MQA is Vaporware

[rn701]

5 hours ago, knickerhawk said:

 

Have you heard what the cost will be for the Sublime subscription with HiRes streaming when it becomes available in the US? Based on the UK pricing, it looks like it will be considerably more expensive than Tidal.

An article somewhere said it would be the same as Euro/GBP except in dollars, $9.99/mo for mp3, $19.99/mo for CD, and $349.99/year for hi-res and discounted downloads.

[rn701]

300+ pages later, just wanted to comment on the thread title.

 

Vaporware, back in the day, referred to announced products that were never delivered, and sometimes never intended to be delivered for various reasons.

 

MQA exists, so it isn't technically vaporware.

 

A better term would be "snake oil." Or more appropriately in the current vernacular, "malware."

[rn701]

MQA live. Lol. That playback test equipment. Lol.

[rn701]

Roon must be finally nearing a new release to fix all the outstanding  issues in their software. Otherwise, it seems like the COO would have R&D projects to tend to instead of spending time on their forums making up new justifications for MQA and running them up the flagpole to see if anybody salutes.

 

At any rate, his recent, uh, activism? in the forums is somewhat revealing about their priorities and their attitude towards customers, which is reminiscent of JimH.

[rn701]

4 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

What is in it for these people to want to see MQA control music distribution?

That'$ a rhetorical que$tion, right?

[rn701]

8 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

You can believe that MQA Provenance is the real thing.  After all, MQA is a lossless, deblurring, time correcting system that has been honest and forthright from day one about what it does!

 

How about that.  Did I do that with a straight face?

 

I understand Bob Stuart contacted the Jimi Hendrix estate to observe production of the MQA master for Band of Gypsies and they authenticated that the blue light came on. 

 

/onion

[rn701]

2 minutes ago, crenca said:

Roon needs streaming more than they need just about anything else,

 

This. Integration with qobuz (and only for radio) is the only reason I'm  keeping roon for another year, having just reupped this month, and before seeing this new rushed, underwhelming release rollout.

[rn701]

P.S. love how the roon worship cult comes out on their forum at the first sign of turbulance and whiner posts get moved, locked or modded. Paging JimH!

[rn701]

33 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

If Qobuz streaming is your primary use case, you can certainly drop Roon for Audirvana, the Qobuz integration there is quite good in my experience.

 

Does it have anything similar to roon radio?

[rn701]

Roon is turning into a 'cult of personality.' Danny and JimH should get a room and compare notes.

[rn701]

Trying to decide between Tidal and Qobuz. Currently have both. The Qobuz price reduction is tempting, but you give up Tidal's personalized playlists and their auto play of similar artists (which is overcome with roon but not using native apps).

 

But I do not want MQA. In Tidal's app, I can set the upper limit to 'hi-fi'. If I set this, it still shows MQA selections. If I accidentally select one, or if there is only an MQA version, what do I get if I have the limit set to hi-fi and I play it? Do I get an unmolested cd quality file, or some kind of unfolded mqa containerized file?

[rn701]

It appears Tidal Hifi (non-plus) users are getting 16/44.1 MQA for some titles:

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/new-pricing-for-tidal/177479/58

 

(I still don't get the point of 16/44.1 MQA.)

[rn701]

Just noticed an mqa "master" album disappeared from tidal. Renaissance by Marcus Miller (Concord Jazz label,  May 2012) was previously available as a 16/44.1 mqa master, but is now only available as 16/44.1 flac.

 

Don't know if mqa was the only version before or if the flac verson was also there or has now replaced it. 

 

He's still got others on tidal in mqa, one from Warner/Rhino (mqa only), another from Universal/Decca (both flac and mqa). Didn’t go through his entire catalog.

 

Anyway, has anyone else noticed disappearing mqa albums on tidal? Could this be an encouraging trend?

[rn701]

When I updated the Tidal Windows desktop app, it reset the exclusive mode setting to off. Turning it on restored mqa core decoding.

 

To see if a max track is mqa or standard pcm flac, toggle the mqa passthru setting. Passthru on disables core decoding, off performs core decoding. If it's 44.1/48 with passthru on and 88.2/96 with passthru off it's mqa. If it's the same either way it's flac.

[rn701]

I've seen some uninformed speculation that Lenbrook might start an MQA streaming service. That would be perfect. It would quarantine MQA to the few hundred people who like it and keep it away from the general population. 

[rn701]

3 hours ago, Fx Studio said:

 

You obviously missed the significance of this one:  https://www.androidbrick.com/how-to-download-tidal-mqa-albums/

That violates Tidal's terms of service and is likely illegal in many countries.