Tidal Playback - Losing Connection

rossnagel

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Hi there - I hope this hasn't been discussed and is in the correct forum. But here's my issue with Tidal playback. Last night was one of those moments. I open Tidal, start playing a streaming album, and choose Tidal Connect to connect to the WiiM Ultra. Thirty minutes of uninterrupted glorious music - I did not touch any device connected to Tidal or WiiM. After the album concludes, I pick up my phone to change albums and play something new. Logically, since playback started on Tidal, I would change there. I go to stop the music and the music is suddenly not playing on Tidal. It's playing on the WiiM interface. To stop the music, I had to stop it on the WiiM and then restart Tidal to get it to reconnect with Tidal Connect.

This is most certainly a first-world problem, but it is super annoying and just doesn't make sense. This seems to happen after a prolonged period of noninteraction. In other words, if I routinely skip through a playlist, it stays on Tidal, but if I allow Tidal to play for an extended period, user control moves over to the WiiM but stops on Tidal.

Footnote - I remember this being an issue with my WiiM Pro Plus and switching over to Amazon Music, and the issue was not present. For reasons too lengthy to discuss, I upgraded to the WiiM Ultra and moved over to Tidal to remember why I suddenly switched over to Tidal.

Is anyone else experiencing this?
 
This seems logical to me to an degree and I think was discussed recently in another post.

When you start a Tidal Connect session, you’re telling Tidal not to play the stream back to your phone, but to direct it to another device I.e. your WiiM and your tidal app then takes on a remote control role. The WiiM app is merely reflecting what’s being played on that WiiM device at that point. You can even turn off your phone running the Tidal app and the stream will continue playing on your WiiM, and will allow the WiiM app to control the stream. After some time, the Tidal app seems to time out its remote control role to perhaps allow you to use the Tidal app offline without interrupting that first stream. I would have thought however that the Tidal app should allow you to re-connect to that first connect stream without rebooting.

I’m sure I’ve seen similar behaviour with Amazon Music.
 
Thanks @Burnside
While likely not apples to oranges, I suspect that my desire is for the playback to operate as it does - say - in CarPlay or connected via Bluetooth. Again, not an ideal comp as someone will quickly point out the massive difference and mechanisms of "Connect" and the "move" to the WiiM, but from a UI perspective, this is how I suspect users would expect playback to occur. Is is logical from a Connect perspective, perhaps, but that doesn't mean it's logical from a UI perspective. Anything that summarily moves the playback to another device is not intuitive, most especially since the user is not notified that playback is no longer controlled on the original point of contact/interface.

I will double-check to see if this is a Tidal issue, as I remember it not being an issue on Amazon. If that's the case, it is most certainly a bug that can be fixed. Again, not certain of it "working correctly" on Amazon, but I will investigate.

And, as a point of clarification - I cannot remember if I needed to restart Tidal. I suspect I did that out of habit and not out of necessity.
 
To be fair, my experience of Amazon Music might well be clouded by having the family subscription which allows up to six streams across one or more accounts, so relinquishing control from one AlexaCast “connect” session to allow you to start another makes more sense there.
 
I've experienced similar a few times, and it seems to be a tidal / network issue.
Sometimes I can just use the cast icon in the tidal app to reconnect to the wiim; sometimes the wiim only shows as a chromecast device, not a connect device, and a restart of the tidal app or the tablet itself makes it work normally again.

I can't say I've noticed any pattern such as your example of skipping tracks vs leaving it to play.
 
I've experienced similar a few times, and it seems to be a tidal / network issue.
Sometimes I can just use the cast icon in the tidal app to reconnect to the wiim; sometimes the wiim only shows as a chromecast device, not a connect device, and a restart of the tidal app or the tablet itself makes it work normally again.

I can't say I've noticed any pattern such as your example of skipping tracks vs leaving it to play.

In my case, if the Tidal app has lost the connection to the device stream (Mini, Pro, Ultra), I simply select “Connect” again. The app then displays the track being played on the device in the app.
However, it is strange that you no longer have the possibility to select the Connect functionality...this is always available for me. However, I have deactivated sleep mode in Android for all music apps, so they can be active in the background.
 
I was having similar issues, but for me the problems would start even sooner: more like 10-15 minutes in. Music would keep playing and I could still see what was playing via the Wiim app on my iPhone but in the Tidal app (either on iPhone or iMac) -- which is my preferred method for controlling a listening session -- my queue and even simply what was currently playing would not keep updating after some amount of time. It was so maddening! First world problem maddening like you said, but nonetheless annoying... Good news is I think I found a fix! Haven't had any of the same problems for the last week or so after making this change. So, basically, you go into your Wiim app - in my case on my iPhone -- and find your Wiim device, click on the gear icon and go to the 'Standby Mode' setting. There, change the sleep feature to something like an hour or perhaps even never. The default was something like 2 minutes if I recall correctly. Anyway, I think I first changed it to 30 minutes and at that setting the problems ceased to happen! Could be a coincidence with an update or something but I'm leaning towards this as being what fixed the problem for me. Good luck!

ps - I will add that it doesn't seem like this should work -- I mean the Wiim clearly isn't going (completely) to sleep because as I said it keeps serving me up music from my originally established queue, but maybe the way this feature is programmed allows it to keep contact with Tidal connect longer
 
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I've been experiencing the same issue with Tidal Connect and my WiiM Ultra. It’s frustrating when the app loses control after a while. Has anyone found a permanent fix for this, or is it something Tidal needs to address in an update?
 
