XXHighEnd

Hi
I just installed the new version 2.04.
I was playing a bit with Tidal and in principle, it works very well. The one thing I have a very hard time with is actually finding stuff.

One example:

I was trying to find the Handel Messiah with Emmanuelle Haïm (2014)
I tried various search term i used in the Tidal desktop app.
I tried Messiah, Emmanuelle Haïm etc.
The album I am looking for does not turn up.

So my question is, how to easily find stuff in Tidal with XXhighend?

It seems the big challenge comes with classical albums, with Pop it is easier since the artist name usually brings up the correct results.

Any tips and pearls are highly appreciated.

Thanks, Michael

Hi Michael - Nasty example this is !

Well, it works, AFTER you know how they store it. And this IS a problem.
If you look at the "Artist part" of the Albums below, you can see what I looked for. But I could only do that after Tidal showed it to me first. See last picture for one of them. The other was different (just under Handel) ...

Peter

Peter thanks.

Classical titles seem really difficult. Maybe there is a way to make the whole searching a bit easier in XXHighend.

The Album I was looking for is actually a different one, and I still was not able to get it.
See attached pic.

Regards, Michael

ok.... Handel: Messiah did the trick.

That means for complicated stuff first figure out the exact title in Tidal app.

Regards, Michael

here is another one

This one i cannot prepare the streams.
The album is not downloaded.

Tidal issue?

Regards, Michael

Michael,


No, ... I suppose you don't know how to do it ... :)

The Artist is Emannuelle Haïm. Of course (and again) you must know that, but the Tidal program tells you.
Fill that (precisely !) in the Artist Name text field (in the Search screen) and then you get the below.

Peter

Nah, RTFM issue. haha.
Yellow border = Format is not in 16/44.1. In Tidal too you can see it's not "Hi-definition" because the "HIFI" text is not lit.
XXHighEnd won't play "MP3" from Tidal ...

Peter

Hi Peter

Thanks for pointing out that not all streams on Tidal are indeed Hifi, was not aware of that.

I have some more searching struggles. Here's a tough one I have no solution yet.
Compilations.

80 Totally 80s Hits
Various Artists

No solution found yet to have it appear in XXHighEnd.

Maybe there is a way to make the search feature in XXHighEnd more robust?
Meaning that when I enter a correct substring, the album would still appear.

But in my example there must be another reason. It is not showing up when I exactly enter the Album Title.

Any thoughts?

Michael

Yes, that one is too difficult for me too. :)

I now see that I don't allow to search for Album Names only, and that is the problem here;
So combined with "Various Artists" as the Artist, this now "fails" on the number of result lines. So there are so many "Various Artists" albums that the list is truncated before yours surfaces.


I assume you mean INcorrect ...
Nah, because the same problem is implied as just described : you will get so many results that you won't be able to choose from it (plus that you wait forever until the result is there).

Inside information :
The problem is exactly the other way around than you'd expect - the standard means of Tidal to search for you (for a program like XXHighEnd) is that when you search for Deep Purple, it also comes up with Deep Forest and The Deep and whatever, and also Deep Purple. This already presents you a list where you can not choose from. It is thus *me* who makes the list shorter for you, by checking for the exactness. You would go crazy if I would not do that.

Also, there's so much more which doesn't work as you think or expect. Example : Genres. So you can search for Genres you thought ? Well, it would be the most helpful to now minimize the list, hence allowing more "wild card". But ... while Tidal shows you Genre search and think it works, it doesn't show you that maybe one out of 1000 (10000 ?) have a Genre filled in its registration. So what Tidal shows you is just nothing (of it all). Meanwhile, we can not use it at all, because it is just not registered.
Record label and (really) dozens of things (data) more, are all not registered. But they are provided ! ... empty. Such a waste / shame actually because all this data would help so much for searching.

