TIDAL Changing Supported Audio Formats

[Big Boss]

On July 24th, TIDAL is replacing MQA tracks with FLAC versions and dropping support for 360 Reality Audio. Seems like they will only support FLAC and Atmos going forward.

Will our Lucid TIDAL app be impacted by these changes?

See: Upcoming changes to your TIDAL experience

 

[MJAir23TheGoat]

Thx 4 post was wondering the same?
Atmos 360 sounds great in the air.

 

[segbrk]

Thx 4 post was wondering the same?
Atmos 360 sounds great in the air.

"360 reality audio" is different from Atmos. Don't worry, your Atmos is safe. They're cleaning up the technologies that were never very good in the first place in order to focus on the ones that are. Should be nothing but good for us.

 

[martinmeyer]

I was concerned by this line:
> While we have at least 16-bit, 44.1 kbps FLAC versions for nearly all MQA tracks today, we may not have a replacement for every single one.

Does this mean that they are replacing MQA (which was 24-bits 192kHz) with CD-quality tracks? You can do 24-bit 192kHz with FLAC too, but I don't know if they are. This statement makes me think they're dropping down overall audio quality.

 

[martinmeyer]

I asked Tidal support and they said they would continue to have 24-bit 192kHz FLAC files supported. Seems this statement was only meant to indicate for files without a current higher quality encoding that it would fall back to this lower quality encoding. I don't know what their plan is to backfill missing higher quality tracks, and I'd like somehow to confirm that there really are 24-bit 192kHz tracks in their library. I'll be pretty unhappy if the entire library quality is downgraded from where it was.

 

[northernstar]

"360 reality audio" is different from Atmos. Don't worry, your Atmos is safe. They're cleaning up the technologies that were never very good in the first place in order to focus on the ones that are. Should be nothing but good for us.

Yup. Air SSP never supported 360 audio format. Just Dolby Atmos.
I did notice an incorrect error message in Air GUI when I intentionally played 360 audio...
If I recall correctly, the error message was like try re-configuring your Tidal membership or something... instead of saying, "This device (Air) doesn't support 360 audio formats".

Does anyone know what the Tidal max bitrate, frequency, and format the Lucid Air device supports?
I'm guessing FLAC at 16-bit, 44.1kHz...
It would be ideal if it supports HiRes FLAC lossless... but part of me feels it's also an overkill and lots of data usage.

 

[MGRMLN]

I wish our Tidal app in the car had settings.
And given how frequently, Tidal updates the phone apps, I would imagine our in vehicle version never gets any of those?

 

[Big Boss]

My understanding is that Tidal, or a third party, writes the Lucid Tidal app. No telling how often it’s updated. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any release notes on a Lucid software update mentioning the Tidal app.

 

[Big Boss]

Also the Tidal Website does not mention Lucid as specifically supported, where it does mention Tesla and Mercedes. It says it’s supported in Carplay and Android Auto.
Tidal Auto Support

 

[MGRMLN]

Also the Tidal Website does not mention Lucid as specifically supported, where it does mention Tesla and Mercedes. It says it’s supported in Carplay and Android Auto.
Tidal Auto Support

Thanks! It looks like Lucid's Tidal integration is based on Android Auto.

https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/18907133150993-Android-Automotive

 

[borski]

Thanks! It looks like Lucid's Tidal integration is based on Android Auto.

https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/18907133150993-Android-Automotive

Yup, this is correct. You have to ask Tidal to update their Android Automotive app.