Tidal adds hi-res audio streams with 'Tidal Masters' (with MQA)

Are you saying that you can disable MQA decoding on your MQA-enabled DAC?

That'd be a very useful thing if that's what you mean ...

 

Rando here. Purchased an explorer 2 earlier in the week to see what all the fuss was about. Here are my (very) preliminary thoughts:

- On the best MQA files, HW decoded MQA>SW decoded>unencoded MQA. So if you like the MQA "sound" you might as well go whole hog.
- $200 Explorer is a good value for the $. It's not going to replace my Yggdrasil for non MQA files but I kind of thought it was going to suck. It does not.
- MQA does pack an immediate aural impact. At first it does seem like "wow". However, over time I also find it can be a bit fatiguing.
- I do not find MQA all that convincing so far in the Classical genre. Less "air" or a feeling that sense of recording space/venue is reduced.
- Bonus points for MQA for initial catalog release. IMO it's better than typical DSD audiophile stuff (Fiona Joy and lute transcriptions)

So does MQA rock my world - No. Was it worth $200. Yes. I will keep the explorer in my system and periodically check out the MQA "masters". Some of them are pretty nice.

 

This is all interesting up to a point, but (at least for me, at least for the moment), the dealbreaker is that Tidal only has MQA implemented in its desktop apps. At my desk, I can listen to actual hi-res stored locally, without having to deal with compression, DSP, or any other form of mumbo-jumbo.

Wake me up when it's implemented in Tidal's iOS app. And even then, most of my on-the-go listening is done under conditions where the difference between Redbook and higher resolutions gets lost in the ambient noise, even with the best-isolating IEMs.

A solution in search of a problem?

 

correct. Mytek lets you turn it off.

 

What are "2NL reference tracks"? Tried regular Google and the SBAF Mega Awesome Search Tool but came up with nought.

 

Sorry, that should be "2L" not "2NL". As in "2L Audio". They have set of high-resolution files that are supposed to be encoded from a common (generally DXD) master and encoded in various forms/bit-rates, including MQA. That file-set can be found here.

It's the closest thing I can find to a useful set of common masters for multiple formats that encompasses MQA.

 

A few mentions here of MQA initially wowing and then resulting in fatigue. Definitely sounds like DR compression to me. Just what we need, more compression being sold to us at a premium. Say what you will about SACD/DSD but at least a lot of the SACD releases are well mastered.

 

Thanks for your efforts Torq in evaluating MQA.

I am wondering if you have tried to passthrough the MQA files from Tidal to another music player such as Jriver to MQA-enabled DAC? Reading up on DAR's latest article on MQA, if you put your own DSP on the MQA file before it does to a MQA-enabled dac it would not authenticate the file as MQA and will not unfold the extra bits. Not the perfect comparison between un-decoded and decoded MQA files on MQA enabled DAC if it acts as described but better than nothing I guess.

 

If this DR compression finding holds, then it says quite a lot about Meridian: (1) they engage full-throttle in the loudness war rather than attempting improved mastering and (2) they're more interested in grabbing market share than improving sound quality.

If as @Torq and @schiit have mentioned the masters for most of the MQA releases on Tidal are different than standard redbook and/or high-res PCM versions and it is part of 'smoke and mirrors' strategy from Meridian, then we could (safely?) assume that the 'temporal' benefits from the MQA pre- or post-DSP are marginal at best.

In this sense, from a performance and SQ point of view, the interest of MQA seems minor at best:
- MQA on non-MQA hardware is sometimes lossy compared to 16/44.1 redbook (i.e. when the recording uses more than 13 bits of DR, it will suffer from DR compression)
- MQA is always lossy above 44.1 kHz compared to high-speed PCM (e.g. for a 16/96 PCM file, while the 44.1 kHz redbook portion may or may not be lossless, see above, the portion above 44.1 kHz will be lossy)

As such:
- MQA is principally about bit-budget, reducing either the space a file takes on the hard-drive or the bandwidth in case of streaming* (incidentally, the purpose of lossy codecs like MP3 or Vorbis)
- and thus MQA offers little to no advantages over storing/streaming high-res PCM** (e.g. 24/96, what Qobuz is now doing with their Sublime package)

In other words, MQA could be perceived*** as the MP3 of high-speed PCM (just like MP3 is the lossy counterpart of standard redbook PCM). So if MP3 is fine for you ('audibly indistinguishable', bla bla), then MQA might be fine for you.
If not, why bother, especially if Meridian's masterings are all about loudness wars... If you want redbook PCM, why would you want MQA-hardware (or MQA encodings)? If you want high-res PCM, why would you want MQA encodings (or MQA hardware)?

