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Tidal to Gen Beam 2 - Tracks won't join Queue

  • 9 May 2023
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J
Userlevel 2
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Hello,

Just signed up to Tidal and I’m trying to play music on my Gen Beam 2.

I can use the Tidal app on my iPhone and then redirect the audio to the Gen 2 speaker, this works fine.

However, if I use the Sonos app and select a track from Tidal I get an error message saying ‘Unable to join queue’.

Any ideas what I’m doing wrong? Is it something to do with my WI-FI set up? I have the Amazon Eero devices so I suppose my phone could be connected to a different Eero device compared to the Gen. I have audio quality in the Tidal App set to Hi-Fi for both streaming and download. My Wi-Fi is Virgin Fibre with 81 MBPS download.

Something I’m not entirely clear on is whether or not my Gen 2 plays back at Hi-Fi quality if I use the Tidal app on my iPhone and redirect the audio to the Gen 2. Isn’t this using Airplay, which can’t support hi fidelity audio?

This was my understanding with Apple music at least.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

James

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Best answer by Corry P 10 May 2023, 10:23

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3 replies

Corry P
Userlevel 7
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Hi @jimmcwilliam 

Thanks for your post!

Something I’m not entirely clear on is whether or not my Gen 2 plays back at Hi-Fi quality if I use the Tidal app on my iPhone and redirect the audio to the Gen 2. Isn’t this using Airplay, which can’t support hi fidelity audio?

This is correct - even when streaming HD (CD quality) content from Tidal, if AirPlay is in use then by the time the speaker gets the music stream it will no longer be HD, instead being compressed with the AAC-LC codec, which is a lossy codec.

As for getting the Tidal tracks to play directly on your Beam without going through your iPhone first, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports. I suspect interference is at work (either at the Beam or at the router), but the support team will be able to confirm.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
J
Userlevel 2
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Hi Corry, thank you for the reply. I’ll get in touch with the techs re the error message.

If I do manage to use the Sonos app to play through music through my Gen 2. Will this also be compressed? My thoughts were that it wouldn’t be compressed because this is streaming over wi-fi. Whether Tidal or Apple Lossless.

Thanks!

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @jimmcwilliam 

It would be compressed, yes, because uncompressed would be wasteful of your available bandwidth (though admittedly not much these days). However, HD from Tidal will arrive as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) format, which as the name implies, is lossless compression, meaning that no information is thrown away (as with wma, mp3, mp4 etc) and therefore the output is identical to the input (the CD quality data stream). The thing to remember is that compression is not necessarily a bad thing - as long as it’s lossless. Even when it is lossy, it often takes a very good ear to tell the difference - though this depends upon the quality of the lossy compression.

Apple lossless is the same, but it uses ALAC rather than FLAC (no prizes for guessing what the A stands for).

I hope this helps.

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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