Perhaps MQA isn’t quite dead just yet...

[Bob Stern]

Stereophile is promoting MQA by making a literally accurate but misleading comparison between MQA on Tidal and lossless high-res on Qobuz.  Jason Serinus says Tidal's MQA "enables" (whatever that means) streaming of 384 KHz masters, whereas Qobuz offers only 192 KHz or less.  Serinus fails to say that Qobuz' 192 KHz is genuinely lossless, whereas converting 384 KHz to MQA is lossy, i.e., the "unfolded" 384 KHz audio is not the same as the original .  He also fails to say that Qobuz in Europe is not in beta, but has been streaming lossless hi-res for years.

 

"Besides the appearance there of many new components capable of MQA decoding and rendering, CES provided an opportunity to unveil two important MQA developments. The first is that Tidal Masters (MQA playback) is now available on Android phones and tablets. While Tidal's potential rival, the French company Qobuz, is currently beta-testing its own hi-rez streaming platform for Android, iOS, Apple, and Windows devices, prior to its official launch in the US, Qobuz is limited to 24/192 resolution. MQA's folding and unfolding technology, as seen on the Android phone held by MQA's Ken Forsythe, enables Tidal to stream Masters titles of up to 24/352.8 or 384 unfolded resolution."

[firedog]

9 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

Stereophile is promoting MQA by making a literally accurate but misleading comparison between MQA on Tidal and lossless high-res on Qobuz.  Jason Serinus says Tidal's MQA "enables" (whatever that means) streaming of 384 KHz masters, whereas Qobuz offers only 192 KHz or less.  Serinus fails to say that Qobuz' 192 KHz is genuinely lossless, whereas converting 384 KHz to MQA is lossy, i.e., the "unfolded" 384 KHz audio is not the same as the original .  He also fails to say that Qobuz in Europe is not in beta, but has been streaming lossless hi-res for years.

 

"Besides the appearance there of many new components capable of MQA decoding and rendering, CES provided an opportunity to unveil two important MQA developments. The first is that Tidal Masters (MQA playback) is now available on Android phones and tablets. While Tidal's potential rival, the French company Qobuz, is currently beta-testing its own hi-rez streaming platform for Android, iOS, Apple, and Windows devices, prior to its official launch in the US, Qobuz is limited to 24/192 resolution. MQA's folding and unfolding technology, as seen on the Android phone held by MQA's Ken Forsythe, enables Tidal to stream Masters titles of up to 24/352.8 or 384 unfolded resolution."

You, me and others responded to his column and tried to set him straight.  And he still doesn't get it. He responded by referring you to a list of MQA files supposedly in DXD resolution.

I literally told him he needs to better inform himself about how MQA works. I don't think he is a "shill". He just assumes all sorts of things and apparently either hasn't read the technical descriptions of how MQA encoding works or is not capable of understanding it.

Pretty amazing for someone who works as an audiophile "professional" and publishes on the subject.

[mansr]

11 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

Stereophile is promoting MQA by making a literally accurate but misleading comparison between MQA on Tidal and lossless high-res on Qobuz.  Jason Serinus says Tidal's MQA "enables" (whatever that means) streaming of 384 KHz masters, whereas Qobuz offers only 192 KHz or less.  Serinus fails to say that Qobuz' 192 KHz is genuinely lossless, whereas converting 384 KHz to MQA is lossy, i.e., the "unfolded" 384 KHz audio is not the same as the original .  He also fails to say that Qobuz in Europe is not in beta, but has been streaming lossless hi-res for years.

 

"Besides the appearance there of many new components capable of MQA decoding and rendering, CES provided an opportunity to unveil two important MQA developments. The first is that Tidal Masters (MQA playback) is now available on Android phones and tablets. While Tidal's potential rival, the French company Qobuz, is currently beta-testing its own hi-rez streaming platform for Android, iOS, Apple, and Windows devices, prior to its official launch in the US, Qobuz is limited to 24/192 resolution. MQA's folding and unfolding technology, as seen on the Android phone held by MQA's Ken Forsythe, enables Tidal to stream Masters titles of up to 24/352.8 or 384 unfolded resolution."

Another way of putting it is that Qobuz fully preserves 192 kHz worth of higher rate masters while Tidal only manages a lossy 96 kHz representation. It is also worth pointing out that very few 352.8/384 kHz masters exist. By my estimate, they account for less than 1% of Tidal's MQA catalogue.

