Beware of Tidal's low quality stream, even with HiFi subscription.
The audio path dot next to the song title in Roon turns from glowing blue to a dull yellow. Hovering over the dot says "Signal Path: Low Quality" and the Roon signal path dialog says Tidal is streaming "AAC 48kHz," not "FLAC 44.1kHz." And it sounds like shit. Even the youtube videos of these songs sound better.
examples:
Keith Urban/Hairy Carrie Underweary - "The Fighter"
Gotye - "Somebody That I used to Know"
Sickeningly, when I play the Karaoke versions of these two songs, I do get the FLAC 44.1kHz and it sounds much better.
So beware of the AAC stream from Tidal HiFi! There is no warning, no explanation for why it sounds so bad. If I didn't have Roon showing the stream resolution I would only have the reduced audio quality to go by. And because Tidal upsampled them from mp3 to AAC 48kHz they think it's OK for HiFi. It has that closed in, clostrophpobic upsampled feeling Dave was warning about couple days ago.
Both of these songs made pretty big splashes in the pop world in the last 5 years. Gotye hit #1 in every US popular genre chart, was #1 for the year 2012, sold 8M, and was a very innovative sound that nobody has been able to copy. The Fighter hit #2 weekly country, and #7 2017 country, sold 1M. So it's kinda sad that Tidal doesn't have them available in CD resolution.
Has anybody else noticed this AAC low quality stream coming from Tidal HiFi? Is this something new that I haven't noticed before? Thanks for any opinions and comments!