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No. They are whatever the label supplies. Lots are 24 bit but some 16/44
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Tidal now labels its HD files MAX sted of MASTERS. Where's MQA gone?
- Thread starter Michou
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Thanks.
So if I change to Qobuz, it will also be because the Studio family plan is less expensive now in Canada than Tidal.
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In the UK the studio plan is a little more expensive monthly than the tidal hifi (not hi res) plan. Qobuz is cheaper with an annual sub. Tidal hifi plus (so with hi res, mqa etc) is considerably more expensive than qobuz studio. But we are rip off Britain!
I've found the notice of proposals posted by the administrators on the 3rd of June via the Gazette, it's a very dry 45 page document but most interesting bits are:
"To date no offers that are capable of being accepted have been received by the administrators and as such they continue to work to reduce costs to enable sufficient time to locate a suitable purchaser"
Roughly translated that means no offer that injects enough cash to cover liabilities has been received and they are making staff redundant.
Very interestingly it turns out a US NPE called BlueSpike sued a bunch of MQA customers in late 2022 over some watermarking patents and MQA had unwisely agreed to indemnify those customers legal costs. I would not be surprised if this is what pushed them in to administration.
The first thing the administrators did was settle that litigation.
They go on to say that
"The most likely objective to be achieved is (c)realising property in order to make a distribution to one or more secured or preferential creditors."
That translates as they are most likely to sell the assets of the company.
As of that document they appeared to think they could raise about £625k from asset sales which had been carried on the books at about £2.1m. In terms of senior and preferential creditors that puts them £114k short this looks like it will be covered by Reinet (who were the major investor) as it better for them to pay than to annoy HMRC. Reinet stand to lose their entire £20m unsecured investment.
Also interestingly MQA had been operating at a net loss of around £4.5m a year for the last few years, this is not that unusual if the backer (Reinet in this case) is investing in anticipation of future revenue however they clearly didn't want to put anymore money in.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
Warner Music, Universal Music Face Patent Suits Over MQA Deals
Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group are facing patent infringement suits over technology used to bring fans high-resolution audio.
It appears that every Universal and Warners MQA file contains a key and/or watermark that breaches a patent: maybe as many as 19.
I can’t find a similar lawsuit against any other company, notably not Sony Music.
It’s hard to tell how far the rot spreads, but it would explain the rush to replace MQA on Tidal.
@chelgrian is right about the lawsuit being the cause of MQA’s demise by the look of it.
And, yes, DRM after all.
It appears that MQA itself is comparing administration to US chapter 11 in its media information: don’t forget to muddy the waters as you drown?
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I never understood how people could say it wasn't a form of drm. Couldn't access the full version of the content without licensed software /equipment.
In the report the value of their intellectual property is listed as 'uncertain' which is accountspeak for 'worthless'.Warner Music, Universal Music Face Patent Suits Over MQA Deals
Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group are facing patent infringement suits over technology used to bring fans high-resolution audio.www.digitalmusicnews.com
It appears that every Universal and Warners MQA file contains a key and/or watermark that breaches a patent: maybe as many as 19.
I can’t find a similar lawsuit against any other company, notably not Sony Music.
It’s hard to tell how far the rot spreads, but it would explain the rush to replace MQA on Tidal.
@chelgrian is right about the lawsuit being the cause of MQA’s demise by the look of it.
And, yes, DRM after all.
It appears that MQA itself is comparing administration to US chapter 11 in its media information: don’t forget to muddy the waters as you drown?
No one sane is going to buy the company as a going concern as it would entail taking on those unlimited liability indemnities.
The 'worth' of MQA and SCL6 is in lock-in not audio quality but that is worthless if the cost of the patent licensing exceeds the revenue obtainable.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
CD was DRM then, wasn’t it? There’s nothing inherently wrong with protecting rights or being paid for your innovation. I don’t expect to still be able to play files in my offline Qobuz library if I cancel my subscription, that uses DRM and is totally fair.
Problems with DRM are dishonest and/or poor implementation. Discussing MQA in that light will get this thread closed immediately so I’ll stop at that.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
Spot on.
Kylo Ren Amamiya
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A user at r/tidal in the ‘What the Bitrate! Adding Sample Rate, Bit Depth and Bitrate to the Tidal Desktop App’ thread has created a Tidal Tags Plug for the Neptune Tidal Desktop App that the shows Sample Rate/Bit Depth/Bitrate of songs.
Also, according to this thread on r/tidal, ‘TIDAL CEO confirms they are working on show bit depth/sample rate of the files’, bit depth/sample rate info is coming for the app.
Also, according to this thread on r/tidal, ‘TIDAL CEO confirms they are working on show bit depth/sample rate of the files’, bit depth/sample rate info is coming for the app.
This is long overdue. Hopefully this can be implemented quickly.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
Tidal's official app started marking MAX files in the lower toolbar as MQA or FLAC today. This is still not great, as you don't know which you are getting until you play the track, and the bitrate is still not shown - as I pointed out earlier, it's important for some DAC owners without native 192/24 playback to know if the track is 192 before the playback starts stuttering. Of course you can still switch to HIGH anyway. The upgrade notes are dated today for me.