[Taz777]

As someone that has embraced a subscription-based music streaming over the last few months and completely moved away from purchased songs stored on my hard drive, I would say there are real-life considerations to contemplate when using a music streaming service. At a guess, 99.9% of my Tidal collection is 44.1kHz and some of it sounds exceptional, other tracks sound 'fair' because of the recording itself.

 

I trialled Qobuz recently and, whilst in general the same songs sounded a little better (mainly due to 48kHz/24-bit Qobuz 'Hi-Res' vs the same song at 44.1kHz on Tidal), I couldn't find a single track at 192kHz to play! Moreover, a significant percentage of the songs I listen to simply weren't available on Qobuz. The Qobuz UI was also inferior to Tidal's.

 

Tidal's MQA is neither here nor there for me as hardly any of the music that I enjoy is in MQA format anyway. It's just a bonus if a particular song is available to me in MQA format.

 

So back in the real world, and starting from the top down (i.e. the artists and songs that I enjoy listening to), if it's not available, then no degree of technical audio superiority will draw me towards the streaming service.

 

I'm pretty happy with Tidal as a music streaming service. I have Tidal playing my music collection for most of my working day. I understand that there are various opinions on the technical merits of MQA. Given that nearly all of my music collection on Tidal is 44.1kHz then the politics around MQA is irrelevant to me.

[asdf1000]

30 minutes ago, Taz777 said:

Given that nearly all of my music collection on Tidal is 44.1kHz then the politics around MQA is irrelevant to me.

 

What I don't like to see, is when a recent new album on Tidal like this is only available in MQA.

 

No non-MQA option available. I guess we hope that doesn't one day become a trend for every new release.

 

[mansr]

45 minutes ago, Taz777 said:

Moreover, a significant percentage of the songs I listen to simply weren't available on Qobuz. [...]

So back in the real world, and starting from the top down (i.e. the artists and songs that I enjoy listening to), if it's not available, then no degree of technical audio superiority will draw me towards the streaming service.

Consider that if you've been using Tidal for some time, your listening habits will likely have been influenced by availability in their catalogue.

[Taz777]

56 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

What I don't like to see, is when a recent new album on Tidal like this is only available in MQA.

 

No non-MQA option available. I guess we hope that doesn't one day become a trend for every new release.

 

 

Good point! A non-MQA version of a song should always be available.

[Taz777]

35 minutes ago, mansr said:

Consider that if you've been using Tidal for some time, your listening habits will likely have been influenced by availability in their catalogue.

 

To some extent, yes. I'm on various forums and social media groups for the genre of music that I particularly like. Members of those groups post (mainly) YouTube links to songs that they like. If it sounds good to me then I seek that song out on Tidal. More often than not, I find the song is available and add it to one of my playlists.

 

With the Tidal recommended lists it's a bit hit and miss, but I have discovered some great new artists.

 

There's also a Tidal mix section that contains playlists of selected music from my own playlists interspersed with Tidal's recommended songs. Again, a bit hit and miss, but I've found new songs that I enjoy.

 

I totally accept that MQA itself is a controversial subject and respect both sides of argument. It's just in my case it doesn't really matter.

[Hugo9000]

The latest in the fraud investigations into Tidal's (alledgedly) falsified streaming numbers (benefiting Beyonce and Kanye primarily, at the expense of correct royalties to all other music acts on Tidal)  :

 

https://www.dn.no/musikk/okokrim-bekrefter-etterforsker-databedrageri-i-tidal/2-1-515215

 

https://www.whathifi.com/news/tidal-under-criminal-investigation-over-alleged-fake-streams

 

(I'd say this is on-topic, as MQA has been using Tidal's adoption of their lossy encoding to claim relevance)

[Rt66indierock]

5 hours ago, Hugo9000 said:

The latest in the fraud investigations into Tidal's (alledgedly) falsified streaming numbers (benefiting Beyonce and Kanye primarily, at the expense of correct royalties to all other music acts on Tidal)  :

 

https://www.dn.no/musikk/okokrim-bekrefter-etterforsker-databedrageri-i-tidal/2-1-515215

 

https://www.whathifi.com/news/tidal-under-criminal-investigation-over-alleged-fake-streams

 

(I'd say this is on-topic, as MQA has been using Tidal's adoption of their lossy encoding to claim relevance)

 

It's on topic if streaming MQA goes away because of Tidal where will they turn?

[Dr Tone]

33 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

It's on topic if streaming MQA goes away because of Tidal where will they turn?

 

Hopefully Chapter 11.

[christopher3393]

cue Anthony Newley: