Tidal and in car audio with 2021.40.x

[Epyx]

the SSD is properly formatted FAT32

Ok.
Last thing to try is using a simple, singe USB drive in FAT32 for your music. Eject SSD.
If it’s recognized by your Tesla, something is wrong with your SSD or its partioning.
If it’s still not recognized by your Tesla, I think it’s time for a SC appointment.

 

[Dilly]

Ok.
Last thing to try is using a simple, singe USB drive in FAT32 for your music. Eject SSD.
If it’s recognized by your Tesla, something is wrong with your SSD or its partioning.
If it’s still not recognized by your Tesla, I think it’s time for a SC appointment.

Thanks, I’ll give that a go. Thankfully Norwich SC opens in the new year. I have a few minor things they can sort at the same time

 

[skshimer]

If you select an album or a playlist within Tidal on the console there is a little down arrow icon to download it. You need to be on wifi to do this. As it downloads, a HIFI icon will appear next to the songs that have download. You will get this same icon if you play a song while connected to wifi, and if you play downloaded songs it will appear on the play bar too. If you play a song while NOT on wifi, it will play but not in the "hifi" resolution. We all believe that it is 16/44.1 resolution (CD quality) when it says HIFI, but I actually never saw that confirmed.

While this is all for the better, I'd still like to see a high resolution format be implemented as well. But if the download speed I see now is any indication it will be very slow to get higher res.

You can play HiFi from Tidal in the Tesla if your car is tethered to WiFi (such as a phone hotspot.) I do not have the Premium Connectivity from Tesla and found that I have to keep the Tesla tethered to my phone's hotspot even to play Tidal music files that are downloaded to the Tesla. I played 20 minutes of HiFi music tethered to my phone's hotspot and it consumed 167 Mb of data, about right for 20 minutes of streaming lossless format. I also downloaded the same playlist to the Tesla and played it for 20 minutes while connected to the phone hotspot and it only consumed 1Mb of data. I assume without premium connectivity the Tidal app in the Tesla is not authenticated unless the Tesla is connected to WiFi.
The Tidal app in the Tesla sounds as good as flac files of a USB stick.

 

[bo3bdar]

You can play HiFi from Tidal in the Tesla if your car is tethered to WiFi (such as a phone hotspot.) I do not have the Premium Connectivity from Tesla and found that I have to keep the Tesla tethered to my phone's hotspot even to play Tidal music files that are downloaded to the Tesla. I played 20 minutes of HiFi music tethered to my phone's hotspot and it consumed 167 Mb of data, about right for 20 minutes of streaming lossless format. I also downloaded the same playlist to the Tesla and played it for 20 minutes while connected to the phone hotspot and it only consumed 1Mb of data. I assume without premium connectivity the Tidal app in the Tesla is not authenticated unless the Tesla is connected to WiFi.
The Tidal app in the Tesla sounds as good as flac files of a USB stick.

Alternate data point here. I signed up for the $1 version, so that's not the 'HiFi' version, I guess? I signed in using the QR code via my phone which was on WiFi, but the car itself was only on Premium Connectivity, no WiFi.

Works well. Doesn't require WiFi to play music, although there is a loading lag as it buffers the data. If you are listening through a play list, it will pre-buffer the next song, but if you jump around it can take about a minute to get a new song. No way to tell, but I presume this is CD quality because of the much larger files being downloaded. Once the song has been played it seem to be cached, so any jumping back to prior songs is instant.

So just noting for anyone confused like me- you can use it via Tesla PremiumConnectivity without any problems.

 

[Mr Miserable]

Also, I have to recall that I found my way into a UK room, searching for Tidal on the forum, me being but a Yank! Though I have always loved British humor. Ability to engage in the same, probably lacking.

Humour.

 

[skshimer]

Alternate data point here. I signed up for the $1 version, so that's not the 'HiFi' version, I guess? I signed in using the QR code via my phone which was on WiFi, but the car itself was only on Premium Connectivity, no WiFi.

Works well. Doesn't require WiFi to play music, although there is a loading lag as it buffers the data. If you are listening through a play list, it will pre-buffer the next song, but if you jump around it can take about a minute to get a new song. No way to tell, but I presume this is CD quality because of the much larger files being downloaded. Once the song has been played it seem to be cached, so any jumping back to prior songs is instant.

So just noting for anyone confused like me- you can use it via Tesla PremiumConnectivity without any problems.

Thanks. I wonder what bitrate Premium Connectivity is streaming at. Tidal HiFi is their lossless streaming tier. Streaming lossless music from Tidal is about 450 Mb per hour. The Tesla Spotify app is reportedly streaming at only 96 kbps or 42 Mb per hour. I don’t know, but can’t imagine that Tesla Premium Connectivity was so stingy with Spotify but is now streaming lossless music with the Tidal app, which is a 10 fold increase in data usage. if Tesla is streaming lossless I will definitely sign up again for Premium Connectivity.

