Hi,
I am, like many others on the web and this forum, looking for ways to, as convenient as possible, stream Tidal Master/Hi-res 24/96 and higher audio to my Squeezebox Touch(I believe the Touch outputs 24/96 max) or any other capable Squeezebox player(like Raspberry Pi), much the same way we today can play local Flac files of 24/192kHz and higher, or stream through the native Tidal app, which is sadly limited to 16/44,1.
I aim in this thread to explore and collect different ways of achieving this, and it doesn't have to be limited only to Tidal, as long as the various methods/apps/plugins/tweaks/links/instructions/tips/ideas also work for Tidal. I hope this thread won't mainly be about MQA, as this is covered in many other threads. I would settle happily for getting only the first MQA unfold of 24/88,2-96 audio, for instance from the Tidal Desktop app, to my players, but if a solution also covers further unfolding steps, higher resolutions and/or MQA passthrough, i would be happy to hear about that here as well!
As my initial attemps and findings were fragmented around in different threads and misplaced under the subject "mysqueezebox.com", and the search for better solutions is still ongoing, I have decided to create its own dedicated thread here, and collect my findings so far.
Having crawled both this forum and the internet extensively, I've so far found 3 potential, but still unsuccessful ways to achieve this:
1. Develop the native MSB Tidal app or a local LMS plugin like Spotty to support streaming Tidal 24/96 with 1st unfold of MQA or full decoding and passthrough to external renderers of higher quality MQA directly (mherger?)
2. Using the Tidal Windows application with its built in 1st unfold of MQA to 24/88,2-96 on a server and stream via "Stereo mix"/a virtual audio cable and the Waveinput plugin, remote controlled from the phone by Unified Remote, or similar
3. Some setup involving OpenHome, BubbleUPnP etc.
4. Other solutions
1. Would be the best solution, but I'm uncertain how to proceed or if theres any hope holding one's breath until this happens? (mherger etc.?)
2. Found a working 24/96 solution, below, for the streaming and remote control in the 2nd point above, with great help from @bpa. Not perfect and very streamlined, though, and still looking for other ways or better remote control than the Unified remote I've found or remote desktop to the server PC.
3. I haven't tried yet, but found some promising posts on the web without complete instructions. I'm also a bit sceptical about installing too much extra on my server outside the Squeezebox ecosystem.
4. I would be very happy to hear tips/ideas!
As the common and thread goal is to get Tidal's(or other streaming services') Hi-Res/Master stream to play with the highest resolution possible on our players, and with the least amount of work/resistance, and the highest ease of use possible, and inside the Squeezebox ecosystem, I'm hoping people could share their thoughts and tips in this thread, by:
I. Posting complete and detailed instructions for any of the above 3 suggested Methods
II. Post maybe existing alternative methods with complete and detailed instructions
III. Upvote or in other ways inspire/motivate/continue the work of the in-house gurus on method no. 1 - The official Tidal plugin, or something similar.
I hope for a populated, alive and motivated forum thread with many good ideas, keeping to the subject and ultimately one or more good solutions to get Hi-Res/Master sound from our Tidal streaming services and easily out of our different Squeezebox players!
Alea iacta est and any help would be greatly appreciated!
Br,
Vegard