96kHz MQA sample rate

Agree with @Chrislayeruk.
On my MQA capable Meridian 818 it does not show up as MQA but as 96k.
On my non-MQA capable DAC, it shows up as 96.
And Roon shows 24/96, both on the album in the library and in the signal path.
I use Roon which does not have software decoding. Have not looked at what Tidal does,

I must be wrong. Thank you. Is the stream quality high? No dropouts? What bandwidth are you seeing?

It sounded good here, no dropouts. Iā€™m not familiar with the music though.

Worked for me initially but I got bored with the music after a minuteā€¦

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@AndersVinberg youā€™re obviously not enough of an audiophile. :wink:

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It was identified as 96k 24bit by Roon at the input and my DAC at the output. If it is MQA it is pre-decoded. That would mean no flag to alert an MQA certified DAC. Also as far as I am aware, if we can stream UHD TV (I am watching it as I type) then 96k is not an issue at all.

I know. I stay awake at night, worrying about this.

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I can also confirm that its Tidal metadata state it is a Master album as shown in Lumin app, but the 24/96 music is not authenticated by MQA decoder to be MQA.

It is possible for MQA music to be delivered at 96kHz rate, but thatā€™s not the case here (as proven by the lack of authentication lights).

There is a slight possibility that it may be a MQA Core decoded version, i.e. the output of Tidal desktop app after going through MQA Core decoding - but this is just a speculation.

In any case, I believe this is a minor glitch.

My interpretation of the bandwidth saving aspect is primarily useful to the streaming service provider as bandwidth and infrastructure costs money, not the end user, the majority of which are able to stream video.

File sizes and subsequent savings in infrastructure costs was one of the big selling points of MQA to the streaming industry. We both agree bandwidth is there I think but an MQA file can be decoded at source and streamed as a HD audio. In fact that is probably the way those who intend to stream HD audio will do it. I would like to think that this little demonstration is quite deliberate, and letā€™s face it, a relatively unknown Polish band have received exposure beyond their wildest dreams so they are happy!

Now unavailable from Tidal.

To bad they did not let it pass. :confused:

Oh cā€™monā€¦ That is a pointless line. Firstly storage is cheap. Secondly the physical size of a compressed 24bit/48KHz file is twice the size of a CD equivalent, and not meaningfully smaller than a 24/96 file. Third, on-the-fly downsampling and adaptive streaming means you donā€™t need to store more than the high-res file. This is all MQA PR speak.

Wouldā€™ve been interesting if someone captured the stream and run it through MusicScope or similar.

Storage (and itā€™s maintenance) is not cheap at the industrial server farm level. My company does VOD and I know how appreciative they were for some of the algorithms used to shrink file sizes of this material.
From their perspective they have the monetising potential of HD Audio at a fraction of the file size.

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@Chrislayeruk: typed this album in both roon and tidal search found it but it is not playing at 24/96 but at 16/44-i am using ME2-does that make a difference

Hi @bobbmd

Tidal have now removed that version of the album, thus it is no longer available at 96k.