Tidal App For Mac

Jun 03, 2015  Watch video  Tidal's desktop app will offer access to 35 million songs and 75,000 videos, gapless play, as well as support for varying audio sources, such as Mac Airplay and DAC. Review title of Andrew Finally home in the Windows Store. A fully functional (including studio masters support) Tidal app is finally in the Windows Store. It's just a repackaged version of the desktop app - and that's perfectly fine.

Tidal has begun serving up high-res audio as a (currently) free addition to its ‘HIFI’ level of streaming, and you can (usually) enjoy 60 days of free trial to give it a listen. BUT there are a good few extra steps to make sure you’re hearing what they’re offering, especially on a Mac. DESKTOP APP ONLY First up, the high-res ‘Masters’ albums will only play from the desktop version of Tidal, available for Windows 7+ and OS X 10.8+. Playing Tidal on your smart device or through a browser won’t deliver high-res results.

For Mac OS, you download the app, open it from your Downloads folder to mount it, then click that to open the window shown right and drag Tidal into your Applications folder as prompted. Then go to Applications and open it. FIND THE MASTERS! At first Tidal wasn’t good at listing files by quality, because prior to the introduction of Masters, everything was the same. Two things have changed that recently. Firstly on the home page you can go to the 'Albums' or ‘Playlists’ section and there is a ‘Masters’ tab at the far right (above) — click this and then ‘Show More’.

On our most recent visit this yielded a list of over 500 albums, yet Tidal has stated there are “thousands” available. Still more usefully Tidal is now putting an 'M' next to Masters albums, as below, thereby distinguishing which of several versions will play at high-res for those with a Masters-level subscription. (The 'E' next to Presence on the right indicates 'Explicit', which has us stumped, unless Plant transgressed by daring to mention cocaine in For Your Life.). NOW FIX YOUR MAC But Mac users haave an extra task, since Macs do not automatically adjust their output frequency for your USB DAC when the file-type changes.

If you leave it on the default, it'll output 44.1kHz CD quality regardless of what Tidal is playing. Open the Mac’s ‘Audio MIDI Setup’ utility (it’s in Applications/Utilities, or just search for it), select your output device and the Output tab, and you’ll see what’s currently going out (as on this screengrab). It’s most likely showing 44.1kHz regardless of what Tidal is playing, so you won’t be hearing high-res audio. Your choices are to change this manually every time you play a different format (inconceivably inconvenient - and prone to error since some albums, such as Richard Hawley, are at 88.2kHz rather than 96kHz, with no way of knowing), or to use a frequency-following program such as Amarra Tidal to do it for you. But Tidal can help through its own settings • Use Tidal’s settings and switch the Streaming/Sound Output option to address your DAC directly, rather than through System Default audio (above). • Then click the little ‘cog-wheel’ settings icon which will appear next to the name of your DAC, and select ‘Use Exclusive Mode’ (below).