[erich6]

 
 
I am with you to a point.  Listening to the new masters and enjoying them is great.  I'll tell you why I'm interested in "overanalyzing" this:  it's because I got duped by HDTracks.  Without getting into a debate here, I'll just say that there's a very very big thread in the Sound Science forum about the "24 bit myth" and whether hi-res is actually audible or not.  What I discovered based on my own testing is that the sonic differences I was hearing were almost always attributed to the remastering that HDTracks does rather than the resolution of the file.  
 
Again, I'm not looking to get into a debate here, just reporting what I've found and why I am curious about what makes the new Masters sound good.  On the plus side, it's no more expensive than regular Tidal (for now) so there's no reason not to just listen to the better music and be happy about it.  I just want to know if I should be looking into an MQA-capable DAC in the future or if I'm being "tricked" by the remaster.  I'd think this would be of interest to everyone else in this thread too.  Should we be clamoring for more MQA hardware and software solutions, or should we be clamoring for more awesome remasters?

 
Yeah, I know what you mean.  I've been very disappointed with some of the HDTracks albums I've bought.  Nothing beats a good master.  I also know music sounds better when playing off a computer using software that uses a good transport and streams directly to the DAC instead of using "system sound."  I know a good DAC and good amp makes a difference.  As far as high-resolution, sometimes I detect just a bit more sparkle and smoothness but only sometimes.  Given that, the priority ought to be on better masters.  So far, the software MQA decoding in Tidal seems to be pretty good!  Probably could improve a bit with better transport to the USB DAC (like Roon does) so some software improvements would help there.  I think MQA DACs will be just icing on the cake.
 
As far as Iron Maiden masters...pretty much every album is there.  Great fun.

 

[iguanajm]

Using a mac & giving Tidal direct acess to the DAC (using an AK70 as USB DAC), it changes bit/sample rate accordingly. I understand the decision by Chord with the Mojo to mute the first couple of seconds of a track; changing from one rate to another is painful!

how do you see the sample rate on mac?
tia

 

[Currawong]

 
No word from Schiit. They did know that MQA was coming to Tidal but they still said no and I am going to assume that they meant it. Too bad but paying Meridian to "bless"your DAC is a pretty sneaky thing and I totally understand why a smaller company would say F this. 24/96 will have to do for most of us. I'm not a big fan of Delta/Sigma so I've pretty much give up hope on any MQA certified R2R DACs. 

 
If you mean that you expect them to make a press statement about something that doesn't have anything to do with them until the moment that they decide it will, then I don't imagine they'll do that. Otherwise you just have to follow Baldr's posts.
 

 

  Yggy user here. Given that Schiit has been vocally and almost militantly against MQA/DSD previously, difficult to see them backing away from their stance, though I'd love to see them pragmatically adapt to support MQA as I now use Tidal for 90+% of listening.. #fingerscrossed

 
I'm not backing away at all, in particular since Tidal is now offering 0.01% of their catalog with MQA. Thankfully, they have made them also available in a 96K/24 bit version which requires no MQA enabled D/A converter. After a bit of listening, my partner and co-founder Jason has pointed out many, if not all of the MQA processed recordings are obviously remastered, compared to the "normal" versions on Tidal, making it very difficult to determine whether any differences are due to the remastering or MQA itself. This leads to two questions:
 
1. Why does Meridian offer no convenient way to compare MQA/NoMQA on the same mastering of the same recording? After all, they want royalty dollars.
2. Why should we not continue to do our best for the other 99.99% of the market? I will not force the 99.99% of our users to subsidize the 0.01% of the curious who have no clearcut way to judge their MQA as being either gold or detrius proper to landfills.
 
Until Meridian offers us a fair, clear way to adjudge MQA/NoMQA with the same (not remastered) material, I smell something, well, very off.

​

 

[lostman]

When I use Dragonfly Black with Tidal, Dragonfly reports 96kHz while Tidal is decoding 48kHz stream.

Also tried Audirvana Plus and for non-master album it reports 44.1kHz; for master it reports 48kHz.
 
Haven't yet found an album that would go beyond 48kHz.

 

[canthearyou]

When I use Dragonfly Black with Tidal, Dragonfly reports 96kHz while Tidal is decoding 48kHz stream.


Also tried Audirvana Plus and for non-master album it reports 44.1kHz; for master it reports 48kHz.

Haven't yet found an album that would go beyond 48kHz.

It's might be your Dragonfly. I've come across quite a few that are 96khz. I'm listening to Eric Clapton & Friends right now and it's 96kHz.

 

[lostman]

canthearyou: that's the thing. dragonfly does report 96kHz but the original stream that Tidal app is decoding isn't 96kHz; it is 48kHz. So it appears Tidal is doing upsampling?

 

[Arnav Agharwal]

canthearyou
: that's the thing. dragonfly does report 96kHz but the original stream that Tidal app is decoding isn't 96kHz; it is 48kHz. So it appears Tidal is doing upsampling?

It is possible that Audirvana's software level MQA unfolding is restricted to 48 kHz, whereas the TIDAL app does it up to 96 kHz. I can confirm that I also get 96 kHz with it on Windows into my Mojo.

