Has there been any statement from Tidal about their intentions to go MQA only ? I haven’t seen anything.
Its OK if you use Roon as the first unfold is done there but what about Tidal access otherwise.
Eg I have a Cambridge Audio CXN , a Samsung Soundbar app , MConnect etc all of which support Tidal, but do not support MQA , I am sure there are loads of other devices that do the same . Will these be unable to use Tidal going forward ?
I can’t jump ship to Qobuz because they don’t cover South Africa yet. This does not sound good for me. I am certainly not going to invest in hardware to use Tidal (the little I use it anyway), my Audioquest Dragonfly supports MQA bit not the rest of my HiFi
As it happens I haven’t seen a mass change to MQA yet, @Chrislayeruk quoted a Hannah Aldridge album he played in MQA, on the South African server this is still 44.1/16 not MQA so it seems to be regional rollout , I am checking this album daily as an indicator.
MQA plays perfectly well on non MQA DAC’s, so you will always have your music. MQA state that it’s better than CD even unfolded. Many would argue but I suspect they have an axe to grind as well.
Backward compatibility is a major concern for MQA LTD I understand.
Roon can do the first unfold and as such you will be able to enjoy further enhanced sound. Further axe grinding will be expressed on this point.
I suggest people have a listen and decide for themselves.
There is a lot of regional issues with regard to MQA releases. In the UK, we do not have Dire Straits but we do have Pink Floyd. Time will tell.
Hopefully this might serve as an impetus for the Roon team to focus on their software a bit more and the many outstanding feature requests, rather than relying on outside third party agents to develop the business model.
Can you explain what you mean? What does Tidal going the MQA has to do with Roon Development and business model? Roon support MQA if you want to use it. I do not, so I dropped Tidal and moved to Qobuz and buying my Hires FLACs and everything works great.
I was picking up on the number of people (like you) dropping Tidal and think that the Roon team should not become overly reliant on their links with these kind of external services.
Well, that does it…I’ve subscribed to Tidal since 2012(ish?), when they still were called WiMP, and to Qobuz since 2015.
I’ve been wondering if I should drop Tidal for quite a while already - there is no real HiRes content available, I don’t use a MQA DAC, the proponents of MQA were not exactly forthright about the protocol’s drawbacks/limitations when it was introduced, and I use room correction anyway.
So far, I couldn’t bring myself to do this (our ‘shared history’ , the catalogs don’t fully overlap), I just set the quality to ‘HiFi’ in Roon.
I’m not going to pay them 20 Euro/month for 13 Bit resolution files, though, so I just canceled my subscription. This is also what I told them in the ‘why-are-you leaving-us’ questionnaire.
I guess now I’ll join the ranks of those clamoring for Deezer integration - I prefer streaming service redundancy, just in case one of them has an outage!
Can you perhaps explain what you mean by "…these kind of services".
Do you mean any streaming service such as Qobuz or Tidal, or are you specifically targeting Tidal?
I would have thought that the vast majority of Roon users use at least one of these streaming services.
I am a very big fan of Roon, but I don’t think that I would continue with my Roon subscription if the possibility of integrating Tidal or Qobuz (or some other good streaming service) with my music library wasn’t an option.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
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Let’s not characterize our fellow posters, now! Tsk-tsk!
Besides, an axe to grind? What, you think we work for… gosh, I find I don’t even know who it is would carry an anti-MQA axe! Believers in open formats and open music? And, really, isn’t even referring to an “axe” somewhat prejudicial in the first place? What makes you think anti-MQA types carry axes? Maybe they carry harps to sing dirges about the apparent duplicity of pro-MQA types, and praises of open formats and open music? Maybe they have “harps to strum”?
Hmmm, are dirges typically accompanied with harps? So many things I just don’t know…
Since ditching Tidal and just having Qobuz instead of both I am noticing a big difference in Roon Radio. It’s less varied and becoming more repetitive. I feel I might be missing out on music discoveries due to its smaller catalogue and possibly poorer metadata. It might have covered my collection bar a few but it’s missing a lot more that I don’t have. Will see how I get on but not liking this so far. Maybe this is why people moan about Radio and I have generally been satisfied with it?
No axe to grind I can say that MQA does not sound as good as regular cd on non mqa hardware ever. I happen to have both Chris so can fairly comment and every time it sounds wrong compared to the regular flac. On my mqa DAC it’s great.
Well they are hardly going to say otherwise are they?
I have steered clear of the MQA battleground for quite a while as, regardless of your side, you had a choice. Now that Tidal has shown their cards then some people will also make a choice on whether to stay or go.
Personally I can’t see (or hear) how taking a few bits away from a 16bit recording can make it sound better. Different maybe but in my opinion not better. So why do it when most people are happy the way it is and has been for 40 years?
One really has to ask what is next on the MQA wish list.
I have fully accepted that my children will all be paying a streaming company in perpetuity. I frankly don’t really care that much if the streams are heavily managed via DRM so that there’s a very limited ability to “own” digital music, but instead you are renting (via stream) or leasing (via a format that calls home). I also don’t mind if the mass streaming platforms are offering a “slightly and many would argue imperceptibly altered but perhaps/likely not worse”, so long as I can get access to huge catalogues in very good SQ. I’m not stuck on “bit perfect at all costs” because we rarely know what the true reference is; many great albums have later remastering done that improves on greatness.
What I do care about is 2 things:
ability for young artists to innovate
back catalog completeness / nothing gets lost
If drm streaming is going to happen…
That system would seem fine to me, so long as underground/indie music can still thrive using the same basic distribution system so long as it wants to be given away free. If we take away the ability for young artists to screw around on a four-track and give away their stuff, or for DJs to sell mix tapes, we will have become much worse off. The underground will always thrive - I want to be able to listen to it on the same basic system I listen to my patented drm streams.
I want every album ever to live somewhere in as close to a master copy in a vault as we can imagine. Nuclear holocaust proof vault. This is a non-trivial components of humanity’s legacy. There are some recordings of early blues, wax cylinders of Berlin cabarets, field recordings of Berber blues jam bands, Angolan funk, etc. that were released on small labels. These were not necessarily commercial projects. Not to mention all the back catalog of jazz that is not the “main” albums. I want that all safe somewhere. Whether or not I can easily or inexpensively listen to it, I want to make sure there is a “global library of Congress” that safeguards all this. When I think about the number of blah masters of jazz CDs that I’ve borrowed from the library and made secure rips because I literally could not find them for sale anywhere… out of print, small defunct labels, etc… I want there to be copies and backups and backups of the backups. Let’s not ever lose any music. If DRM can pay for this somehow, I’ll be more in.
, the catalogs don’t fully overlap), I just set the quality to ‘HiFi’ in Roon.
- I prefer streaming service redundancy, just in case one of them has an outage!