Differences using Tidal app and WiiM Home Tidal App

[bazzast]

Hi, can someone tell me why , using the same Tidal account, the new suggested album/song are different between Tidal main app and the one included in WiiM Home ?
If the account is the same why ther're different results ?

 

[Brantome]

I guess there’s a difference between the api that Tidal supplies to third parties like WiiM and the one they use in their own app.

 

[bazzast]

@Brantome
Excuse my extreme ignorance, what's api ?

 

[Brantome]

Application Programming Interface - a set of software and procedures for passing information from Tidal to third party apps.

I don‘t think Tidal is alone in the respect you describe - if I use the amazon music app on my pc, iPad and android phone, they all show me different recommendations from my account. I don’t understand why they’re coded to do that, but they do….

 

[CrystalGipsy]

The more personal curated stuff is generally only available to the native apps and what they offer up to 3rd parties is generally the more generic stuff. They need to give their own software a certain advantage or no one would ever use it.

 

[simbun]

I saw the same thing when I briefly tried LMS where it was missing the Qobuz My Weekly Q.
Got to be native apps for the online streaming services.

 

[ChaoticMike]

Hello, I'm a newbie who has joined after taking the leap away from a Logitech Media Server/Squeezebox ecosystem, to Wiim-world. I have a basic question about *where* digital to Analog conversion takes place, when using the native Tidal app on my phone instead of the Tidal-integrated-with-the-Wiim app, also on my phone.
If I use the native app, and cast to the Wiim, is...

• The phone receiving a stream of bits from Tidal and forwarding these to the Wiim box for conversion
• Some magic occurring whereby Tidal knows the address of the Wii box, and directing traffic straight to it for conversion
• The phone receiving bits from Tidal, applying some form of processing and then forwarding to the Wiim box

A situation further complicated by some folks' opinion that my amp's DAC is better than the Wiim's, and that I should connect digitally to the amp and let *it* do the D/A conversion.

I'm just interested in understanding the end to end flow from Tidal to my ears.

Full disclosure... I have played bass guitar in various live settings at a range of sound pressure levels over the past 40 years, so the finest perceptions of quality might be beyond my ears' capabilities!

Mike

 

[Brantome]

Hello, I'm a newbie who has joined after taking the leap away from a Logitech Media Server/Squeezebox ecosystem, to Wiim-world. I have a basic question about *where* digital to Analog conversion takes place, when using the native Tidal app on my phone instead of the Tidal-integrated-with-the-Wiim app, also on my phone.
If I use the native app, and cast to the Wiim, is...

• The phone receiving a stream of bits from Tidal and forwarding these to the Wiim box for conversion
• Some magic occurring whereby Tidal knows the address of the Wii box, and directing traffic straight to it for conversion
• The phone receiving bits from Tidal, applying some form of processing and then forwarding to the Wiim box

A situation further complicated by some folks' opinion that my amp's DAC is better than the Wiim's, and that I should connect digitally to the amp and let *it* do the D/A conversion.

I'm just interested in understanding the end to end flow from Tidal to my ears.

Full disclosure... I have played bass guitar in various live settings at a range of sound pressure levels over the past 40 years, so the finest perceptions of quality might be beyond my ears' capabilities!

Whether you use the WiiM or the Tidal app, the Tidal cloud service sends the track to your WiiM device since it knows its IP address. The WiiM device will convert that track (a FLAC file for example) to an uncompressed digital stream. If you are using the WiiM DAC and its analog/RCA output, that in turn converts that stream to an analog signal. If you use the WiiM's digital output (coax or digital), the digital stream is instead passed to your amp for it to do the digital to analog conversion.

 

[alpha_zulu]

It‘s the way you called „magic“. Your phone is just working like a remote control, telling the WiiM what to stream from the TIDAL servers..

 

[ChaoticMike]

Thank you gentlemen, that's very clear. I'm guessing that part of the casting protocol must tell Tidal the IP address of the WiiM device, as (a) it's behind a router that is NATing, and (b) my LAN's external IP address will be a moving target between reboots of the fibre optic termination (I don't think I have a static IP address).

 

[Brantome]

Thank you gentlemen, that's very clear. I'm guessing that part of the casting protocol must tell Tidal the IP address of the WiiM device, as (a) it's behind a router that is NATing, and (b) my LAN's external IP address will be a moving target between reboots of the fibre optic termination (I don't think I have a static IP address).

When you use the Tidal app to cast, the app will present a list of compatible target devices on your home network. When you choose that target, an outward call (probably from the target device itself) will be made to the Tidal cloud service which will then send back the required track. In a very simplistic manner, I don’t see that as being any different to a browser requesting a webpage.

 

[cooky560]

When you use the Tidal app to cast, the app will present a list of compatible target devices on your home network. When you choose that target, an outward call (probably from the target device itself) will be made to the Tidal cloud service which will then send back the required track. In a very simplistic manner, I don’t see that as being any different to a browser requesting a webpage.

It isn’t any different. Neither is Netflix on a “smart tv” for that matter. Remember the cloud is just someone else’s computer. Or these days, server network