Today I’m reviewing the Tidal music streaming service. I have tested the application on my PC via the Windows Tidal application and on the Android tablet. I listened via the iFi Zen DAC most of the time.
Tidal offers two price brands HiFi, which offers HiFi CD-quality streaming or the HiFi Plus brand, which provides higher quality streaming up to 9216kbs (kilobits per second).
Tidal music quality
Music quality is good, with every track I have come across available at CD quality and many tracks available in master quality if you have a HiFi plus subscription. The master quality stream is excellent, but it does come at a price that may turn some people off.
Tidal music discovery
As I had never tried Tidal before, I had to set up a new account, and I had to select the music I liked by ticking the artists I liked. It is worth spending some time doing this as the Tidal algorithms use this data to recommend tracks and albums that you will likely enjoy.
Tidal provides many genre playlists, which seemed to be okay. Within a couple of days of using Tidal, I received a suggested daily playlist, a combination of tracks I have already added to my favourites by clicking the heart and tracks that I haven’t. It is really good.
Tidal also regularly updates a new arrival playlist of newly released tunes that the algorithm thinks you might like.
Tidal also provides eight suggested mixes that change over time.
Tidal music application User Interface
The User interface on both the Android and Windows apps is well designed, though I have noticed one difference with the Android app allowing you to start listening to your favourites with a shuffle play. While on the Windows app, you have to select which track from your favourites you want to listen to first.
I have also encountered a couple of issues with the Tidal app on both Android and Windows.
The Android app tends to pause playback when the screen goes into energy mode. I know this as adjusting the time until the time on my tablet powered down the screen resolved the issue.
On the PC, I have some issues with it locking on the system and not playing the master quality track even if my DAC was connected via USB. I usually had to restart my computer to resolve the problem.
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Music quality
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Music discovery
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User Interface
Summary
I would rate the music quality available for the HiFi band as being 4. The difference in the Tidal sound quality is worth a premium, but I think paying an extra £10 here in the UK is quite steep. Overall Tidal is an extremely good music streaming service.