Qobuz streaming MQA CD's?

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On my Pro-Ject S2D the display shows 176k. As noted above the original was 16/50.35, and I thought MQA was not about upsampling but there you have it.

It displays a green dot not a blue dot. The green dot indicates the signal is MQA, but not approved by the artist/owner.

 

I'm also experiencing MQA dropouts and clicks/static with ASIO and WASAPI Exlusive; yet another to ignore this. #sad  Back to my Schiit Modi and the undecoded signal is fine, but I think I'll go find some true Hi-Res now.

[left channel]

Interesting. The Tidal app for Windows plays same album OK, with my DAC displaying 192k and a blue dot, but I can't find any way to play it from the Qobuz app without constant dropouts, stuttering, and other glitches on my only MQA-capable DAC, the Pro-Ject S2D, which is perhaps more sensitive than most to imperfect MQA streams. Even the Qobuz plugin for LMS does better, with my DAC displaying same 176k and green light as Qobuz, but with no glitches.

 

I've posted this on the official Qobuz issues thread as a technical problem, pointing back here for anyone who wants to discuss the merits of MQA or MQA on Qobuz in general. Personally I don't think MQA should be on Qobuz, but if it's done then it should be done right.

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23 minutes ago, Starrfighter said:

I just had a conversation last week with qobuz that they said we will never do mqa but apparently the 2L albums are of a very small subset of what's actually available and the employee just didn't know?

 

Keeping track of all the possible ways MQA can find its way into their catalog is probably like drinking from a fire hose, but for the record this one is not a 2L album. It's on the Odin label.

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2 hours ago, RonO. said:

Three weeks ago, I found two MQA titles on Qobuz and my Mytek Manhattan II recognized them as MQA. Last night I played both the Radka Toneff “Fairytales”, mentioned by others, and the Mozart Violin Concertos. However, this time the Mytek display showed them as PCM. I checked the Mytek and the MQA setting was enabled. Oh well.

 

17 minutes ago, ddetaey said:

 

Excellent! Even if you personally wanted it the other way.

Up to now, Qobuz has resisted to actively support MQA and I sincerely hope to keep on doing this forever.

(It is unavoidable that once in a while they will offer MQA downloads/streaming as there are companies like 2L that are by providing mqa files without identifying it as such, jcheating on everybody).

Dirk

 

The Toneff album still has "(MQA)" in the title, and is still the same upsampled MQA release. Just be glad your Mytek falls back to PCM, instead of trying to re-lock onto the MQA signal as my Pro-Ject S2D does. I'm still getting dropouts when playing that album through the Qobuz app for Windows, with better results via the Qobuz plugin for LMS. As I've previously opined, albums like this should not be on Qobuz unless the official Qobuz apps are updated to stream them reliably.

[left channel]

I just noticed that the MQA CD we were discussing above, Radka Toneff's Fairytales, has been removed from Qobuz. I see four of her other albums (on the UK service; zero in the US), as well as more albums from the same Odin label, so perhaps Qobuz management agreed with us that this one was a problem. It is still available on Tidal, where it will stream bit perfectly and be decoded or not without problems.

Fairytales was voted the best Norwegian jazz album of all time in 1982, and I'd still vote for it too if asked. I do not know if Odin, the official label of the Norwegian Jazz Federation, has decided to go all MQA like 2L. Apparently remastering the original recording required a great deal of recovery work, so perhaps this was a unique situation, but folks from 2L and MQA were involved: https://www.stereophile.com/content/recording-april-2018-fairytales-original-master-edition-mqa 

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13 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

I may be a little slow but how can you produce a remaster from a long lost tape?

 

 

 

Well it was a slow process, apparently: https://www.stereophile.com/content/recording-april-2018-fairytales-original-master-edition-mqa  

 

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17 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

The version in Tital displays 24/192 blue light on my DAC (Mytek). No dropouts or clicks/static, etc.

 

Yes it always worked correctly in the official Tidal app for me too, even on my Pro-Ject S2D. The problem was that the Qobuz app is not designed up to support MQA, and until we started mentioning the problem to Qobuz reps and managers they were apparently unaware such an album had somehow been placed on their service.

 

An album like this is a strange beast in other ways too. It of course should work in the official Tidal app. But when playing it through the Tidal plugin for LMS, which does not support MQA and normally delivers all "Masters" as 16/44.1, this one comes through as MQA (though as 176k./green).

[left channel]

7 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

Apparently, the MQA/SACD was issued in 2018.  But back in 2015, there was also a (non-MQA) transfer using the "Original Masters Tapes":

 

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/radka-toneff-s-dobrogosz-fairytales-original-master-edition-11-27-15.479106/

 

 

 

The Stereophile article on the 2018 release says: "As reported by Norwegian journalist Jan Omdahl in December 2015, the 2015 restoration was flawed. In particular, while the recording's original pitch had been A=442Hz, the restoration was tuned to A=446Hz, and there was noticeable wow."