MQA is Vaporware

[Currawong]

4 minutes ago, lucretius said:

However, Qobuz does not operate in Canada, so that leaves Tidal as the only realistic streaming solution.

 

It doesn't operate in Japan either, yet I could sign up for it. *cough* ;)

[lucretius]

1 minute ago, Currawong said:

 

It doesn't operate in Japan either, yet I could sign up for it. *cough* ;)

 

Then I would need to pay for a VPN service and get an American issued credit card.

[Dr Tone]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

 

Then I would need to pay for a VPN service and get an American issued credit card.

I did it with paypal last time, not sure if that isn’t an option anymore.

[Stereo]

1 hour ago, Archimago said:

 

Hilarious that MQA is "going green" as a rationale. 🤣

 

Extra encoding, storage for the MQA-encoded version of all the music, unnecessary MQA-decoding hardware, more bandwidth used than just a true (preferred) 24/48 lossless FLAC stream. Then there's all that Ultimaco "digital security" hardware! 🤢

 

Talk about BS grasping at straws if that's the angle they want to take now! 😱

 

Interesting. If TIDAL has a lossless "HiFi" FLAC 16/44.1 or 16/48 option that's cheaper than the HiFi+ tier with MQA/surround/Atmos, I might be tempted as a Canadian since we have no Qobuz in these parts for Roon integration. Just make it competitively priced with Amazon Music HD which I'm currently using and the forthcoming Spotify lossless which basically means something like $10-$12.50/month here.

 

No love for Jay-Z, et al. but so long as I don't give 1¢ for MQA music streaming, I might be OK with Tidal.

Although Jay-Z still has a hand in it he is now a minority owner of Tidal (still doesn’t make it any better though):  https://news.yahoo.com/jack-dorseys-square-now-majority-185107101.html

[robi20064]

There is some pricing information up on the AUS site now.

 

https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-au/articles/115003662825-Subscription-Types

• • Premium - $11.99 AUD a month with standard sound quality (320 Kbps)
  • HiFi - $17.99 AUD a month with lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps)
  • HiFi Plus - $23.99 AUD a month with lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps), Master Quality audio (up to 9216 Kbps), and immersive audio - 360 Reality Audio, Dolby Atmos Music
  • Family Premium - $17.99 AUD a month including up to 5 additional family members totaling 6 on the account. Standard sound quality (320 Kbps)

• Family HiFi - $26.99 AUD a month including up to 5 additional family members totaling 6 on the account. Lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps)
• Family HiFi Plus - $35.99 AUD a month including up to 5 additional family members totaling 6 on the account. Lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps), Master Quality audio (up to 9216 Kbps), and immersive audio - 360 Reality Audio, Dolby Atmos Music

[UkPhil]

9 minutes ago, robi20064 said:

There is some pricing information up on the AUS site now.

 

https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-au/articles/115003662825-Subscription-Types

• • Premium - $11.99 AUD a month with standard sound quality (320 Kbps)
  • HiFi - $17.99 AUD a month with lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps)
  • HiFi Plus - $23.99 AUD a month with lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps), Master Quality audio (up to 9216 Kbps), and immersive audio - 360 Reality Audio, Dolby Atmos Music
  • Family Premium - $17.99 AUD a month including up to 5 additional family members totaling 6 on the account. Standard sound quality (320 Kbps)

• Family HiFi - $26.99 AUD a month including up to 5 additional family members totaling 6 on the account. Lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps)
• Family HiFi Plus - $35.99 AUD a month including up to 5 additional family members totaling 6 on the account. Lossless High Fidelity sound quality (1411 Kbps), Master Quality audio (up to 9216 Kbps), and immersive audio - 360 Reality Audio, Dolby Atmos Music

Very confusing as I have just been given this screen shot is Tidal also going to give us 24bit lossless PCM in the options 

[GoldenOne]

