Tidal and in car audio with 2021.40.x

[GRiLLA]

My phone (which is in my car) is. Been perfect the last few years

I don't even get enough bandwidth for Spotify (or DAB reception) reliably when I visit family in Scotland.

 

[DJP31]

Am I understanding this Tidal thing correctly, it’s basically another music source available in the car - providing I’m paying the £9.99 subscription? And if I want better quality I have to have downloaded it, presumably to an external storage device, whilst the car is connected to wifi?

 

[Jeeves]

Sorry, I'm a simple soul and don't understand all these bit rate audio stuff being chucked around. I'm a punter with Premium Connectivity in the Tesla and Apple Music on the phone. How do I get optimum sound quality from what I have?

There would have to be extraordinarily better sound quality to justify an additional subscription for me. I do value sound quality. My home audio system is quite high-end in terms of speakers and amplifiers, but I don't use any good DAC on my sound sources.

 

[browellm]

A while ago, when Tidal was first announced, so probably a year or so, Tesla upped the audio playback capabilities of the car to 96/24 (that's resolution not bit rate, CD is 44.1k/16bit for comparison) and possibly 192/24. I don't believe that this was just a coincidence.

As mentioned earlier, tbh, no point with Tidal Masters unless you use it at home and ideally have kit that can decode MQA (its backward compatible with non MQA kit). I would like to be wrong, but I really do not believe that the car will decode MQA and have the necessary high bandwidth electronics to take full advantage of it.

However, there is more to Tidal Masters than just resolution which may be of interest to some. Some of this is the provenance of the recording hence the term master which guarantees that the track was taken from a first generation master and contains hints to compensate for the ADC used during the original recording that MQA can then use to produce, along with compensating with the characteristics of the output DAC to give a playback that is as close to the original genuine master recording as is possible. No dodgy tracks of dubious authenticity or sample rate. This does mean that not all tracks are high resolution as many were originally recorded using relatively meagre capabilities, but the end to end process knows those capabilities and allows what comes out at one end is as true as one can get to what went in at the beginning - which is not always a good thing as subsequent mastering may have tweaked the sound giving a different audio rendition that is not true to the original recording. One of the thing that MQA capture is the correct timing of the track which is imho more important than any detail contained within high resolution tracks. You may A/B test an MQA encoded track and not hear any difference, but your toes will tell you there is a difference. This may sound all snake oil, but the two authors of MQA are really top of their game with many years experience and a long track record - some of their work (MLP) formed the basis of the audio codecs used by Dolby on DVD and blu-ray material. If anyone is interested, look up Bob Stuart.

Counter view: it's batch encoded nonsense designed to pad Bob Stuart's pension pot.

 

[spon88]

I'm testing Amazon HD and Tidal at the moment. I have a couple of DACS including one capable of working with MQA. I'm finding Amazon HD at least as good as Tidal Masters if not better and I'm listening on decent gear (PMC/AKG etc). I'm desperately trying to hear a difference with MQA but not really getting it if I'm honest. I've been hanging on to the Tidal subscription because of the promised Tesla upgrade but jury is definitely still out. Most of my stuff is FLAC on a separate drive in the car and Spotify is bearable for anything new. Still a work in progress

 

[MrBadger]

Counter view: it's batch encoded nonsense designed to pad Bob Stuart's pension pot.

I might have thought the same had I not heard for myself and heard the same thoughts from several other people who's audio opinion I trust more than mine none of whom had any vested interest in the products (quite the opposite in some cases as several had many thousand of CD's) yet were sufficiently convinced that they changed the focus of their audio systems to concentrate on MQA based material. And these are people equally sceptical about snake oil claims. At the end of the day, their thousand of FLAC ripped CD's (and my more meagre collection) have now been replaced and/or augmented by a £20/month tidal subscription.

but its all going rather OT for a Tesla software release

 

[Epyx]

Sorry, I'm a simple soul and don't understand all these bit rate audio stuff being chucked around. I'm a punter with Premium Connectivity in the Tesla and Apple Music on the phone. How do I get optimum sound quality from what I have?

There would have to be extraordinarily better sound quality to justify an additional subscription for me. I do value sound quality. My home audio system is quite high-end in terms of speakers and amplifiers, but I don't use any good DAC on my sound sources.

I’m not familiar with the term "punter". Anyway, good sound quality is hard to describe in words. Fortunately, for every subscription, there is e free trial period. Check it out

 

[Jeeves]

I’m not familiar with the term "punter". Anyway, good sound quality is hard to describe in words. Fortunately, for every subscription, there is e free trial period. Check it out

Ah, I see you're from Belgium. The meaning I meant there was 'a customer or client, especially a member of an audience'.

When I get the update, I will try it.

 

[Nick77]

Sorry, I'm a simple soul and don't understand all these bit rate audio stuff being chucked around. I'm a punter with Premium Connectivity in the Tesla and Apple Music on the phone. How do I get optimum sound quality from what I have?

There would have to be extraordinarily better sound quality to justify an additional subscription for me. I do value sound quality. My home audio system is quite high-end in terms of speakers and amplifiers, but I don't use any good DAC on my sound sources.

