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Ok, I tried Tidal, and…(and “premium” audio too)

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Lack of shuffle is the only complaint I agree with. Tidal is far ahead of the other audio apps available (caveat: no Spotify experience here as I am a longtime Tidal subscriber and a big hifi audio guy in my home). The audio quality I get is just head and shoulders above any other source I've had in my Tesla. Interface is great! My playlists, albums, artists and search are all within easy reach.

Different strokes for different folks I suppose. But for the real audio purists here, y'all know there is nothing else to discuss. The best audio experience available in our cars: HDD or Tidal. A native Qobuz app would be lovely.
 
I suspect the partnership with Tidal is a bit different than Spotify.

For the Spotify integration they just used Spotify’s public API which requires almost no help from Spotify’s team—anyone can do it. Tidal however, has no public API so their team was likely more involved.

Fun fact; Spotify’s shuffle feature is an API request, so when you click that button your car is sending a request to Spotify to shuffle the playlist instead of the car‘s computer doing it. I suspect this is because Spotify’s shuffle is not exactly random, it is actually curated to the songs you like most.

This might also explain the lack of shuffle for Tidal. Tidal may not have this endpoint for shuffling like Spotify (and maybe Slacker) does, so it would require Tesla to make their own.
 
I suspect the partnership with Tidal is a bit different than Spotify.

For the Spotify integration they just used Spotify’s public API which requires almost no help from Spotify’s team—anyone can do it. Tidal however, has no public API so their team was likely more involved.

Fun fact; Spotify’s shuffle feature is an API request, so when you click that button your car is sending a request to Spotify to shuffle the playlist instead of the car‘s computer doing it. I suspect this is because Spotify’s shuffle is not exactly random, it is actually curated to the songs you like most.

This might also explain the lack of shuffle for Tidal. Tidal may not have this endpoint for shuffling like Spotify (and maybe Slacker) does, so it would require Tesla to make their own.
Tidal def growing on me the more I use it. I’ve downloaded my ten fave albums and they play in hifi and I’m starting to dig the generated playlists. I’ll keep for three months then prob go back to the free basic.

Maybe if they add more features I’ll keep at 10/month but I doubt it.
 
How can I simply make Tidal go away? It nags me to log in EVERY TIME I START THE CAR. I don't use any streaming service; all my music is FLAC on a USB drive.
Even worse, tidal jumping to the front makes the audio system forget where I was in playing from my USB drive. Does anyone know how to give USB absolute priority so the car will always remember where it was? What's really frustrating is that After I drive for a few minutes and park, THEN it suddenly remembers! My 12 year old VW works perfectly; Tesla should be at least as good.
 
Tesla should be at least as good.
That's why I've been so disappointed with the Tesla audio. It isn't nearly as good as promised and not as good as my Honda Odyssey was. Tidal is a big improvement over everything else I tried in the car, except for the hi-res I could play while parked through the browser on Qobuz. And I've upgraded the dash speakers and they sound much better than the original and fill in the gaps in the frequency response in my SR+.
 
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I've been using Tidal at home as my preferred streaming service for several years now... and I pretty much agree. The Tesla app needs a lot of work both in UI ease of use, and technical issues. Spotify's interface is far better. Tidal works fine for me on my PC (or Mac) via web browser or the MacOS app, but in the Tesla version they carried some stuff over that they should NOT have, and didn't carry over some stuff they SHOULD have. Big example - "My Collection" Artists page is shown in chronological order that I added them and doesn't give options to display A-Z as the web/app do.

To some of your points:

1) Agree 100%. It's cluttered and hard to use in an environment where you really can't afford that. Too much lazy carry over of their attempted curated/recommended lists etc. and too much space wasted with that.
2) I did not see a way to shuffle an artist OR play "radio", both of which I can do in web/app.
4) The downloading thing IMO is a non-starter. Way too much effort and planning, way too little info. (How much of this can you even do, where is it stored?)
5) I suspect it's trying to use a higher bit rate and getting hung up on bandwidth somewhere in the chain. This is frequently causing dropouts or just not playing for me.
I wish the guys at Tesla can make a button that automatically attaches the car wifi to your phones tether to keep the hifi while driving, without all of the messing around pre-planning at the beginning of each drive. And "radio" and shuffle are such basic requests. C'mon guys.
 
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I wish the guys at Tesla can make a button that automatically attaches the car wifi to your phones tether to keep the hifi while driving, without all of the messing around pre-planning at the beginning of each drive. And "radio" and shuffle are such basic requests. C'mon guys.
It isn't Tesla that is the issue, at least not with iPhones. An iPhone will only automatically connect another device that is on your iCloud account. You otherwise need to open the Hotspot screen on the phone to allow other devices to connect. This is a security feature to prevent people from just jumping on even if there is a Password.

The other inconvenience though is that at home I have it connect automatically to my house wifi, and then have to select the iPhone. I could change that I think so it selects the iPhone first but would fall back to home wifi?
 
Tidal is supposedly a higher bitrate than Spotify in the car but.... If you care about sound quality then playing lossless content from USB is really your only, best, option-- by an easily passable abx test margin :)
 
It's quite informative to take an abx test on different bit rates.

For me I could easily tell the difference with an mp3 between 96 and 128. 128 vs 192 is a bit more difficult. 192 vs 384 is really something I have to focus to pass the test. I've never tried an abx test with 384 and lossless but I suspect I would not be able to pass that test.
 
IME playing TIDAL tracks whilst connected to my phone hotspot sounds as good as the FLACs on my USB SSD. There might be some difference, but I can't hear it. There is definitely a perceptible SQ difference between that and Spotify (WiFi or LTE), or TIDAL over LTE, although that feels like a smaller difference. Spotify just sounds terrible SQ wise.

As far as I can tell the TIDAL app does not "know" that it is not connected to a reliable WiFi network, as in the underlying internet connection is variable. It sees that it's on wireless, and streams tracks in "HiFi" quality. Because the wireless connection is strong, it will play all tracks in HiFi quality, only pausing or getting choppy if the actual internet connection from the phone is poor.
 
I was
Well that's it for me and Tidal. I had it for 7 months hoping they would eventually just get the basic features like looping a playlist and voice control that actually does something.

Maybe I'll revisit them in a year. For now it's back to spotify.
So you're prioritizing screen control over sound quality? That's backwards IMO. I don't find the interface to be all that bad and I almost never rely on voice control as I end up having to look at the screen to see that it got it right anyway.

I was driving around yesterday, making stops, so I'd forget to turn the hotspot back on. I had Led Zep 4 playing and Four Sticks was playing but it sounded muddy so I turned on the hotspot at the traffic light. Going to California sounded so much better then. When I was parked I played it on Qobuz through the browser at 24/96 and it sounded better still, much more organic for lack of a better word. The thing is though on Qobuz I have to be stopped and in park so it is quieter in the car so maybe that is part of it.