[abrxx]

With MQA Passthrough enabled, its not "scaling down" the sound ... its passing the MQA file which has a native transport rate of 44.1 or 48Khz. If you don't have an MQA DAC you will want to uncheck the passthrough, to allow the software decoder to unfold the file and extract the high resolution.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

So I'm confused. According to this page, Tidal MQA can only be played with the PC/MAC Desktop App: http://tidal.com/us/download

So does that mean that any external device that acts as a Tidal streamer (like the Bluesound Node 2) cannot currently play MQA files through Tidal? This is seriously confusing.

 

[lostman]

I did some poking around the app and I can see it downloads encrypted FLAC files when playing albums from the Masters section. Then it calls out to libFLAC (you can see it with dtrace on Mac OS). I don't get it. Where does MQA come in?

 

[Topspin70]

  So I'm confused. According to this page, Tidal MQA can only be played with the PC/MAC Desktop App: http://tidal.com/us/download

So does that mean that any external device that acts as a Tidal streamer (like the Bluesound Node 2) cannot currently play MQA files through Tidal? This is seriously confusing.

 
Ditto for MicroRendu streaming Tidal. Do the MQA files go through like normal and let the dac do the decoding?

 

[lostman]

Also, Tidal Mac OS doesn't do any caching which is ridiculous. It will re-download the same file every time you play it. Should be easy to setup a proxy to cache those encrypted FLAC files; wish Tidal engineers weren't too lazy to do it.

 

[Mozartaudio]

  Tidal Streaming: 24/352,8   MQA  !
Congratulations and thank you to all the teams : Meridian, Tidal,  Roon(hope soon), Mytec  

 
 

 
 

   
Dies every MQA track play back at 24/352.8? Or does it vary from track to track? 

 
No, depending on the album

 

[deadie]

Absolutely agreed on the differences b/w the two versions of Tigerlily -- in "River" the beginning of the Hifi version is boom boom bass hot, whereas the Master track is more... restrained piano only.  In fact, and I'm going kind of nutty trying to articulate this, but the entire Master track seems less "forced", less in your face, less punchy vs. the Hifi version.  
 
FWIW, the "River" Hifi mix on Tidal is the same mix on Amazon Music and Spotify. 
 
Quote:

  So I listened to Tigerlily as well, and A/B'd the first 5 tracks between HIFI and MASTER. Very noticeable difference. This must be a different master.With the track "River" the bass drum in the intro is almost inaudible, whereas its quite loud on the HIFI version. No way MQA can change the level of a bass drum! Also comparing "May I know the word", the level of background hiss is much higher on the MASTER. Sounds like a HF roll-off was added for the HIFI version, and removed for the MASTER.
 
Very curious indeed. I think I prefer the MASTER version, but it does seem like a different version of the album entirely.

 

  So,
 
I'm listening to Natalie Merchant's Tigerlily and it seems there is no way this is simply the MQA version of the same flac album they've had. The guitar sounds a lot different. This must be the master before processing. That said. It sounds a lot better than the flac and this was what I already considered a well-mastered album.

 

[Topspin70]

   
Ditto for MicroRendu streaming Tidal. Do the MQA files go through like normal and let the dac do the decoding?

 
Found the answer to my own question on the Roon forum. Set to exclusive mode for the dac and we get full res playback. Somewhere along the chain those files got decoded. 

 

[goldendarko]

So do these Master Quality files sound better than Hi-Res music (24/96 & 24/192) or just better than the regular CD FLAC versions of the same albums? 

 

[akg fanboy]

so with a quick wiki, I found that the mqa codec is actually lossy.... it can be put under the a flac container though I guess. I dunu but I'd rather stream normal content encoded as a flac if I were to use tidal

 

[punchkid]

Here is an interesting read concerning MQA:  http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/06/an-inconvenient-truth-mqa-sounds-better/

And a quote from the article concerning lossyness:

Bob Stuart explains: “What is happening here is that the encoder (using system metadata and/or AI) resolves artefacts that are obviously different in each song according to the equipment and processes used. When these distracting distortions are ameliorated then the decoder can reconstruct the analog in a complementary way.”  “Removing ‘pollution’ is not lossless” [DAR’s emphasis].

This means each MQA file’s DNA is different to that of the standard hi-res PCM equivalent. In strictly data terms, the MQA encoding process is lossy – it is no longer the studio master as archived by the record label. Bob Stuart’s proposition with MQA is that the originating hi-res PCM file is filtered in order to make it sound better with any D/A converter.

 

[djlethal]

Guys, I wouldn't be so quick to buy into all the hype... first read up on some proven facts (not marketing ********).
 
Check out this article that details the lossy nature of the MQA codec.
 
Also, this article gives some insight and measurements into how MQA actually performs... vs, you know, "impressions".

 

[lostman]

Did some more digging. There are two versions of Pink Floyd Endless River Deluxe currently on Tidal. They look identical but there are two albums in the list if you look at the artist. One appears to be 44100 Hz FLAC with ~700kbit/s, the other one 48000 Hz FLAC with ~1500kbit/s when streamed in master mode. If they don't remove the other album it's going to be interesting to compare. I assume one is MQA and one isn't? Don't have time today but will try some A/B testing tomorrow if both are still there.

 

[discape]

Re: Masters, the DAC I currently use only has 16bit 44hz output, does that mean there wouldn't be any difference for me for me from the usual Tidal HiFi?

 

[lantian]

  Guys, I wouldn't be so quick to buy into all the hype... first read up on some proven facts (not marketing ********).
 
Check out this article that details the lossy nature of the MQA codec.
 
Also, this article gives some insight and measurements into how MQA actually performs... vs, you know, "impressions".

THX, I have been wondering about hte quality impact since it is no true lossless and uses something similar to superscaling/upscaling at least looks that way, want to hear it fist. Though in my opinion this is more useful for streaming to save bandwidth, after all stoage is cheap and I would imagine more people would rather use true lossless. But even in they'r own material the say mqa is a  lossy compression so there's that...