Uniti Nova and Tidal Connect

Hi, I have recently bought a Uniti Nova and have been running it wirelessly with my router, playing music via Tidal Connect without any problems. I have been trying to experiment in connecting the Nova to my router via an Ethernet cable to see if this improves speed of connectivity and sound quality. The system is quicker in switching between sources with the Ethernet but it’s too early to say if the sound is improved. I have though hit a problem, when using the Ethernet cable from my router to the Nova the option on the Tidal App to play music via Tidal Connect has disappeared, instead I just have the option of Airplay & Bluetooth. Is this normal has anyone else encountered this problem and did you find a fix? I am able to use Tidal via the Naim app but would really like the choice of streaming music through the Tidal App using Tidal Connect. Any help would be really appreciated.

Welcome @dmerlincone !

I think the official answer to your dilemma of Tidal Connect working wirelessly but failing over Ethernet is “no that’s not normal at all”! I think also that the majority of forum participants do not see this behaviour. That said, I’m in a very similar situation, and have narrowed my issue to a firmware problem deep in the Ubiqiti UniFi wireless access points that I use in my home network… so my suggestion to you for getting the best help from others here is to share a little extra info on your internal home network setup: what router are you using? any switches, especially managed ones? any additional wifi access points or wireless mesh infrastructure?

The discovery protocol for these services is mDNS, which is a multicast method for things to announce their capabilities, such as Tidal Connect or Airplay2 for music, but also for network printing or file sharing or even a device-specific web interface. If you are using iOS, there is a nice app, appropriately called “Discovey” that will listen on your network and tell you who offers what. You will likely find your Nova showing as a TidalConnect point while you are connected via wifi, but it will be missing when you see the failure when connected via Ethernet.

One quick test to see if your issue is a “missing service” as opposed to a “disappearing service” is to watch the Discovery app after a hard-restart (power cycle) of your Nova. Many issues I’ve read about - in other contexts than Naim - seem to be loss of availability rather than never being found in the first place. This is a useful piece of diagnostic information to help you get started on identifying your solution.

I realize this likely isn’t as helpful as either of us hope, but I hope it feels welcoming and friendly… which has been my experience n this great forum that you’ve just joined! Good luck and best wishes.

Thank you for your reply alan33, it’s really appreciated.

I use a Plusnet router for fibre broadband and also use a TP-Link Deco M5 home mesh. I will check the Discovery App as you suggest but are there any issues that you might know of with this kind of router or mesh?

I’m not familiar enough with your TP Link m sh to comment, I’m afraid. That said, you should be mindful that you have a very unusual corner case… not just because it works over WiFi but not over wired, but because only some (one?) of the mDNS advertised services fails (Tidal) but others work (Airplay) even over wired.

For deep debugging, you might need expert help, possibly from the Naim technical team … but getting started with monitoring either via an App or using command line tools on your Mac (eg look up dns-sd and give it a try with -B _raop to look for Remote Audio Output Protocol, which Naim uses, or even -B _tidalconnect which Tidal looks for).

You can also look in your Router setup web page and see if there is a checkbox to Enable IGMP Snooping, as this is useful for multicast traffic too… My ISP router doesn’t offer this, but some certainly do.

My main advice here is just an attempt to give you some things to try as you work out exactly what’s failing, and when. That will go a long way to seeking advice from Naim (or even requesting to join the Beta group, where sometimes stuff like this gets explored to ensure most people’s experience is optimal!).

A common issue with mesh and other home network equipment, especially when the router is a different brand to the wifi devices, is that both the router and the TPlink stuff are trying to take control of the network and run the DHCP server which allocates IP addresses to all connected devices. This function should be disabled on either the router or the TPlink stuff in order to avoid conflicts.
The fact that this issue coincided with you connecting the streamer to the router makes me suspect that this is causing discovery problems for you.

Also……did you restart both router and Nova after changing to a wired connection?

I use the same Mesh network and have the Atom HE connected via wired Ethernet and Tidal connect works fine over here. The router is a Zyxel though. The Deco M5 is in slave mode.

BR,
Richard

I have Deco mesh too (M9). Use virgin media, so the SuperHub router is switched to “modem only” mode. Tidal Connect works fine in that setup.

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