AAA?? That means that you haven’t bought ANY new vinyl albums for at least a decade or more then? It’s basically impossible to buy any version of any recorded work without it being ‘touched’ digitally.
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They are out there, but rare. The UHQR series, blue note (45rpm), QRP, RTI. They exist.
Everyone knows you crack the boiled egg at the little end!
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So, you’re not a music fan, just a ‘format’ fan? Fair enough. It takes all-sorts…
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You could always buy it direct from the artist and sack Tidal off if it annoys you that much?
https://shop.foals.co.uk/uk/everything-not-saved-will-be-lost-part-1-cd-32.html
I’m actually a musician myself, so yes I’d consider myself a music fan. Whatever presents the music best.
Well , it certainly ain’t vinyl, that’s for sure. As much as I love the stuff, and I’m heavily invested myself, I personally find digital streets ahead. Even MQA at times.
But the format is irrelevant. It IS the music that matters.
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)I’m sure there’s some sort of clever point you’re trying to make here, but it’s evading me right now.
“Annoy” isn’t really the correct term for the concern I have over a streaming platform that supposed to be providing a predominately lossless service (notwithstanding some rarer, old material which is only available in AAC format.
This is purely a marketing decision by Tidal.
MQA IS lossy. That’s the possible ‘problem’ here?
BUT listen to it, and it sounds very good. No complaints here.
No musical information is lost in MQA and it sounds amazing to me. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy other formats, it’s the music that counts…
Hate to disagree, but it’s been proven that MQA is lossy, NOT lossless. Hence, some of the musical information is dispensed-with in the MQA process. See:
However, I’m with you that it can sound great. No argument there 
I would happily jump across to Qobuz’s redbook tier service which is priced that same as Tidal. Unfortunately for the type of music I listen to, the library has too many gaps in it.
How do you know it’s Tidal doing this and not the actual provider of this files?
I don’t f course, but that would be rather perverse given there’s a CD.
Also, I assume on the lower Tidal tier this has been transcoded to mp3. Would they transcode MQA to mp3. Would be odd.
My point is… you’re paying for a service (Tidal) and that service is not delivering what you want from it.
So… if it annoys you that the service is not delivering what you want… stop paying for it.
There are other options to get what you want, and with the example you chose… the Foals album, I was merely pointing out that other option.
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The latter half one cannot argue against. However, let’s see how lossy you think MQA would be after a given track/album been encoded and decoded 10-15 times. Might not sound so good.
At the very least, MQA is not a good format for archiving. But I for one don’t complain about people liking it or listening to it. I do not like that any release is only available as MQA. I’ll vote with my dollars on that one.
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Not sure I understand this. You can copy a digital file as many times as you like without loss. If it’s not perfect, it won’t authenticate and it won’t be MQA?
When would a track actually go through that process though?
Absolutely correct.
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[Moderated]
There is no ‘digital degradation’ on repeated playing.
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