Tidal

[tinpan]

The best advice I ever got for playing wireless music was from Tom here on this forum and it was to lose the Mac client to feed my network.

I bought a Synology NAS based on his advice and it solved most of  the jitter problems I was having.

I too have Comcast as an internet provider and I have an Apple Airport Extreme for a router. I was using a combination of airport expresses and web tvs to distribute my music to my stereos. That was nothing but 1 big head ache after another. I had nothing but jitter and drop outs. Everytime I wanted to sit down and relax the gxx dxxx apple tvs had to download a gxx dxxx fxxxn firmware patch. You know how long those take. 15 flippin minutes. So...that shiet is gone.

Wanna run flac or alac files from your mac? You have to download amarra or jriver or pure music or fidelio. They take a ton of memory to run, they want money every time the offer a new version...so they are gone for me as well

I'm still using con cast as an IP and I've had no issues with bandwidth. I am still using my Airport Extreme for a router. I do like that since I am network config challenged. My Synology NAS is connected directly to my Airport Etreme so I don't need any computers on to listen to music

The thing that fixed all my drop out and jitter issues was moving to a sonos connect  http://www.sonos.com/shop/products/connect

They are a bit pricey at $350 a pop, I have picked a couple off ebay for under $280. They are nice, you just plug them in, push a button and they work. They seem to stand up a separate wireless network. I can stream music to my garage which is probably 50 yards away from my house. The Apple network doesn't even reach that far.

Just giving you some food for thought. I am liking this Tidal thing. It's like having access to a bunch of Flac files I don't have...and it integrates with the Sonos. It was very easy to use.

Before I spent any money on SW or memory for you mac...I'd take a hard look at trying a sonos. How many systems do you have?

[bearjew]

he has a system in the living room and a small one in the bedroom.  i didn't realize that tidal integrates with sonos; that might change things a little bit.  i've heard great things about sonos, so i'll have to read up on it more.

[tinpan]

Well, I have spent a few days playing with this and here are my thoughts.

Originally I had planned on doing the trial and stopping there. I don't like the $20 bucks a month fee and it takes me a lot to pony up for something that. I was hoping to drop the service and see if they some back with an offer at half price and I may still do that. So far my favorite streaming service has been jazz radio.com, especially the smooth mellow jazz track, at $8 bucks a month for the hires feed it's a no brainer.

A little late for OBG but I did put a list of 10 songs together here: http://tidalhifi.com/playlist/3ad2cfb6-2a9b-4477-aef3-13b71501b397

It doesn't have about half the songs I would have included because they aren't on Tidal at this point, but, these are still pretty decent.

What it does offer though, is a bunch of music I don't have. To begin with their rip of the 25th anniversary hall of fame concerts is better than the one I ripped from my DVD. I'm not a big fan of MTV's productions but Jeff Beck on this concert was outstanding and him playing Foxy Lady with Billy Gibbons was not to be missed.

Tidal's rip of Gene Harris's This Masquerade is the same as mine. You can hear the same tape noise I hear on my copy I ripped from the CD.

I put together about five tracks of easy listening club music for those late at night quieter listening moments. Then a few with a little more volume.

What is probably pushing me over the endue to ponying up for $20 a month is the amount of music they do have. I like Gene Harris and Scott Hamilton a lot; Randy Halberstadt, Frank Weis and Trio Pim Jacobs. They seem to have an abundance of their music I don't have so that is VERY nice.

[OldiesButGoodies]

Well now JazzRadio.com has me intrigued.