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Tidal ditch MQA

Excellent. Really pleased to hear that as I’m now a Tidal subscriber and don’t have (or want) the decoding technology. There is still a lot of stuff that identifies as MQA on there and of differing resolutions, though I guess I only get to hear them as lossy watermarked files. Good riddance to bad technology.
 
Actually you should be able to get the full benefit, even without an MQA enabled DAC. Just switch the passthrough MQA option off! Your PC will then take over the MQA decoding (well at least a windows one will).

You find your DAC is actually operating at a higher sample rate and or bit depth than 44/16.

I would say at least half of Tidal's hi res material is still MQA. I certainly hope they're not just going to replace it with standard 44/16 since regardless of what people say about MQA I've found Tidal MQA normally sounds noticeably better than my CD rips when I have the two to compare.

MQA certainly isn't foo and those who suggest otherwise need to get better equipment.

It certainly does have issues though. I find MQA streams far more likely to drop out than any others and I get an irritating pop between tracks (possibly because I'm running Tidal trough JRMC to be able to use the ASIO drivers for the DAC).

If Tidal is as "audiophile" as it claims then it really needs to support ASIO II directly.
 
Maybe some other use for it can be found. A while ago I checked out mqa and thought it sounded ok, I remember thinking it sounded way better than any known bluetooth codec.
 
MQA was a 'solution' (I use that term loosely) in search of a problem. With bandwidth for even basic home broadband capable of easily streaming lossless FLAC, the introduction of a proprietary and costly way to make files smaller really wasn't needed.

I wouldn't have minded about it if it was entirely optional but TIDAL at the time converted all their FLAC to MQA so you couldn't avoid being served up the lossy, meddled-with file instead of an open-source lossless FLAC.
 
krenzler said:
Just give me the original format in whichever way it was mastered - be it 16/44, 24/48, 24/96 or whatever. Why does it need to be tampered with after the fact?
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Unfortunately due to band width limitations bluetooth audio must be tampered with.
 
colasblue said:
Actually you should be able to get the full benefit, even without an MQA enabled DAC. Just switch the passthrough MQA option off! Your PC will then take over the MQA decoding (well at least a windows one will).

You find your DAC is actually operating at a higher sample rate and or bit depth than 44/16.

I would say at least half of Tidal's hi res material is still MQA. I certainly hope they're not just going to replace it with standard 44/16 since regardless of what people say about MQA I've found Tidal MQA normally sounds noticeably better than my CD rips when I have the two to compare.

MQA certainly isn't foo and those who suggest otherwise need to get better equipment.

It certainly does have issues though. I find MQA streams far more likely to drop out than any others and I get an irritating pop between tracks (possibly because I'm running Tidal trough JRMC to be able to use the ASIO drivers for the DAC).

If Tidal is as "audiophile" as it claims then it really needs to support ASIO II directly.
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I don't have a PC, I stream with Bubble uPnP to my streamer, how would I use the MQA files?

Probably a moot question if they are dropping MQA, is there any other source for MQA files other than Tidal downloads or rare MQA CDs?

Thinking about downloads, if a Tidal subscriber downloads all the MQA files for offline listening, will they be able to keep them as long as their subscription lasts?
 
colasblue said:
Indeed, but I suspect that makes it more prone to glitches if there is any error in the data.
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That reminds me of the ifi Blue, the connection was always flaky and it wouldn't connect in my room beyond about 10 feet. They said they had developed proprietary firmware to improve the quality of Bluetooth music.
 
garyi said:
This wasn't a 'solution' to/for Bluetooth. Bluetooth as far as I am aware has nothing to do with MQA.
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Not saying bt has anything to do with mqa. Where did i say that.
I was merely suggesting that maybe mqx might make a better bt audio codec than those currently available.
 
Funk said:
MQA was a 'solution' (I use that term loosely) in search of a problem. With bandwidth for even basic home broadband capable of easily streaming lossless FLAC, the introduction of a proprietary and costly way to make files smaller really wasn't needed.

I wouldn't have minded about it if it was entirely optional but TIDAL at the time converted all their FLAC to MQA so you couldn't avoid being served up the lossy, meddled-with file instead of an open-source lossless FLAC.
Click to expand...
Exactly this. MP3 for hi-res and totally overtaken by bandwidth improvements.
 
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