 

[Zacster]

Thanks. I wonder what bitrate Premium Connectivity is streaming at. Tidal HiFi is their lossless streaming tier. Streaming lossless music from Tidal is about 450 Mb per hour. The Tesla Spotify app is reportedly streaming at only 96 kbps or 42 Mb per hour. I don’t know, but can’t imagine that Tesla Premium Connectivity was so stingy with Spotify but is now streaming lossless music with the Tidal app, which is a 10 fold increase in data usage. if Tesla is streaming lossless I will definitely sign up again for Premium Connectivity.

The way to tell is to look for the "hifi" symbol. If it is there you are getting lossless, if not then you aren't. When streaming over premium connectivity you will not get hifi unless you had previously downloaded the same song, in which case it will use the downloaded copy in hifi. I don't know what the bitrate is when streaming over premium connectivity but it probably isn't great.

As for the lag, it has no lag when you download in advance, only when streaming. I haven't tried streaming over my phone's hotspot yet so I don't know how much of a lag you'd get there, but over the car connectivity I'd expect a lag as it's pretty slow. But consider this, I pay $40/mo for my data plan for my phone but only $10/mo for Tesla. Guess which will be faster just based on that.

Now that I'm saying all this I need to check the speed of my phone vs. the car over LTE with Speedtest.net.

 

[Epyx]

..., I pay $40/mo for my data plan for my phone....

When was the last time you made a price check / comparison?

 

[browellm]

I should really put some background and context around my ire toward the Tidal/MQA partnership. IMV they are really stretching the limits of marketing to describe the service as it currently stands.

Up front, I will say I don't like MQA for all sorts of reasons. But the least of these reasons is SQ. The biggest issues I have are around marketing vs reality, lossy codecs claiming to be otherwise, latent DRM concerns and that it's a solution to a problem that never existed.

However, this is about Tidal and their policies primarily, so onward.

Back when Tidal was a 2-tier service, they announced their tie-up with MQA. However as anyone using Tidal with Roon could see (via the "Versions" tab and in the signal path display), the MQA versions of albums were coexisting peacefully alongside the original, lossless FLAC versions of the albums. So there was always a choice for the end user. Those that preferred the sound of MQA, invested in the licensed hardware, or had some weird Bob Stuart worship fetish (believe me, they exist) could happily choose that version. Those that wanted to retain the original FLAC versions in their library could also do so. Happy days.

Then something quite insidious started happening. Without making any announcement, Tidal started to pull the FLAC versions of albums completely from their platform, leaving only the MQA version available on the HiFi tier. Likewise, many new releases on their platform are now only presented in lossy MQA format, no FLAC lossless version available. "Well so what?", you might ask.

Even if you can't hear the difference (and to be fair in a car this is highly likely), I have serious problems with the marketing of Tidal's service.

To be clear, an MQA recording that doesn't go through any of their software or hardware renderers ("unfolding"), e.g. in the car, is a lossy recording equivalent to about 13 bits (it's still lossy with a full MQA setup but we'll skim over that here). This is not a "HiFi" tier service by any stretch. It's a lossy codec cleverly marketed under the banner of "Masters", "provenance" and "time alignment" (all bs, by the way).

If it was marketed as a high quality lossy codec, ideal for low bandwidth environments (like a car!), that would be OK. But then high bit rate .aac and .ogg are already very good, so there's really no point.

 

[Sunvalleylaw]

Humour.

I like the colour of the word spelled that way.

 

[Sunvalleylaw]

I should really put some background and context around my ire toward the Tidal/MQA partnership. IMV they are really stretching the limits of marketing to describe the service as it currently stands.

Up front, I will say I don't like MQA for all sorts of reasons. But the least of these reasons is SQ. The biggest issues I have are around marketing vs reality, lossy codecs claiming to be otherwise, latent DRM concerns and that it's a solution to a problem that never existed.

However, this is about Tidal and their policies primarily, so onward.

Back when Tidal was a 2-tier service, they announced their tie-up with MQA. However as anyone using Tidal with Roon could see (via the "Versions" tab and in the signal path display), the MQA versions of albums were coexisting peacefully alongside the original, lossless FLAC versions of the albums. So there was always a choice for the end user. Those that preferred the sound of MQA, invested in the licensed hardware, or had some weird Bob Stuart worship fetish (believe me, they exist) could happily choose that version. Those that wanted to retain the original FLAC versions in their library could also do so. Happy days.