I've been experiencing the same issue with Tidal Connect and my WiiM Ultra. It’s frustrating when the app loses control after a while. Has anyone found a permanent fix for this, or is it something Tidal needs to address in an update?

Did you try the solution I provided yesterday at 7 pm?
 
This has also been suggested elsewhere: "Solution (will vary by phone but the basic idea is the same): go into App Management on your phone. Find the Tidal app and the power settings. Enable 'Allow to run in background'."
 
This has also been suggested elsewhere: "Solution (will vary by phone but the basic idea is the same): go into App Management on your phone. Find the Tidal app and the power settings. Enable 'Allow to run in background'."
Yep, good thing to confirm, for sure, but wasn't the step that fixed the problem for me on my iPhone. Seems like it's the default setting anyway.

Solution for me was found by going to the Wiim app and extending the Standby Mode time.
 
Yep, good thing to confirm, for sure, but wasn't the step that fixed the problem for me on my iPhone. Seems like it's the default setting anyway.

Solution for me was found by going to the Wiim app and extending the Standby Mode time.
Yeah I read that but can see no rhyme nor reason why that should impact a Tidal Connect session especially as the playback hasn’t stopped and the device not gone into standby. It sounds coincidental at best
 
Yeah I read that but can see no rhyme nor reason why that should impact a Tidal Connect session especially as the playback hasn’t stopped and the device not gone into standby. It sounds coincidental at best
Hmmm, it sounds like you personally haven't experienced the issue that all these complaints are about. And "rhyme or reason"? Are you new to computers and phones? ;-) In all seriousness, I tried all kinds of solutions and had no success with anything until I changed the Standby Mode to a longer duration. I encourage anyone have this problem to try this. Btw, I have been a heavy user of Tidal and my Wiim for a couple years now so I do have a great deal of experience troubleshooting these devices. Allowing Tidal to run in the background was never the issue at hand for me -- i.e., it was always set to run in the background whenever I had these problems. Anyway, perhaps I sound a touch defensive but that is only in response to the casual dismissal of my suggestion after having dealt with the problem for a long time. Try it, people, you'll very likely thank me. :-)
 
Unfortunately (?), I never experienced such behaviour as long as music is still playing through Tidal Connect, neither with the WiiM Ultra, nor WiiM Amp, nor WiiM Amp Pro. When playback ends then the Tidal app will disconnect very soon (which I find annoying at times).

So far I have no reason to increase the standby mode delay on any of my WiiMs, so no reason to thank anybody.

I do see apps using Googlecast (like e.g. the native Radio Paradise app) losing contact quite often. It happens when streaming to non-WiiM devices too, and tapping the cast icon fixes it every time. Different topic, but I still mention it because I never found a solution to prevent this. Neither by taming aggressive battery optimisers nor by changing any device settings.
 
In my opinion, it is an understandable and desired behavior of any Android (phone) operating system to work energy-efficiently. In this respect, it is also understandable that after music playback has been transferred to a Connect device, the connection to the “remote control” (the phone is nothing else at this moment) is interrupted. Activating the option in the system settings to allow apps to run in the background can counteract this - but it also behaves differently in the various Android versions with manufacturer adaptations. I have experience with active LG, Samsung, Redmi, Xiaomi and Honor devices, Android versions 9 to 14 (no experience with Apple). It also depends on the app itself. I could imagine that Tidal deliberately disconnects inactive devices in order to avoid unnecessary strain on the servers, while the WiiM app as the network control center deliberately maintains the connection and thus (fortunately) displays the stream permanently.
What I was actually wondering about is the fact that the Tidal app has to be restarted. If I pick up the phone/tablet again after a long time or while playing an album, I simply reconnect via Connect and the playback screen is promptly updated without having to restart the app. This is also possible if the WiFi connection has been disconnected in the meantime.
 
In my opinion, it is an understandable and desired behavior of any Android (phone) operating system to work energy-efficiently. In this respect, it is also understandable that after music playback has been transferred to a Connect device, the connection to the “remote control” (the phone is nothing else at this moment) is interrupted. Activating the option in the system settings to allow apps to run in the background can counteract this - but it also behaves differently in the various Android versions with manufacturer adaptations. I have experience with active LG, Samsung, Redmi, Xiaomi and Honor devices, Android versions 9 to 14 (no experience with Apple). It also depends on the app itself. I could imagine that Tidal deliberately disconnects inactive devices in order to avoid unnecessary strain on the servers, while the WiiM app as the network control center deliberately maintains the connection and thus (fortunately) displays the stream permanently.
What I was actually wondering about is the fact that the Tidal app has to be restarted. If I pick up the phone/tablet again after a long time or while playing an album, I simply reconnect via Connect and the playback screen is promptly updated without having to restart the app. This is also possible if the WiFi connection has been disconnected in the meantime.
I pretty much agree to that this behaviour is logical from the operating system's point of view. But I think it's more than that.

Excluding the Tidal app from power management never changed anything for me, though. I suspect that the app actively disconnects, irrespective of OS settings.

More generally speaking, allowing an app to automatically start in the background is another thing that needs to be considered.
 
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