Tidal's recently stopped asking to access my DAC on Android (Pixel 3 - Android 12). Anyone else notice this? I honestly can't (and never could) hear any differences but I'm curious about what's occuring. What I have noticed is that when using a headphone cable with an inline remote, that now works - when it wouldn't when access was previously granted. This leads me to assume that things are no longer bit perfect on Android. I have also noticed that the Windows app forgets my settings for exclusive mode, passthrough, etc. Thoughts?
-
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
Tidal reportedly enabling bit-perfect playback to USB DAC on Android
- Thread starter Beershaun
- Start date
I have noticed this as well. I no longer get the message asking for exclusive control. MQA songs are no longer showing the purple light on my ifi dac. I'm using a Galaxy Z Fold 4 on Android 12 .
Tidal (after the version 2.90.0 for Android) STOPPED using an external DAC. Tidal requests permission to use USB DAC - BUT (!) transfers audio to the Android audio path. In the lg g7 thinq any audio is converted to 48, and in the gtking pro - to 96 kHz - theirs standard frequences. Try to use the version 2.90.0 - it uses the USB DAC.You highlight Tidal re Android limitations, but not any other streaming services. Strikes me that Tidal is the only service to have actually done something to help solve the issue; an issue of Android's, not Tidal's, making? Dare I say, a good news story! Cheer up.
Both the TIDAL issues (windows' exclusive mode and Android not-using the externak usb dac) stays not fixed.
Tidal (after the version 2.90.0 for Android) STOPPED using an external DAC. Tidal requests permission to use USB DAC - BUT (!) transfers audio to the Android audio path. In the lg g7 thinq any audio is converted to 48, and in the gtking pro - to 96 kHz - theirs standard frequences. Try to use the version 2.90.0 - it uses the USB DAC.
This happened to me and I discovered it was UAPP that was preventing Tidal from getting exclusive access to USB. I uninstalled UAPP and everything worked. After a month or so, I can reinstall UAPP and now Tidal can still get exclusive access. If, on your phone you have another app that request exclusive access - just check if it is not the culprit.
Windows exclusive mode is still working fine for me, it's switching sample rate and MQA comes through. I have the issue with Android not taking exclusive control any more though.
In Windows, the Tidal application disables the exclusive access mode to the built-in audio card of the PC if you turn off the app while it is playing the LOW track: after turning on the app, it works WITHOUT exclusive access to the built-in audio card.
In Android, all Tidal applications AFTER version 2.90.0 do NOT use an external USB DAC, but send audio data to Android and it converts the audio to the standard Android frequency for all types of audio and then sends it to the external DAC. At one point, Android even played audio through the device's speaker instead of an external DAC.
Exclusive only works in Hifi and Max (formerly Master). This has always been the case. There's so little content in "low" (it's maybe 1 in 1,000 albums) that I don't feel this is really an issue. It works in exclusive for me other than for "low" which I don't care about.
Are you saying that it can toggle off the exclusive if you happen to exit the app while playing low, so it's not exclusive when you go back? I could believe that, but you can just toggle it back on again and it will be exclusive again (for high and max, which is 99.9% of their content).
You're right. But my wife and I have playlists (and, by the way, mixes too) in which there are a LOT of tracks in LOW. “Even” I forget to RESTORE the application settings, which Tidal programmers FOR SOME REASON (for something) DESTROY.
Moreover, what is the difficulty of RESTORING my settings in the procedure of turning off the app, if the programmer came up with an idea (!) that he should ruin my settings?
Why does he need to cancel MY settings? The built-in audio card will perfectly perform LOW with exclusive access!
Last edited:
There are a lot of issues with the programming in Tidal, it's sloppy. Their network coding is terrible, it grabs individual sections of fixed length 1MB which can be as short as one second (for 192kHz FLAC) and then waits to get the next one... makes it very susceptible to getting stuck. I basically can't listen to 192kHz stuff on it as I'm in Asia and the latency is just too much, it's not even the download speed (which is plenty for 4K video), it's that it needs to make a new request every second and refuses to just queue them up in a cache, it waits until just before to get them.
I can add that even working with the queue of tracks is also not debugged. Not to mention the style and level of work of their technical support - they simply DO NOT read more than the first line of text and simply send a plug to silence the mouth: “send us this, that, and that about your system,” although from my request clearly nothing from their standard checklist is required.
In the Android app, the USE OF AN EXTERNAL DAC has disappeared for several months now - AND THE ENTIRE FLOW OF THE APPLICATION IS SENT TO THE ANDROID, NOT THE DAC... FOR MORE THAN A MONTH I HAVE REPEATEDLY TRIED TO EXPLAIN TO THEM THAT THEIR LATEST VERSIONS DO NOT WORK AND CHEAT CUSTOMERS - WITHOUT RESULT. THEY ASK EVERY TIME “DO YOU HAVE THE LATEST VERSION OF HARDWARE IN YOUR DAC?” although every time I tell them that the DAC works fine with the unbroken version. And they are unable even to find the code differences between the working and broken versions!
I can confirm that playback in Tidal on Android using USB DACs is absolutely broken currently. On my recently bought Fiio KA17 the sampling rate got stuck and I couldn't get playback to continue from MQA to uncompressed FLAC. Found a workaround though, and that was to install USB Audio Player PRO, connect to Tidal from there and play my music through that app. It works, although not without its own problems. It is an absolute farce that I must pay another developer to get this shit to work somewhat OK.
Welcome to ASR!
The Android application (older than version 2.91.1) sends the audio date NOT to the DAC, but to the ANDROID audio track! TIDAL again BLOCKED the correct operation of his application (the previous case was version 2.14, after which LG phones stopped processing mqa). But today's situation is simply amazing: TIDAL deliberately stopped using USB DAC in Android applications!
All the talk about Hi-Res makes no sense when TIDAL deliberately using Android's 48 kHz audio track despite of existing of connected USB DAC.
If you have the opportunity to check with NON-MQA DAC I will be very grateful for your answer!
Do you have a NON-MQA DAC? It works with MQA DAC? If you have the opportunity to check with NON-MQA and a MQA DAC - I will be very grateful for your answer!
I have 2 dac's Topping ex5 and Smsl dl200.. in bout is same (bout are MQA).. Upsampling to 96
I can tray at work tomorrow with Topping DX3pro+ If I not forget to take Amazon tablet ;pI hope that TIDAL did not deceive me, and that they disabled the use of MQA DAC in their application, sending audio data directly to the Android audio path. That is, when MQA-DAC is detected, Tidal deliberately ignores it and uses the Android audio path. Why TIDAL thinks I should pay another $1000 for a NON-MQA DAC for his desire to get revenge on the MQA guys is beyond me.I have 2 dac's Topping ex5 and Smsl dl200.. in bout is same (bout are MQA).. Upsampling to 96
If they didn't deceive me, then your NON-MQA DAC WILL be used by TIDAL and you will not see the 96 kHz generated by your Android (my phone runs on 48, and the streamer runs on 96). Tidal canceled the use of MQA DAC after version 2.91.1 (probably the v. 2.92 was the first version they castrated. They did a similar joke with LG phones that had built-in MQA support. They did this after v. 2.24, if I'm not mistaken).