Then something quite insidious started happening. Without making any announcement, Tidal started to pull the FLAC versions of albums completely from their platform, leaving only the MQA version available on the HiFi tier. Likewise, many new releases on their platform are now only presented in lossy MQA format, no FLAC lossless version available. "Well so what?", you might ask.

Even if you can't hear the difference (and to be fair in a car this is highly likely), I have serious problems with the marketing of Tidal's service.

To be clear, an MQA recording that doesn't go through any of their software or hardware renderers ("unfolding"), e.g. in the car, is a lossy recording equivalent to about 13 bits (it's still lossy with a full MQA setup but we'll skim over that here). This is not a "HiFi" tier service by any stretch. It's a lossy codec cleverly marketed under the banner of "Masters", "provenance" and "time alignment" (all bs, by the way).

If it was marketed as a high quality lossy codec, ideal for low bandwidth environments (like a car!), that would be OK. But then high bit rate .aac and .ogg are already very good, so there's really no point.

I understand those concerns, at least on paper, and would prefer to have the FLAC versions available in the car, if the rendering is not happening in it, as seems to be the case. I guess I will see what the situation is when I get my car, currently scheduled for over a half year out.

 

[RichardL]

I am getting severe stuttering whenever it is streaming (as opposed to playing a previously downloaded version). This is with a very strong LTE signal.

Anybody else hearing this?

 

[Zacster]

When was the last time you made a price check / comparison?

Yesterday. I have a new plan for the same money with more features, including Disney+ so I can watch The Beatles, and unlimited high-speed hot spot. Otherwise it is pretty much the same. The other phones on the plan are less since they didn't need the hot spot and you only need one Disney subscription. The hot spot for my line was specifically for Tidal in the car.

 

[bo3bdar]

The way to tell is to look for the "hifi" symbol. If it is there you are getting lossless, if not then you aren't. When streaming over premium connectivity you will not get hifi unless you had previously downloaded the same song, in which case it will use the downloaded copy in hifi. I don't know what the bitrate is when streaming over premium connectivity but it probably isn't great.

As for the lag, it has no lag when you download in advance, only when streaming. I haven't tried streaming over my phone's hotspot yet so I don't know how much of a lag you'd get there, but over the car connectivity I'd expect a lag as it's pretty slow. But consider this, I pay $40/mo for my data plan for my phone but only $10/mo for Tesla. Guess which will be faster just based on that.

Now that I'm saying all this I need to check the speed of my phone vs. the car over LTE with Speedtest.net.

Thanks for that info. I'm ignoring the MQA/Atmos/360 stuff for their HifiPlus, because I think there is zero chance that is implemented for Teslas. I think you are right that Tidal using Tesla Premium Connectivity is not lossless. I did a little more searching and on Tidal page: https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/...What-Audio-Quality-Do-TIDAL-HiFi-Plans-Offer-

A TIDAL HiFi membership supports the following sound options:

• HiFi - Lossless quality audio (1411kbps or 16bit / 44.1kHz).
• High - Best compromise between data usage and sound quality (320kbps AAC).
• Normal - Reduced data usage for slower connections.

Based on the data we have, I'd expect this to probably be the 320kpbs AAC. I've gotten buffering and also stuttering because of bandwidth, which I've never see on the Spotify Premium using 96kbs Ogg format. If it's was on the 'normal' setting, I would not expect it to stutter.

When saved to the device, they say:

How much space will TIDAL HiFi and HiFi Plus audio files take up when downloaded to my device?

The following things determine the size of a downloaded song: the file’s bit depth, sampling frequency, and compression codec used. Note that higher-quality lossless files are larger. Below are examples of file sizes for a 3½ minute song:

Normal - 2.5MB
High - 8.4MB
HiFi (lossless, 44.1 kHz sample rate) - 20 MB
MQA (lossless, max 352 kHz sample rate) - 26.25 MB

For a comparison to Spotify stream, 96kbps / 8 = 12kBs * 60 sec = 720 kB * 3.5 min/song = 2520 kB/song. Or 2.5MB per song. That's roughly comparable to the 'Normal' rating there, and if that were true, then I would not be able to explain why Spotify never buffers or stutters, but Tidal always does. So another possible reason to believe Tidal stream on High.

That's not particularly awesome, I don't think I love any of this enough to pay $20/month for both subscriptions. I also felt like the Tidal I listened to was not as good as the Spotify streams, but of course this is subjective and prone to audio hallucination. 320kbs AAC should be at least as good as 96kbsp Ogg. Always possible it's just a buggy first implementation, and it's actually worse quality because Tidal streams on Normal. No way to know for sure because Tesla never explains anything, ever.

I want to do more comparisons with known good lossless from my USB.

