared within one second over a 56k modem.
One word: The animated GIF revival. Well, four, actually.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Tidal

Reply #13 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Does internet bandwidth work like that? If I use a little less, there's more left over for everyone else?


We're derailing here, but, you got it.

Quote from: 2Bdecided on
This seems to contradict the real-world experience of years on line, which is: the more I use, the more everyone else uses, and the more bandwidth is provided overall. And it costs less. And the extra bandwidth enables new use cases than no one thought they needed when there was less bandwidth.


Don't confuse infrastructure improvements over time for some other mystical phenomenon. Trust me, if every device on the internet right now started streaming 4k uncompressed video to every other host there would be no doubt in your mind that simply using more bandwidth doesn't magically create more bandwidth on the internet.

Quote from: 2Bdecided on
If you want to talk irritating waste, it's badly written webpages which seem to assume you have a fibre connection, while delivering information that could have appeared within one second over a 56k modem. That's a waste - of my time, at least. Then again, fibre is only £2 per month, so...


One HD video on youtube uses more bandwidth than dozens of crappy web pages. While many web pages suck, the big bruiser really is video. If everyone started streaming lossless audio then that would also start to represent a much larger base bandwidth load.

Now I'm not some internet environmental freak or anything. By all means stream to your heart's content. I'm just advocating for the better technical solution where it makes sense. IMO multiplying your bandwidth consumption on a shared societal medium by 10-15 times for no tangible gain in audio quality is an abuse of that resource.

Tidal

Reply #14 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
EDIT: they say the comparison is between lossless and 320kbps AAC. Is the latter full bandwidth? Would anyone on the planet expect to be able to tell these apart?!

When I went to the test page, my first thought was, "Where's the button for 'I can't tell the difference at all?'" Because I couldn't.

Tidal

Reply #15 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Does internet bandwidth work like that? If I use a little less, there's more left over for everyone else?

Contention ratio
Quote
In computer networking, the contention ratio is the ratio of the potential maximum demand to the actual bandwidth. The higher the contention ratio, the greater the number of users that may be trying to use the actual bandwidth at any one time and, therefore, the lower the effective bandwidth offered, especially at peak times.[

The internet service won't be same everywhere.

Quote from: 2Bdecided on
This seems to contradict the real-world experience of years on line, which is: the more I use, the more everyone else uses, and the more bandwidth is provided overall. And it costs less. And the extra bandwidth enables new use cases than no one thought they needed when there was less bandwidth.

"The more I use the internet" is not same as "The more I use the bandwidth".

Tidal

Reply #16 –
Lossy is not transparent to everyone despite people parroting this constantly. I can tell the difference so there would be a plenty tangible gain for me. I would be very interested in this if it was cheap-free like netflix.
FLAC -> JDS Labs ODAC/O2 -> Sennheiser HD 650 (equalized)

Tidal

Reply #17 –
Quote from: yourlord on
I don't see the point. Give me a 80-96kbps opus stream and I'm a happy camper. Lossless is best left to storage and local/LAN playback. Streaming it over the internet just seems like a waste of bandwidth unless you are ripping the stream, which would be a copyright violation in most cases.
You don't care about the lovely transients?

Tidal

Reply #18 –
Despite I think this is wasting internet bandwidth, it's obviously the future. I hate when people using Youtube solely for listening music in a background tab, but I'm finding myself doing this as well more and more often. 
Luckily the listening site works outside UK/US so I had the chance to see what's behind the surface, and it's streaming FLAC. This is interesting since no web browsers at the moment is capable of decoding FLAC the native way. I presume the decoder is in the minified js code.

Tidal

Reply #19 –
Quote from: darkbyte on
[...]it's obviously the future.

Not so certain a future perhaps, if you consider the current mass market's tendencies along with internet's own infrastructure.
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Tidal

Reply #20 –
Quote from: Satellite_6 on
Lossy is not transparent to everyone despite people parroting this constantly. I can tell the difference so there would be a plenty tangible gain for me.


In the spirit of TOS #8, would you mind sharing with us at what bit rate and and with what codec you hear a difference, and what your test setup was?

Tidal

Reply #21 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Does internet bandwidth work like that? If I use a little less, there's more left over for everyone else?

This seems to contradict the real-world experience of years on line, which is: the more I use, the more everyone else uses, and the more bandwidth is provided overall. And it costs less. And the extra bandwidth enables new use cases than no one thought they needed when there was less bandwidth.

To the others who have decided to instruct David in how the Internet works (bandwidth contention, etc): you're missing his point. I am sure that David knows very well about these issues.

I think what he's trying to point out (perhaps in a somewhat cryptic manner - maybe it's a British way of expression) is that it's only through the historical increase in bandwidth usage that we have the capacity we now enjoy. In a competitive market, the ISPs are basically forced to increase their capacity to handle the demand, and technological advances have kept the costs low. Everyone wins.

However, the worry I have (from a philosophical viewpoint) is that all this extra bandwidth seems to have encouraged a rather superficial usage model. People are just consuming bandwidth for no real purpose, and we are becoming a race of undiscriminating sinks for meaningless data. You really don't need to be online 24/7.

Tidal

Reply #22 –
Quote from: cliveb on
However, the worry I have (from a philosophical viewpoint) is that all this extra bandwidth seems to have encouraged a rather superficial usage model. People are just consuming bandwidth for no real purpose, and we are becoming a race of undiscriminating sinks for meaningless data. You really don't need to be online 24/7.


And equally worryingly, it seems to be used to support the argument for differentiated service (network non-neutrality).

Tidal

Reply #23 –
cliveb got it.


For me, the biggest problems with existing streaming services do not include the fact that they use lossy audio. But if all those other problems were solved, and I had the choice between (e.g.) 96kbps Opus, ~320kbps lossy, or pure lossless, then the choice would be down to cost: 320kbps lossy would be my "good enough" point, but I could be persuaded to use 96kbps Opus if it was free and the others were expensive, and I could be persuaded to use lossless if the price increment over 320kbps AAC was small enough.

If someone wants to receive it, someone else wants to send it, and there's a business model that supports it, it's not a waste of bits.

(I would make the proviso that the resources required to build+run a data centre should be provided and taxed in an environmentally sustainable way. If you can't do that, some people would argue that we should all be doing a lot less of everything. But that's a much bigger issue and I don't think lossy vs lossless audio is the place to start with that one!)

Cheers,
David.

P.S. I might think differently if "everyone started streaming lossless audio", but I doubt that will happen - certainly not before the network can cope so easily that it will seem strange to even question it.

Tidal

Reply #24 –
I wonder why people find it acceptable to waste bandwidth on lossless audio streams meant for immediate consumption, and not archival. Nobody would use raw video for video streams, so why use it with audio? Just because the increase in bandwidth requirement is "only" a factor of 2-10? (depending on respective encoder settings and input files)
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.