Free 90 day trial of TIDAL HiFi Plus for new customers

[NSS89]

Tidal are currently offering a 90 day trial for their HiFi Plus service. You sign up as normal and then go into Account and change your subscription to the HiFi Plus one which is usually £19.99 a month.

I've not long signed up myself but have noticed a considerable difference in quality of sound and volume vs streaming Apple Music of my phone.

 

[Rirawin]

Another forum member pointed this out to me, you can use a VPN and change your location to Argentina, create an account and sign up for a HiFi Plus Family subscription for £1.50~ a month (important to use a card that has zero foreign transaction fees). That's what I've done and it's been great.

 

[NSS89]

Another forum member pointed this out to me, you can use a VPN and change your location to Argentina, create an account and sign up for a HiFi Plus Family subscription for £1.50~ a month (important to use a card that has zero foreign transaction fees). That's what I've done and it's been great.

Yeah came across this too and will definitely do that once this subscription runs out. I've only exclusively used Apple Music up until this point but was disappointed with the sound quality since getting a Tesla which must be down to it streaming over Bluetooth vs wired CarPlay on my previous cars. Happy with my limited use of Tidal so far so will be making the switch.

 

[Peter 224]

Tidal and for that matter, QoBuz, offer audio streaming at a quality level much above Apple Music and Spotify, but only if played through a DAC that is capable of resolving the data at a sufficient level of detail. A mobile phone generally isn't that good: there are Audio streamers and DAC devices that will stream from an internet source, if available, but 4G is probably a minimum.
I have QoBuz at home, I tried it on the browser in the Tesla, but couldn't tell the difference between it and the Spotify free service.

 

[NSS89]

Tidal and for that matter, QoBuz, offer audio streaming at a quality level much above Apple Music and Spotify, but only if played through a DAC that is capable of resolving the data at a sufficient level of detail. A mobile phone generally isn't that good: there are Audio streamers and DAC devices that will stream from an internet source, if available, but 4G is probably a minimum.
I have QoBuz at home, I tried it on the browser in the Tesla, but couldn't tell the difference between it and the Spotify free service.

Have you tried Tidal via the built in app? I noticed a significant difference especially where the music was labelled 'master' which I believe is the HiFi Premium stuff.

 

[Peter 224]

Have you tried Tidal via the built in app? I noticed a significant difference especially where the music was labelled 'master' which I believe is the HiFi Premium stuff.

No, perhaps I should drop QoBuz and move to Tidal, I'd forgotten that there is a built in App... Yes, "master" is the HiFi premium, should be noticably better as long there is a good 4G signal. Down here in south Wiltshire 4G reception is flakey, as is DAB.

 

[MrBadger]

Tidal and for that matter, QoBuz, offer audio streaming at a quality level much above Apple Music and Spotify, but only if played through a DAC that is capable of resolving the data at a sufficient level of detail.

The quality of he master also makes a difference too, and in the same way that you can see the difference that HD and UHD TV sources make when watched in SD, a decent master can still be distinguishable on lesser replay equipment. Tidal benefits from the MQA mastering even if you do not get the full MQA stream or haver an MQA decoder - not sure about the free tier. I have a feeling that Qobuz also does, but I think that is probably it as far as audio sources are concerned.

Yeah came across this too and will definitely do that once this subscription runs out.

For anyone thinking of doing this, be aware that you would need to sign up again with a different email address. With Tidal, once you have signed up with an email address, that's locked forever into that region. I signed up to a free trial that at the time not realising it was not UK. Even after approaching Tidal to change, they could not help and I am forever locked into a non UK region. I could sign up with a different email address, but the region that I am locked into is actually cheaper than UK pricing so I am mostly happy to stick with what I get. Even Tidal suggested that I stuck with what I unintendedly had due to the pricing differential.

I say mostly happy, but something to be aware of is that the region determines what audio you have access to. I don't have the full Pink Floyd catalogue for instance, but UK subscribers do.

 

[AnthonyLR]

I think for the app in the Tesla the £9.99 pm Tidal is fine - no benefit to playing Master files apparently

 

[NSS89]

The quality of he master also makes a difference too, and in the same way that you can see the difference that HD and UHD TV sources make when watched in SD, a decent master can still be distinguishable on lesser replay equipment. Tidal benefits from the MQA mastering even if you do not get the full MQA stream or haver an MQA decoder - not sure about the free tier. I have a feeling that Qobuz also does, but I think that is probably it as far as audio sources are concerned.



For anyone thinking of doing this, be aware that you would need to sign up again with a different email address. With Tidal, once you have signed up with an email address, that's locked forever into that region. I signed up to a free trial that at the time not realising it was not UK. Even after approaching Tidal to change, they could not help and I am forever locked into a non UK region. I could sign up with a different email address, but the region that I am locked into is actually cheaper than UK pricing so I am mostly happy to stick with what I get. Even Tidal suggested that I stuck with what I unintendedly had due to the pricing differential.

I say mostly happy, but something to be aware of is that the region determines what audio you have access to. I don't have the full Pink Floyd catalogue for instance, but UK subscribers do.

