Respectfully, I think you’re on the wrong post to praise MQA
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I don’t listen to Taylor Swift but at least Tidal offers in lossless as well. And the 1989 album is only in hires and cd quality with no MQA offered. So MQA seems to be being phased out on Tidal.
There is definitely a difference between the MQA album and the CD version. Almost seems like some reverb is being applied to that track. However, that track is so far from my tastes I didn’t really want to test any longer. Wasn’t actually a fair test since it’s not a 48/24 hires vs a 48/24 MQA. But MQA vs hires has been argued to death. Question here is if Tidal has true lossless and it does. Only time I see that it doesn’t is when there are the 44/16 MQA files and no other versions.
Oh on the tidal website, seen from Canada, they still show it as being 19.99$ per month for the Hifi Plus Plan but I see on google that they did announce they’ll drop the Hifi Plus Plan and only have one plan for 10$ a month, I guess it’s not available in Canada yet?
On my legacy 1.8 everything still comes in MQA.
There probably won’t be an update from Roon on that version to change this.
As far as I know, BluOS also still plays the MQA versions, so they must still be on TIDAL’s servers
As an aside, now that Roon 2.0 works the same again without internet access as 1.8 did, the primary reason for using 1.8 Legacy is gone, so my guess is they won’t change it anymore at all
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It will globally change on April 10th.
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Thanks! I’ll give it a try, see if I can hear a difference between tidal and qobuz, if it ends up with a similar price to what I’m paying right now but with a bigger catalog it might be worth it to switch over.
This is what I am seeing when I am checking the Tidal site (Netherlands).
And this is the e-mail I’ve received from Tidal yesterday.
I have both Qobuz and Tidal to go along with my Roon Lifetime 
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I wish roon or tidal or soundiiz or somebody would create a process to replace every mqa release with a flac version if available.
That depends on who you ask. The golden ear MQA loving crowd will claim any MQA makes everything else sound like garbage. Vise-versa for the golden ear MQA hating crowd.
My issue is the way Tidal handled all of it. Regardless, MQA is a lossy format and 16-bit MQA isn’t even 16-bit and none of this will matter come April 10 (and will matter even less once Tidal finishes banishing MQA from its service).
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Yeah for me, the whole MQA situation is a big a** can of worms and I think the entire Hi-Fi Community is happy to see Tidal’s move to FLAC and cheaper pricing and all.
I just hope for the best with everything from here on out.
Well, enjoy MQA to the fullest now you still can 
mathieu … also in Canada
I have both Tidal HI REZ($19.99) and Qobuz (at $150/yr) both great values for what we get…think of it… ALL that music that we listen too… I remember the days of running to the CD Store …
depending what you listen too… On Qobuz I have a 12-15% difference in what is missing as far as Albums … when I did my migration to Qobuz … and although Qobuz offers great quality and not the confusing MQA/Hi REZ/Low which is 320khz … I just wanted one stream …
We end up so focused on what bit rate…we forget to listen to the music … Once Tidal Offers one package in mid April … I will prob drop Qobuz… not because of the quality … but because less Library and availability.
I also like the Ai and the mobile App of Tidal and its integration in Carplay.
Bonne Chance !
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I think this subject is worth not only discussing but I would suggest a conference, preferably in Davos, to handle this pressing issue. The only questions is do you have a private jet?
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Sheesh! Let’s focus on the big (bad) boys before picking on high res music.
When considering environmental pollution on a global scale, the contribution of telecommunication bandwidth to overall pollution is relatively small compared to other major sources such as transportation, industry, and agriculture.
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How do you eat an elephant?
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In terms of global pollution, Hi Res music isn’t an elephant … its a mouse. Transportation, industry, and agriculture are the elephants. Eat them, one bite at a time.
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It all adds up, the Bitcoin mining industry is apparently a real power hungry hog.
I’ll leave my tube amp unplugged until I need a heater 
Running class D
There is, or was, a group that was trying to identify a common repository that all streaming providers could license against. One copy for everyone of a track makes good ecological sense. Having every streaming company hold their own copy of a track sitting and waiting for no one to stream it is a much larger power draw then the difference between the power used to power my bits moving on the difference between compressed high resolution, sorry folder, and bit-perfect high-resolution.
For such a thing to exist everyone would need to agree on a format. Untouched PCM in a FLAC container is now the standard. It took too long to get here thanks to tidal.
This isn’t exactly accurate. MQA uses a PCM bitstream. Its encodes its MQAness into the “noise floor” of the PCM. By making it compatible with PCM it is then compatible with the FLAC container. It’s also compatible with any other container that supports FLAC. But, it’s this “encoded in the PCM” compatibility is why you can play an MQA encoded bitstream on a PCM DAC and get music.
Now me… it’s opinion time…
Qobuz is some brutally honest folks. Do they have the deepest catalog? No. They just sort of tell it as it is and their platform is relatively simple. It’s 2-channel high resolution audio, an OK app, a good magazine, and some well curated playlists (by real people).
Tidal has not always been honest. Well, that’s not fair. They have not always been transparent. I applaud them for replacing all the MQA with not-MQA but the way they are doing it is, well, proving my point. They are not transparent about it. To me, that means something. I like to know what format I’m listening to even if it’s only for comparing to another streaming service.
I’ll probably add Tidal again when the new pricing goes up. I’ll certainly be keeping Qobuz; I really like the people at Qobuz.
Taking my feedback to answer your question… If it’s really important to you I’d say you cannot trust Tidal. Especially not until they think they are done with this transition. Also remember, a small number of labels decided to only release in MQA (looking at you 2L) so you’ll still find that whole catalog as MQA but that’s true of all the streaming providers as that’s how the label released it. I think that will be the next big wave of this mess to get the labels to release their stuff on not-MQA.
Tidal will stream at the highest resolution they have access to and it will arrive at your network bit-perfectly. That may not always be 24/192 PCM. But “true lossless” is confusing here. Their goal, as I read it, is to stream the highest possible and Tidal has made the decision that 24/192 PCM > folded 24/192 but folded 24/192 > 16/44.1 (and, honestly, I agree with them). That’s the best we can get from Tidal right now which means you’ll still see MQA.
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