SoundID Reference on Tidal works poorly

Answered
3

The SoundID Reference app in Windows 11 works halfway with the Tidal player, whenever I listen to 1 or 2 songs on Tidal with the SoundID Reference app, after the song ends it does not play the following songs and the Tidal player hangs, However, when I change the 'SoundID Reference Virtual Audio Device' audio device to another such as Realtek or my DAC, it is fixed there and Tidal continues playing without problems. It seems that your SoundID Reference audio device has some type of incompatibility when listening to the Tidal player, I'm mentioning this so that you can solve that problem in the future. At the moment I have no problems with that since I generally listen to Tidal through Audirvana and there I use the VST FX plugin - Sonarworks SoundID Reference, which works perfectly without any problems so far.

8 comments

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I have the same problem on a Macbook pro M1 and SoundID Refence and Tidal.

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Tidal only plays through Sonarworks Systemwide at 44.1.  Please help.

The plugin lets my player that supports it autoswitch sample rates no problem, and that way my EQ footprint is a new record for minimal detectability, but through Systemwide, only 44.1 gets any audible output.

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SAME

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Same problem over here. Spotify and everything else works, but Tidal doesn't want to cooperate…

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I  use this with Tidal every day, without any issues at all. I use a windows machine and a Hifiman 499 as DAC/AMP.

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Same problem here. SoundID Reference on Windows 11 + Tidal Desktop app + High Quality Output. 

Playback works about 20% of the time when switching to the SoundID Reference, but just results in a spinning “pause” symbol the rest of the time.

No issues with using the direct DAC output in Tidal.

No issues with “low quality” output. 

No issues with dozens of other audio applications. 

Having said this, it's still not clear if it's a Sonarworks issue or a Tidal issue…

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The Web player doesn't seem to have this issue, so this does provide a workaround. 

The Web player doesn't have a way to change output, so assume it just uses “system default”. However, if using “system default” in the Windows app, it still has the issue… So definitely seems like a problem with the app itself. 

Sonarworks Dev's anybody home?! 

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Hi everyone! 

It is unclear to me whether there are several different unique issues here to address, but let me start by one common theme: adaptive sample rate setting based on source audio.

Oftentimes times in Tidal and other advanced playback platforms, there is functionality where the Tiday adapts the sample rate format of the source audio, and the output device also adapts. This might be an issue once the SoundID Reference virtual audio device is introduced in the chain between the app and the physical output device. Generally speaking, it is a quality loss issue as the sample rate might no longer adapt per song (audio source), but it could potentially present a technical issue too. This is also quite complex to investigate as the SoundID Reference app on Windows features 4 different driver modes, and each has a different behavior when it comes to forcing or adapting to sample rate changes. Learn more here: [WIN] Audio driver types in the standalone app.

To exclude sample rate as a potential issue, I would recommend two things: 

  1. If you are using the WASAPI or WASAPI-to-ASIO driver modes, set the Tidal sample rate to top audio files in your library (and set it for SoundID Reference and the output device too). That way you will still have top-quality playback for the higher sample rate songs, while the lower ones will be upsampled without any loss. This means you'd have a stable sample rate across the system
  2. Use the APO driver mode instead. The APO driver is more like a plugin inserted directly in the Windows audio engine, it doesn't have any sample rate processing, and in fact, it doesn't even have a virtual audio device at all - the output goes straight from Tidakl to your physical output device instead. This might be a quick and solid solution, bypassing any such issues in the first place: [WIN] Windows audio device insert (APO)

 

It would be great to understand whether the issues posted above are related to this sample rate behavior, and whether they can be resolved as I've suggested. Thank you!

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