The latest update appears to switch off Exclusive mode and even switch DAC on Windows computers, so watch for this.
The latest update appears to switch off Exclusive mode and even switch DAC on Windows computers, so watch for this.
So the next event in this saga is that the next accounts are required to be filed by the 30th of September.
No, it wasn't. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and refers to a technology that exists in excess of the actual data to be consumed (audio, video, software) to prevent unauthorized access or copying. CDs have no DRM, they're just physical media for digital audio. There's nothing in redbook that stops certain players from reading discs or stops users from copying them.
In fact, introducing DRM to an audio CD violates the standard - Sony tried to do this and was rebuffed by generally everyone.
Don't disagree.
I don't agree here. DRM often hurts paying customers more than it hurts pirates.
DRM basically always adds cost (often very significant cost) to the consumer, both on the hardware and software end. Anybody can build a CD player or manufacture CDs without getting access to special tech beyond the Redbook standard. If Philips gave out special encryption keys to only certain companies, it would have made CD players more expensive. It also would have limited who could publish CDs. It's a type of market control that is generally harmful to the consumer.
For example, if Atmos were an open standard instead of licensed by Dolby, I am sure Atmos receivers would be a lot cheaper and more common by now.
Meanwhile, absolutely unbreakable DRM doesn't exist, and probably can't exist. In the absolute worst case, analog mics or cameras can be used to pirate the media anyway. So people who are determined not to pay, will never pay.
Anyway, I'm not even adamantly against the idea of DRM. Add it to your products if you feel it's necessary, do what you need to do. But I'm less likely to pay for a download or disc if it's got DRM in it, because I'm less likely to buy equipment capable of decoding it. I had an MQA-capable DAC for a while, but it was not on purpose, it just happened to come up on Craigslist. I never listened to any MQA content on it, and probably never will.
MQA in particular grinded my gears because it was a DRM scheme falsely marketed as an audio-quality-improving technology. The idea that audio quality would improve if you lowered the bit depth for audible content and stuck lossy ultrasonics in there instead was laughable to begin with, but making it a DRM / licensing scheme on the back end was just insulting.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
Please don't lose context. I was replying to
CD players were licensed, so by a definition that says DRM applies with "licensed software/equipment"...
The point is that if somebody legitimately produces a genuine advance, as a private company rather than through public funding, there has to be a return on the investment involved.
You need to think about dishonesty, the word I used, in more than a technical sense, and what should and should not be covered by patent law and by security devices.
Licensing fees were used to generate revenue from CD players and discs. It was the looming end of the patent, and therefore of that revenue, that was a contributing factor in the development of SACD, as we keep being told.
If we consider licensing, it gets even more confusing. Ownership of an LP record is still a license, even today. It used to be printed on every single label, and I presume it still is. The current law in a lot of countries allows you to rip the vinyl, or copy the CD, or whatever, for other personal uses (varies by country) but if you sell the LP, you also sell the license. It may not be digital, but it is still control of use by legal right. This is civil law.
Limiting the number of manufacturers would have made no sense for CD as a format. Atmos is a different proposition because it doesn't just repackage an existing technology and there is more to protect: so I can't say the same thing for it, especially as I'm not really sure of the requirements to be let into the club. Some DRM techniques are used to ensure or preserve standards, which in turn protects the consumer (they pay more but they know what standard of product they are getting).
DRM does more though than protect copyright, at least in some jurisdictions. Because of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and other laws, in the US - and because of the way copyright law and free trade agreements are set up, in other jurisdictions - breaking a DRM protection system potentially runs you up against criminal law and extradition from some of those other jurisdictions. So DRM is brought in because of that extra legal issue, raising the stakes for anyone who goes near it. Civil law is much harder for companies to use, when it comes down to it.
In other words, the consumer may not like DRM. However, DRM gives a company more protection against someone breaching the system than copyright or patent protections do. The patent may not be valid, but the DRM is. What do you expect a company to do?
It doesn't seem like a slam dunk for most consumer-facing companies. The possibility of putting pirates in prison is really remote for most companies in the space any way you slice it.
Since it's a good assumption that all media will get pirated eventually, you need a good reason to use DRM beyond preventing piracy, as you note.
I think content gatekeeping is probably the best reason, as in the case of Atmos, you can't have just anyone crapping out Atmos content and making the format seem stupid and worthless.
As a consumer, I don't think I am expected to like DRM or even condone its use, but you're right that there are valid business reasons to use it.
I would still argue CD isn't a form of DRM, though. The licensing etc exist entirely apart from the media.
No, it doesn't, just see the game industry, for example, the Nintendo games...
There are many layers of complexity here. In the music industry, after platforms like Spotify, Deezer, etc. the number of people pirating music decreases too much. So, for start, why not a "fair" price for their products?