----
* We should not forget that streaming video is considerably more bandwidth intensive, so in this sense the bit-budget improvements of MQA seem indeed to be a solution in search of a problem. In other words, if you can stream video without blinking an eye, it's not very clear what's the interest of the space efficiency provided by MQA streaming: you may as well just stream hig-res PCM.

** If bit-budget is a problem for you in the realm of audio, then get another hard-drive/SD card or upgrade your internet connectivity. If that is too much to entertain, then you shouldn't worry about expensive fancy hardware in the first place and you shouldn't be spending your scarce resources in the audiophilia.
See also @ultrabike on bit-budgeting:
http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/mqa.1635/page-4#post-54804
http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/mqa.1635/page-4#post-54909

*** The coding principles are not quite the same from what I understand, but MQA does seem to require additional assumptions about the human hearing, above and beyond those of standard redbook.

 

I don't know, @Torq - from here in the cheap seats, it all seems deeply fishy to me. I wouldn't be amazed to find that it was sharpening/brightening stuff up, or monkeying with the DR- so "master quality" is more "remaster quality".. i.e. the opposite of a good idea.

(BTW, I now think of the tiredness caused by fatiguing brightness/false detail as "Beyer's remorse"...)

 

Technical details about MQA aside, as a Tidal subscriber and dedicated Linux user, this is absolutely worthless to me since they don't offer a desktop application for Linux, and MQA isn't supported with the Google Web Player.

I wish my premiums were being used for less dubious services and instead expanding user base, capturing a larger market share, and fixing their current services. The Tidal app on my Samsung S6 sucks. I'm considering dropping it all together and going back to Spotify.

 

The space efficiency argument is really just a side-beneift. While reducing bandwidth costs for the streaming providers is a tangible benefit to them (none of them are making any money unlike, say Netflix, so every little helps), it's largely inconsequential to any internet connection beyond those using mobile data.

The studios would like to sell (or rent you, via streaming) high-resolution content. It's worked well in the TV/video market and they think now's the time to push it They believe they can get a premium for it. And they know a straight format change won't work ... they've tried that before. Whatever they do has to be transparent to existing users/hardware/software and still offer an advantage to everyone in the chain.

Now, the studios are terrified of having actual high-resolution masters in the wild in an unprotected digital format. It's the last thing they can "hold hostage". Hence you get MQA which keeps the highest-resolution digital data locked up and only allows analog output of that from approved (paying) DAC manufacturers (same shit we had with SACD). Everyone else gets the next tier down and can output it in digital form.

That's all aside from whether it's actually better or not, of course.

 

All the more reason for me to walk away. I signed up for Tidal because they pay the most to artists, but these days I'm using streaming sparingly and may as well jump back down to a lossy streaming service (I know Tidal has a lossy tier as well). I appreciate them trying to offer more value for the money but IMO MQA is more of a benefit to the suits than the consumers, and any attempt to say it's better than untouched PCM or DSD is selling us a bill of goods.

 

Wasn't that the working assumption from the get-go? A closed format, licensed hardware, etc.? It all smelled like a lock-in play and a gouging tactic. A way to make people pay again for their music, but this time with a nice dose of lockdown, is pretty much a wet dream in this respect.

 

I just posted an MQA Op-Ed about my thoughts of an MQA demo put on by Mytek Audio.

 

I'm voting with my money - I just canceled my Tidal subscription. I think non-MQA Tidal can sound better than Spotify, but it depends on the album and mastering. I have no interest in supporting something that reeks of DRM and will potentially negatively affect all people in in the music chain, from the artists down to the listeners. I'm back to Spotify and buying the CDs of the new artists and albums I discover.

 

Just installed Tidal for desktop. Even if it is not as great as it seems, I plan to get the albums I want on FLAC and then decide.

Spotify does not have the FLAC option, which is why I removed Spotify...

 

I wish Spotify offered a lossless option. With that being said, I did find myself enjoying some Spotify tracks vs Tidal, depending on the album/mastering, even though Spotify is lossy in comparison. With a good recording, Tidal was better. With Spotify, if I discover a new album/artist that I really like, I will go ahead and buy the CD and rip to FLAC, and hopefully put more money in the pockets of the artists. I wish Schiit would build a good transport.

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, but here are some thoughts on MQA from every SBAF members' favorite DAC designer, John Siau:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa

 

I believe it's at this point that the DRM kicks in: The "high-res" portion of the MQA file (above redbook) is never available for user digital extraction and can only be passed to the analogue circuits. So I'm not sure such a comparison would be possible.