Bug report: Tidal Connect Hi-Res on the Wiim Pro

[audiophilistine]

I recently bought a Wiim Pro and a Tidal subscription with the goal of streaming hi-res music using Tidal Connect.
What I am finding is that while Tidal Connect works most of the time, it sometimes struggles and this seems to be worse as the sampling rates increase.
24/96 is bad, 24/192 is worse but everything else is more or less reliable.

The problem is usually difficult to reliably reproduce but one album (below) is consistently hopeless.
Using Tidal Connect on the Wiim Pro I can't play more than ~30 seconds from this album, yet when I play it on my Android tablet speakers (still 24/192) it works fine.

The problem album:

Judith Jáuregui - Homeland

Listen to Homeland on TIDAL

tidal.com

Judith Jáuregui, Homeland, 2024

It works fine in the app but fails every time over Tidal Connect to the Wiim Pro.

Things I have tried without success for a week now:
- switched to ethernet from Wifi on the Wiim Pro
- reboot the Wiim Pro
- switch preferred DNS server off/on
- clear the Tidal app cache
- log out/back in to Tidal app
- uninstall Tidal app from other devices
- uninstall/reinstall Tidal app
- reboot the tablet

I am connecting from Canada without a VPN.
Local network issues have been eliminated (because it works fine in the app).

Wiim Pro firmware 4.8.717049
Tidal app version 2.153.0.1298.71 (from the Play store)
Tablet: Google Pixel Tablet
OS: GrapheneOS
Android 15 build 2025052800

I know there are a bunch of other posts about similar issues but I wanted to document this particular reproducible bug here.
Unfortunately I have not yet found any way to get any kind of error message or logs related to this bug.

Other problems I have with Tidal Connect which are more difficult to reliably reproduce:
- Tidal Connect will not work (fail without error message) until I reboot the Wiim Pro
- after switching to Tidal Connect playback will fail with a spinning widget on the app until I skip a track
- volume shown in the Tidal app is at one level but the music starts playing on the Wiim Pro at whatever volume it was last at, so making a tiny change to the volume in the Tidal app makes a huge sudden jump from the level on the Wiim Pro to the new level on the Tidal app

 

[harkpabst]

Unfortunately I have not yet found any way to get any kind of error message or logs related to this bug.

You can file your bug report directly to the technical WiiM team using the WiiM Home app on your Pixel Tablet and device logs will be attached automatically (without you having to deal with them). In the app's.main navigation, hit the rightmost tab "More", then tap on "Feedback".

This is primarily a user community, even though WiiM are monitoring the posts to some extend. The app provides your direct path to technical support. You will receive a confirmation mail. Read this mail carefully and decide if you want to be personally contacted.

 

[Frans]

I recently bought a Wiim Pro and a Tidal subscription with the goal of streaming hi-res music using Tidal Connect.
What I am finding is that while Tidal Connect works most of the time, it sometimes struggles and this seems to be worse as the sampling rates increase.
24/96 is bad, 24/192 is worse but everything else is more or less reliable.

The problem is usually difficult to reliably reproduce but one album (below) is consistently hopeless.
Using Tidal Connect on the Wiim Pro I can't play more than ~30 seconds from this album, yet when I play it on my Android tablet speakers (still 24/192) it works fine.

The problem album:

Judith Jáuregui - Homeland

Listen to Homeland on TIDAL

tidal.com

Judith Jáuregui, Homeland, 2024

It works fine in the app but fails every time over Tidal Connect to the Wiim Pro.

Things I have tried without success for a week now:
- switched to ethernet from Wifi on the Wiim Pro
- reboot the Wiim Pro
- switch preferred DNS server off/on
- clear the Tidal app cache
- log out/back in to Tidal app
- uninstall Tidal app from other devices
- uninstall/reinstall Tidal app
- reboot the tablet

I am connecting from Canada without a VPN.
Local network issues have been eliminated (because it works fine in the app).

