Can not play hi res music via tidal at MyVolumio

I am a member of MyVolumio and Tidal Hi-Fi. All tracks from Tidal are at CD quality, which is 16 bit/44.1KHz. Is there a way to play hi res music from Tidal? I can play hi res files from my hard drive but tidal does not work. Also when I change volume at Volumio interface the tacking of song resets to zero but continues to play where it is.

Wow, today I am able to see MQA files at Tidal marked with M. It works now, so I am a happy user now or let me say happier user.

Great to hear that this, as I was facing the same issue.

Great to hear guys, enjoy!

Hi,

Have MyVolumio Virtuoso and Tidal HiFi.

Max playback rates for MASTER files are NOT 24/96 (or 192) but I can only get 48kHz/24bit on the stream dial.

Is this the max or should I be able to get 24bit 96kHz playback.

Thanx in advance

Yes, TIDAL masters are played at this rate (MQA encoding).
But give me a couple of days to investigate better. Let me also know which album youā€™re trying to play

2 Likes

These 4 tracks perhaps?:
Five Leaves Left (96kHz/24 bit) by Nick Drake (Tracks : River Man & Three Hours)
River: The Joni Letters (96kHz/24-bit) (Track:The Jungle Line)
Prayer - Voice & Organ (96kHz / 24 bit) by Magdalena KoženĆ”, Christian Schmitt (Track: Schubert: Ellens Gesang III)

Thanx!
R

I have the same, here is the attached image. By the way, this is not a complaint actually, I am so happy with what Volumio offers me. Please take this as a feedback for refinement. Great work :smiley:
Tidal Volumio.jpg

Could you please repeat by setting TIDAL quality (in my music setting) to lossless?

Thanks for the quick response, i did it immediately but still the same. System version is 2.526. I have a friend of mine who is inspired my me and got volumio. He has the same, does your works ok?

Nope. But we figured out why:

  • Youā€™re actually receiving the Highest quality format, but streamed in MQA format.
  • TIDAL masters are streamed with MQA encoding (we are one of the only few enabled players), when resolution is set to ā€œHighest possibleā€. This results in a 24 bit 48k file if MQA unfolding is not supported by your DAC.
  • We need to allow disabling this by setting properly TIDAL APIs for those who do not want MQA on TIDAL masters.

Weā€™ll keep on looking at it.

Thanks for looking at itā€¦ i have a Allo Boss DAC and my friend has usb dac; Cambridge, so he use the setting PCM and has the same issue. Just for your information. :wink:

For the record:

I also have an ALLO BOSS DAC on Raspberry Pi.
Sound Quality on 48kHz/24Bit is really good!

Looking forward to a future of 96/192 kHz capability!

Thanx for an awesome service!
R

Hello,

Iā€™m a bit confused on the nomenclature for the different Sound Qualities when configuring MyVolumio for TIDAL playback.
Please confirm if I got it correctly?
[MyVolumio]->[TIDAL]
Low -> Normal
High -> High
High Res -> High Fidelity
Lossless -> Master (MQA)

Also, I have an IOaudIO Pi-DAC Pro PCB 008v1. With that, and configuring the Sound Quality as Lossless or as Highest Possible, I get only 24-bit 44.1kHz audio playback via MyVolumio (besides having TIDAL HiFi and trying to play a Master compatible track).

Thanks,
Andre

Hereā€™s the response from TIDALā€™s Technical support:

"In order to listen to the MQA format to its fullest extent, your equipment needs to be MQA capable. Otherwise, you will not be getting the full MQA experience but you will still have better quality than HiFi.

If you do not use a DAC at all, the TIDAL client will decode the MQA in 1x unfolding. A DAC which is MQA capable can unfold up to 8x (provided the DAC has that capability). With the desktop and/or a non-MQA DAC you will get 24bit/88.2 (96) kHz . The stream quality of each album depends on the labelsā€™ engineering of the album. Please ensure that the ā€œpassthrough MQAā€ is not enabled if you do not have an MQA DAC.

Please visit the MQA website for all MQA-enabled devices mqa.co.uk/customer/our-partners.

Further information on TIDAL Master with the desktop app can also be found at support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/arti ā€¦ AL-MASTERS.

As for the streaming qualities, you have it correct. Normal and High qualities are a part of the Premium subscription. The streaming bitrates are as follows: Normal quality: 96 kbps (AAC +), High quality: 320 kbps (AAC), HiFi - 44.1khz/16 bit, MQA 88.2 (96(khz/24 bit."

So, now the question is, who is responsible for unfolding the MQA stream in MyVolumio, the TIDAL plug-in or the DAC?

Thanks

Hello
I am Warner.
I have the same issue.
I am using usb DAC which covers up to 24 bit 96 kHz.
I could only see 24bit / 44 Khz and 24 bit / 48 kHz when it comse to MQA sources.
I did not check the target MQA quality of the Tidal music.
Is it normal or should it be played on higher quality music?

Thank you in advance.

Guys, Iā€™m not a Tidal user (any more) but at MQA 24/48 you are getting the highest resolution you can play without MQA licensed hardware. This is a ā€œfeatureā€ of MQA which is a propietary, lossy compression codec.

To play higher resolution MQA you need to buy a DAC that supports MQA hardware decoding. There is no DAC hat for the Pi that does this, I think the cheapest DAC out there with MQA hardware decoding right now is the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital.
If you wish to stream high-resolution lossless look at Deezer or Qobuz.

1 Like

I have the same result with my usb dac: 24bit and 48khz. By my opinion the reason for this is that volumio does not do the first MQA unfold as expected. There is also no switch to configure this.
With aurdirvana (media player for ein &mac) this is working.
I still like volumio - thanks for you support and I am also looking forward to the MQA support

Hi all.
I set ā€˜highest possibleā€™ and i only get 48/24 max with Volumio. But if i play the same master quality song on the the desktop native tidal app i can get 96/24. Why is that exactly or is it normal? Only the desktop app can software decode 96/24 and Volumio is only capable of 48/24?

Dear MyVolumio team.

Many thanks for developing such an excellent product.

I was just wondering if the issue with not being able to play 24 bit 96khz MQA files is in the pipeline for development?

Many thanks for your help.

Darren