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Tidal vs Qobuz experience
- Thread starter martin900
- Start date
Warner is adding more MQA offerings to Tidal, but they are clearly removing non-MQA offerings, as demonstrated by the links showing actual Tidal users who are losing Redbook albums from their libraries. Given there are a limited number of services that actually offer proper hi-res streaming in any form, using market statistics is, of course misleading. Most people listen to lossy Spotify and Apple Music.
The only picture presented as evidence in That thread is a picture of the Roon path of one track showing a normal FLAC file being decoded and rendered in 16/44.1. So still not seeing evidence of what you are talking about.
I mean, the very first post mentions the deletion of Redbook files, I can see it in my own collection, but I didn‘t expect people to give any credence to that. Honest question - do you use TIdal? It is pretty easy to check for yourself.
If you use Roon it’s easy, look at what you have in your library that has been added via Tidal and then try to find a Redbook album of that. For certain albums they will no longer be available. For example, there is no longer a non-MQA version available of Aretha Frankin’s I Never Loved a Man... (released on Atlantic, now owned by Warner).
Just to be clear, I cannot tell a difference between most MQA and non-MQA files (and I have an MQA-capable DAC). If there is a difference, it is likely down to different masters being used. However, I do think it is concerning that non-MQA versions of albums are being removed from Tidal. Although Qobuz is not available in Canada, I regretfully think I will need to set up a VPN to access it as I am not comfortable with this development.
I don't use Roon so I can't see what you see. I can see that the particular album is only listed as master quality in the tidal app. When I change my listening quality setting in the Tidal app to HiFi it switches to "hifi" on the app. Not sure either piece of info really means anything in this case.
I use Bubbleupnp to play my tidal library on various endpoints around my house including my phone. When I play that song I see it is available as Master but the playback is 16/44.1 FLAC. This tells me a FLAC file is being sent and not an MQA file. Bubbleupnp does not have an MQA renderer so it must be sent a FLAC file. So they must have a FLAC 16/44.1 on their servers.
I use Bubbleupnp to play my tidal library on various endpoints around my house including my phone. When I play that song I see it is available as Master but the playback is 16/44.1 FLAC. This tells me a FLAC file is being sent and not an MQA file. Bubbleupnp does not have an MQA renderer so it must be sent a FLAC file. So they must have a FLAC 16/44.1 on their servers.
MQA is still delivered in a FLAC container, so I am not sure your analysis helps, unfortunately.
To be clear, I have nothing against MQA per se. You will find no anti-MQA comment from me on any of the threads here (or elsewhere). However, I put zero trust in the record companies and I think what Warner is doing is very sketchy.
MQA is delivered in a FLAC container. There is no such thing as an MQA container.
Regarding Warner, one week ago I could happily download a lossless FLAC album of my choosing on Tidal - now I can’t. I am not sure why I am the one that needs to explain this change. Why is Warner no longer allowing me to do this?
- As @GDK says, MQA is not a container format. It is pure PCM, with "additional" data encoded in the least-significant bits.
- As such neither bubbleupnp nor your Denon will even notice when MQA in a FLAC container comes down the wire. To them, it all looks like FLAC-compressed PCM data.
That's a deceptive statement.
The noise floor is raised because the 8 LSBs have been replaced by the MQA data. In the best case scenario, 24-bit MQA behaves like undithered 16bit PCM.
Like Chrispy this is not my experience.
Well I'm sorry that been your experience mine has been different, Tidal is more than JayZ stuff. It recommends music that I listens too,just like Amazon HD and Spotify and Pandora,schitt even Jriver and Roon picked up on my listening habits when I first open Tidal it's going to have recently played next it's going to have mixes for you and then it's going to have Radio stations for you than it's going to have new hifi tracks for you than it's going to have new hifi albums for you all based on the stuff that you listen to.When I trialled Tidal it was constantly pushing Jayz' stuff and similar pop music, which is not what it could glean from what I did select to play....or its algorithm is really screwed up!
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it’s a common belief that Tidal masters are better than Qobuz masters on average. No body knows why.
Will Tidal really remove all their FLAC files for MQA? That kinda sucks.
It might be a common belief but I'd need to see some evidence, e.g. double blind testing, specific info about the masters that are used by Tidal and Qobuz.
I’m using mconnect to stream to a DLNA renderer. It can definitely tell when it’s FLAC or FLAC with MQA header. It depends on your player.
i really recommend mconnect on iOS for streaming.
You might have to take that up with the records companies