Wiim Pro firmware 4.8.717049
Tidal app version 2.153.0.1298.71 (from the Play store)
Tablet: Google Pixel Tablet
OS: GrapheneOS
Android 15 build 2025052800

I know there are a bunch of other posts about similar issues but I wanted to document this particular reproducible bug here.
Unfortunately I have not yet found any way to get any kind of error message or logs related to this bug.

Other problems I have with Tidal Connect which are more difficult to reliably reproduce:
- Tidal Connect will not work (fail without error message) until I reboot the Wiim Pro
- after switching to Tidal Connect playback will fail with a spinning widget on the app until I skip a track
- volume shown in the Tidal app is at one level but the music starts playing on the Wiim Pro at whatever volume it was last at, so making a tiny change to the volume in the Tidal app makes a huge sudden jump from the level on the Wiim Pro to the new level on the Tidal app

I have the same experience and I sent an email to Tidal. Until now they still not have a solution for this problem. I also report this to WiiM / Tidal team. They are aware of this problem. I advise you to follow the same path as what I did.

 

[audiophilistine]

Thank you @harkpabst

It was not clear to me that the feedback from the app would include logs.
Normally I run open source software for stuff like this and so it feels really odd to have no diagnostic information whatsoever, (even a basic error code would be better than nothing).
It could be a simple problem on my end that I have overlooked but I have nothing to go on.

I have submitted the report and referenced this post.

 

[harkpabst]

It could be a simple problem on my end that I have overlooked but I have nothing to go on.

No, certainly no problem on your end. It's not directly mentioned in the app. You won't know about it until you search the knowledge base or this forum.

This is just the way WiiM do it. They certainly try to provide users with a non-technical experience as much as possible. Very much like this other California based company, 27 miles down the road.

 

[audiophilistine]

I have been watching this issue from my firewall to gain a basic understanding of how the streaming/buffering is happening.
Also started using Tidal in the Wiim app, which behaves exactly the same as using Tidal Connect.

My observations:
- each time a track is loaded there is a burst of about 50 Mbps for 1-2 seconds (my connection is > 900Mbps)
- for 16/44 tracks this burst is often enough to load the whole track, which then plays fine
- for 24/96-192 tracks the burst is followed by a trickle at the same rate reported in the Wiim app (~1800-~4500 kbps)
- on problem tracks the trickle stops about 5-10 seconds before the music stops
- the speed with which the trickle fails seems to increase with higher bandwidth (higher sampling rate==earlier failure)
- pinging the server where the stream is coming from reveals no dropped packets, latency <30ms

My suspicion is now that the Wiim thinks that it has buffered the entire track well before it actually has.
Maybe the buffer size is being calculated/allocated/estimated based on the wrong sampling rate or bit depth.

 

[harkpabst]

My suspicion is now that the Wiim thinks that it has buffered the entire track well before it actually has.
Maybe the buffer size is being calculated/allocated/estimated based on the wrong sampling rate or bit depth.

That sounds not too unreasonable, but why would the behaviour be the same with the Tidal API based implementation in the WiiM Home app and with Tidal Connect?

Using Tidal Connect I'd assume the Tidal app being responsible for gathering the required chunks of data in time. It could be get wrong information about the buffer status from the renderer, admittedly.

 

[audiophilistine]

@harkpabst I believe that the advantage of Tidal Connect is that the moile app becomes a control interface and the Wiim becomes the client.
I don't have any experience with the internals of this specific system but the evidence seems to imply that both Tidal Connect and the Tidal portion of the Wiim Home app are calling the same API from the Wiim device.
It's a complex architecture but it makes a lot of sense because the Wiim device is essentially a server, plugged into the grid and not roaming around on battery power.
Mobile devices make great control interfaces but they're not so good at behaving like a server, as they are constantly trying to save battery power by shutting things down.

 

[cg.greener]

I recently bought a Wiim Pro and a Tidal subscription with the goal of streaming hi-res music using Tidal Connect.
What I am finding is that while Tidal Connect works most of the time, it sometimes struggles and this seems to be worse as the sampling rates increase.
24/96 is bad, 24/192 is worse but everything else is more or less reliable.

