XXHighEnd

General

Watch out please : What's in the Tidal Tutorials is by no means meant as a negative of any kind; not directly and not implied. However, it is useful information on how we approach a service like Tidal and how XXHighEnd and you thus need to deal with it - in the end to our benefit; You will run into things that remain hidden for you with normal direct Tidal (player) usage.

First off, it must be 100% clear that we use Tidal in the realm of the best Sound Quality possible;
We do NOT use Tidal because we can obtain music for a perceived low price;
We use Tidal because we can obtain music we otherwise may not be able to BUT we do not accept any concessions because of that. SQ is ahead of all.

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One of the key points in XXHighEnd is that we can apply asynchronous streaming, which virtually is the same as download and then play. But this is two-folded :

1. When there's a normally downloaded "stream" we can apply 100% the same as we always do and this is crucial.

2. When we play back a static file we can be assured that nothing influences the SQ via (Internet) back doors.

Ad 2.
Let's keep in mind that we do everything and all to eliminate Services and Processes and CPU usage and other consumption, so would we like to worsten that again ?

Outside of the above, in our view it is so that no streaming can meet our demands of super audio quality to begin with.
Of course, it is the same subject as #2, but now we must think more from the perspective of why we, for example, do not like CD Players any more; they carry "influences" we don't like (laser, error-prone CD reading, etc.) and we avoid those by means of using a computer (which its own down sides, but alas).
That it is cumbersome at times to achieve a steady and fast enough stream, is quite something else, but that too weighs in (if we perceive a hiccup we must be dead sure it's our PC/Player settings, and not an Internet hiccup we hardly can know about).

And so all has been done to make the Tidal playback exactly equal to the normal playback.
But it is still not so easy ...

When we look at our "normal" catalogue, we can observe that the quality we have in that, is the quality we were interested in. We chose that at the purchase (of the, say, CD). Not so with Tidal;

At least at this moment, Tidal does not provide data on the origine of the albums. Sadly, someone over at Tidal did not think about the cruciality of such data, when it is about "high quality CD material" (16/44.1) in the first place. So, there's an album with tracks, but what version from what year etc. ... and all the so many data we tend to collect and register ... it is not there or often wrongly there.

The above is a tad worse than you can imagine at this moment; funny thing is also that you don't really see (through) this when you'd be digging the normal Tidal playback software. Because ... that does not allow you much to "dig" as XXHighEnd can do in her first version of it. And that already contains piles of tricks to let it work in the first place. Side note : this is related to the standard "wild card" operation Tidal works with. You'll get too many trees to see the forest and will not arrive at the stage of bothering. This is too hard to explain, but you will see it happening once you use XXHighEnd to search, and only then you will see a nice list of things which are really there and of which you only then say "but *that* is not right !".

To see happening in real life what this is about, just follow the Tidal - How to use (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3368.0) Tutorial where a random Artist was taken to create that Tutorial.

How to start with Tidal

Go to www.Tidal.com and choose "Try Now" in the top of the screen. Next click on the picture at the right side :

(http://www.stordiau.nl/XXHighEnd/Tidal31.png)
... and not the left one (XXHighEnd won't be able to play any of the "AAC" (MP3) low-quality Albums).
The monthly fee for the Tidal "Hi-Fi" service is, as you see, 19.99 euros but depending on where you are it is 19.99 USDollars or 19.99 (GBP) Great British Pounds.

It is good to remember that mentioned 30 day free trial indeed is free for 30 days, with full functionality. If you cancel the subscription before the 30 days expire, you haven't payed anything. Otherwise it's an automated payment via PayPal each month and the first payment will happen after 30 days, automatically.

Watch out : You do need an XXHighEnd license or otherwise "Unauthorized" messages will be your share.

Future

XXHighEnd 2.03 is the first version of XXHighEnd using Tidal and it does it in its most simplified form (think Search Facilities). Much more is to come, a bit depending on the enthusiasm of its users.