I can't imagine that this price model adjustment will change anything regarding the actual files that are being streamed. But once it's out here in the UK i'll test it

[UkPhil]

18 minutes ago, GoldenOne said:

I can't imagine that this price model adjustment will change anything regarding the actual files that are being streamed. But once it's out here in the UK i'll test it

It seems Tidal has gone into meltdown, if they are going to offer 24bit PCM too in the hifi plus package this could be the end of MQA's reign 

[The Computer Audiophile]

19 minutes ago, GoldenOne said:

I can't imagine that this price model adjustment will change anything regarding the actual files that are being streamed. But once it's out here in the UK i'll test it

Agree

[Dr Tone]

52 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

It seems Tidal has gone into meltdown, if they are going to offer 24bit PCM too in the hifi plus package this could be the end of MQA's reign 

I doubt it, it looks like it’s sourced from MQA at all tier levels.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/tidal-hifi-plus-mqa-damage-control/157461/16?u=drtone

 

[Dr Tone]

11 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

Then I would need to pay for a VPN service and get an American issued credit card.

And you only need the vpn to initially sign up after that it isn’t needed.  They can’t expect you to be at home to use their service.

 

Any free vpn client on an iphone would work for sign up.  I used tunnel bear.

[UkPhil]

4 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

I doubt it, it looks like it’s sourced from MQA at all tier levels.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/tidal-hifi-plus-mqa-damage-control/157461/16?u=drtone

 

More garbage marketing then, I will watch and see what unfolds (no pun intended) 😃

[Cebolla]

1 hour ago, Dr Tone said:

I doubt it, it looks like it’s sourced from MQA at all tier levels.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/tidal-hifi-plus-mqa-damage-control/157461/16?u=drtone

 

 

Indeed. The current original HiFi tier has both the HiFi quality connection (16bit/44.1kHz res only streams) and Master quality connection (16bit/44.1kHz and above resolution streams) available to the user. All TIDAL appear to have done is rename the original HiFi tier to HiFi Plus and created a new HiFi tier to only have the HiFi quality connection available. Since the TIDAL HiFi quality connection is already providing 16bit/44.1kHz streams from MQA sources, it's very doubtful that'll suddenly start providing differently sourced streams just because of the tier restructure.

[Daren F]

13 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

Then I would need to pay for a VPN service and get an American issued credit card.

 

Here's some info on how to get a US account in unsupported countries - LINK

 

I haven't tried it myself. I was fortunate to get a French account back when qobuz would remove the geo-restrictions.

[firedog]

14 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

Hilarious that MQA is "going green" as a rationale. 🤣

 

Extra encoding, storage for the MQA-encoded version of all the music, unnecessary MQA-decoding hardware, more bandwidth used than just a true (preferred) 24/48 lossless FLAC stream. Then there's all that Ultimaco "digital security" hardware! 🤢

 

Talk about BS grasping at straws if that's the angle they want to take now! 😱

 

Interesting. If TIDAL has a lossless "HiFi" FLAC 16/44.1 or 16/48 option that's cheaper than the HiFi+ tier with MQA/surround/Atmos, I might be tempted as a Canadian since we have no Qobuz in these parts for Roon integration. Just make it competitively priced with Amazon Music HD which I'm currently using and the forthcoming Spotify lossless which basically means something like $10-$12.50/month here.

 

No love for Jay-Z, et al. but so long as I don't give 1¢ for MQA music streaming, I might be OK with Tidal.

Why not sign up for Deezer? They have a CD quality tier that's reasonably priced. Available in Canada and about 184 other countries. No Roon integration, but...no MQA. 

I predict that  if Tidal makes a CD quality tier cheaper than the "masters", a fair number of people will leave the masters tier and most premium signups will be to the CD tier. 

