The new streaming architecture spools and buffers at the application level , so dropouts wont occur in the same way as the legacy streamers where the issue is tcp related latency or limited tcp segment buffering. If there is a dropout on the new streamers then your buffer has been exhausted which is many many seconds long. This would only happen if there is some sort of catastrophic failure in connectivity throughput or you have very low throughput due to access contention.
I use Tidal a lot on my next gen streamer… and never had a dropout in 2.5 months. I have had the very occasional issue of early track ending on replay, but not in recent weeks. On my first gen streamer dropouts occurred frequently so I used a proxy media server to mitigate.
We have been working on accumulating evidence on this one as it’s quite a complex one. Over the last few days have got hold of some Wiresharks that catch it in the act and we have been in detailed discussions with Tidal engineering.
As of tonight Tidal has switched the Naim account to a different CDN (Content delivery network), as the Wiresharks strongly suggest there is an issue on the new CDN when a track slowly streams across the network over the full length of the track. This is the case when using Bridgeco streaming IC based products like the Muso, Qb and classic uniti / streamer range.
For clarity the new streaming product range (Atom, Star, Nova, ND5XS2, NDX2 and ND555) work in a different way and burst read the data from the server into RAM as quickly as possible. This means that within around 10secs we are no longer talking to the Tidal CDN - pull the network plug out and it will continue to the end of the track.
On those who have been having this problem, could you power cycle your units to ensure that they are talking to this alternative CDN and see how things go. Naturally the internet has its ups and downs at times, but lets get a tone if this has done the trick or not.
If you wish to contact me privately on this subject, you can email me at steve.harris (at) naimaudio.com
Firstly, a big thank you for popping into the thread to update us with a detailed explanation, that’s much appreciated and very professional.
Secondly, I can report, that I re-powered my Uniti2 and it is streaming Tidal perfectly. I have tried the same album that wan’t getting through the first track, and I am well through the full album - so well done.
Yes, as Steve said it will return Tidal playback to how it was a few months back so the previous Naim optimisations for the legacy streamers should help again. It won’t magically fix the legacy issues that occur for some for with the older streamers, but should restore Tidal to previous performance you were experiencing. If so or not please let Steve/Naim know.
It looks like the anomaly that was shared in the trace shared by a forum member was not a one-off but symptomatic of the issue in hand.
Apart from a brief evening of regular dropouts about a month ago, my NDX has been unaffected by this whole dropout issue since the day I bought it, so I’m hoping this situation will continue!
My Qute drops after 3 or 4 songs. Although if has changed the way it drops. Song is playing drops but starts playing again. Doesn’t play next track. Odd. So far 272 is all good.
Not sure if this is related but my Nova refused to play any Tidal music today. A reboot cured it. So, although I realise the original issue was with the old streamers, if any of the new streamers start having Tidal problems, try a power cycle.