Tidal Connect Stream Test – Raspberry Pi 4 vs Raspberry Pi 5

MyVolumio
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Tidal Connect Stream Test – Raspberry Pi 4 vs Raspberry Pi 5

I’m new to Volumio and have been running a comparison test between two Raspberry Pis (Pi 4 and Pi 5) to evaluate how Tidal Connect handles audio streams through different hardware interfaces.

Setup:

• Pi 5 → Allo DigiOne

• Pi 4 → Audiophonics AES

• Both feed into a Bricasti M1se DAC for monitoring

I switch between the two setups to compare playback behavior and metadata.

When streaming from Tidal Connect (using the macOS app), the two devices don’t always receive the same signal format:

• Pi 4: 44.1 kHz / 16 bit / Audiophonics Digipi+AES

• Pi 5: 48 kHz / 24 bit / Allo DigiOne

I read :

• “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” – 44.1 kHz / 16 bit

• “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” – FLAC 48 kHz / 24 bit

The discrepancy also seems to appear depending on whether playback is controlled from the macOS Tidal app or directly from the browser via the local Volumio interface.Sometimes “Flac” appear. sometimes not .

This raises a few questions:

• Is Tidal Connect resampling based on the endpoint’s reported capabilities?

• Do the Pi 4 + Audiophonics AES and Pi 5 + Allo DigiOne report different supported sample rates?

• Could the iOS/macOS → Tidal Connect control path influence the stream format negotiation?

Thanks a lot for your help !
Phil

2

Nobody ?

3

Yeah, this is a very specific question with very specific hardware. So I try to give an answer which is mainly depending on “best to my knowledge”.

Tidal connect negotiate the connection based on the reported hardware, So it might be very feasible that both DAC reports different capabilities.

I would suggestion when you stream the song to run below commands and see what they give back.
cat /proc/asound/card*/pcm*/sub*/hw_params

for example:
System 1:

volumio@rpi5-es9038q2m:~$ cat /proc/asound/card*/pcm*/sub*/hw_params
access: RW_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 48000 (48000/1)
period_size: 2048
buffer_size: 1638

System 2:

volumio@motivo:~$ cat /proc/asound/card*/pcm*/sub*/hw_params
access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 48000 (48000/1)
period_size: 1200
buffer_size: 4800
4

Thanks ! Will check this :slight_smile: