Tidal Hi-Fi - partial track load bug back again?

[paulmack]

Hi All - have any other Tidal Hi-Fi users noticed a lag in the tracks loading in version 3.1.8?
The waveform appears completely but at about 3 1/2 bars in the audio just stops.
Eventually (after a minute or two) it will get past this point and play the entire track but it doesn’t leave a lot of time for cueing and getting your mix ready.
It reminds me of this issue which was resolved a couple of versions back:

Tidal 'Hi-Fi' - only first 6 beats appear in the waveform!

Hi All - this is my first post but I have been using Djay Pro for many years. Over the last week I have developed a new problem:- When I load a track from my Tidal ‘Hi-Fi’ subscription only the first 5 or 6 beats are showing in the waveform. I know sometimes it takes a while to load but these never load, no matter how long I wait. I have upgraded to the latest version of both Djay and Tidal and cannot resolve the issue. The affected tracks were all working fine last week! Sometimes the com…

Or is it just me?..

Thanks,
Paul.

[Lucas_Frederic]

Just want to bump this post. I have noticed the exact same issue for about two weeks now. One observation is that Tidal announced its basic version was free and that all paying users were now premium users around the same time this issue started occurring for me. Not sure if it could be related.

Another observation is that I dont have this issue with Beatport.

[Emily]

Hi guys, Thanks for bringing this to our attention, and sorry to hear about the problem with the TIDAL HiFi track waveforms not loading as expected. We’re monitoring this issue closely as it does seem similar to the old bug you mentioned, @paulmack.

One possibility is that this is related to the network speed, since Hifi files are larger than normal. As a starting point to troubleshoot this, our team has asked if you guys could please try testing the network speed with speedtest.net and send us the results at the time this error occurs.

Thanks in advance for your help troubleshooting.

[paulmack]

Hi Emily,

The speedtest result is a download of over 70 mbps so network performance is not the issue.
It is so eerily reminiscent of the earlier bug I reported except the full waveform loads almost immediately but for over a minute or so only the first 2 and a half bars play. I am on version 3.1.9.
Please look into this as at the moment it feels like we are taking 2 steps forward and 1 back!
Thanks,
Paul.

[Emily]

Thanks, Paul. We appreciate your efforts. I’ve passed this information to our Development Team, and I’ll be in touch with any new updates here.

[Mic_Mac]

I gave up on Tidal hi-fi on djay pro about 6 months ago.

[Djdavidjones]

Any update on Tidal HIFI tracks taking long to load? Serato might be calling my name since this a ongoing issue for the past year.

[DJ_Norm]

This has been occuring for me as well. I kept it on Normal quality since this started happening to me a few months ago. I switched the quality setting to “High” the other day which doesn’t seem to give me too much of an issue, although needle searching/skipping does take a few seconds to load which is why Normal quality is more reliable. I have used LAN since the beginning and Hi-Fi never loaded as slow as it does now.

[E_Flem]

I had 3 hotspots/wifi and it still was acting up. This bug is wasting us money on Tidal.

[Djdavidjones]

My tracks showed fully loaded and they cut off halfway during a couple of my sets. I had to keep turning the quality back to high. It was embarrassing for me and the program. I made it know it was the program. This issue has been going on for the past year and yet it’s always “the team is looking into it.” How long they need to look we telling y’all the issue. I don’t believe this photo either. I hope DJ Algorithm proves me wrong but until then will not be my #1 program.

[dj_romy_fi]

I think the problem might be related to the handling of metadatafiles
(https://help.algoriddim.com/hc/en-us/articles/360014912211-Where-does-djay-Pro-store-playlists-cue-points-and-other-data-)
I.e those files are never deleted.

When you do the analysis the .metadata file is created and it won’t never be deleted.
Even if you delete all files from your local music database.

So your local storage will fill up with metadatafiles even if you’ve just played a song once.

As performance point of view (at least in old fashion HD) => when there was too many files in the hd, the search was getting slow and eventually there was a need for defragmentation when the HD was starting to be too full.

