The "Link Tidal Account" device-flow UI displayed a verification URL
like `link.tidal.com/XBXYT` that, when clicked, navigated back to the
SoulSync origin (e.g. `http://localhost:8889/link.tidal.com/XBXYT`)
instead of to Tidal's activation page.
Root cause: tidalapi returns `login.verification_uri_complete` as a
schemeless string. settings.js drops it straight into `<a href>`, and
browsers treat schemeless hrefs as same-origin relative URLs.
Normalize the URI in `start_device_auth` — if it doesn't already
start with `http://` or `https://`, prepend `https://`. Same
treatment for the `link.tidal.com/{user_code}` fallback so the
defensive path stays well-formed too.
Reported on Discord by Netti93: with Tidal configured for "HiRes only"
and "Allow Quality Fallback" disabled, tracks were still downloading
successfully — as m4a 320kbps files. Some "successful" downloads were
less than half the file size of the same track pulled via Tidarr/tiddl
from the same Tidal account.
Root cause: Tidal's API silently degrades to the best quality your
account + the track + your region permits. Setting
`session.audio_quality = Quality.hi_res_lossless` and calling
`track.get_stream()` on a track that's only available in AAC returns
an AAC stream with no error. The downloader wrote the m4a file to
disk, the ~7MB size sailed past the 100KB stub threshold, and the
download reported success.
The pre-existing "verify quality wasn't silently downgraded" block
only LOGGED a warning when this happened; it did not fail the tier.
Two knock-on effects:
- Users with "HiRes only, no fallback" got m4a files anyway, which
defeats the setting entirely.
- The worker-level fallback chain (hires → lossless → high → low)
couldn't advance past the first tier, because every tier
"succeeded" at whatever Tidal happened to serve.
Fix: after `track.get_stream()`, compare `stream.audio_quality`
against the tier we asked for using a rank-based ordering:
LOW < HIGH < LOSSLESS < HI_RES < HI_RES_LOSSLESS
- Same tier or higher → accept (so the occasional Tidal upgrade
doesn't get rejected just because it's not an exact match).
- Lower tier → reject THIS tier. The loop `continue`s and the next
fallback tier is tried, or the whole download fails honestly
when the user has fallback disabled. The existing final-error
log already has a hint directing users to enable fallback if
they want automatic Lossless substitution.
- Unrecognized `audioQuality` value (e.g. a new Tidal tier we
haven't mapped) → reject conservatively, so the next fallback
tier gets a chance and the diagnostic log names the unknown
value.
Why the rank-based approach instead of strict equality:
Tidal's API doesn't technically promise an exact-tier match on
serving; on tracks that are flagged in its catalog as a higher
tier, it can serve higher than the session setting. Rejecting
higher-than-asked quality would be user-hostile. And the `HI_RES`
(legacy MQA) value — not in tidalapi's modern `Quality` enum but
possibly still present on old catalog entries — needs to rank
below `HI_RES_LOSSLESS`: users asking for true lossless HiRes
should reject MQA since MQA is a lossy format.
tidalapi's `Quality` enum is a `str` subclass whose VALUES (not
member names) match what the Tidal API returns in the
`audioQuality` field (e.g. `Quality.hi_res_lossless.value ==
'HI_RES_LOSSLESS'`, `Quality.low_320k.value == 'HIGH'`). Both
sides of the comparison are coerced to `str` before use, so the
check is robust to whichever tidalapi version exposes the served
quality as an enum or a plain string.
The check is extracted as `_verify_stream_tier(stream, q_info,
q_key) -> (ok, reason)` at module scope — a pure function with no
I/O, unit-tested independently. Ten tests: match, three upgrade
cases (LOSSLESS → HI_RES_LOSSLESS, LOSSLESS → HI_RES, LOW → any
higher), three downgrade cases (the reported HiRes → AAC, HiRes
Lossless → MQA HiRes, Lossless → AAC), one unrecognized-tier case,
and two defensive paths for older tidalapi builds without
`audio_quality` on the stream object and for QUALITY_MAP entries
that lack `tidal_quality` (e.g. tidalapi wasn't importable at
module load). Test stub updated to use uppercase `Quality` values
matching real tidalapi so case-sensitivity regressions get caught.
