Tidal Master on MoOde Audio

[RafaPolit]

There are some UPnP apps for iOS as well. I have been trying mConnect Lite. It seems to do the job well.

It even sends the 'raw' MQA data if for some miracle you have a MQA enabled DAC. Unfortunately it does not take advance of the phone's ability to unfold the MQA so it sending the 'base' stream only.

It's not bad.

Audirvana from the PC is able to fully decode the MQA and send the stream via UPnP which is fantastic! My only issue is that, for some reason I have been able to cast to an USB-only Moode RPi perfectly, but my fully featured Allo DigiOne RPi is not working the same. Not sure if it's the HAT, or if one of the things I have installed on it is interfering with the UPnP ports, I need to debug further. But this is only happening with Audirvana, my phone can cast perfectly via UPnP to that device.

Still, I agree MQA seems a needless overhead in terms of price. The idea is nice, and could work great, but proprietary file systems are not the way to go IMHO.

Unfortunately, Qobuz is not available in my country (well, neither is tidal, but I do have an account), so I can't try actual hi-res files instead of folded MQA.

Still, I think mConnect is as good as I will get from mobile devices into Moode for the time being. Audirvana seems great for higher res UPnP.


Tim, you mention multi room in Airplay. It's true it is supported (natively in Airplay 2), but the iOS devices allow multi room for Airport Expresses nativley, but they won't allow multi room with the Moode version of AirPlay (ShairPort?). Anything I need to do to enable this? This is off topic, but since you brought it up!

Thanks. Best regards,
Rafa.

[Tim Curtis]

Right, from IOS the receiver needs to support Airplay 2 protocol. I thought shairport-sync was either at version 2 protocol or it could be a TBD.

[vilmann]

MQA is nothing more than ugly DRM masquerading as some sort of "improvement". It will never appear in moOde.

Why is that? Using Tidal is very inconvenient now trough UPNP and lack of Tidal support is major disadvantage of moode which is overall a good application.
In summary will not hesitate to exchange moode to another tool while it offer full tidal support... (for now I exclude Roon as too expensive, but still considering it if there is no other option) I try hardly to use Tinal trough UPNP but this is nightmare!
I am not the only one, I am sure...

Well, Tidal is available though mo0de with squeezelite. I use it all the time.
Yes - it requires a Logitech Media Server somewhere, but it works everytime.
Of course it would be nice to have a direct plug-in, but it actually works now. And LMS/squeezelite a lot easier than the horrible uPNP-stuff.

It doesn't do MQA though, but it doesn't matter. I completely agree with Tim on that subject.

[gza123]

I'm on the iOS platform.  Most info I find is outdated.  I would like to see a good Bubble app on the iOS store, but what kills the experience is using a different UI than Tidal to interact with the catalog.  To be able to avoid that would be fantastic.

Hi Rafa,

I'm using Linn KAZOO on iOS and I found it less annoying than other apps.

[gza123]

Dear All,

Despite Tim's statement:
"MQA is nothing more than ugly DRM masquerading as some sort of "improvement". It will never appear in moOde."
I knew the "Tidal Masters" thread would emerge sooner or later on the forum again.
I have no doubts about how MQA is working and (partly) agree with Tim. Why? Because in parallel with "ugly DRM" it delivers hi-res stream from Tidal and that's why many moOde users are interested in. For example, I have DAC which is MQA certified (Hegel H590 via USB) thus I'm wondering if Tidal MQA stream could be just passed-through over moOde to be unfolded by eg. H590 DAC/Amp? Is it possible from technical point of view as well as licence/DRM compliance?

btw: I'm so appreciated for all your effort put into mo0de development. Chapeau bas!

Andrzej

[Tim Curtis]

Airplay and Spotify renderers are receive-only. Bluetooth is either receive or send but not both at same time.

Whats not supported in moOde (yet) is a mechanism to forward a received Airplay or Spotify stream to Bluetooth for streaming to a speaker.

[TheOldPresbyope]

...

Whats not supported in moOde (yet) is a mechanism to forward a received Airplay or Spotify stream to Bluetooth for streaming to a speaker.

Since in this use case moOde is simply a pipe, why not skip it and use the upstream source to drive the BT speaker directly?

I'm just saying...

Regards,
Kent

[Tim Curtis]

Yes, of course that would be the best way. No need for moOde in the middle.

[hnnaum]

So to summarize.
I want to buy usbridge signature with moode, and want to know what is the best way to use it with Pro Ject Pre-box s2 digital DAC (has MQA decoder). I'll use android phone to control USbridge, and probably mconnect player app. Can my DAC receive original Tidal MQA files? Does my phone have to stream files to player or android app serves only as a controller, and Usbridge download files from Tidal server?
I'm new to this and need a little help...
Thank you

[grasshopper]

@hnnaum Hi, maybe not the answer you're looking for but Amazon HD streams in flac I believe, has a larger library than tidal & therefore no need for MQA.