Tidal not playing through Squeezebox with LMS in Docker

Starting to rebuild my whole-house audio playback system based on LMS as Roon, while nice, is not as free as LMS. Plus, I can get my LMS to access and play not only local files and Tidal, but also Spotify, which is missing from Roon.

Anyway, in getting back into this, I came across a frustrating issue - I could not get Tidal to play on any client device.

There's a few posts out there on things to check, like Tidal plugin setup in mysqueezebox.com, use FLAC file format etc., but nothing worked for me.

I had a look in the LMS server log file and came across a bunch of these errors;

fh=Slim::Networking::Async::Socket::HTTPS=GLOB(0x563293263068)
[23-03-07 11:43:22.4710] Slim::Networking::IO::Select::__ANON__ (130) Error: Select task failed calling Slim::Networking::Async::HTTP::_http_read_body: Error in tempfile() using /config/cache/tmp/XXXXXXXXXX: Parent directory (/config/cache/tmp/) is not writable at /lms/Slim/Formats/FLAC.pm line 950.

I run my LMS as a docker in unRaid. When I checked my mapped paths in the docker, I see 'config' maps to my appdata/LogitechMediaServer/. Inside there, I used chmod via SSH to set permissions on the /cache/tmp/ directory and instantly the Tidal stream started right up.

Maybe the best gadget I've ever bought?

 

Fairly insidiously, Amazon has taken over my house.  I now have various iterations of FireTVs connected to each TV, and almost every room has an echo device.

I'm not complaining really, these are great pieces of technology, and voice control is a lot more useful that I would have envisaged a few years ago. 

And the FireTV is excellent - easy to use and supports everything I use on a regular basis; Netflix, Kodi, Spotify, Emby Amazon Video and more. However, there's one thing that' been bugging me -  it's lack of true bit-streaming of extended sound formats. I use Kodi quite a bit for my media library, and there are many titles in there with fancy surround formats that just don't make it out to my AV system unscathed.

This is only an issue in my Home Cinema which has a full 7.1.4 system that can make best use of such soundtracks (everywhere else is plain old stereo).

I've been reading about the nVidia Shield for a while and finally bought one to see if it could replace the FireTV in this room. Here's how I got on with it...

Why I'm leaving Tidal

I signed up for music streaming service Tidal a few months ago, thrilled with the quality full-resolution audio I heard on the meagre 7-day trial and excited by the way I could integrate it with my squeezebox setup via ickstream.

I'd been a Spotify user and enjoyed that service. It too integrated well with Squeezebox but as a family we were sharing an account and more times than not, I'd find the account in use when I wanted to listen. I needed either a second Spotify account or an alternative.

I've been using Tidal a lot for the past couple of months, out and about on my Sony Xperia phone in low-res mode, on my Macbook at work in HiFi mode via the desktop and occasionally home via the web interface.

During this time, the service was re-launched with much ado by a bevy of singers that I never listen to. It passed me by.

I've enjoyed using Tidal but now I'm leaving and here's why;