The problem is usually difficult to reliably reproduce but one album (below) is consistently hopeless.
Using Tidal Connect on the Wiim Pro I can't play more than ~30 seconds from this album, yet when I play it on my Android tablet speakers (still 24/192) it works fine.

The problem album:

Judith Jáuregui - Homeland

Listen to Homeland on TIDAL

tidal.com

Judith Jáuregui, Homeland, 2024

It works fine in the app but fails every time over Tidal Connect to the Wiim Pro.

Things I have tried without success for a week now:
- switched to ethernet from Wifi on the Wiim Pro
- reboot the Wiim Pro
- switch preferred DNS server off/on
- clear the Tidal app cache
- log out/back in to Tidal app
- uninstall Tidal app from other devices
- uninstall/reinstall Tidal app
- reboot the tablet

I am connecting from Canada without a VPN.
Local network issues have been eliminated (because it works fine in the app).

Wiim Pro firmware 4.8.717049
Tidal app version 2.153.0.1298.71 (from the Play store)
Tablet: Google Pixel Tablet
OS: GrapheneOS
Android 15 build 2025052800

I know there are a bunch of other posts about similar issues but I wanted to document this particular reproducible bug here.
Unfortunately I have not yet found any way to get any kind of error message or logs related to this bug.

Other problems I have with Tidal Connect which are more difficult to reliably reproduce:
- Tidal Connect will not work (fail without error message) until I reboot the Wiim Pro
- after switching to Tidal Connect playback will fail with a spinning widget on the app until I skip a track
- volume shown in the Tidal app is at one level but the music starts playing on the Wiim Pro at whatever volume it was last at, so making a tiny change to the volume in the Tidal app makes a huge sudden jump from the level on the Wiim Pro to the new level on the Tidal app

Same issue here. For a while it would skip at 2:36 each time. Other times completely freeze with the spinning wheel in place of the Play button. Same issue with Tidal on my Mini.

Also in Canada no VPN.

 

[hgo58]

This is not a general issue. I can play any high resolution track from Tidal without issues on the WiiM (tested on Ultra and Pro+)



This is true for both the WHA and the native Tidal app (Connect). This is also expected, as it's always the WiiM that request the data transfer.

 

[graemewi_nz]

That is really odd - I tested 2 of my Wiim devices a few hours ago and both times Tidal failed to connect or play, now it seems to be acting normal. I wonder if Tidal have fixed something in their backend - both Tidal and Wiim apps have not had an update in the last few hours!

 

[harkpabst]

@harkpabst I believe that the advantage of Tidal Connect is that the moile app becomes a control interface and the Wiim becomes the client.
I don't have any experience with the internals of this specific system but the evidence seems to imply that both Tidal Connect and the Tidal portion of the Wiim Home app are calling the same API from the Wiim device.
It's a complex architecture but it makes a lot of sense because the Wiim device is essentially a server, plugged into the grid and not roaming around on battery power.
Mobile devices make great control interfaces but they're not so good at behaving like a server, as they are constantly trying to save battery power by shutting things down.

I would have chosen a slightly different wording (although Tidal Connect is proprietary and closed, the term "server" is surely not the best for the Tidal Connect target), but that's basically how it works. The native Tidal apps most likely have access to features not exposed in the API that's available to OEMs like WiiM, but my doubt was.probably unfounded anyway. Buffer management must be performed by the Tidal Connect capable device and any problems related to that could be caused by Tidal, their CDN partners, bugs in their SDK or bugs in WiiMs implementation. We cannot know for sure.

Even the fact that it appears to work for some, but not for others, is no unambiguous proof of who has to change something: Problems with geo location could e.g. (at least in theory) mean that some devices are not connecting to the best CDN servers. Thing might really be complicated.

Btw., no problems.pkaying 24 bit 96 kHz here (Frank Zappa: Funky Nothingness).