TIDAL Music: HiFi Sound

The app was working perfectly on my iPhone 14 Pro. I just switched to the 16 Pro and I can’t use it unless I’m connected to WiFi. I tried logging in and out, clearing the cache, deleting and re-downloading and it still does not work. It keeps asking me to refresh but for some reason it thinks I have no internet. Sadly I’m canceling my subscription even though I loved my music quality.

I’ve had Apple Music for 10 years and 3 days into my trial I’ve decided to switch and keep Tidal, it has more music and the playlist are great as well as other things I’m still discovering!

If you’re also looking for an alternative to other music apps, Tidal is worth consideration. ~13.99 a month and you can download music, make playlists and pretty much all other features other music apps offer. My only problem with Tidal is that some songs just… don’t download. I have downloaded playlists, but there are always a handful that will just not download at all, and will basically stay in the “download queue” forever. I haven’t found a way to remove them from the queue without deleting them from my playlist entirely— which I don’t want to do. Also, to download music, if you want like, any progress on your DQ your phone or device needs to be open to the DQ the whole time. If I leave it open, music will download quickly, but if my phone turns off, the song that was downloading will basically stop downloading until you open the DQ again.

It slow and buggy. Nasty 10 minutes of ads between each song. Lot of the new songs are trash. CD music are way better then streaming music online. Worthless app. Heavy battery draining fast on the iPhone. This app is hard to use.

Now that iOS finally allows the AirPods Max to play lossless audio over USB-C, I was excited to try Tidal and enjoy Hi-Res FLAC. But after 24 hours of testing, it’s clear: getting Tidal to reliably send audio over USB-C is an absolute mess. Here’s the issue: Tidal seems to require a Bluetooth connection first in order to recognize the Max’s. Even then, while the app shows “USB-C Audio Line” under outputs, the connection doesn’t turn blue, which indicates Tidal hasn’t established a trusted, exclusive path for lossless playback. The reality? Bluetooth is still interfering, even with a wired connection. To force a true USB-C signal, I have to: 1. Start playback via Bluetooth. 2. Manually disconnect Bluetooth. 3. Disable Bluetooth entirely in iOS. 4. Reconnect the Max’s over USB-C. And even then, Tidal sometimes routes audio to the iPhone speaker, or auto-reconnects Bluetooth anyway. I’ve had to repeat this two or three times just to get Tidal to finally stream over USB-C. I’ve even had to reset the Max’s multiple times because their buttons stopped responding. I’ve since disabled Bluetooth auto-connect and ear detection — but that’s a compromise. These features are useful outside of Tidal. It’s clear this is a shared flaw between Apple (iOS, hardware design) and Tidal, but if Tidal wants to retain users like me, the app needs a manual audio routing toggle — especially for USB-C or external DAC use. And users should know: the AirPods Max are hardware-limited to 24-bit / 48kHz, so you’ll never hear Tidal’s full MAX quality of 24-bit / 96 or 192kHz. That’s not Tidal’s fault — but what is frustrating is that the app doesn’t always clearly show what bit depth or sample rate you’re actually hearing. The orange MAX badge just tells you what the file is — not what’s actually being played to your ears. On the app side: it’s fine. The UI is clean and intuitive. But Spotify is still miles ahead in algorithmic music discovery, playlists, and daily mixes. Tidal lacks personalized AI-driven features — which, for a paid premium service, feels like a miss. I’m okay with using it more like a digital record player where I manually pick albums in lossless quality, but the app should do more to help me discover what to play. Also, Tidal really needs to offer an EQ. iOS doesn’t let users set EQ profiles at the system level for Tidal, and not everyone uses external amps or DACs. A basic in-app EQ would go a long way — even just presets like bass boost, vocal clarity, or bright/neutral options. 3 stars for now. The potential is huge, but the user experience is clunky — and at odds with what Tidal promises. I’ll continue with the trial and revise this review if things improve between iOS, Apple hardware, and Tidal’s handling of lossless USB-C output.

I’ve been a long time fan of Spotify; been on the platform since its inception. My whole music life, every free moment of every day, is spent listening to music. I didn’t realize what I was missing out due to the sound quality restrictions. Spotify’s “high” quality playback is anything but. To compare the two streaming services is honestly laughable. Grateful to finally be actually hearing my favorite music the way it was intended by the artists and producers who pour so much love into their craft.

Just switched from Spotify, and am loving the app so far. I just wish that you could search for a song from the lyrics and that you could filter an artists discography by what songs you’ve liked.

outside of the fairly terrible UX at a base level , nothing ever actually downloads and what does download still buffers and takes so long to load it may as well just not be available offline. i’m tryna make this work but jesus yall - higher so devs and make a real platform please

I swapped to tidal recently, I’m liking it aside from some sluggish response. My main reason for 3/5 is the fact that I can’t search for a playlist while I’m trying to add a song a specific playlist. I do a lot of cataloguing and this has made it significantly more frustrating and tedious. Really disappointed this very basic feature isn’t included in the app.

This app pushes HARD one specific race over all others. For instance you can type any letter say “T” in the top search, and you’d think you’d get suggestions like Taylor Swift? Nope, you get 100% all artists of one specific race. Type L and you are getting a bunch of “lil” “artists” This isn’t just the search it’s the recommendations and the way the whole algorithm is built. Doesn’t matter if you are primarily using the app for classical 18th century music. You are getting rap music pushed on you at every corner. It’s gross. I don’t expect this company to be around much longer. It doesn’t surprise me they’ve done so poorly and are among the lowest used streaming services The irony is the demographic they are targeting largely doesn’t give any care about “Flac audio”. They are streaming compressed YouTube videos, pirating, or using a much more affordable alternative like Spotify The people who invest in hi-fi systems predominantly are not interested in lil Wayne. They want hi res classical, Jazz, rock, world music, sound tracks etc