[Stevko]

FLAC is FLAC, not possible to be equivalent

 

[NickT23]

FLAC is FLAC, not possible to be equivalent

I see.... like my comment...

 

[Chris Kaoss]

Guess you question is, if Tidal streams in a proprietary lossless codec, similar to FLAC.

But why should they, bc FLAC is "free"?
No need to but extra work on another codec, imo.

 

[NickT23]

Guess you question is, if Tidal streams in a proprietary lossless codec, similar to FLAC.

But why should they, bc FLAC is "free"?
No need to but extra work on another codec, imo.

Yea I think so. I wanted to know whether 44/16hz hifi Tidal is FLAC or FLAC equivalent.

 

[caleb66]

No link because its verbal.

When I mentioned pure FLAC I mean direct physical rip CD as oppose to streaming 44/16hz on Tidal which I wonder if its actually FLAC or just FLAC equivalent.

They stream loseless 44.1kHz/16 bit stream in FLAC. End of the story.

Regarding "physical rip CD" that's another thing.

I heard and even pointed out in this thread that some music can sounds much worse than what you can have on CD - it was a 1999' album from Static-X.

New releases though might sound better than on their CD equivalents IF music's publishers follow TIDAL or other streaming providers guidelines on how loud they should upload their music, and considering that on their CD releases they will skyrocket volume like before.

There is no rule if streaming sound better or worse - it is purely album dependent. Having "TIDAL Masters" label does not guarantee that it will sound at least as good as the CD version.

 

[rlw6534]

Yea I think so. I wanted to know whether 44/16hz hifi Tidal is FLAC or FLAC equivalent.

Tidal says it streams in FLAC at CD-quality, at least for the HiFi tier. That makes sense as FLAC is lossless and but takes less bandwidth than raw PCM. The FLAC codec supports multiple bitrates and bit depths (as well as MQA) so simply saying a file (or stream) is FLAC doesn't tell you the quality of the audio. A FLAC encoded CD will be 16/44.1 because that's what the CD source provides. FLAC can certainly be high-res as well and also preserves/supports MQA (if the MQA information is present). So FLAC can be 16/44.1 or it can be 24/48 MQA that decodes and renders to 768 kHz (with a supported DAC). - and many other possible bit rates and depths.

 

[rkw]

Yea I think so. I wanted to know whether 44/16hz hifi Tidal is FLAC or FLAC equivalent.

I think your question is whether Tidal HiFi is lossless streaming. Yes it is lossless. As others have pointed out, if it is an MQA encoded album (Tidal Master), it won't have the same data as a rip from CD.

Please stop using the term "FLAC equivalent". It doesn't make sense.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I think your question is whether Tidal HiFi is lossless streaming. Yes it is lossless. As others have pointed out, if it is an MQA encoded album (Tidal Master), it won't have the same data as a rip from CD.

Well MQA is lossy, hires compression that requires bitperfect (as you mentioned). It's one a kind

 

[NickT23]

Ok, so Tidal Hifi and CD rip are considered as FLAC ?

 

[Stevko]

No FLAC is a format..

 

[NickT23]

No FLAC is a format..

Yes then. So let me rephrase, equivalent to CD as well since 44/16hz ?

 

[Stevko]

Yes then. So let me rephrase, equivalent to CD as well since 44/16hz ?

right, but FLAC can also be higher quality.

 

[NickT23]

right, but FLAC can also be higher quality.

Higher quality such as what ? Like for instance ?

Can I simply say Tidal Hifi is FLAC ?

 

[Stevko]

Higher quality such as what ? Like for instance ?

Can I simply say Tidal Hifi is FLAC ?

yes, Tidal uses FLAC format. and streams in 16bit 44.1
flac can be: ex: 24bit 192

 

[NickT23]

yes, Tidal uses FLAC format. and streams in 16bit 44.1
flac can be: ex: 24bit 192

Yes that I am aware of. Because some say its not FLAC.