Also removed the old codec-string-based warning block — the new
tier check is strictly stronger, and keeping the warning around
would just be dead code waiting to drift out of sync.
Deliberately NOT tackling in this PR (documented as follow-ups):
- Bit-depth verification of HiRes FLAC files via mutagen. The
`stream.audio_quality` tier check catches the main "HiRes
requested, got AAC" case; bit-depth would only matter if Tidal
labeled a stream HI_RES_LOSSLESS but served a 16-bit FLAC
(`Stream.bit_depth` isn't reliable for this — tidalapi defaults
missing `bitDepth` fields to 16, so a trust-the-stream check
would spuriously reject valid HiRes whenever Tidal omits the
field). A proper fix runs mutagen post-download to inspect the
actual file, then decides whether to delete + retry the next
tier — a whole new failure mode with design trade-offs that
deserve their own PR. The support logs don't show this
happening.
- The "manual remap still says Not Found" symptom. Might be
downstream of this same bug (silent-AAC "success" hitting a
later rejection), might be a separate task-state issue. Not
guessing without logs from the retry path.
- Quality-aware stub threshold. 100KB is a reasonable floor for
real stub/preview detection and there's no evidence the
universal threshold is misfiring in the wild.
Field-verified status: desk-verified via unit tests and empirical
checks against a live tidalapi import (confirming the `Quality`
enum's str-subclass behavior). Not yet smoke-tested end-to-end
against a real Tidal account with a HiRes-only-no-fallback
setting — Netti93 or anyone else with that config should notice
either the fix working (non-HiRes tracks fail honestly with a
clear log line) or any regression before wider release.
Files:
- core/tidal_download_client.py — new `_verify_stream_tier` helper
and `_QUALITY_RANK` table at module scope, called in the
download loop after the stream is fetched and before any
bandwidth is spent. Removed the old inline codec-based warning
since the new check supersedes it.
- tests/test_tidal_stream_tier_verification.py — ten tests covering
match / upgrade / downgrade / unknown / defensive paths.
- tests/test_tidal_search_shortening.py — fake `Quality` values
brought in line with tidalapi's real values so both files share
a consistent stub regardless of pytest collection order.
- webui/static/helper.js — WHATS_NEW entry under 2.40 describing
the rank-based tier comparison.
Reported on Discord by Netti93 — the "same account works via
Tidarr" comparison narrowed the cause to SoulSync's download path
rather than an account/region issue.
Tidal's search engine chokes on long queries with multiple qualifier
words (remix credits, edit labels, bonus-disc markers). User reported
case: "maduk transformations remixed fire away fred v remix" returns 0,
but shortening to "maduk transformations remixed fire away" works.
Behaviour change:
- On a 0-result search, retry with progressively-shortened variants
(capped at 5 total attempts, 100ms pause between).
- Variants (in priority order):
1. strip trailing "(...)" / "[...]"
2. strip all parentheticals/brackets
3-5. drop last 1 / 2 / 3 tokens
6. keep first half of tokens (rounded up)
- Dedupes so identical variants don't re-query.
Safety — qualifier-aware filter:
- Variant keywords (Live / Remix / Acoustic / Extended / Unplugged /
Instrumental / Karaoke / etc.) are extracted from the original query
using word-boundary match so "edit" doesn't match "edition" and
"mix" doesn't match "remixed".
- If the original query carries any qualifiers, fallback results MUST
contain those qualifiers in their track names — otherwise a shortened
query could silently downgrade "Song (Live)" to the studio "Song".
- Tracks that fail the filter are dropped. If no variant produces
qualifier-matching tracks, returns ([], []) — the same outcome as the
original code, so no regression.
Contract preservation:
- Never raises to caller (outer try/except catches orchestration errors).
- Returns ([], []) on any failure path, same as original.
- Original-query successes take the same code path as before — no
behavioural change for queries that already work.
- Defensive guards for None/empty/non-string query (early return).
Logging:
- Preserves original warning/error/info messages for back-compat log
scraping.
