Bitrate changes on Tidal album through Plexamp and missing songs in some albums

[EgonHeuson]

Server Version#: 1.28.2.6151
Player Version#: Plexamp 4.4.0

Hello all,
I reopen this thread as I get a same issue with Tidal integration into Plexamp. In my case I have several album that, after a different period of time, are changing from a FLAC/AAC320 bitrate to an AAC 96kbps bitrate. First , when I play the albums with this lower bitrate, the sound is clearly degraded (actually horrible), so it’s not a display problem.

But more than that, the transition to this new bitrate seems, at first sight, totally random. Sometimes it’s directly albums that are under this bitrate when I do a Tidal search via Plexamp (see capture below)

Moreover, as you can see, there are often two versions of the album, one in FLAC and the other in AAC96. But sometimes, as for the 2B Human album here, both versions are in degraded bitrate… Maybe it’s because I already added the FLAC version of the album to my library, I’m not sure.

But as you can see here, if I play the tracks, they are indeed in AAC96, and moreover the sound spectrogram is flat (with white noise or very heavily degraded music being played)

Beyond the presence of different bitrates in the Tidal list in Plexamp, what is more annoying is that some albums have their bitrate changed to AAC96 after a while once added to my library. This has even happened to me during playback, between songs. For example I had the problem between tracks 3 and 4 of the album below. It was playing quietly on my Plexamp player, when, as soon as the 4th track started, it turned into continuous white noise. When I checked the bitrate had changed to AAC96, and more annoyingly the rest of the album had the same change.

In order to solve the problem, I deleted the “problematic” albums from my Plex library, but nothing to do, they remain displayed like that in Plexamp. Whether I put them back in the library afterwards or check them on Tidal via Plexamp.

Of course, I went to Tidal to see if the albums were still in FLAC and no problem on the Tidal side.

Another important piece of information, in the Plex interface on my browser (music tab), I have no problems with all the Tidal albums. They all play perfectly, with a very good sound quality (even if I can’t check the bitrate on this interface, at least I don’t know how to do it ^^). So I guess that it comes from Plexamp and not from the Plex library in general… Strange…
That said, through Plex, when I search on Tidal, I sometimes see 2 different albums for the same album, while on Tidal there is only one, but on the Plex web interface, both albums launch perfectly.

Via plex on my browser:

Via Tidal App on my mac:

Any idea?!

To solve this issue, I haven’t tried to unlink my Tidal account and link it again to see. I may try it sometime.

Finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out another little problem I’ve noticed. Some rare Tidal albums, when displayed through Plexamp or Plex web interface have only certain tracks listed, while the separate Tidal application (or their web interface) displays all the tracks on the album. The most telling example is this: “HOME” from John Butler Trio

Via Tidal app:

Via Plex web interface:

Via Plexamp:

Have you ever noticed this type of problem? Would it be possible to check if you have the problem? Again, even if I remove the album from my library, and put it back in, it doesn’t change anything.

Thank you very much in advance for your help and your time! I hope we can solve these little problems. In any case I can do all the tests you want if needed

Have a nice day!!

[FlaTechNole21]

Yes, I’ve seen the exact same issues as you. No way these issues are unknown as they are obvious.

[EgonHeuson]

Bump!
I confirm this continues and only happens with Plexamp. On the web browser, no problem so far. So sad that I cannot use my wonderful Plexamp App for listening to Tidal

[nibbles]

It’s a good topic with a complex OP, and it might have been overlooked when it wasn’t filed in the PlexLabs forum.

In general to get help

reboot everything then provide:

• a compact set of reproducible steps to the recreate the issue
• a couple of sample tracks that show the issue, zip and drop them in your reply.
• Plexamp logs demonstrating the issue after the reboot
• server logs after the reboot

Like you, I’m sure there’s interest in your Plexamp Tidal working smoothly.
Gathering a bit more evidence in the meantime can’t hurt.

[tgp-2]

tidal keeps multiple versions of some albums (MQA this/that, explicit/clean, deluxe editions, 360 reality audio, atmos, etc.) … we don’t always see all of them, it depends on the app, search method, etc.

the albums that plexamp shows in AAC 96 format … in all cases that I’ve seen, these show as 360 or atmos versions when viewed in the tidal mobile app … don’t know how these versions make it onto the (sometimes reduced/summarized?) list under artist → albums, but I’m guessing AAC 96 is the only format that plexamp can handle for these … hopefully plex team can make some improvements and present us with a FLAC version wherever one exists

for now, a workaround … if you search for an album title and then click the tidal albums section, you should see the list of all available tidal album versions … if there’s a FLAC version that plexamp can play, it should show up here

[EgonHeuson]

@tgp-2 Thanks for this idea! I was also thinking about this possibility at first. But this doesn’t explain some of the behaviors. For example, I have added some albums that where originally in FLAC and that shifted to AAC 96 after some time. Also, these albums are still fully readable using the plex web interface.
The thing that might fit your hypothesis however, is that when there are 2 version of an album, one being a “normal” one and the other a “Master”, plexamp only sees one of the two, and I don’t know which one is used. But your solution doesn’t work here as even if you go to the Tidal Album section, most of the time you only see one of the 2 albums:

But there is something I wondered: could the option Playback/Audio Output/Sample Rate Matching be responsible of something here? What is it about?

Another thing is that since recently, I cannot anymore see the “add to my plex library” option in plexamp, any idea where is has gone? Because it’s still available on the web interface…

This is also gone on my iPhone app:

[EDIT]: Ok I found where the Add to my Library option has gone. It’s under “Add to…” now, while the two options where readily available in the main menu before

@nibbles I’ll track the logs. But just so you know, rebooting the server doesn’t help sadly

[tgp-2]

hopefully a screenshot will help clarify … in plexamp, search for album name and follow the tidal albums header as shown below (not the albums header under the artist home page) …

[EgonHeuson]

Ok I see! Thanks I didn’t understand properly. This way it’s easier to select the remaining high quality albums. But sometimes all the available albums are AAC96 for a specific one… I don’t know how to do then

[EgonHeuson]

Ok, this thread needs an update. I do not know if I’m just unlucky enough to always love the artist for which the Tidal albums are not compatible with, but for more than 3 weeks now, every single album I add from Tidal to my library is not playing correctly.
Basically, either I get this:

With the music not being decoded apparently, or this when Flac is recognized:

Here the issue is indicated by the missing bitrate.
In both cases, it results in a music of a poor quality, especially in the basses which are just abrasives. Basically I cannot use my Tidal account with my plex library anymore.

But that’s not all, since today, I sometimes have the same issue with tracks that are stored on my server, like this one (actually it’s the entire album):

And the worse is that I tried to convert it to 320kbps mp3, to see if it was a compatibility issue, changed the bitrate, etc. Nothing worked! Even when I reconverted my FLAC tracks into AAC, I couldn’t make them playing properly. What’s worse is that my tracks are playing perfectly on iTunes for example. So I really do not know what to do here.
But the reason why I chose to use Plex, and why I took a supportive perpetual licence seems to sadly being fading away…

Also, from time to time, when playing Tidal albums, I get AAC instead of FLAC, eventhough my parameters are to never convert over Wifi:

P.S. I must say that I installed the last version of the Plex server yesterday, maybe this is linked?

[EgonHeuson]

By the way such behavior seems to have been known for a long time sadly (see this post), but unlike what @tgp-2 mentioned, in my case the music is sadly degraded, especially in the basses as I mentioned.