I love Tidal. That said its UI is remarkably heavy for what it is. You also used to see what quality the songs were in without playing them, but they removed that. They added bpm and key, but that is not as useful to most of us as seeing the quality of the song beforehand.
And you also have to make sure you're getting the most out of it manually. Here are three steps for those who have Tidal and wan't to make sure that they're getting the most (ish) for their money:
1. Hardware Source: If you're using the soundcard in your computer, make sure to bump up the sample rate: on macOS you go to "Audio MIDI Setup" and change the sample rate to highest possible for your output.
2. Software Source: In Tidal itself you have to go to "Settings" and under "Audio quality" choose "Max". Under "Playback" turn off "Normalize volume". If you're having a dinner party and playing the music through a bluetooth speaker, you might want to leave it on. But otherwise off; the normalization causes distortion.
3. Output Device: You have two options here and you can go with both or invest more in the other one:
* Option 1: Invest in some decent studio monitors. They don't have to be expensive or be able to play super loud, they just have to not lie to you. I would 100% recommend buying higher quality low power monitors for small spaces and/or spaces that lack acoustic treatment.
* Option 2: Buy some actually ok headphones. Bluetooth headphones are not good. I got Sony WH-1000XM6 which I mostly use outside. Inside I can plug them with an audio cable and turn them on and then they double their sample rate from 22kHz to 44kHz. But I also got Sennheizer HD600 which cost about the same and I plug them into a cheap headphone amp, and these headphones are really a world appart.
Note: You have to actually find the high quality songs on Tidal to enjoy all those changes. Aim for the 24-bit 192kHz or at least 24-bit 96kHz (personally, the DAC on my Mac only offers 96kHz anyway).
Remasters are often a good source, but sometimes they're from the loudness era and are horrible comparing to the originals.
Sonic Pi looks nice. But as with Elixir, which I for most parts love, I really hate the `do end` syntax and I've never understood why someone would design something where you would have to type those words instead of using on pinky to press `shift` and another pinky to press either `{` or `}`.
`{ }` is just so instantly recognizable as a scope.
Also, Sonic Pi was designed for teaching - the language priorities for professional programmers that touch-type are quite different to those for a learner. Lots of strict and unusual syntax can be a considerable and confusing barrier.
Also, Sonic Pi is implemented in Ruby, so you can totally use `{ }` just fine if that's your preference :-)
Nice. I made my solar clock here: svennidal.is/solarclock
I'm currently in Iceland and I've been using my clock as my main clock since the Icelandic clock is set to be almost one and half hour to early. I've never really shared it so that is why it's just hardcoded to my location haha.
If you could have a atomic wristwatch and you travel around the world with it, you will have a very precise time for you, but you'll end up out of sync with almost every other atomic clock.
If you sync two atomic clocks and put one at the surface of the arctic ocean and another one on top of Mount Nevado in Peru, and leave them there for one million years, the clock in Peru will be 1.88 years ahead of the clock in the arctic.
That is a difference of 0.44 nanoseconds per day.
Don't quote me on that though.. I'm not a physicist.
And you also have to make sure you're getting the most out of it manually. Here are three steps for those who have Tidal and wan't to make sure that they're getting the most (ish) for their money:
1. Hardware Source: If you're using the soundcard in your computer, make sure to bump up the sample rate: on macOS you go to "Audio MIDI Setup" and change the sample rate to highest possible for your output.
2. Software Source: In Tidal itself you have to go to "Settings" and under "Audio quality" choose "Max". Under "Playback" turn off "Normalize volume". If you're having a dinner party and playing the music through a bluetooth speaker, you might want to leave it on. But otherwise off; the normalization causes distortion.
3. Output Device: You have two options here and you can go with both or invest more in the other one:
Note: You have to actually find the high quality songs on Tidal to enjoy all those changes. Aim for the 24-bit 192kHz or at least 24-bit 96kHz (personally, the DAC on my Mac only offers 96kHz anyway). Remasters are often a good source, but sometimes they're from the loudness era and are horrible comparing to the originals.