So what will happen when you’ve not added the song to your local music database:
djPro needs to go through all the files in the metadata folders and it needs to find correct file which maps to the TIDAL song id info.

But if you store the song data in local music database:
the location of the metadata file is stored to the database with the TIDAL song id
=> search is fast as the file path is known
=> metadata file load can start much sooner

So please check and report these

• how many songs you have on your local music database
• how many metafiles you actually have
• check also local storage size vs. how much free space there is
• if hd is getting full => all apps are getting slower

[dj_romy_fi]

Let’s continue…:

Let’s consider that we have analyzed the song with low quality (square wave) and stored the metadata with that kind of signal.

Now in high quality we actually are receiving the Sine Wave kind of singal.

What will happen is that djapp need to somehow map the new high quality data to the stored low quality version. If the data is too different, it can’t load and show the low quality data (like match the high and lows to the same “time stamp”).

[Djdavidjones]

Thanks for the info. Never knew the metadata files were there. I went and deleted all the metadata files and the songs seemed to load faster. I have not played a whole set yet to see if they cut off any half way through the show but far as trial and error that seemed to work for song load speed. Will keep up to date. Thanks

[dj_romy_fi]

It would be nice to know how to “force” re-analysis of files i.e. how to force updating the metadata files.

The stupid thing is that if I delete a song from database, the metadata trackanalysis file won’t be deleted.

[GKF]

How do you delete the metadata?

[dj_romy_fi]

The trac kanalysis data can be found as described

Where does djay Pro store playlists, cue points, and other data?

But the problem is: the file name itself is cryptic and you won’t really know what file is related to what song

I’ve deleted all files from that structure couple of times, but then you need to reanalyze or play all songs to recreate those files.

[Anders]

Thanks for your analysis @dj_romy_fi. That’s not quite how djay works though. A couple of notes:

• Track analysis data (i.e. .djayMetadata files containing e.g. beat grids and overview waveforms) is always stored in the “Metadata” folder, irrespective of whether a track has been added to “My Collection” in djay. And djay will use the same metadata file for a track irrespective of whether you load a track from the TIDAL source directly or from one of your playlists in djay.
• djay doesn’t have to search for metadata files, it can find them instantly by using a unique identifier of the track (which again is stays the same irrespective of where the track is being loaded from). It never has to go through all the files in the metadata folder.
• We handle the same track being loaded with different quality settings.

I hope this helps to shed some light on these metadata files (although I realize this doesn’t help with the original topic here).

[dj_romy_fi]

I was hoping to get some deeper info for this

So the metadata file contains

• beatgrid
• waveform overview

So for this sounds that you have some kind of sync issue:
ie when song is playing read and show the wave form and the beatgrid from the metadata file

It’s still questionable “bug” or “feature”:

• load a new track to player (which never have been stored to “My Collection”)
• metadata file will be created
• don’t store the track to “My Collection”
• don’t play the track
• close the app
• the metadata file is never deleted

2nd step:

• add a new track to local playlist the “My Collection”
• delete the track from “My collection”
  => the metadata file is never deleted

[paulmack]

Thanks for this info Anders (and for @dj_romy_fi for the ideas). Deleting all metadata may help with the loading of files, as described by @Djdavidjones, but I really do not want to lose the analysis, cue points etc from my library.
Can we please have some kind of update from the dev team on where we are with this issue?
It is even more frustrating as the ‘Tidal Hi-Fi bug’ was originally raised last year, apparently ‘fixed’ and now it has crept back in again. I too am on the verge of ditching Djay and just investing in Denon Prime / Engine as this is way too unreliable. Sorry!

[paulmack]

For sure - if you analyse a bunch of songs in ‘normal’ quality and then switch to Hi-Fi you will have a nightmare on your hands. All of the grids, cue points etc will be way out and it seems there is no way to easily ‘re-analyse’ the track (unless I am missing a trick). Only way round it is to painfully adjust the grid markers, tempo etc manually. This is not a great experience…