Tidal Masters & MQA Thread!

[gregorio]

Wow, you sure know a lot about the place

Not “a lot”, just a few basic historical facts because I worked there once.

If Apple Music stopped treating anyone not using an apple device like they're undeserving of lossless music, it could be basically perfect

Everyone is “undeserving” of lossless/bit-perfect music though, who can hear the difference between lossless and say a high bit rate MP3 or AAC at reasonable listening levels? It all depends on what we mean by bit-perfect, or more precisely, in what way is it not bit-perfect. Some non-bit-perfect is entirely desirable and deliberately audible, loudness normalisation (replaygain or sound check) or the addition of EQ for example. But even in the case of loudness normalisation, the difference between bit-perfect and loudness normalised would be inaudible if volume matched. So, except in some specific circumstances, bit-perfect/lossless for consumer playback is nothing more than audiophile marketing.

because 'why on earth would you want something of such quality on such a plebian non-apple device'

As “such quality” in the vast majority of music playback scenarios just means considerably more data to transfer and process for no audible benefit and as Apple obviously does not make Windows or the hardware devices which run it, then the choice is between: Providing bit-perfect/lossless which has no audible benefit but may cause issues with some devices not designed for it or not providing it, which has no audible downside but ensures compatibility. And as you correctly stated, even some Apple devices are excluded, because they weren’t designed for it.

The same is true of the other distributors, it’s not “so stupid”, it’s the opposite, “entirely wise”. The point at which it might become “so stupid” is purely a marketing point in time, when all your competitors offer it and when/if a significant portion of your consumers *believe* the false marketing (that lossless is an audible improvement).

G

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Deezer Hifi is bitperfect over Bluesound. That's the way I use it and scamazon. Bypassing their desktop apps solves that major problem except that BluOS can't turn scamazon into an acceptable experience.

 

[peterinvan]

Thanks for the reply. Right now I cant even get it to output it with exclusive mode. dec I started getting an error on the app and it wont do it. Been dealing with Amazon trying to get them to fix the issue. One day it just stopped working and no idea why.

Enjoying my new HiFiMAN EF400 DAC/amp. Tidal app on Win 11 PC.
I had a problem selecting Exclusive mode in Tidal. I closed the app and opened it again and was able to set Exclusive. Strange.

I don’t see any way to set Exclusive on my iOS app (iPad Pro).

Can anyone explain what I am getting from the iPad Pro USB-C out?

 

[Left Channel]

MQA has entered administration, which is the UK equivalent of US Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But we don't know what this means.

This is the best analysis I've seen so far: https://www.ecoustics.com/news/mqa-bankruptcy/

tl;dr summary: they may have done this to enable the separate sale of their Bluetooth division, while the rest of the company may yet have a viable future. Or not.

 

[GoldenSound]

TIDAL Will soon be adding hi-res lossless to their service!
Hopefully this also means that 44.1khz / 16 bit tracks which currently are only available in MQA on the service (even on hifi tier) will have lossless versions restored
https://reddit.com/r/TIdaL/comments/12hr68f/ama_w_jesse_tidal/jfuo1ng/

 

[gimmeheadroom]

https://www.enjoythemusic.com/news/0423/

 

[BobSmith8901]

https://www.enjoythemusic.com/news/0423/

Found another article that provides a bit more granularity:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/tidal-is-introducing-hi-res-flac-to-its-hifi-plus-subscription-tier

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Found another article that provides a bit more granularity:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/tidal-is-introducing-hi-res-flac-to-its-hifi-plus-subscription-tier

Thanks. It's true that it's a better article, but that is what I understood from the short one I saw anyway.

 

[BobSmith8901]

Thanks. It's true that it's a better article, but that is what I understood from the short one I saw anyway.

I thought it was interesting when Whathifi asked them to clarify a bit on the status of MQA, and they said their existing MQA catalogue will continue to be available, which, semantically, could indicate that there may be real plans to move entirely away from MQA, eventually. I think Tidal's pretty deep catalogue and music discovery along with a genuinely legitimate Hi-Res offering could be stiff competition for Qobuz.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I thought it was interesting when Whathifi asked them to clarify a bit on the status of MQA, and they said their existing MQA catalogue will continue to be available, which, semantically, could indicate that there may be real plans to move entirely away from MQA, eventually. I think Tidal's pretty deep catalogue and music discovery along with a genuinely legitimate Hi-Res offering could be stiff competition for Qobuz.

Agreed. It is hard to guess exactly what this means in terms of MQA. But as @rkw has pointed out, it remains unclear if Tidal has much control over what format they get from the music companies.

Qobuz has a very limited offering area and it is much more expensive that Tidal so I don't see it as real competition. I have 3 services for various reasons, they're all cheap and it's good to have options.

 

[BobSmith8901]

Agreed. It is hard to guess exactly what this means in terms of MQA. But as @rkw has pointed out, it remains unclear if Tidal has much control over what format they get from the music companies.

Qobuz has a very limited offering area and it is much more expensive that Tidal so I don't see it as real competition. I have 3 services for various reasons, they're all cheap and it's good to have options.

Yeah, we really don't know a lot about how this will be implemented.

When I heard that Qobuz was coming to Canada I got pretty excited. With the Tidal news, if nothing else, I wouldn't make a move until I saw how the Hi Res thing was going to pan out since I'm a long time Tidal subscriber.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Yeah, we really don't know a lot about how this will be implemented. When I heard that Qobuz was coming to Canada I got pretty excited. With the Tidal news, if nothing else, I wouldn't make a move until I saw how it was going to pan out since I'm a long time Tidal subscriber.

Qobuz is definitely worth trying, it's the only other service aside from Tidal with a bitperfect desktop app.

If it ever comes to either of the two countries I live and work in I will give it a try. But, I won't pay 2X what I'm paying for Tidal.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Qobuz has a very limited offering area and it is much more expensive that Tidal so I don't see it as real competition.

$10.83 per month for annual Qobuz subscription vs $9.99 per month Tidal, or whooping $0.84 difference.
Doesn't MQA and high-res also requires $19.99 Hifi-Plus, which makes Qobuz a much cheaper option.
If it's limited in your area that's a different issue, but I wouldn't call current 25 countries coverage a "very limited".

 

[peterinvan]

Yeah, we really don't know a lot about how this will be implemented.

When I heard that Qobuz was coming to Canada I got pretty excited. With the Tidal news, if nothing else, I wouldn't make a move until I saw how the Hi Res thing was going to pan out since I'm a long time Tidal subscriber.

I am also in wait-and-see mode. The one area where there is room for improvement in the Tidal UI is the “recommended” list. My observation is that it is still heavily biased with hip-hop and other favs that JZ might like. It would not be difficult to filter the new recommendations based on the thousands of tracks I have actually tagged.

I look forward to hi-res tracks based on actual masters. By-by MQA.

Tidal folks: please ask your sources to specifically note the provenance of the tracks supplied. Then display it in the album info. You can compete with Qobuz if you have the best “master” tracks.

 

[BS5711]

Interesting observation after recently giving up Tidal but later subscribing again but to the Hi Fi tier this time.

My FiiO M11 Plus, ifI Gryphon and Go Bar will still show MQA on a lot, not all, “master” songs despite that my subscription apparently does not allow that. Diablo doesn’t show MQA indicator light only PCM 16/44.1 indicator.

Obviously as Golden Sound has indicated the HiFi tracks are nothing more than MQA tracks with the encoding changed so a DAC doesn’t recognise them as MQA. It seems that some DACs still see them as MQA or Tidal didn’t change the encryption on all music.