Is MQA Fading Away?

BlueFox said:
I don’t know if MQA is fading away, but I do know I have never come across a MQA file, or ever have a reason to use, or try, it.
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I see that you have a LUMIN X1. If you have Qobuz, you might try playing "2L - The Nordic Sound" through the LUMIN App. When I play it on the desktop through the Qobuz App, it shows 24/44.1, but through the LUMIN App to the T2 in the main system, it shows as MQA Studio 24/352.8. Curiously, the album info says 24/44.1 in the LUMIN App (just as in the Qobuz App), but when I start playing the album it reads MQA. Not sure exactly what is happening here, but the sound is incredible.

Honestly, the 2L Label has some of the very best recorded and mastered titles that I am aware of when it comes to streaming. Even the 24/44.1 files are incredibly clean sounding, so the ultimate quality of the MQA stream in the LUMIN App surely owes a lot to 2L's mastery of their craft. The LUMIN player and App combination hasn't done any harm to that beautiful sound, at least to my ears. Certainly worth a try if you have Qobuz. I'm not sure if Tidal has the 2L label's titles, so I can't comment on that.
 
This is normal.

2L has stated their support and preference for MQA officially. Therefore the 2L albums on Qobuz are MQA because 2L provided MQA albums to Qobuz, even if the service does not support MQA. You can also find 2L MQA coded albums from Apple Music (there are multiple hurdles in getting lossless transmission from Apple Music to a DAC, but that's another story.)

Unless Tidal changes their decision and gets all the labels cooperation/approval to replace their MQA albums by non-MQA versions (I seriously doubt this is done by simply flipping a switch), and all MQA affiliated labels such as 2L replace their albums on Qobuz by non-MQA versions, what happens to MQA Ltd. financially does not change anything at this moment regarding functional requirements from Tidal subscribers and MQA CD owners, until some drastic change occurs to the state of all current MQA content in streaming, and the labels re-release the albums in the next disc format to attract buyers.
 
Seems like there are several possibilities:

1. MQA goes bankrupt because they cannot find a buyer.

2. A strategic buyer like Tidal or Apple or Spotify (maybe a label too?) emerges to capture the existing MQA algorithm (Keep the Tidal Masters revenue going) or the new SCL6 algorithm for Bluetooth or both.

3. MQA gets a new investor or Bob Stuart who is independently wealthy makes an investment.
 
No, I don't. I respectfully wonder if you understand what MQA is. If I buy a DAC today that decodes MQA that DAC would still function just fine no matter what streaming service I decided to use. If MQA goes away no one with a MQA DAC will have any issue, it will function just as it always did, the MQA decoding will just become extra baggage if you will.
nicoff said:
Not so fast. There are some folks that are looking at buying MQA DACs because they use Tidal (I think you are one of them). If MQA goes away, Tidal will drop MQA as well. Those folks will no longer need MQA-capable DACs and will likely be moving to other streaming music services for high def content. Then they will be checking out other DACs that were not on their radar before and will get rid of the MQA DAC that they own. You follow?
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The two questions now become:
Who will purchase MQA assets?
What will they do with them?

The internet will endlessly riff on:
Does anybody really care?
 
Randy Myers said:
:) not to me. I had been saying since day 1 that it was a big money grabbing scheme!
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As have most audiophiles, including AJ I would expect (if he even bothered to think about it); I'm sure his post was both ironic and sarcastic.
 
W9TR said:
The two questions now become:
Who will purchase MQA assets?
What will they do with them?

The internet will endlessly riff on:
Does anybody really care?
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With operating losses and debt orders of magnitude greater than "profits", I'm not sure what those "assets" are? A lossy codec for streaming music from ONE provider? A codec for wireless music transmission that has (so far) been rejected by Bluetooth (but may offer real advantages over what currently exists)?
 
W9TR said:
The two questions now become:
Who will purchase MQA assets?
What will they do with them?

The internet will endlessly riff on:
Does anybody really care?
Click to expand...

Regarding the first question, potential buyers of MQA assets could be companies or investors interested in the music industry, audio technology, or digital media. They could also be competitors seeking to expand their market share or diversify their product offerings.
 
LOL, the real irony is my DAC does not decode MQA, I did pay to download the first unfold software from Aurender, the reason it was my understanding that I needed MQA to get hi res from Tidal (higher than 44.1k), now that I'm thinking of a new DAC I wanted MQA for the final unfold, now it could be going away. Always late to the party, frown, I guess not fashionable in this case.

If anyone has Tidal without the MQA DAC can you tell me if you get hi res when playing those tracks?

Someone earlier was talking about Tidal having to replace the MQA tracks with non MQA tracks for hi res but someone else I was talking to who is an IT guy/audiophile told me losing MQA would be no big deal for Tidal like those hi res tracks would keep playing. But if that's true I should be getting at least 192k now. Unfortunately, I'm not able to see any display to see what I'm receiving. I can see from the Aurender app what is being sent but not what is actually playing.
 
If your DAC does not support MQA, you will not be able to fully decode and play MQA encoded tracks on Tidal at the highest resolution. However, Tidal offers high-res streaming without MQA, so you can still listen to music at resolutions higher than 44.1kHz.
I would like to add that MQA is not the only way to get high resolution audio from Tidal, and many DACs support high resolution audio without the need for MQA decoding. In addition, Tidal offers multiple streaming options, including FLAC and AAC, which deliver high-resolution audio in a variety of resolutions.
 
rbbert said:
With operating losses and debt orders of magnitude greater than "profits", I'm not sure what those "assets" are? A lossy codec for streaming music from ONE provider? A codec for wireless music transmission that has (so far) been rejected by Bluetooth (but may offer real advantages over what currently exists)?
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That's based on figures from Fiscal 2021. Hard to speculate on what license revenue was in 2022.