Btw, this problem with the Various Artists should be solved when I allow to look for the Album Name only after all. But I did not allow it, so far, because that too can easily come up with much too much. I didn't try, but many could be named "under the moon" (for stupid example). But I can allow it and we'll see.
Something else : You are not going to tell me that you explicitly look for such an album, right ? (you wouldn't be aware that it exists). Still, I have many examples myself with Various Artists and I can't even think of where to begin for searching for them. See below - and I have 800 or so of these, all in the Genre Ambient. In Tidal I'm confident I can't even find one, OR I make it so that all of Various Artists are presented which will be a literal Million. And oh, I will be able to "sub search" that, but the point is that these million need to be downloaded first for their meta data. It is just too much ...

Peter

Try 2.04b (see below, unzip over your current 2.04 folder).
With that you can Search for Albums only.
(don't tell anyone, but I think it was not really intentional that it did not want to work)

The super seriously complete 80 hits of the Totaled 80s remains unfound. BUT, I think that is for me over here. I also don't see it in the Tidal program.

Peter

The fact that you did not find the title might be also related that I signed up for Tidal in the US.
In this way, I pay the lower US monthly fee.
But that could also imply regional differences in the offering of albums.

Regards, Michael

Hi Peter,
It's been a while. Recently I tried to prepare some new Tidal tracks again with no success. I had been preparing tracks from Tidan before with about 90% successful rate. But this time around I got all yellow bordered items, for both MQA and non-MQA tracks. My music PC has internet connection, and all track informations except "Streams" folder are downloaded. My tidal subscription is Premium, not HIFI. Could this be an issue?

The folders of all yellow bordered items have TidalAlbumErr.tst files.

Examples of my yellow bordered items:
121424706
35106004
34409408
11791263

Hi there Zheng,

I tried them all, and for me the first (CD01) of the Back was tested and works, the second does not come up at all, the third (Brahms) the CD01 is Yellow and the CD02 is OK, and the fourth again does not come up at all.

But as we know this may not tell all because it could be the difference between Netherlands and HK (I hope I recall that correctly).

We might try this :

1. In your XX folder there's a TidalSession.dat file; delete that. Restart XXHighEnd and retry. This will force a re-login at Tidal.

2. If #1 did not help, please email (not attach here) the now new TidalSession.dat file. This also requires your Tidal email (account) and password. You could change the password for the occasion, so I can try it for say this week; after that you can change it back to what it was.
Of course if you don't like me to do this, then it is OK (but won't help either :)).

It can well be the Premium vs HiFi account indeed. Are you new to Tidal ? Maybe I forgot, but I don't recall having a Premium account (while still MQA is allowed). So with the help of your account data I can test it.
But possibly #1 already helps, but in that case I'd say that something must have changed underway and that at first you were logged in as HiFi account, while now (suddenly ?) it requires Premium.

I don't think I am doing anything with it. But for example, if you have the even lower rated account (??) that only allows MP3 albums, all would emerge with yellow borders because XXHighEnd tests for them not to be MP3 and "skips" them (yellow border) if not Redbook after all. N.b.: It works like this because sometimes what's promised as Rebook, at the "playing" level turns out to be MP3. This is rather a rights issue than something wrong, although the "promise" regarding you (which is also related to the country - HK) having the rights, is then a bug (somehow). Btw, this is determined on a per track basis, and when you (/ HK) do not have the rights to the first track, the album will be yellow bordered and inaccessible for Playback. If the first track is OK and a next track does not have the rights for you, that next track(s) is just skipped (the track number will lack in the sequence of tracks for the album, after it has been Prepared).

Long story, but it may help you to debug the situation.

I am not assuming that this is related to the current HK situation (if you are in HK at all), but this could also be the case, far sought.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi Peter,
As always I got from you a full detailed response! What else I can say but a big THANKS! Here are some clarification and steps I’m going to do:

I’m residing in upstate New York.
First I’m going to try to upgrade to HIFI level.
If issues persist, I’ll delete that file and restart anew.
If still not working, I’ll email you the file and login credential.

I will report results here. Thanks again!

Ok it looks like an issue of Tidal subscription. Once I upgraded to HIFI account, the above issues disappeared. Except for the third Brahms CD01, I prepared the rest successfully.

OK Zheng, thank you for the feedback !


Is Premium "lower" than Hi-Fi ?


PS: But in NY someone named Trump is in control. That could have caused anything.  :wacko:

Yes Premium is lower than HiFi.
You never know, we might be able to get rid of him! ;)