The fact is Qobuz doesn’t do MQA in the first place and have made it very clear they only do Hi-Res lossless streaming. They don’t have to do ‘informed choice’ coz it is labels mistakes for giving Qobuz the wrong copies. I can understand the fact Hi-Res and MQA are also enscapsulated as FLAC and make it more difficult to differentiate them. Now Qobuz has to find a way to accurately detect and inform the label about this issue.
As I said this only occurred in small label like 2L, big music labels like Universal, Sony and Warner Music are not affected.
If Qobuz allows labels to provide MQA, then Qobuz will have to support the decoding process in their playback app. This means Qobuz app must pay licensing fee to MQA. Consumers who subscribed to Qobuz are expect that any format Qobuz provides be able to playback and decode into their original state.
What customers expect obviously has been thrown out the window. They don’t have to unfold if they don’t want, they do have a regular lossy tier as well.
Then what can you said about Tidal app that support MQA decoding? If decoding is needed to support a particular format, they need to provide that in their app. Yes, MQA can still playback in unfold state but if consumers pay for something like 96k and 192k tier, sure this is going to be a problem for Qobuz and the consumers if they use Qobuz app to playback.
Thanks for the link. Qobuz do not say they do not do MQA. I suspect that page will get a rewrite when they get the tools to sniff and identify MQA. But MQA will remain as part of their offering even if by proxy.
If they said they don’t do MQA, that’s a bad publicity. In the business world we don’t going out and tell people not to use others products. We compete in term better offerings and competitive products.
Not sure what they say is full hires is according to this article @Sloop_John_B posted in another thread. I would not wholly trust Qobuz at their word.
See, we do have some common ground! It would be a bad idea to come out hard against MQA. Much better to play up their high res offerings than play down a few dozen MQA compilations. MQA may not be a part of their business model but it is part of what is offered through their portal though. And it is an interesting (and for some, troubling) development.
That’s in his own opinion. His comments that most music rarely exceeds 8-10 bit for dynamic range I would suggest download this app try on any Redbook contents and check its overall dynamic.
His comments on uncompressed vs losslessly compressed file makes no sense especially when he doesn’t know the importance of doing bandwidth streaming and storage of files. His credibility on this article is really in doubt.
First, Qobuz specifically announced at the AudiophileStyle site that they aren’t supporting MQA. They aren’t planning on adding an unfold to their app, and why should they if they aren’t hosting MQA “hi-res”?
Second, 2L supplied them with 16.44.1 files that had been subjected to the MQA process, what 2L mistakenly calls MQA-CD. It’s not,actually 16/44.1
They did not inform Qobuz and didn’t label or mark the files in any way as MQA and not regular Redbook.
2L said they are no longer marketing straight 16/44.1 at all, only MQA’d 16/44.1.
2L said they are continuing to supply straight non-MQA hi res files to Qobuz and have no plans to force high res MQA files on the market (although they will provide them to those that want them).
Qobuz said they are working to get the 2L MQA files marked tagged as MQA by 2L.
Let’s get real about this: the number of albums here is tiny and is only so called CD quality, not hi-res. It shouldn’t make a serious difference in anyone’s evaluation of Qobuz.
It’s more an issue of what you think of 2L and their decision no to offer consumers the choice of buying/listening to actual Redbook files; and of the future implications for the industry.
It’s one article by a very opinionated industry professional. Lots of people don’t agree with his idea of the definition of hi-res. It’s his opinion - nothing more, nothing less.
Surely if Qobuz cared so much about this in the first place they should be checking the material before putting it up rather than blindly doing so. There are pretty much automated QC processes for this kind of thing.
Qobuz are not supporting MQA. There is nothing controversial about that. At the moment Tidal are the only streaming entity that are supporting it, i.e. labelling it correctly and providing support for the first stage unfold. So you pay your money and you can benefit from the first unfold. But my point all along is that Qobuz cannot stop labels from choosing to stream MQA encoded FLAC on their platform. If it is FLAC then Qobuz’s criteria has been met. All they need to do is identify it so customers know what they are getting. And my understanding is Qobuz will do that. But they won’t unfold it and the mainstay of their offerings will remain lossless Red book and high res for as long as the labels want to do it.
From the perspective of the writer of that article, most of his comments are about mastering from my understanding. So it doesn’t matter if you are being offered 96/24 files if they have been mastered at levels which restrict their dynamic range to less than that which a 96/24 file is capable of. It is essentially the loudness wars argument presented slightly differently. That is my understanding of the discussion anyway. And note that that applies equally to MQA and full High Res.
Both MQA and Hi-Res are encapsulated in FLAC, so it is difficult by just scanning it and relying on tags. A more elaborate detection is required by partially play it back and I believe Qobuz have the solution.
Henry, I think you are missing the point. Consumers who subscribed to Qobuz expects that all playback must be clearly defined to their respective tiers. For instance, if the consumers subscribed to Hi-Res ‘studio’ up to 24/192 lossless tier and the file is tagged as 24/192 but playback as 24/48 MQA then you are not getting what you want. This has nothing to do to labels enforcing what they want to stream on any platforms.
The bottom line is you don’t get what you paid for and this really sucks!