The Spotify account in the car is your best available at the minute. I'm not sure you can get Apple Music in a Tesla.

When Tidal appears I'll be switching purely because I prefer that program to Spotify. And I can import all my Spotify playlists to Tidal in a few minutes.

 

[Jeeves]

The Spotify account in the car is your best available at the minute. I'm not sure you can get Apple Music in a Tesla.

When Tidal appears I'll be switching purely because I prefer that program to Spotify. And I can import all my Spotify playlists to Tidal in a few minutes.

Thank you.

I hardly ever use the built in Spotify. I operate Apple Music with Siri on my iPhone and play it via Bluetooth into the car. I shall try Tidal when I get the car's firmware upgrade, but it would have to be a big jump in sound quality to justify the subscription for me.

 

[Peter 224]

The world of digital, streamed music is complex, to say the least. I tried Tidal and Qobuz and concluded that. for classical music, Qobuz is better as through our home HiFi system is is more realistic.

The Tesla audio is good, but when compared with the best streamer Linn can offer, and fed through a pair of QUAD valve amps driving their big electrostatic speakers it is just another bomb box. I'm not unhappy, the HiFi cost about half as much as the M3... and in the noisy environment of a car anything much better than the M3 Premium sound system would be wasted, IMO.

It is better than the branded but not original music system in the Mercedes.... Just because the speaker has Burmester (a highly respected German HiFi brand) on the speaker doesn't mean the hardware is the same quality.

 

[Jeeves]

The world of digital, streamed music is complex, to say the least. I tried Tidal and Qobuz and concluded that. for classical music, Qobuz is better as through our home HiFi system is is more realistic.

The Tesla audio is good, but when compared with the best streamer Linn can offer, and fed through a pair of QUAD valve amps driving their big electrostatic speakers it is just another bomb box. I'm not unhappy, the HiFi cost about half as much as the M3... and in the noisy environment of a car anything much better than the M3 Premium sound system would be wasted, IMO.

It is better than the branded but not original music system in the Mercedes.... Just because the speaker has Burmester (a highly respected German HiFi brand) on the speaker doesn't mean the hardware is the same quality.

So, in your opinion, do you think the Tidal streaming is likely to be noticeably better given the cabin noise?

 

[OnTheEdge]

Be interesting to see if Spotify HIFI gets support. I'd be guessing not as I don't think we get the High Quality Streaming (320kbps) supported by my premium account. Can but hope

 

[browellm]

So, in your opinion, do you think the Tidal streaming is likely to be noticeably better given the cabin noise?

Not imo. Ambient noise is limiting factor.

 

[Tony Hoyle]

Be interesting to see if Spotify HIFI gets support. I'd be guessing not as I don't think we get the High Quality Streaming (320kbps) supported by my premium account. Can but hope

Spotify is limited to 96kbps

I suspect Tidal streaming will be similarly limited and you'll have to download to get the higher bitrates (as the release notes imply).

Having heard what the sound system in the car is capable of (it wasn't at all a subtle difference, I was gutted when Tesla 'fixed' it back again to the old crappy sound) there *should* be a big difference. If not I'll just give Tesla audio up as a lost cause.

 

[OnTheEdge]

All fairly pointless then, for me Spotify has the best interface, suggested music and library. I'm happy enough with sound in my SR+, does the job and is a world away from an FM transmitter in my 15 year old 6 series. Couldn't hear much over the V8 anyway.

 

[browellm]

I'll caveat what I said by agreeing that 96k really is a low bit rate and I'm sure you could notice the difference there, especially in a stationary car. At 70mph on the motorway, cabin noise becomes limiting.

 

[Peter 224]

So, in your opinion, do you think the Tidal streaming is likely to be noticeably better given the cabin noise?

In a word, No!

 

[TestPilot]

I'll caveat what I said by agreeing that 96k really is a low bit rate and I'm sure you could notice the difference there, especially in a stationary car. At 70mph on the motorway, cabin noise becomes limiting.

I keep seeing 96kbps quoted, can anyone share how this is known, is it documented somewhere? I can normally tell low bitrate audio and have found Spotify to be acceptable without the amount of underwater swishing in cymbals and high-hats that I’d normally associate with such low bit rate!

 

[Tony Hoyle]

One thing we don't have to compare with is Slacker, which according to some people sounds much better than spotify.

What's interesting is people who clam massive differences between bluetooth and spotify, and it seems fairly subtle to me - spotify clips and distorts on loud tracks, cymbals definitely sound a bit iffy, but not so bad I'd only ever use bluetooth like some are doing - just goes to show we all hear differently and have a 'preferred' sound (although I'm currently tying to resurrect an old iphone to see if that's an apple/android difference given it'll be using AAC).

96kbps is hard to validate (possibly by wifi bandwidth used, which is a suggested method I've seen mentioned) but it's spotify 'normal' quality and was (possibly still is) default for mobile, and given it's impossible to change the spotify config on the car, it might just be that by default
.