Grooved
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In my experiences over the last couple weeks with mqa on Tidal shows that mqa Masters have more dynamic range and better sound stage. You cannot always hear it's easily in every single song; but it is quite obvious in many tracks especially those from classical musicians. The ability to capture string instruments is specifically the most noticeable in my opinion.
There is also the addition of more depth to certain vocals but not all.
However they have to be played straight to an mqa capable device. Using tidal for the first unfold does not result in better audio quality. Comparing Tidal versus Spotify extreme quality shows no difference unless using an mqa Master through an MQA DAC.
I spent a couple of hours of critical listening on some of the most complex and hard to reproduce tracks that I know of which I know are also masterfully recorded.
The difference is apparant on Tidal MQA through my Topping EX5. Makes no difference on the DX7 with Tidal first unfold. However the quality wasn't worse than that of Spotify extreme quality. Which is OGG VBR 384kbps Q10 encoding from my past inspections (through desktop client).
Tidal "hifi" was worse than Spotify extreme in 2 tracks in specific parts, so I would say it is pretty comparable.
To me this makes MQA the first real SQ upgrade I've seen in 5 years since I got my nice high end headphones and DAC+Amp setup.
Now I know there is Qobuz which supposedly has high nitrate Flac streaming; but their library is much smaller... In my limited testing with my friends DAP; I couldn't say the songs I picked are as good as Spotify Extreme... However it's not a true apples to apples as I didn't have Qobuz on my workstation the way I do with Tidal and Spotify.
What your experience shows me is that Tidal MQA sounds more different than any other sources you compared, including Spotify, Tidal while in Flac or MQA not decoded, and maybe Qobuz, more than anything else
What I find strange is that you don't some tracks where you can find which version it is between Spotify and Tidal non-MQA.
I have several tracks where get 100% ABX result, between Spotify at its max quality and Tidal with FLAC.
There's also a difference between a standard FLAC and MQA with only the decoding done (without rendering), even if I agree there also another difference between decoding only and decoding+rendering.
Now, MQA should even not be compared to standard FLAC or OGG/AAC. It's presented like a HiRes option, so it should be compared with Qobuz or Amazon HD for example.
You should find differences, and it's correct that you can find the sound stage changed, but I would call it "wider", not "better".
It can be a preference for me, so better for me, but it doesn't mean "better" is correct for everybody.
And the problem on this is that even if you like it better, it's no more the width that was decided while creating the master. It's just simple as that.
I can change the width of tracks I own, and like it better, but it's my problem, it's for me, but creating a version with more width and telling it was what the master should have been is a lie, and it's what sound engineer don't like.
It's not their master, and the only possibility for it to happen would be if MQA had decided to sell encoders instead of converting tracks after the master was created.
The way MQA is used now is like offering a different master, and I'm not sure that the possibility to use MQA devices during the creation of the track will happen because the cost of the encoders may be way too much for all studios.
I always thought it could have been an interesting technology, but that it's not used and promoted the right way.
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