CES 2017: MQA announces TIDAL Masters, and more

[revand]

 
I believe all or most of the internal DACs in smartphones and tablets are limited to 16/44.1, so they wouldn't be able by themselves to produce even 1x MQA software decoding which is 24/88.2 or 24/96. 

 
My HTC 10 is capable of producing 24bit/192 kHz, and has an excellent headphone amp as well.
Having been a HTC fan over the past years I was excited to hear the news from CES 2016, that HTC had a demo with the A9 smartphone decoding MQA.
HTC 10 is having better audio parts as the A9, so I do hope my HTC 10 will be capable of decoding MQA soon.

 

[revand]

  Some of the releases listed in the file are available only in certain countries, e.g, UK.

 
I can confirm it like in case of Buena Vista Social Club and Mark Knopfler.
They are not available in Hungary at the moment, but most of the albums in the Roon community sheet are working!

 

[Left Channel]

 
My HTC 10 is capable of producing 24bit/192 kHz, and has an excellent headphone amp as well.
Having been a HTC fan over the past years I was excited to hear the news from CES 2016, that HTC had a demo with the A9 smartphone decoding MQA.
HTC 10 is having better audio parts as the A9, so I do hope my HTC 10 will be capable of decoding MQA soon.

 
That's good news.

 

[Arnav Agharwal]

Distinguishing Master albums just got easier -- TIDAL has added an "M" icon against the Master versions 

 

 

[headfry]

...is anybody else here as enthusiastic about  the improved musicality of Tidal Masters
over the same FLAC master w/out MQA?

This is just with Tidal software decoding, to me generally an amazing advance in listening
and basically for me [COLOR=4B0082]lives up to the hype[/COLOR]!

For example, I recommend listening to [COLOR=A52A2A]Bonnie Raitt[/COLOR]'s opening track [COLOR=0000CD]Unavoided Consequence[/COLOR] [COLOR=0000CD]of Love[/COLOR] from the album [COLOR=FF0000]Dig In Deep[/COLOR] 2016 and compare with the Tidal HIFI version!

 

[pdickerson]

...is anybody else here as enthusiastic about  the improved musicality of Tidal Masters
over the same FLAC master w/out MQA?

This is just with Tidal software decoding, to me generally an amazing advance in listening
and basically for me [COLOR=4B0082]lives up to the hype[/COLOR]!

For example, I recommend listening to [COLOR=A52A2A]Bonnie Raitt[/COLOR]'s opening track [COLOR=0000CD]Unavoided Consequences[/COLOR] [COLOR=0000CD]of Love[/COLOR] from album [COLOR=FF0000]Dig In Deep[/COLOR] 2016 and compare with the Tidal HIFI version!

Yes, I have only listened to MQA since Tidal release it. Once Roon adds MQA I'll be a Roon subscriber.
The Cars never sounded better.

 

[goldendarko]

Well I'd be more excited if all the MQA music wasn't stuff I already have in Hi Res downloads from HDTracks. Plus it needs to hurry up and come to TIDAL on mobile to really make a difference to me. But it'll get there eventually I'm sure.

 

[pdickerson]

Tidal has added A Masters section under Playlists.
Playlists must suffer from volume level differences across songs.

 

[TadMorose]

  Distinguishing Master albums just got easier -- TIDAL has added an "M" icon against the Master versions 

 

Finally!

 

[jwbrent]

Well I'd be more excited if all the MQA music wasn't stuff I already have in Hi Res downloads from HDTracks. Plus it needs to hurry up and come to TIDAL on mobile to really make a difference to me. But it'll get there eventually I'm sure.

I agree on the playback on mobile devices. I'm not sure if A&K is responsible for updating the TIDAL app on my AK240 or if it will be automatically done when TIDAL updates all the apps on portable devices.

 

[jwbrent]

  Finally!

Happy!

 

[tradyblix]

Well I'd be more excited if all the MQA music wasn't stuff I already have in Hi Res downloads from HDTracks. Plus it needs to hurry up and come to TIDAL on mobile to really make a difference to me. But it'll get there eventually I'm sure.

It's not the same thing anyway. Tidal's app quality sucks. They have a ton of problems talking to high end dacs and other exotic equipment compared to Apple so. I can't recommend tidal for now. It's also inexcusable there's no MQA support on mobile 2 months later. 
 
As soon as apple / spotify have a lossless streaming option they'll lose most of their market advantage IMO. MQA is not so great that it beats a better music library, proper music discovery options, etc. And the fact they don't work properly with Sony's top of the line equipment is not a good look either

 

[goldendarko]

I agree. I'll be moving to Spotify the minute they go lossless. Much preferred the UI they had. Even MQA on TIDAL probably wouldn't be enough to keep me around especially if Spotify ends up charging $15 a month

 

[Left Channel]

 

Well I'd be more excited if all the MQA music wasn't stuff I already have in Hi Res downloads from HDTracks. Plus it needs to hurry up and come to TIDAL on mobile to really make a difference to me. But it'll get there eventually I'm sure.

It's not the same thing anyway. Tidal's app quality sucks. They have a ton of problems talking to high end dacs and other exotic equipment compared to Apple so. I can't recommend tidal for now. It's also inexcusable there's no MQA support on mobile 2 months later. 
 
As soon as apple / spotify have a lossless streaming option they'll lose most of their market advantage IMO. MQA is not so great that it beats a better music library, proper music discovery options, etc. And the fact they don't work properly with Sony's top of the line equipment is not a good look either

Lack of mobile support is actually quite excusable, because most mobile phones cannot exceed 16/44.1 so wouldn't benefit from even the first-level MQA "unfolding". Yes MQA is backwards compatible so it would "work" on those phones too, but without much or any audible results, and yes some phones like the HTC 10 are capable of hi-res. Here in the rarefied atmosphere of Head-Fi, you'll even find people with mobile apps like UAPP outputting direct to external DACs. But most users will not understand these things, and releasing something that doesn't work as expected on most phones is a surefire way to get even worse app reviews.

 

[germay0653]

 
Lack of mobile support is actually quite excusable, because most mobile phones cannot exceed 16/44.1 so wouldn't benefit from even the first-level MQA "unfolding". Yes MQA is backwards compatible so it would "work" on those phones too, but without much or any audible results, and yes some phones like the HTC 10 are capable of hi-res. Here in the rarefied atmosphere of Head-Fi, you'll even find people with mobile apps like UAPP outputting direct to external DACs. But most users will not understand these things, and releasing something that doesn't work as expected on most phones is a surefire way to get even worse app reviews.

Like you imply, that 16/44.1 limit, on most phones, is only imposed when using the phones internal DAC.  Granted, I agree, most won't understand and go the USB digital out from a phone to an external DAC but that bit depth/sampling rate limitation is removed when doing so.