audio-quality.md

Audio Quality & PipeWire Setup

By default Chromium resamples all audio to 48kHz, which degrades high-quality content from Tidal (HiFi / Max). TIDAL Hi-Fi includes a setting to force the output sample rate to 192kHz, but your system's audio stack also needs to be configured to take advantage of it.

Table of Contents

• Audio Quality & PipeWire Setup
  • Table of Contents
  • Enabling 192kHz output in TIDAL Hi-Fi
  • Configuring PipeWire (Linux)
  • Discussions and tips

Enabling 192kHz output in TIDAL Hi-Fi

1. Open settings (Ctrl + =)
2. Navigate to the Advanced tab
3. Enable Audio output sample rate (192kHz)
4. Restart the app (flags only take effect on launch)

This passes --audio-output-sample-rate=192000 to Chromium and disables the out-of-process audio service so the flag is respected.

Configuring PipeWire (Linux)

The Electron flag alone is not enough — if PipeWire (or PulseAudio) is running at 48kHz it will resample the stream back down before it reaches your DAC.

⚠️ Warning: Setting rates in the PipeWire config that your hardware doesn't support will crash PipeWire, leaving you without audio.

First, find the sample rates your DAC supports:

# List all sound cards
aplay -l

# Check supported rates for a specific card (replace 0 with your card number)
cat /proc/asound/card0/stream0

# Alternative if the above doesn't work (e.g. on some USB DACs)
aplay -D hw:0 --dump-hw-params /dev/null 2>&1 | grep -i rate

If you have multiple sound cards, use aplay -l to find the right card number and check /proc/asound/card<N>/stream0.

The rates listed in the output are the ones you should use in the PipeWire config below. Create (or edit) ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/sample-rate.conf and set default.clock.rate to the highest supported rate, and default.clock.allowed-rates to all of them:

context.properties = {
    # highest supported rate
    default.clock.rate          = 192000
    # <all supported rates, space-separated>
    default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 88200 96000 176400 192000 ]
}

Then restart PipeWire:

systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse

The allowed-rates list lets PipeWire switch dynamically to match the source rate, so 44.1kHz content won't be needlessly upsampled either. You can verify the active rate with pw-top.

Recovery: If PipeWire crashes after applying this config, delete (or fix) the file and restart:

rm ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/sample-rate.conf
systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse

Discussions and tips

• #266