I guess this could be the beginning of the end for “pure PCM” in Tidal

I only want the MQA version if it’s available. That’s my priority choice.

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Choice is just as important Chris. People should have the choice to pick the version they want if both are out there.

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Completely with you there. It is often ignored that those that are concerned about MQA, usually with dazzling conflicts of interest, would limit availability to those of us who want more MQA.
Listening to MQA via Roon with KSE 1200s, and frankly, it’s amazing.

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Absolutely. That’s why I started this topic.

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If an artist is happy with the decision to release only an MQA file as it’s the way he wants the music to be enjoyed, then that’s their prerogative surely?

But that isn’t what is happening.

So [Chris] setting up that straw man is disingenuous.

Personally I consider your argument a non issue as I feel you have missed the point of MQA entirely.
MQA sounds great, undecoded, half decoded and full decoded in my experience and one advantage is the servers will only need one source file to cover all bases.

I appreciate the anti MQA lobby hate this idea as much as I hate Brexit, but it’s a tough world out there and they may just have to ditch Tidal on this issue.

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My point is that, for the most part, it isn’t artists who are issuing only MQA material but, in this case, Tidal which is streaming only MQA material.

Really, I don’t want to get into this argument again and again. That wasn’t what this thread was about.

Pretty sure that isn’t part of Tidal’s business plan.

I’m willing to bet you the “artist” has no say in whether the album is released in MQA or not in about 99% of the cases. Few artists have control of their output, unless it is self released.

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Many have gone to Qobuz.

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I expect the MQA gains outweighs the MQA losses from Tidal as I see plenty of very positive feedback on MQA out in the world.

Not sure how what I posted was a “straw man argument”. I pointed out that two of the albums Chris was concerned about were still available elsewhere as non-MQA files. Not arguing anything one way or another, just providing information.

Surely you jest?

His comment was to Chris not yourself.

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Not your straw man.

The straw man is setting up the argument that if artists want their releases to be in MQA then it’s OK if Tidal only streams MQA versions.

Not really sure if that is technically a straw man, maybe more of a red herring?:smirk:

Dunno.

No,no, I guess it’s more of a non sequitur.:laughing:

Either way it is irrelevant. From what’s known, the number of hifi/masters subscribers to Tidal is only around 200k, a minuscule number. And many of those joined before MQA was even available.

So MQA isn’t gaining Tidal subscribers relative to the market - Tidal is continually losing market share to the other services.
There is no actual “out in the world” for MQA. It’s still unknown to the general public. (In fact hires in general has made almost no impact “out in the world”). Barring adoption by someone like Apple, the future of MQA looks bleak. It’s made no impact on the general audio market.

Sorry, I misunderstood your post.

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38 posts were merged into an existing topic: MQA disappointing

Maybe we close this thread. Just turned into another MQA thread. This was spun off because Tidal stopped offering cd versions on some new albums. All the talk about why MQA sounds great or not doesn’t change the fact the some people lost the option to have the original file to let the dac of their choice control how it’s processed. No one was saying to remove the MQA version.

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