Is MQA Fading Away?

If MQA has a sonic advantage over a lossless format, its my opinion it is not due to their compression algorithm. Those and the need for them have pretty much faded away unless you are at the edge of the universe and have CenturyLink ADSL. :)

A few years ago I was in that boat and supported MQA. Now I have fiber internet.

In my view any sonic improvement is due to their use of specific apodizing encoding filters designed to mitigate the damage done by the low pass filters used in mastering A/D converters, especially early ones. This is potentially a big deal and gets overlooked. Maybe someone will step up and buy this piece of the puzzle.

Apart from this, any value their compression algorithms have would be to reduce steaming costs for service providers. So far Tidal is the only test case. We’ll see what happens and if thy pony up some cash to keep their streaming costs lower.

Lots of ways this could play out.



This technology may have value and we’ll see what happens
 
Reddit - Dive into anything

In short, Tidal is going lossless FLAC.
Bye MQA.

Jesse Dorogusker on the relationship of Tidal and MQA:
“Hi-res FLAC will come soon. TIDAL added MQA when others were streaming low bitrate AAC (and some still do). It was a balance of quality and bandwidth. Cell networks are better now. Hi-res FLAC files will be big, but we think the infra is ready, even on mobile.”

Member asked:
“Any chance Tidal might acquire MQA?”

Jesse Dorogusker:
“No, not acquiring MQA.”




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
 
W9TR said:
If MQA has a sonic advantage over a lossless format, its my opinion it is not due to their compression algorithm. Those and the need for them have pretty much faded away unless you are at the edge of the universe and have CenturyLink ADSL. :)

A few years ago I was in that boat and supported MQA. Now I have fiber internet.

In my view any sonic improvement is due to their use of specific apodizing encoding filters designed to mitigate the damage done by the low pass filters used in mastering A/D converters, especially early ones. This is potentially a big deal and gets overlooked. Maybe someone will step up and buy this piece of the puzzle.

Apart from this, any value their compression algorithms have would be to reduce steaming costs for service providers. So far Tidal is the only test case. We’ll see what happens and if thy pony up some cash to keep their streaming costs lower.

Lots of ways this could play out.



This technology may have value and we’ll see what happens
Click to expand...

This is not news; many people (including me) have said for years, in fact starting at the time of MQA’s introduction, that the filtering algorithms should have been separated from the lossy compression so that listeners could determine if there is a sonic benefit (or not).
 
Mike said:
Reddit - Dive into anything

In short, Tidal is going lossless FLAC.
Bye MQA.

Jesse Dorogusker on the relationship of Tidal and MQA:
“Hi-res FLAC will come soon. TIDAL added MQA when others were streaming low bitrate AAC (and some still do). It was a balance of quality and bandwidth. Cell networks are better now. Hi-res FLAC files will be big, but we think the infra is ready, even on mobile.”

Member asked:
“Any chance Tidal might acquire MQA?”

Jesse Dorogusker:
“No, not acquiring MQA.”




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...

Stick a fork in in it...
 
Can anyone with a non-MQA DAC play 96k or 192k from Tidal now?

If you can then I don't understand why add FLAC hi res, unless it's so those with MQA can receive hi res and bypass that software. If not, then seems there's a section of customers being left out and adding FLAC would increase potential customers.
 
I don't know if MQA is good, bad, or not and I have no dog in this fight. I do know when I went from Tidal to Qobuz I feel like I got improved SQ.

Whatever the reason is I don't know. But I prefer Qobuz. If MQA is really all that great I'm really not missing it.
 
Mr Peabody said:
Can anyone with a non-MQA DAC play 96k or 192k from Tidal now?

If you can then I don't understand why add FLAC hi res, unless it's so those with MQA can receive hi res and bypass that software. If not, then seems there's a section of customers being left out and adding FLAC would increase potential customers.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you are asking, but I suspect it will be weeks or months before there is a large selection of hi-res FLACs on Tidal. The MQA offerings may well stay there also, depending on the arrangements between Tidal and the labels.
 
I don't know how to make it anymore simple, if your DAC is not MQA can you play hi res from Tidal? Meaning no MQA software anywhere in the digital chain.

rbbert said:
I'm not sure what you are asking, but I suspect it will be weeks or months before there is a large selection of hi-res FLACs on Tidal. The MQA offerings may well stay there also, depending on the arrangements between Tidal and the labels.
Click to expand...
 
Mr Peabody said:
I don't know how to make it anymore simple, if your DAC is not MQA can you play hi res from Tidal? Meaning no MQA software anywhere in the digital chain.
Click to expand...

As answered in post #109, before Tidal starts giving you non-MQA Hi-Res FLAC, you only get up to CD-quality or MQA coded music. You get degraded SQ from MQA music without MQA decoder in place. In this case, you will not see anything beyond 44.1kHz or 48kHz displayed on non-MQA DAC.

If you care about it this much you should subscribe to Qobuz, so you can enjoy Hi-Res music now, instead of waiting.
 
Mr Peabody said:
I don't know how to make it anymore simple, if your DAC is not MQA can you play hi res from Tidal? Meaning no MQA software anywhere in the digital chain.
Click to expand...
I see that this has already been answered. I thought the answer was obvious before you asked the question, which is why I wasn’t sure what or why you were asking.
 
If what you say is how it works, then no one can get hi res from Tidal unless they have a MQA DAC. This seems a bad decision from the beginning as it limits your customer base. Those without MQA DAC who care about receiving hi res would be forced to use another streaming service.

I care because I like to know how things work, especially when it involves me. You can't make a good decision without the facts.

Just so you know I have tried to subscribe to Qobuz. Last year they gave a card for 3 fee months. I can't seem to get subscribed, I used two separate emails. I don't know where they reference their data it seems there is an issue with my date of birth. I said forget it, it shouldn't be that hard. Even they couldn't help. I didn't even get to the point to input pay info.


wklie said:
As answered in post #109, before Tidal starts giving you non-MQA Hi-Res FLAC, you only get up to CD-quality or MQA coded music. You get degraded SQ from MQA music without MQA decoder in place. In this case, you will not see anything beyond 44.1kHz or 48kHz displayed on non-MQA DAC.

If you care about it this much you should subscribe to Qobuz, so you can enjoy Hi-Res music now, instead of waiting.
Click to expand...
 
I don't know where AI gets their data but the answer I got and posted earlier is exact opposite of what Peter said. There's nothing obvious about what I asked, presuming that's why the lack of answers unless everyone has MQA DAC's. I trust that Peter in his position would know.

Besides if you thought it obvious why not either answer or not say anything? Instead, you said you didn't understand which is what I trust is the truth of the matter.
rbbert said:
I see that this has already been answered. I thought the answer was obvious before you asked the question, which is why I wasn’t sure what or why you were asking.
Click to expand...
 
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