MQA now on Tidal

For those of you using Aurender or methods that are not the desktop app - how are you verifying that you are actually streaming the MQA version of the album when following the instructions above, and NOT simply streaming the Redbook version? Last night I was listening to Tinariwen's Tassili in my listening room via the PC desktop app and my DAC showed 88.2k. I favorited the album and played it back this morning using BubbleUPnP and was only offered 44.1k. According to everything Ive read MQA software decoding is only supported via the desktop app, so Im a bit confused by all of the conflicting reports in this thread.

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mep said:
Rob-I know you are a digital only kind of guy, so to you the comparison of an album that was originally recorded to analog tape and cut to LP when the master tape was still fresh against the MQA version may be "silly and irrelevant." To those of us who maintain both digital and analog playback in our systems and still prefer the sound of analog, the comparison is neither silly or irrelevant. For the analog believers, you die hard digital guys comparing one sort of PCM file against another sort of PCM file that has been manipulated, folded, and data tucked in for the night until its decoded through MQA doesn't hold much stock for determining which PCM file "is closer to the master recording sound." How would you know which is "closer to the master recording sound"??? Because some light lit up on your DAC that says you are playing an authenticated file? Because you bought into some marketing hype and you believe that MQA has corrected all problems with the original A/D converters used in every recording?

The only way you would ever know which version of a PCM file "is closer to the master recording sound" is if you had an early generation copy of the master tape at your home and you had a professional tape deck to play back that master tape copy and you compared that against all of your PCM files to determine your digital winner. That's still reminiscent of having a margarine tasting contest to see which one comes closer to tasting like butter. That is why I want to hear from someone who has invested in both digital and analog in their system and compares an LP that was cut from the original master tape (pure analog transfer) against the MQA file. Until then, everyone is just comparing different flavors of margarine and trying to convince themselves that one of those flavors actually does taste just like butter. Maybe that could be the next marketing slogan for digital: "I can't believe it's not analog!"
Click to expand...

Great post. The other side to that argument is to look at recordings made after 1982 or so. Recordings made to digital. Let's look at digital recordings made today. This is where things get tricky. How do we know what sounds closest to the original? A-D converters have sucked for so long and only recently have gotten better. In speaking with one of my reps who has 95% of his work (sales) on the pro side, and working with many of the top studios around the country, he told me not one records above 24/96. So, right there, 24/192 files are just 24/96 upsampled (something I will give credit to jdandy for, who was the first to say that 24/96 files sounded better in almost every case than 24/192).

So this is where the "compared to what?" argument gets tricky.

MQA attempts to compensate for shortfalls made during the recording. Problems with older microphones, old A-D converters, mixing boards, etc.

I guess if you're listening to music recorded to tape, R2R represents a great baseline. When we talk about music recorded digitally, that's when the waters become muddy.
 
RLL1..when you say 'for the "Masters" selection to appear'...do you mean the album itself or the word 'Masters' indicating it is a 'Masters' album..?..thanks for your help..
 
But seriously, they know/can compensate for every mic, mixing board, ADC combination used in every recording studio.... really.... (and this is not even considering using certain Marshall amps is the studio because of desired distortion they added) but even if we give them a pass and say that they are able to do this (or for that matter could actual track down what was used in each and every recording)... would it not be in the file and therefore when unfolded, weather in a MQA DAC or via software, the assumed advantages should be there.

Of course this is assuming that the recording engineer did not already take into account said recording studio combinations, and already made adjustments for them. I would assume that many of these engineers where/are real professionals and already understood the equipment affects in the studios.

Also, many of the manufactures of the professional digital equipment have came out against MQA, going as far as writing very extensive papers reviewing the entire technology.

With all of this said personally I do strive most to obtain the closest I can to the original recording. Of course I understand the concept of how do we know what is closes go the original recording anyway. However, one basic premises to me is to not continually add additional processing.
 
Randy Myers said:
But seriously, they know/can compensate for every mic, mixing board, ADC combination used in every recording studio.... really.... (and this is not even considering using certain Marshall amps is the studio because of desired distortion they added) but even if we give them a pass and say that they are able to do this (or for that matter could actual track down what was used in each and every recording)... would it not be in the file and therefore when unfolded, weather in a MQA DAC or via software, the assumed advantages should be there.
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Yes, they are in the file - if we are talking about the corrections for the ADC only. That's where the marketing claim of MQA file sounding better even without MQA DAC comes from.

If my speculation is right, the DAC side correction is only in MQA DAC instead of software decoding. Full benefits involve corrections for both ADC and DAC ends, not just one end (that's why MQA emphasized the end-to-end processing.) Each MQA DAC implementation is tuned according to its specific hardware for the correction.
 
For Lumin owners...how can you tell if the 'Masters' album you added to 'Favorites' is playing in the HD version..?
 
Randy Myers said:
But seriously, they know/can compensate for every mic, mixing board, ADC combination used in every recording studio.... really.... (and this is not even considering using certain Marshall amps is the studio because of desired distortion they added) but even if we give them a pass and say that they are able to do this (or for that matter could actual track down what was used in each and every recording)... would it not be in the file and therefore when unfolded, weather in a MQA DAC or via software, the assumed advantages should be there.

Of course this is assuming that the recording engineer did not already take into account said recording studio combinations, and already made adjustments for them. I would assume that many of these engineers where/are real professionals and already understood the equipment affects in the studios.

Also, many of the manufactures of the professional digital equipment have came out against MQA, going as far as writing very extensive papers reviewing the entire technology.

With all of this said personally I do strive most to obtain the closest I can to the original recording. Of course I understand the concept of how do we know what is closes go the original recording anyway. However, one basic premises to me is to not continually add additional processing.
Click to expand...

A bad recording is a bad recording and no software or fancy hardware is going to fix that unless you put the same musicians back in the studio and do all over again. Just my 2cents
 
I have masters finally playing through my system. Most show 24/44.1
What has been others experiences.
Sounds very good so far.
Too soon to tell if best since sliced bread.


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when playing the 'Masters' albums on a Lumin should it show '24/44' ?..my Lumin still shows 14/44 with the Masters albums i have added..
 
JGlacken said:
I have masters finally playing through my system. Most show 24/44.1
What has been others experiences.
Sounds very good so far.
Too soon to tell if best since sliced bread.


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Click to expand...
Mine have all displayed 88.2 or 96k during playback. Are you using the desktop app?

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calloway said:
when playing the 'Masters' albums on a Lumin should it show '24/44' ?..my Lumin still shows 14/44 with the Masters albums i have added..
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You are not getting Master quality with Lumin, it would appear.

A lot of people seem to be missing the key point - MQA software decoding is ONLY supported via the desktop app.

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audiophil said:
What have you found at 192? Would love to check those out.

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Two that I have tagged are Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly" and Van Morrison's " Moondance".

It's funny but there are 88 and 96 files that sound better than these two. The original does not have to be 192 to get great sound.
 
calloway said:
are you using the 'desktop app' to play through your system?..if so..how does that work..?
Click to expand...

If that question is directed at me the answer is NO. After using the Tidal ap to find "Masters" I would like to hear, I then go to Tidal in Sooloos and tag the MQA version to add to my Library. When I output them to my Sooloss endpoint (808v6) they display switches to "MQA. " and shows the original output. 88, 96, 192 or in some cases 44.
 
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