[KeenObserver]

14 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

Hilarious that MQA is "going green" as a rationale. 🤣

 

Extra encoding, storage for the MQA-encoded version of all the music, unnecessary MQA-decoding hardware, more bandwidth used than just a true (preferred) 24/48 lossless FLAC stream. Then there's all that Ultimaco "digital security" hardware! 🤢

 

Talk about BS grasping at straws if that's the angle they want to take now! 😱

 

Interesting. If TIDAL has a lossless "HiFi" FLAC 16/44.1 or 16/48 option that's cheaper than the HiFi+ tier with MQA/surround/Atmos, I might be tempted as a Canadian since we have no Qobuz in these parts for Roon integration. Just make it competitively priced with Amazon Music HD which I'm currently using and the forthcoming Spotify lossless which basically means something like $10-$12.50/month here.

 

No love for Jay-Z, et al. but so long as I don't give 1¢ for MQA music streaming, I might be OK with Tidal.

 

I have to wonder what Bob Stuart tells himself when he comes out with this stuff.

Is he so far into this that he would sell his soul to see it through? He knows very well that this is all bullshit.

[firedog]

1 minute ago, KeenObserver said:

 

I have to wonder what Bob Stuart tells himself when he comes out with this stuff.

Is he so far into this that he would sell his soul to see it through? He knows very well that this is all bullshit.

People can convice themselves of all sorts of things - and believe them - when profit is involved.

[KeenObserver]

I'll say it again.

MQA is a scheme to put a layer of cost onto every level of music production.

It has no benefit to the music consumer, but the music consumer will pay for every aspect of MQA.

[bambadoo]

10 minutes ago, firedog said:

Why not sign up for Deezer? They have a CD quality tier that's reasonably priced. Available in Canada and about 184 other countries. No Roon integration, but...no MQA. 

I predict that  if Tidal makes a CD quality tier cheaper than the "masters", a fair number of people will leave the masters tier and most premium signups will be to the CD tier. 

Wish it was so well...

Everything from 2L is "MQA first/only"... now 

Guess the same will happen to some, if not most of the material from Warner, Sony and UMG also

 

[firedog]

7 minutes ago, bambadoo said:

Wish it was so well...

 

If it is only 2L albums, not really. 2L only releases "CD" quality as MQA CD. But the number of 2L CD tracks is probably about .0000001 of the Deezer catalog. Those tracks are also at Qobuz. 

It doesn't mean they are "supporting" MQA. 

Even those of us who are anti-MQA need to have some perspective.

[KeenObserver]

MQA influencers continually tell the gullible that MQA "improves" the music. Anyone with any intellectual capacity can tell that this is pure BS.

[StephenJK]

1 hour ago, KeenObserver said:

MQA influencers continually tell the gullible that MQA "improves" the music. Anyone with any intellectual capacity can tell that this is pure BS.

Just for fun, I Googled that - Does MQA improve the music? 

 

The first hit is how only MQA addresses something called time-smearing.  I don't know what that is, but it sure doesn't sound very good. 

 

Then, we have only MQA providing time-domain accuracy, which sounds like something anybody would want.  

 

It sounds like a solution to a problem that I didn't know I had, and I think I'm supposed to be grateful for that. 🙂

[kumakuma]

51 minutes ago, StephenJK said:

It sounds like a solution to a problem that I didn't know I had, and I think I'm supposed to be grateful for that. 🙂

 

Don't forget that MQA also solves other problems you didn't know you had such as authenticating the provenance of your high-res files and reducing their carbon footprint.

[lucretius]

5 hours ago, Daren F said:

 

Here's some info on how to get a US account in unsupported countries - LINK

 

I haven't tried it myself. I was fortunate to get a French account back when qobuz would remove the geo-restrictions.

 

I've seen similar instructions like this before for signing up to other geo-restricted services.  I don't want Qobuz bad enough to go through this amount of effort.

[Daren F]

1 minute ago, lucretius said:

 

I've seen similar instructions like this before for signing up to other geo-restricted services.  I don't want Qobuz bad enough to go through this amount of effort.

 

I agree, it's a PITA.