TIDAL Music: HiFi Sound

I have had tidal for about 10 months now and I’ve gotten the most out of what apple offered when it comes to streaming HiFi music. One thing that was a small disappointment with the iOS app before was the inability to play MQA (Masters) content. The only way to utilize MQA content was via my MacBook Air desktop app. Today I was fooling around with the app settings and noticed that Tidal updated the app in version 2.7 to allow iPhone users the ability to listen to MQA content. I assumed this wasn’t ever going to happen due to apple’s hardware. Well now this app, which already deserves 5 stars(apples problem not tidal) has made it a must have service for Audiofile music lovers like myself. Listening to Tidal MQA music on the iPhone X with my sennheiser HD600’s through apples USB camera adapter connecting with my audio quest dragonfly red finally gives iPhone users the desired music quality they deserve. There’s not an IOS app that I’m aware of that allows better than CD quality streaming than Tidal. It’s now worth every penny spent! The only problem is that not all MQA content downloads as MQA. Some so, some don’t Oh yea, if your a military veteran you can sign up for a discounted monthly offer for the top notch account that saves you $4 a month. Thanks Tidal!

I've been a dedicated Apple Music user for years but I'm looking for a change so I created a trial account and so far I've been loving it! Most music streaming services are similar so there really isn't anything revolutionary about another streaming service, it's all about preference. Tidal is a great service that provides a great app, but I have three problems with the app and web browser that are making the service difficult to fully enjoy. I don't like that it's not possible to save specific tracks of an album as ONE album, instead they save as "tracks" as a seperate category. I'm a neat freak so I like oragnization and that method of seperateing between tracks and albums is inconvenient. There should be a page for albums (you can save any tracks you want from the album) and there should be a tracks page where ALL the songs in your library are shown and there should be the option to play ALL the tracks on shuffle, or in order, etc. I also don't like that there isn't an option to organize albums by artist AND release date. The first and problem is far more important to me than the second one. I hope Tidal would make this change, if they do, they'll have a subscriber for life.

I started selling high end audio equipment back in the 90s, to me the popularity signaled the end of the high end audio Industry and the backlash of consumers against record companies for producing and supporting music distribution mediums that wore out, or scratched easily. I should have known better that people would help move file based music into the hi-fi so many of us cling too. Supported by this trend, I signed up for Tidal with a hi-fi account. The sound quality does come through, and my Oppo application usually works with Tidal, that about where my satisfaction with Tidal ends. First UX, what year is it? Offline sorting, display of albums, vs artist and general navigation smack of early 2000s expect the availability of modern program languages reveal either the incompetence of Tidal’s product team or they have outsourced their UX to a bank. Customer support is impossible to contact. The last time I tried, their wasn’t any authentication between the app my account and their ticketing system, so each time I wrote a ticket and submitted it, I got a message saying I wasn’t authorized. I unsuccessfully emailed and took to Twitter, none of the channels replied. What a dismal and useless waste of money. I consider this a major management failure. Good luck, when you are selling for pennies on the dollar refer to this review. Make your customers happy and they won’t have to lower their gaze when people ask why they are using Tidal in public.

Ok, Tidal gets a lot right... sounds great, especially the MQA stuff ... closest to analog I’ve heard thus far (HiFi tier only)... I’d give their service 4 stars, it’s the app I give 3...the app misses because there’s no easy way to search when you are in offline mode, which is a must do when trying to make sure you don’t waste data downloading hi-res files! Need shuffle within artist, better playlist controls... maybe even a toggle for making sure it only downloads over WiFi? I don’t know, I like Tidal a lot, especially after my iTunes library was messed up due to its inherently flawed “matching” system... obviously there is no matching abilities with Tidal at all, the draw for me is having a separate rental app and having my iTunes library synced from my Mac Pro without “matching” deciding to match random tracks with different masters from the album a track is originally from or screwing up my cover art... anyway, the MQA and full resolution downloads make Tidal is very very realistic and tempting alternative for the long haul for music rental. Wish the desktop version allowed downloads for offline listening too... Random missing albums are an issue too... why certain albums aren’t available is odd especially if an artist is on Tidal and the album isn’t that old...

I not an expert in audio so I honestly didn’t have any expectations that I would notice any difference between NORMAL quality and the MASTER, but I have to say I was blown away. The master quality is superb, songs I’ve listened to hundreds of times completely transform, and all the details, layered sound, and 3 dimensional effect take the music to elevated level of intimacy. I appreciate Tidal for providing a studio quality experience. However, I really wish that lyrics where where available in the app I think any true music platform should have a lyrics feature. Also, since such a large portion of tidal subscribers use Apple devices it would be nice if there were Siri integration and Apple Watch compatibility for this app. I want nothing more to be able to ask Siri to play my morning drive playlist in the tidal app. And I wish I could leave my phone in the house to go for a morning jog and still be able to stream my favorite songs . The Apple Watch has come so far and I use to make calls, check the news, and stream my favorite podcasts why can’t I browse thru my tidal music selection from my watch ?