MQA is Vaporware

[Daren F]

3 hours ago, firedog said:

Sure, but it doesn't say that it will exclusively lossless. So it will be a lossless tier except for the lossy MQA CD. Just like the "master" tier.  Note how the description of the Master tier if basically a lie. 

 

In Canada this false advertising is a violation of Canadian Competition Law.

[UkPhil]

1 hour ago, Daren F said:

 

In Canada this false advertising is a violation of Canadian Competition Law.

the same in the UK, our advertising standards agency would have something to say about it 

[KeenObserver]

What, exactly, is a 1411Kbps FLAC file?

[Archimago]

13 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

What, exactly, is a 1411Kbps FLAC file?

FLAC Level 0 compression??? 🤪

[KeenObserver]

I can never see MQA being a "niche" segment of the music business.  As long as MQA exists they will continue to try and implement their business plan to be "THE" music distribution method.  The BS would continue on ad infinitum.

I would never consider Tidal as long as they were contributing to MQA.

[StephenJK]

1 hour ago, KeenObserver said:

I can never see MQA being a "niche" segment of the music business.  As long as MQA exists they will continue to try and implement their business plan to be "THE" music distribution method.  The BS would continue on ad infinitum.

I would never consider Tidal as long as they were contributing to MQA.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but don’t think that Tidal are necessarily culpable in this whole mess. Meaning, perhaps they should be given the benefit of the doubt as to their guilt. 
 

I do subscribe to Tidal with their HiFi option, essentially Redbook standard, and for 20 clams a month in Canada think it’s a great value. And, not having any other options it’s Tidal by default for any decent sound quality. 
 

Who know the type of pressure that could have been brought to bear against Tidal by the music labels?  It’s not hard to imagine a conversation where someone says “We’re agreed then, all highres tracks will be MQA versions.”

 

 

 

 

[danadam]

1 hour ago, Archimago said:

FLAC Level 0 compression??? 🤪

The official FLAC reduces size even at level 0.

Here's some discussion about no compression: https://github.com/xiph/flac/issues/73

 

[Daccord]

27 minutes ago, StephenJK said:

Who know the type of pressure that could have been brought to bear against Tidal by the music labels?  It’s not hard to imagine a conversation where someone says “We’re agreed then, all highres tracks will be MQA versions.”

 

But it's not just high resolution, it's CD resolution tracks too. Tidal actively promotes MQA as "the best" sound. When I cancelled my membership I told them it was because Warner had replaced all CD albums with MQA versions. A month later Tidal sent me a "please come back" email, touting MQA as a reason I should be interested. So it's more than just pressure from the music labels.

[One and a half]

20 minutes ago, Daccord said:

 

But it's not just high resolution, it's CD resolution tracks too. Tidal actively promotes MQA as "the best" sound. When I cancelled my membership I told them it was because Warner had replaced all CD albums with MQA versions. A month later Tidal sent me a "please come back" email, touting MQA as a reason I should be interested. So it's more than just pressure from the music labels.

Hmm, so Tidal don't read the reasons for leaving in the form and shotgun cancellations to lure back people, sounds counter intuitive. Warner most likely spent Mega$ on MQA, so Tidal HAVE to use it, or lose a large section of the offering. Rock and hard place. 

Don't go back to Tidal then, let them rot. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 minutes ago, One and a half said:

Hmm, so Tidal don't read the reasons for leaving in the form and shotgun cancellations to lure back people, sounds counter intuitive. Warner most likely spent Mega$ on MQA, so Tidal HAVE to use it, or lose a large section of the offering. Rock and hard place. 

Don't go back to Tidal then, let them rot. 

I’d bet Warner didn’t spend much on MQA. 

[KeenObserver]

1 hour ago, StephenJK said:

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but don’t think that Tidal are necessarily culpable in this whole mess. Meaning, perhaps they should be given the benefit of the doubt as to their guilt. 
 

I do subscribe to Tidal with their HiFi option, essentially Redbook standard, and for 20 clams a month in Canada think it’s a great value. And, not having any other options it’s Tidal by default for any decent sound quality. 
 

Who know the type of pressure that could have been brought to bear against Tidal by the music labels?  It’s not hard to imagine a conversation where someone says “We’re agreed then, all highres tracks will be MQA versions.”

 

 

 

 

 

I would never subscribe to Tidal as long as they are supporting MQA.

It is truly a sad state if Tidal is your only option in Canada.

Tidal has gotten up with fleas.

[Daren F]

1 hour ago, StephenJK said:

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but don’t think that Tidal are necessarily culpable in this whole mess. Meaning, perhaps they should be given the benefit of the doubt as to their guilt. 
 

I do subscribe to Tidal with their HiFi option, essentially Redbook standard, and for 20 clams a month in Canada think it’s a great value. And, not having any other options it’s Tidal by default for any decent sound quality. 
 

Who know the type of pressure that could have been brought to bear against Tidal by the music labels?  It’s not hard to imagine a conversation where someone says “We’re agreed then, all highres tracks will be MQA versions.”

 

 

 

 

 

This is the problem. You are of the understanding that the HiFi tier is lossless Redbook CD quality FLAC. It's not. It's lossy MQA-CD disguised as FLAC.

