Sound quality problems with Tidal Streaming Service?

@Wildcat Yep, the YouTube video sounds better than the TIDAL HIFI version. Around 30 seconds in, the piano sounds crazy.

Yeah, it really stands out on things like piano, violin and some vocals, particularly when solo, where same pitch is held for extended periods and thus the 'shimmer'/wavering stands out more. The effect sounds not unlike flutter on a tape deck that also typically stands out with piano and violin
 
They still have a large selection of CDs there? (I remember their video selection was fantastic!)

Yes, cd selection is pretty big, but the video selection is bigger.

One of the library folks that picked music had great taste, I believe they have left.
 
Yes, cd selection is pretty big, but the video selection is bigger.

One of the library folks that picked music had great taste, I believe they have left.
If I still lived out that way (been 10 years ago as of next week :( ), it'd be worth donating CDs that aren't worth selling. Even then, that video collection was amazing--for a month or two I was taking out all of the MASH season episode sets. My girls used to pick a few titles from the childrens' video area back then as well. (That was not long after they added onto the library.)

The effect sounds not unlike flutter on a tape deck that also typically stands out with piano and violin
That's it!

Are you finding others (beside us AK folks) are noticing it as well?
 
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That's it!

Are you finding others (beside us AK folks) are noticing it as well?

There are threads all over the audio interwebs about this.

In passing, I have often wondered why some titles sound so bad streaming as compared to my CD rips. I will have to pay more attention and see if it is specific to Universal Company titles.
 
In passing, I have often wondered why some titles sound so bad streaming as compared to my CD rips. I will have to pay more attention and see if it is specific to Universal Company titles.
It wouldn't surprise me if UMe is the main culprit. UMe is like the "cheap uncle" of record labels--make as much $$ as you can, for the lowest cost. Adding watermarking to streaming files is, to them, a way to save (?) the files from piracy and not lose any sales. They still screw up physical media. They did a major botch job on a recent vinyl box set some of my pals on another site purchased--the vinyl was noisy from dirt, some records were scratched, a few were off-center...vinyl pressing work, sold to the lowest bidder. And don't even get me started on how they've been shrugging off the artists that used to be on their label. I've worked with a jazz group for over 20 years now--they were on MCA/GRP for a few albums, and the only thing they get out of UMe now is a poorly assembled compilation every half dozen years or so, while fans still want reissues of the old albums that the band can't even touch, buried in the vaults likely forever. And let's not overlook the last fire at UMe that destroyed thousands of masters.

As an old buddy of mine would say, UMe could [screw] up a one-car funeral.

Having said that, I didn't really notice anything amiss about the Bernard Haitink "Decca Years" set I was listening to on Tidal for a while, but then again, it was primarily as background music on my desktop system, played at a lower volume. I do have a direct comparison I could try, though--there is a disc in that 20-disc set that has the Debussy recordings he made with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and I am very familiar with those. (I've had the original CD for at least 30 years now, and also have those tracks and more on an SACD.) One of those other sites listed some albums, for which I likely have matches in my collection. Might be worth a quick listen when I am bored one evening.
 
It is not a technical problem. Tidal has admitted that some labels are providing them with watermarked lossless files and they claim it's a very small % of files (although in my experience it's about 25%). So it's not a technical issue on Tidal's part. Some of this is covered over in the thread on this topic over in the Hoffman forums.
Thanks for the link.

Any thoughts on the notion that this could be audible due to some DACs not processing the watermark correctly?
 
Thanks for the link.

Any thoughts on the notion that this could be audible due to some DACs not processing the watermark correctly?

As botrytis said, no. The watermark is not some magic that one DAC could process differently to another; the watermarks adjust the stored audio, adding typically either volume or frequency variations that are definitely passed through the DAC. Whether or not folk hear them is a different matter.
 
I was wondering why they would watermark a digital file and ran across this.

If I am reading this correctly the artists want their material watermarked so they can follow it around the web. Interesting.

These folks offer a tool to detect the watermarked in various shared media.

https://www.sourceaudio.com/2015/07/try-out-our-new-watermark-detection-tool-now/

I wonder which watermarking/fingerprinting technology Universal is using.

It is a similar process to digitally watermarking and copyrighting photographs, and being able to detect them.
 
So are CDs watermarked?
None that I know of. But I still have bad memories of the Sony rootkit that installed itself unannounced on computers, so they couldn't be ripped. Never owned any of those myself, but the horror stories were out there. Sony really took one on the chin for that.
 
None that I know of. But I still have bad memories of the Sony rootkit that installed itself unannounced on computers, so they couldn't be ripped. Never owned any of those myself, but the horror stories were out there. Sony really took one on the chin for that.

Yep, never bought another Sony since then. Wasn't just this one thing, but it was the final straw as they say.
 
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