 

[Hansotek]

Yeah, I know what you mean.  I've been very disappointed with some of the HDTracks albums I've bought.  Nothing beats a good master.  I also know music sounds better when playing off a computer using software that uses a good transport and streams directly to the DAC instead of using "system sound."  I know a good DAC and good amp makes a difference.  As far as high-resolution, sometimes I detect just a bit more sparkle and smoothness but only sometimes.  Given that, the priority ought to be on better masters.  So far, the software MQA decoding in Tidal seems to be pretty good!  Probably could improve a bit with better transport to the USB DAC (like Roon does) so some software improvements would help there.  I think MQA DACs will be just icing on the cake.

As far as Iron Maiden masters...pretty much every album is there.  Great fun.

In my experience, higher bit rates are much more noticeable on a 2-channel system than on headphones due to the inherent differences in staging.

 

[Hansotek]

It is possible that Audirvana's software level MQA unfolding is restricted to 48 kHz, whereas the TIDAL app does it up to 96 kHz. I can confirm that I also get 96 kHz with it on Windows into my Mojo.

Audirvana hasn't pushed the update for software decoding yet - that's why you're seeing 48 & 44.1.

 

[Currawong]

Make if you're using the TIDAL app that you're using the latest version, or it wont go up to 96k either.

 

[lostman]

Tidal itself is decoding 48kHz stream. If you have Mac OS try it out for yourself:
 
sudo dtrace -n 'pid3514::*get_sample_rate:return { printf("%d", arg1); }'
dtrace: description 'pid3514::*get_sample_rate:return ' matched 2 probes
CPU     ID                    FUNCTION:NAME
  0  10521 FLAC__stream_decoder_get_sample_rate:return 48000

Just replace 3514 with the PID of TidalPlayer process. dtrace is a utility that lets you inspect the internals of a running process. Mac OS has kernel hooks for that so no special version of an application is needed. You inspect what any application is really doing (it slows down your system a lot!).

Meanwhile my Dragonfly Black has the pink icon indicating 96 kHz.
 
Also, there appears to be no MQA decoding going on. Here's a simple probe that lists any functions that have mqa in their name:
 
sudo dtrace -ln 'pid3514::*mqa*:entry'
   ID   PROVIDER            MODULE                          FUNCTION NAME
 3760    pid3740       TIDALPlayer mqaDeviceInExclusive(PlaybackDevice const&, PlaybackDeviceOptions const&) entry
 3761    pid3740       TIDALPlayer _GLOBAL__sub_I_mqa_device_handler.cpp entry
 3762    pid3740       TIDALPlayer _GLOBAL__sub_I_mqa_audio_output_reader.cpp entry
 3763    pid3740       TIDALPlayer _GLOBAL__sub_I_mqa_decode_listener.cpp entry
 3764    pid3740       TIDALPlayer    _GLOBAL__sub_I_mqa_decoder.cpp entry
 3765    pid3740       TIDALPlayer _GLOBAL__sub_I_mqa_decoder_builder.cpp entry

But when I try to trace whether or not any of those functions is actually called when I play a track, nothing shows up!

 

[pkcpga]

No word from Schiit. They did know that MQA was coming to Tidal but they still said no and I am going to assume that they meant it. Too bad but paying Meridian to "bless"your DAC is a pretty sneaky thing and I totally understand why a smaller company would say F this. 24/96 will have to do for most of us. I'm not a big fan of Delta/Sigma so I've pretty much give up hope on any MQA certified R2R DACs. 

Schiit would need to build a completely different dac to play mqa natively? MQA is 24 bit and as far as I know schiit doesn't make a 24 bit dac.

 

[loplop]

how do you see the sample rate on mac?
tia

Open up Audio Midi and take a look.

canthearyou
: that's the thing. dragonfly does report 96kHz but the original stream that Tidal app is decoding isn't 96kHz; it is 48kHz. So it appears Tidal is doing upsampling?

Isn't MQA backwards compatible with 16/44 and 16/48 systems? If so, perhaps what is occurring is the 44/48 is being "unfolded" to 88.2/96 a la HDCD? Just a guess--I really haven't read a lot about the technical details as I've been skeptical.

All that said, and with the obvious remastering pointed out above, I've listened to a few MQA on tidal that sounded really, really excellent... so no matter if it's the mastering or the delivery mechanism, I'm enjoying the addition to a service I already pay for and use a lot.

 

[erich6]

  canthearyou: that's the thing. dragonfly does report 96kHz but the original stream that Tidal app is decoding isn't 96kHz; it is 48kHz. So it appears Tidal is doing upsampling?

​No, Tidal is not upsampling.  Tidal has a software MQA decoder and it's "unfolding" the music to a higher-resolution version.  That's why you are seeing the 96kHz in your DAC.  It's real!
 
When you use Audirvana, it doesn't have a software MQA decoder so you are only getting the lower resolution version of the track.

 

[erich6]

In my experience, higher bit rates are much more noticeable on a 2-channel system than on headphones due to the inherent differences in staging.

​Interesting.  I listen almost exclusively with headphones so haven't experienced the difference with speaker systems.  I suspect that's even more so with surround sound recordings.  Good to know.