 

HiRes is a loose term with no real definition but FLAC by definition stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. https://xiph.org/flac/

 

It doesn't say that it's a garbage container to disguise mp3, MQA or any other lossy codec as an attempt to deceive its customer.

 

It's a lie and false advertising.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

But, MQa will weasel its way around that by saying the original is the MQA format and FLAC compresses it losslessly. 

[Butterfly]

Is it just coincidence that straight after the ‘official’ Quobuz launch in AU/NZ – that Tidal announce a new pricing scheme … starting in AU ?

Must be a 1^st down-under on the Audio front.

 

21 hours ago, Archimago said:

Hopefully the Industry recognizes that they "cannot fool all the people all the time".

Doubt it as they've been at it for decades - motto ... If at first you don't succeed ...

 

On the way :

“The key to experiencing 360 Reality Audio in hardware, is that each product will need to have Sony’s custom decoder built-in”. And then – “Dolby Atmos Music tracks work on any home audio kit that supports Dolby Atmos”.

 

[Daren F]

49 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

 

I would never subscribe to Tidal as long as they are supporting MQA.

It is truly a sad state if Tidal is your only option in Canada.

Tidal has gotten up with fleas.

 

There's also Deezer HiFi and Amazon Music HD. Qobuz is the only one missing that offers CD or better quality.

[MikeyFresh]

4 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

What, exactly, is a 1411Kbps FLAC file?

 

It's compression-less lossless, another Bob Stuart worldwide first.

 

The new acronym will be PLCAC, Perceptually Lossless Compression-less Audio Codec™.

 

4 hours ago, Archimago said:

FLAC Level 0 compression??? 🤪

 

Actually it's the all new FLAC level -1.

[GregWormald]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

But, MQa will weasel its way around that by saying the original is the MQA format and FLAC compresses it losslessly. 

Unfortunately it not a weasel, it's what the words actually mean, and therefore it's also not illegal. It is misleading though, like many (if not most) partisan/political statements. 

 

Getting reality from carefully crafted statements can be extremely difficult. Just read a legal document to see the lengths that must be gone through to be precise and accurate. Enormous amounts of time are spent in court over just such concepts and wordings. The odds of the average person getting it right on reading such statements are very small.

[Stereo]

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/new-tidal-tiers-and-mqa/157785/73?u=drtone

[firedog]

10 hours ago, Daren F said:

 

In Canada this false advertising is a violation of Canadian Competition Law.

 

9 hours ago, UkPhil said:

the same in the UK, our advertising standards agency would have something to say about it 

And when they get fined, let me know....

They claimed MQA was lossless (still do, sometimes). Did anything happen?

[StephenJK]

8 hours ago, Daren F said:

 

There's also Deezer HiFi and Amazon Music HD. Qobuz is the only one missing that offers CD or better quality.

I apologize, I should have reiterated the point I've made in other posts - available for streaming through Roon.  That's with Tidal, Qobuz and DropBox only.  Why a cloud service is included is beyond me.  If I'm going to buy new music, I'll add it to my local storage, not upload it to DropBox.

 

Only Tidal have subscriptions available in the Great White North, Qobuz has a special deal they've setup in Quebec for them only with a focus on French artists. 

 

Either way, MQA or not, having essentially Redbook music streaming from Tidal at a decent cost is still a way for me to find and listen to new music that's hard to find.  I do have over 1,500 LPs recorded and 1,000 CDs in my local storage as a fallback.  

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, StephenJK said:

That's with Tidal, Qobuz and DropBox only.  Why a cloud service is included is beyond me.  If I'm going to buy new music, I'll add it to my local storage, not upload it to DropBox.

Dropbox is for backing up your database, not music. 

[StephenJK]

15 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

What, exactly, is a 1411Kbps FLAC file?

That's a standard CD Redbook file.  The 16 bit/44.1 kHz sample rate gives you a 1,411 Kbps file - kilobits per second.  That, as compared to MP3, which at its highest rate is 320 Kbps

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=cd+kbps+rate&rlz=1C1OKWM_enCA906CA906&oq=cd+kbps+rate&aqs=chrome..69i57.6106j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[StephenJK]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Dropbox is for backing up your database, not music. 

That makes more sense.  I do that locally, and don't normally consider cloud storage as an option..

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, StephenJK said:

That's a standard CD Redbook file.  The 16 bit/44.1 kHz sample rate gives you a 1,411 Kbps file - kilobits per second.  That, as compared to MP3, which at its highest rate is 320 Kbps

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=cd+kbps+rate&rlz=1C1OKWM_enCA906CA906&oq=cd+kbps+rate&aqs=chrome..69i57.6106j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

But 1411 is for uncompressed audio. Apply any level of FLAC and it can’t be 1411. Apply FLAC uncompressed and you’ll likely get 1411. 

[Cebolla]

19 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

Ouch.

 

If this is what's going to happen in the "Hi-Fi" tier even without the "Plus", then forget Tidal. It's poisoned and cannot even maintain clean 16.44.1.

 

 

Looks like the new Australian TIDAL HiFi tier has been tested and it is indeed poisoned:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/tidal-hifi-plus-introduced/157461/15