Volumio to support Tidal Connect (2024)

I’m not affiliated with them in anyway.

This might be good news to anyone who is planning on to buy a streamer just for this feature.

Suit said:

Thank you so much!. Working to perfection here with my Digiberry Digi Pro. Followed your instructions and voila! Can play Tidal with all apps in MQA. Only thing not working (at the moment) is control with Volumio.

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See Also

Best OS/server to stream Tidal/Qobuz via Raspberry PIUsing Tidal Connect on a raspberry pi without Volumio

Use the Tidal App to control when you play Tidal. When you switch to Volumio (MPD...), you need to stop and exit Tidal App (or on Tidal App choose This device mode).

Glasvegas said:

If this is so easy, why are Volumio developers taking so long to create a Tidal Connect plug in?

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Because redistributing binaries you've pulled out of another product's firmware is a copyright violation, and they don't want the whole project taken down by a DMCA takedown. That's my guess anyway - it looks like this one was pulled from an iFi product based on the filename. Doing it legally is more difficult. You can try to reverse engineer it, but that gets difficult when encryption gets involved. I think is why AirPlay2 and the Chromecast client end have been a problem. It can also lead to compatibility issues (you've not quite worked everything out correctly) or sudden breakage when API changes go live and you have some new stuff to work out. Or you can take the route they are, getting into licensing discussions so you can have access to the 'secret sauce' with full compatibility and notice of protocol changes before they happen. This means that the Tidal part is unlikely to be open source, and could well be a paid-only thing.

quatmo said:

Use the Tidal App to control when you play Tidal. When you switch to Volumio (MPD...), you need to stop and exit Tidal App (or on Tidal App choose This device mode).

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Works very well indeed! Thank you. I've noticed that for some reason I cant connect to volumio Audirvana over DLNA anymore, even if I stop the server. Is there a specific reason that might explain this behavior? Once again thanks for all your help. Having a lot of fun

somebodyelse said:

Because redistributing binaries you've pulled out of another product's firmware is a copyright violation, and they don't want the whole project taken down by a DMCA takedown. That's my guess anyway - it looks like this one was pulled from an iFi product based on the filename. Doing it legally is more difficult.

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https://community.volumio.org/t/adding-tidal-connect/42022/74

Great news, and of course Orchard Audio's PecanPi Streamers already support this feature.

I'll try to answer some of your questions....

yes, you need the Tidal player/controller running on another device. Having Tidal Connect enabled on a device just enables that device as a playback/renderer/endpoint for Tidal...not as the controller

yes, you need to pay for Tidal and Volumio separately. The Tidal fee is for the base streaming service, Volumio packages Tidal connect with some other features as part of its premium pay service...although the Volumio premium cost is fairly minimal

You have to run Tidal Connect on RPi with an OS that supports it. Right now, Volumio is the only one that supports it (at least legally)...interestingly, Volumio certified Tidal Connect running on their Primo player but the general position seems to be that it will work on any platform that you can run Volumio.

One note.....its my understanding that the current Volumio Tidal Connect support does include support for MQA but Volumio intends to add that capability later. Some will view this as a problem, others a benefit.

Last comment....I think Tidal is going about this all wrong. Spotify decided to support an open source connect endpoint (or at least look the other way) which means that customers have more options to easily stream Spotify content than Tidal (not to mention a distinct price advantage). If Spotify keeps support for Open Source clients when they release their HIrez service, it will be yet another reason to ditch Tidal for Spotify.

Thank you for the explanation. Now I get it, tidal connect is not Open Source.

Volumio adds some features. from their page: with "minimal operating system", with "Various Audio related tweaking for best audio performances, Integrated WebRadio directories, Mount CIFS and NFS Network Attached Storage, with an auto-discovery function, Plugin support with new functions available like Spotify and Digital Room Correction, Multilanguage with a growing number of translations available".

So as I understand volumio tries to take over some of the Roon market.

I suppose the "trick" is that probably in practice it turns out that, for some reason, you need most expensive plan that is 67 EUR / year and that aproaches almost 70% of Roon annual pricing. And you can not buy lifetime plan (that in case of Roon in IMO much too expensive with $700, but at least you have the option if you don't want to pay every month higher bills).

mash said:

One note.....its my understanding that the current Volumio Tidal Connect support does include support for MQA but Volumio intends to add that capability later. Some will view this as a problem, others a benefit.

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That could be a problem if you don't have a DAC that supports MQA. Tidal appears to be moving to MQA only tracks. So if Volumio doesn't do the MQA "first unfold" as e.g., Roon does, then quality on a non-MQA DAC would be compromised.

DHT 845 said:

I just hope for direct installation of Spotify Connect on Raspberry Pi 4B

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Spotify Connect is already available for Raspberry Pi 4 and 4B (Moode, Volumio and others). However, I understand that Spotify would not cooperate and the Raspberry Pi implementation was created by independent engineers who reverse engineered Spotify Connect and published it as open source. Spotify HiFi support will probably require changes and may take some time to become available.