- Adds fallback-success INFO log ("Tidal fallback query succeeded: ...")
so successful retries are visible in production logs.
- Adds qualifier-filter INFO/DEBUG logs with kept/total counts.
- Per-attempt exception logs at DEBUG (not ERROR) to avoid noise when
retries succeed.
- Traceback preserved on final failure.
Tests (16 regression tests in tests/test_tidal_search_shortening.py):
- Skowl's reported query reaches his working variant within the cap.
- Paren/bracket stripping priority.
- Short queries produce no variants.
- All variants unique (dedup guard).
- Progressive token drops present for long queries.
- Qualifier extraction is word-bounded (no "edit" in "edition").
- Qualifier extraction is case-insensitive.
- Track name filter requires ALL qualifiers.
- Empty-qualifier list passes every track (original-query behaviour).
All 292 tests pass.
PR #340 added ruff to the build-and-test.yml CI gate, which surfaced
286 pre-existing lint errors. Left unfixed, every feature branch push
fails CI. This commit resolves all of them so CI goes green and
contributors can actually land work.
Auto-fixes (248 of 286): removed unused f-string prefixes (F541),
renamed unused loop control variables with underscore prefix (B007),
removed duplicate imports (F811).
Manually fixed 10 latent bugs ruff caught (all wrapped in try/except
today, silently failing):
- music_database.py: _add_discovery_tables() called undefined
conn.commit() — would have crashed the iTunes-support migration
for existing databases. Now uses cursor.connection.commit().
- web_server.py settings GET: referenced undefined download_orchestrator
when it should be soulseek_client. Feature (_source_status on the
settings payload) was silently missing for UI auto-disable logic.
- web_server.py _process_wishlist_automatically: active_server
undefined in track-ownership check. Auto-wishlist was falling
through to the error handler and re-downloading owned tracks.
- web_server.py start_wishlist_missing_downloads: same active_server
bug in the manual wishlist path.
- web_server.py _process_failed_tracks_to_wishlist_exact: emitted
wishlist_item_added automation event with undefined artist_name
and track. Automation event silently never fired correctly.
- web_server.py discovery metadata enrichment: referenced cache
without calling get_metadata_cache() first. Track enrichment from
cached API responses was silently skipped.
- web_server.py Beatport discovery worker: wing-it fallback branch
used undefined successful_discoveries variable. Wing-it counter
never incremented correctly. Now uses state['spotify_matches']
consistently with the rest of the function.
- web_server.py _run_full_missing_tracks_process: stale import json
mid-function shadowed the module-level import, making an earlier
json.dumps() call reference an unbound local (F823).
- web_server.py discovery loop: platform loop variable shadowed
the module-level platform import (F402).
- core/watchlist_scanner.py: 7 lambda captures of loop variables
(B023 classic Python closure-in-loop bug) now bind at creation.
No existing tests had to change. Full suite stays at 263 passed.
Track per-quality-tier failure reasons across all failure paths (stream
error, empty manifest, download exception, stub file, MP4 extraction
failure) and include them in the exhausted-tiers log message so failures
are diagnosable from logs.
When HiRes is configured with no fallback and all tiers are exhausted,
log an actionable hint directing the user to enable Quality Fallback.
Surface Tidal-specific error messages in the UI task on retry
exhaustion: distinguishes HiRes-unavailable (with actionable guidance)
from general Tidal auth/quality failures, rather than showing the
generic Soulseek error string.
Each streaming source (Tidal, Qobuz, HiFi, Deezer) now has an "Allow
quality fallback" checkbox in Settings. When disabled, the source only
tries the exact quality selected — if unavailable, it skips and lets
the orchestrator try the next source. Default is ON (current behavior).
Adds Tidal as a third download source alongside Soulseek and YouTube. Uses the tidalapi library with device-flow authentication to search and download tracks in configurable quality (Low/High/Lossless/HiRes) with automatic fallback. Integrates into the download orchestrator for all modes (Tidal Only, Hybrid with fallback chain), the transfer monitor, post-processing pipeline, and file finder. Frontend includes download settings with quality selector, device auth flow, and dynamic sidebar/dashboard labels that reflect the active download source. No breaking changes for existing users.
