So I have a Plex Pass and recently added the Tidal HiFi (8,99) Subscription. So I should get Tidal Music in Master Quality. In the Tidal App it works perfect, it shows “Master” when I play music there.
However if I play the same track via Plexamp it shows only ACC 320 Quality.
THe only info I found is, that Plex Players do not support MQA, does this mean Tidal does only provide MQA and MP3 Quality?
You cannot access the MQA quality music from the Plex clients. They work with Tidal’s native apps but not from inside Plex.
So do I have to select a different file or does Tidal not provide Flac files if there is already a MQA version?
Hello @Asathor,
Sadly this is quite a big issue for now for me. I cannot succeed in having a correct quality for all my Tidal tracks added to my Plex library. In the best case they show AAC320kbps, but when I get FLAC (because the tracks encoding is compatible with Plex, which means no MQA) music is of very poor quality. See here for a small description I’ve done of the issue I encountered. If you find a solution, I’d be happy to ear it 
Tidal stores the files in multiple qualities. They only return AAC and FLAC versions to Plex. This is controlled by Tidal, Plex cannot request a specific version. It’s based on your subscription.
When Tidal changed their plans, this did cause some issues, which I think may be what happened to you @EgonHeuson. When using the Add to Library option, this adds a link to the file from Tidal. This link points to a specific version. The target for these links can change over time when Tidal shuffles things around so you may not be getting what you expect. If this is the case, remove the item from your library, reload Plex Web to clear any cached info, and re-add the content from Tidal. This will update the links to the current target.
Hello @anon18523487,
Thanks for the info. I’ll try this. And I’m aware that this is not entirely due to Plex for sure. Still, having to erase and reload many albums is not very convenient though. Also, In my case I basically have issue on every album on Tidal or almost. I’d be surprised if it was only a matter of links sadly 
Also, the FLAC sound worse in my case than the AAC320, and I do not know why but I do not have the 44.1Hz bitrate written anymore when it’s Flac. I used to have it.
By the way, is their any way to fix a specific bitrate or file format for the Tracks coming from Tidal in the plex library? Maybe by converting every track before playing this would solve my issue ? 
What do you mean by fix? We get what we get from Tidal. Can’t change that. If you mean to update the links, then no, we can’t do that. Imagine adding a bookmark to a website. If the page that bookmark points to changes or no longer exists, there’s not way to know what the new correct page would be without finding the page manually. Hence, the remove and re-add.
I mean to have the possibility to ask for the specific transcoding of the Tidal tracks (and not those of the personal library) into a specific bitrate. Especially as you can convert tracks on the go, so I wondered if we could convert specifically the tracks from Tidal, and not the one from the personal library, or with a different bitrate/file format for each?
Like for example: “transcode all track from Tidal to AAC320” and “tracks from library to MP3320” for example.
What would that accomplish? You’re going to lose quality when transcoding. If it’s already bad for you, this will not make it better.
My assumption is that Plex has trouble to play some bitrates and tracks format. As an example, all the tracks from a defined album in Tidal are running perfectly, but when I play them through Plex they are quite degraded. Also there is this AAC96 auto-conversion (or wrong labelling) that shows that at some point Plex tries to read the tracks before playing them. So why not try to trasncode everything into a format that would be better played. Again, here the issue doesn’t come from Tidal, as all their tracks are playing well, but from the Plex interpretation of them.
Plex does no interpretation of the data. What you see is what is being returned to Plex from Tidal. I have not heard of any reports where Plex is handling playback incorrectly. Do you have any music in your own libraries with AAC96 and can reproduce the issue? Also, what client are you using? Some cannot handle AAC for music so PMS may already be doing some sort of conversion.
Are you comparing against the actual Tidal app? They support MQA so you may be getting that in their app. Is the AAC96 you see after doing the remove/re-add? In most cases, you should be getting FLAC. Can you provide an album so I can check what you should be getting?
For sure! And actually there are many discussions ongoing on this topic, like mine here where I describe a ton of tracks and album where bitrates are wrong. 
And it is also quite reported by others like here, or here.
So to give you some other examples (but I already have the screenshots in the first thread I mentioned) I have issues these days with these albums for example:
- Arcane - Arcane from league of legend
- Freya Ridings - Freya Ridings
- Dance Fever - Florence + the Machine
- C’est quoi tom nom ? - Blankass
- Creusons, Piochons - The Celtic Tramps
- Give me the future + Dreams of the past - Bastille
and so many others. I can send you the logs also if you like.
And no I do not have the issue of AAC96 with my own library tracks. they all play well, at the expected bitrate. Fortunately at the same time because otherwise I couldn’t even use Plex
And 90% of the time I use the Plexamp app on my Macbook or iPhone.
And as for Tidal, yes, Im using both their iOS app, MacOS app, and also the web interface. And whatever the version of the album I select (Master, etc.) or the app, it plays correctly. 
P.S. I use an E10k and a Sennheiser HD650 to listen to the music
Also what is, to me, really really strange, is that the Plexamp app is playing different bit rates and file format for the same track in my library (coming from Tidal) depending on the device I play it on. As an example of what I get right now on Plexamp on :
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My Macbook:
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My iPhone:
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But on my iPhoen when streaming to my Headless Plexamp on my Raspberry Pi:
By the way, the 2 first play bad, while the last one is ok
I even took a video on how it changes its bitrate when I shift from the local Plexamp on my iPhone to the headless Plexamp on my Raspberry Pi. I can send it to you if you like.
If only I could get the AAC320 also on my Macbook and when playing locally on my iPhone That may help to solve my issues
Same for this track for example:
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On my Macbook before playing the album:
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Then on my macbook while playing:
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On my iPhone when playing locally:
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And on my iPhone when streaming to my headless plexamp:
Are these being played from the Tidal section or from your server after you “Added to Library”?
Also, I’m really not sure what PlexAmp does. Are you able to reproduce the issue with the official Plex for iOS app? If so, can you provide me the ios logs after playing one of these. Please pick a song and stick with that for testing purposes. Do not jump around to different songs, that makes it harder to diagnose.
Ok sorry. I wanted to show it was not an isolated case.
Regarding your questions:
- Yes it’s when I have them added to my library.
- No I didn’t try the official App (plexamp is not official?), I will
but I tried on the web interface too, and while I cannot see the bitrate, I have kind of the same issue I guess.
I’ll send you the iOS logs tonight Thank you for your time!!
PlexAmp is a Plex Labs project. This is an experimental client that can do things differently than our official app as proof of concepts and to test out new features.
It is odd that the AAC streams sound better for you. FLAC is lossless so it has the most data. AAC is lossy.
So tested it on PLex Desktop. There it shows HiFi quality, streaming the same song on Plexamp shows AAC. So this is an issue on Plexamp side I guess.
Still makes the Tidel integration a bit useless atm as Plexamp is the main app I listen to music on, when I’m nopt at the PC (where I use a non-plex software).
PlexAmp should be able to play flac (i.e. HiFi) files. Are you playing from the Tidal library or from your server after doing “Add to Library”? If the latter, try removing and readding the album.
I directly play them from the tidal library but I tested adding it to my library and there it is the same.