 

[EricB45]

'Scuse my ignorance, but will you really notice the difference with all the ambient noise in the car whilst driving?

How do I stop getting badgered to sign in to Tidal? I don't want it.

 

[KennethS]

Have we started to discuss interconnects yet?

I just signed up to the Tidal $2 trial. For in car audio it sounds quite nice in our M3P. I will have to give it a proper listen later on my main home system….

It does not appear I have any devices in my home that can decode MQA. Whilst I'm curious to experience it for myself, not enough that I wish to purchase a D/A converter to try it out on my main home system. So it seems I wasted $1 and could have signed on for the $1 trial instead of the $2 HiFi Plus subscription...

 

[bo3bdar]

How do I stop getting badgered to sign in to Tidal? I don't want it.

You can go to the Settings section, and under Sources, you can disable it in the UI.

BTW: I recommend disabling the Streaming service, which is Slacker/LiveXLive and is totally, insanely terrible sound quality. I originally thought my SR stereo was terrible- because I was listening through this crap service. If you disable it here in the Sources, it will also be skipped on searches.

The stereo, even in the SR cars, is actually very good. I've been profiling the stereo using REW and a high quality microphone. And I think that the recent Tesla update to the stereo to add Tidal and another Immersive setting also improved the EQ mix so that even it's better than it was.

 

[bo3bdar]

I did some more in-car comparisons with USB lossless songs, and I have to backtrack a bit- I think the Tidal over Premium Connectivity must be their "Normal" setting. It doesn't sound like I would expect 320kbs AAC would sound. Loss of sound stage, loss of definition like hearing singers breath or smack their lips. It's not terrible like the Slacker radio, but it's not as good as Spotify on premium. I did a comparison of a given song on USB, Spotify, Tidal to compare, switching back and forth with an A:B:A approach. I also compared with Slacker as my control sample for terrible.

This also explains why I felt my initial listening was not as good as I expected, and also the ear fatigue after listening. As one primary metric that is not really subject to audio hallucination- I'm especially looking for a source that does not give me ear fatigue.

I can't really explain the buffering and stuttering problem then, it's got to be less than the 96kbs Ogg of Spotify. I tried to see what the connection might be running using speedtest.net, but of course the browser just crashes when you run that. Just like you'd want.


I then enabled WiFi connection, and went to Tidal and downloaded a couple of songs to enable the HiFi stamp for a few songs. This is dramatically superior and is back to what you expect in terms of audio quality. Comparing A:B:A with my lossless USB files, I can't hear any difference.

Now of course, those files are stuck on HiFi, so I can no longer compare them to the original songs from Tidal. Doing a two wheel reboot did not clear the downloaded songs. So if you are trying to do a comparison, do the no-wifi test first.

So the only way to get high quality audio from Tidal is to download the songs in advance from WiFi. You can click the 'download' button without, but it just queues the song for when you connect to WiFi.

 

[Sunvalleylaw]

I did some more in-car comparisons with USB lossless songs, and I have to backtrack a bit- I think the Tidal over Premium Connectivity must be their "Normal" setting. It doesn't sound like I would expect 320kbs AAC would sound. Loss of sound stage, loss of definition like hearing singers breath or smack their lips. It's not terrible like the Slacker radio, but it's not as good as Spotify on premium. I did a comparison of a given song on USB, Spotify, Tidal to compare, switching back and forth with an A:B:A approach. I also compared with Slacker as my control sample for terrible.

This also explains why I felt my initial listening was not as good as I expected, and also the ear fatigue after listening. As one primary metric that is not really subject to audio hallucination- I'm especially looking for a source that does not give me ear fatigue.

I can't really explain the buffering and stuttering problem then, it's got to be less than the 96kbs Ogg of Spotify. I tried to see what the connection might be running using speedtest.net, but of course the browser just crashes when you run that. Just like you'd want.


I then enabled WiFi connection, and went to Tidal and downloaded a couple of songs to enable the HiFi stamp for a few songs. This is dramatically superior and is back to what you expect in terms of audio quality. Comparing A:B:A with my lossless USB files, I can't hear any difference.

Now of course, those files are stuck on HiFi, so I can no longer compare them to the original songs from Tidal. Doing a two wheel reboot did not clear the downloaded songs. So if you are trying to do a comparison, do the no-wifi test first.

So the only way to get high quality audio from Tidal is to download the songs in advance from WiFi. You can click the 'download' button without, but it just queues the song for when you connect to WiFi.

Interesting observations. Thanks.

 

[browellm]

I just don't think these streaming service comparisons are particularly illuminating. How do you know, with certainty, that Spotify and Tidal are using the same master for your comparison? Too much anecdote, not enough data.