IP could be worth a good bit. Maybe Tidal doesn't want to see Tidal Masters going away. Maybe a hardware mfr will want SCL6.
 
I wanted to play with ChatAI here's a bit of what it came up with.

Does a person need a MQA compatible DAC in order to play higher than 44.1k resolution files from Tidal?


No, you do not necessarily need an MQA compatible DAC to play higher than 44.1k resolution files from Tidal. Tidal streams high-resolution audio files in two different formats: FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and MQA (Master Quality Authenticated). If you have a standard high-resolution DAC that supports FLAC up to 192kHz/24 bit or higher, you can stream and play Tidal's high-resolution FLAC files without any issues. However, if you want to stream Tidal's MQA files and decode them to their full resolution, then you will need an MQA compatible DAC. An MQA compatible DAC is able to fully decode the MQA files and restore the original studio-quality sound. Without an MQA compatible DAC, you can still stream and play Tidal's MQA files, but they will be downsampled to a lower resolution.
What is the difference between Tidal's hi fi tier and the Master tier?


Tidal offers two tiers of subscription services: HiFi and Masters. The HiFi tier offers users access to Tidal's library of high fidelity (hi-fi) music in CD-quality, which is 16-bit/44.1 kHz. HiFi also offers access to exclusive content, music videos, and editorial editorial content. The Masters tier, on the other hand, offers a higher quality of music playback than HiFi. Masters is based on the industry-standard MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) technology, which enables high-resolution streaming of studio-quality music files. With Masters, Tidal streams music in 24-bit/96 kHz or 24-bit/192 kHz (depending on the availability), providing an even higher level of sound quality. The difference between these two tiers of subscription lies solely in the quality of music playback. HiFi tier offers CD-quality streaming, while Masters offers higher-resolution 24-bit streaming.
So if I am a Master tier subscriber from Tidal I can play 192k files without a MQA compatible DAC?


Yes, if you are a Tidal Master tier subscriber, you can play 192k files without an MQA compatible DAC. Tidal uses two types of audio formats for its Master tier - MQA and non-MQA. Non-MQA files are hi-res audio files that are encoded in the FLAC format with a sampling rate of either 96kHz/24 bit or 192kHz/24 bit. These files can be played back by any compatible audio endpoint or DAC. MQA-encoded files are also 96kHz/24 bit or 192kHz/24 bit, but they are packed in a way that allows them to be streamed in smaller file sizes. In order to unfold the MQA-encoded audio, you need an MQA-compatible DAC, which can decode and interpolate it into a higher resolution audio signal. However, even without an MQA-compatible DAC, Tidal will still stream the audio at a 96kHz/24 bit or 192kHz/24 bit resolution.

According to this if MQA goes under Tidal will be fine. Well, I guess as long as Tidal has duplicate HR & MQA for all available albums where MQA is offered.

PeterBrodbeck said:
If your DAC does not support MQA, you will not be able to fully decode and play MQA encoded tracks on Tidal at the highest resolution. However, Tidal offers high-res streaming without MQA, so you can still listen to music at resolutions higher than 44.1kHz.
I would like to add that MQA is not the only way to get high resolution audio from Tidal, and many DACs support high resolution audio without the need for MQA decoding. In addition, Tidal offers multiple streaming options, including FLAC and AAC, which deliver high-resolution audio in a variety of resolutions.
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You were spot on
 
Lee Scoggins said:
That's based on figures from Fiscal 2021. Hard to speculate on what license revenue was in 2022.

IP could be worth a good bit. Maybe Tidal doesn't want to see Tidal Masters going away. Maybe a hardware mfr will want SCL6.
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It's easy to speculate that the downward trend in profits and the upward trend in losses and debt in the years prior to and including 2021 would have continued in 2022. The problems with Tidal possibly buying MQA have been discussed (Tidal is probably in little better financial shape than MQA, although as a privately held company we don't know for sure). Someone or company might want SCL6, but would they pay enough for it to keep the rest of MQA going?

The fact remains that despite your continued advocacy, MQA in toto is a dead technology and (obviously) also dying in the marketplace. If the filtering algorithms in MQA do actually result in better sound (still being debated), offering that in some commercial form without the lossy codec does have some potential.
 
Mr Peabody said:
.....

According to this if MQA goes under Tidal will be fine. Well, I guess as long as Tidal has duplicate HR & MQA for all available albums where MQA is offered.
...
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That would be the big question.

When I was a Tidal subscriber, I recall that the first MQA unfold was done by software. That first unfold was limited to 96khz. I used Roon to do the first unfold.
To get the maximum resolution out of the MQA file, you needed to do other steps/unfolds. Those other unfolds could only be done with DACs that supported MQA.
 
You are correct. I thought my questions may be answered but as I think about it when selecting albums on Tidal I see MQA but have never seen an option to select a regular hi res vs MQA, its always been MQA. So if Tidal has those FLAC hi res I wonder why an option is not given to select either/or. I suppose time will tell.
nicoff said:
That would be the big question.

When I was a Tidal subscriber, I recall that the first MQA unfold was done by software. That first unfold was limited to 96khz. I used Roon to do the first unfold.
To get the maximum resolution out of the MQA file, you needed to do other steps/unfolds. Those other unfolds could only be done with DACs that supported MQA.
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