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Tidal MQA Classical Gems


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2 hours ago, Norton said:

 

The best Ma Vlast I've heard so far (Tidal 83066082 in UK).  Superb SQ and a conductor and orchestra who clearly own this piece.

 

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I own very many recordings of Elgar 1 and 2, but these standout to me  both for  superb SQ and performances:

 

77610506:

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77695915:

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The Smetana is inaccessible in the US. :(

 

The 2 Elgar's are indeed visible here. My experience with Elgar is limited to the Cello Concerto, Enigma Variations, and Pomp & Circumstance. The Symphonies are still an Enigma! ;) 

 

Added both to my listen queue.

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13 hours ago, Daverz said:

So what happens when you can see the MQA album, but you don't get the [M] in your region?   Is the MQA played back unfolded in "compatibility" mode, or is the true 16/44 PCM file?  If the former, it would seem that one could accidentally end up play the lossy unfolded MQA.

 

If the album is region limited, you will just get a regular 16/44.1 stream. One might ask - if limiting the region, why not suppress the limited version, rather than show duplicates? I haven't studied this deeply, but I have noticed that labels often precede the MQA encoding step with a remaster, so perhaps the duplicate is the remastered version, without the MQA encoding.

 

As to what happens with an MQA-encoded album, it depends on your playback HW and SW. MQA tracks are encoded at either 24/44.1 or 24/48.

  • For non-MQA DACs, playing back on non-MQA software (pretty much everything except the Tidal Win/Mac desktop apps and Audirvana 4+): your DAC sees a 24/44.1 or 24/48 stream 
  • With MQA-enabled players like Tidal app and A+ 3, the SW does the first unfold, so your DAC typically sees 24/88.2 or 24/96, except in the cases where the original master was at 44.1 or 48, in which case there is no unfold.
  • With MQA DACs, of course, you get the full unfold and MQA filtering.
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3 hours ago, RJeff said:

Every one of the great Everest Stereo albums listed below is on Tidal in MQA. Those of you who read Audio Magazine in the 80s might remember Bert Whyte's reminiscences of the recording sessions. (I learned enough about studio technique to impress the hell out of an old girlfriend who was a recording engineer.)
http://evereststereo.com/ 

 

When were these recordings made? I'll certainly give some a listen.

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I spent a very pleasant few hours sampling the treasure trove of Everest albums on Tidal in MQA. Thanks again to @RJeff for bringing these to our attention.

 

I "grazed" about a dozen albums, and I completely agree that recording quality varies from album to album. I still stand by my assertions that these recordings, while outstanding, cannot escape the technical limits of the time. For me, this is most evident on crescendos. Perhaps it's because I favor orchestral music, but it's on the crescendos (or should I say crushendos) that these old recordings show their limitations.

 

To be fair, I find the best of the Everest tapes on MQA to be head and shoulders above the much vaunted, but supremely disappointing (to me) Mercury Living Presence reissues on SACD.

 

Of the dozen albums I tried yesterday, here are a few standouts for SQ.

 

Outstanding

 

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Excellent

 

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12 minutes ago, Norton said:

 

Funnily enough, I find the few  MLP I’ve tried in MQA to be uniformly disappointing with a very obvious “squashed” character  to the sound.  I much prefer the CD box sets.

 

But I can only dream of owning most of the MLP SACDs.  Apart  from a couple of titles, it looks like the opportunity to get them at a normal price passed long ago.  Some really expensive  examples on Amazon, although I can’t  work out who would actually buy them.  Of course, if you don’t want yours, happy to take them off your hands for  the cost of shipping.....

 

The SACDs aren't any better...

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1 hour ago, agladstone said:

This is a general Tidal Classical MQA recommendation, I find all of the Tidal MQA albums from the label 2L to be outstanding, including their “sampler” titled “2L: The Nordic Sound”. 

I’ll have to go through my Saved Favorites list in my Aurender Conductor to try and link or list to the specific albums later. 

 

The only classical 2L album that I found amazing was this one:

 

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Some of the others, at least on the 2L testbench (http://www.2l.no/hires/), like the Mozart, the Britten, the Vivaldi, and the Haydn, seem overly bright to me. I would love other recommendations of good 2L recordings on Tidal MQA.

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