Yeah definitely re the email address used as I only found out about the 'VPN hack' after signing up and had I known I probably would've used a different email address for the trial and then my main one to actually sign up.

Good point about different regions having different catalogues - not something I had considered but makes sense.

 

[NSS89]

I think for the app in the Tesla the £9.99 pm Tidal is fine - no benefit to playing Master files apparently

I definitely noticed a difference between 'master and 'normal'.

The first song I played was master and the difference really surprised me. It wasn't until a bit later I must have been listening to a 'normal' file and wondered why it didn't sound as good.

 

[NSS89]

No, perhaps I should drop QoBuz and move to Tidal, I'd forgotten that there is a built in App... Yes, "master" is the HiFi premium, should be noticably better as long there is a good 4G signal. Down here in south Wiltshire 4G reception is flakey, as is DAB.

I didn't consider the signal part but you make a good point. I suppose you could download the albums/songs beforehand when parked up at home on WiFi.

 

[GRiLLA]

I tried Tidal, had the music but didn't have the podcasts I wanted. Sticking with Spotify.

 

[browellm]

The first song I played was master and the difference really surprised me. It wasn't until a bit later I must have been listening to a 'normal' file and wondered why it didn't sound as good.

The problem is that it's way too easy to attribute this to the file format. It's more likely that a different master was published between the two services and even a small difference in loudness tricks the ear into thinking "better".

Controlled studies have shown the average user can't reliably tell the difference between 256kpbs mp3 and lossless. And that's under managed conditions, not to mention a car environment.

MQA uses all the marketing tricks in the book in their literature to flog their service: "master quality"; "Authenticated"; hardware with a blue light that comes on when the signal is "locked" and "authenticated". Shame it's bs.

 

[Peter 224]

............Controlled studies have shown the average user can't reliably tell the difference between 256kpbs mp3 and lossless. And that's under managed conditions, not to mention a car environment.........

It all depends on the hardware.

At home I have a Linn Klimax DSM, feeding a pair of QUAD II-80 power amplifiers, each connected to a QUAD 2912 ESL . high end HiFi and I can easily tell the difference between MP3 and FLAC 24-Bit up to 192 kHz. But on the amplifier and speakers in my hobby room, fed from QoBuz in my iPhone via a Bluetooth link I cannot tell the difference between a HiRes and normal file.

If you don't have a high end HiFi system don't bother with HiRes downloads and in a car, HiRes files are pointless.

 

[browellm]

I don't really want to get into "my hifi's better than your hifi" dick swinging. I will just describe my home hifi as "adequate".

However, aural memory is famously easy to fool and suffers from confirmation bias. Statistically, people fail miserably at discerning file format differences, under ideal conditions.

Everyone thinks they have golden ears because their hifi is expensive.

 

[Irata]

I found a bug when you change tidal accounts and don't delete downloaded music from the previous account.

My son has just created a new trial account and logged into their account in the car. From my account a couple of months ago, my downloads still show even though that account doesn't exist anymore. When I click on my "old" downloaded tracks/albums it crashes the system and reboots the screen.

I can't see a way to delete all old downloads, not without it crashing before it gets that far.

I'd assumed that logging out would delete them, but it doesn't. So they have been stored for a while now, long after I had deleted the account.

I can't login as the old account, I asked Tidal to delete it.

 

[otherslackjaw]

I found a bug when you change tidal accounts and don't delete downloaded music from the previous account.

My son has just created a new trial account and logged into their account in the car. From my account a couple of months ago, my downloads still show even though that account doesn't exist anymore. When I click on my "old" downloaded tracks/albums it crashes the system and reboots the screen.

I can't see a way to delete all old downloads, not without it crashing before it gets that far.

I'd assumed that logging out would delete them, but it doesn't. So they have been stored for a while now, long after I had deleted the account.

I can't login as the old account, I asked Tidal to delete it.

Uh oh... I'm sure factory resetting the car would fix that, but you really shouldn't need to. Maybe a service request and they'll be able to clear the data associated with the app? Could be worth a shot.

 

[Nick77]

I'm getting lots of loading errors recently on Tidal when connected to my hotspot. It'll either not play at all or play 5-10s then skip to the next track.

LTE works fine.

Would deleting all the downloaded files work as a fix? No idea why that'd be the problem but a thought.

 

[Horatio Alger]

I'm getting lots of loading errors recently on Tidal when connected to my hotspot. It'll either not play at all or play 5-10s then skip to the next track.

LTE works fine.

Would deleting all the downloaded files work as a fix? No idea why that'd be the problem but a thought.

I had his problem, and I think it's related to being out of storage space on the media system. Not sure how much is reserved for TIDAL - I have about 40 albums diwnloaded - but deleting individual albums stopped the problem.

 

[Nick77]

I had his problem, and I think it's related to being out of storage space on the media system. Not sure how much is reserved for TIDAL - I have about 40 albums diwnloaded - but deleting individual albums stopped the problem.

Cheers. Just got to remember how to delete them now.