The end of speculations is over. Now you can ask Bob yourself. (Almost)
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/your-chance-ask-bob-stuart-anything-about-mqa-27412/
The latest Tidal app now has a Master Quality option and when switch it says sound quality changed to LOSSLESS_HD. At first it didnāt work saying I needed to upgrade subscription and then started working. Seems output is still at 44.1, so not sure itās active yet.
I canāt tell if it makes any difference or not. I donāt see any change in my bit rate, so Iām guessing it might just be for a few select albums and not sure how we have anyway of knowing. Do not see any announcement from Tidal yet.
Does that mean Tidal has turned on MQA?
If Tidal is ready to begin streaming MQA, that hopefully means Roon will be able to decode them too.
Hmmā¦ I donāt see that option (I upgraded this morning). Do you have an MQA DAC?
Iāll check my version when I get home. Was supposed to just be latest Mac version. Not a beta tester. Master is just listed under HiFi in the streaming tab in quality section.
See if I can figure out anything else about it. If it is doing something I still prefer Roon with HqPlayer over its sound. Was mostly hoping it meant MQA decoding for Roon was close to release.
I see it in my latest version for Mac, too. When I try to use it, though, it tells me my subscription does not allow me to use the āMasterā version - I have to drop back to HiFi.
Not sure if this means they will add another, more costly, tier to allow āMasterā streaming, or just that option not available yet. Nothing yet on their website or account management.
I got that too at first but kept trying and finally worked.
So it highly likely that this has been release in error if not everyone is seeing it. Doing a quick search showed that some users last year even saw the Master option. I just assumed Tidal went live with Master Quality.
Interesting - I donāt see that option on the latest version of TIDAL. Suspect they have regionalised for nowā¦
For MQA they will have to go back to the masters and encode them. MQA stands for master quality authenticated after all. Applying MQA to the currently available CD quality files on Tidal makes little sense even if MQA allowed it which I doubt. So i think it is going to take some time before much MQA content becomes available.
I just open my Mac Tidal app yesterday after seeing people mention they have exclusive output setting. It asked to download latest update. Iām not a beta tester.
I see it in the Streaming tab of setting right under Hifi. Just says Master is all. And then when switch get message in bottom right that setting will take place with next track and audio quality will be Lossless_HD. The HIFI text is still listed at bottom and lit up.
Also, when I first tried it, it said I needed to upgrade my subscription. I closed and reopened and it worked. But really not sure if itās doing anything.
Wasnāt sure if Tidal is just going to pass MQA files thru or if it will decode to at least 96k or not.
@palbratelund is this region restricted somehow??
Iām in the US. Possible I got some beta by mistake. I never get that lucky in the past.
Wow, I got it to work. I checked out 2L download page of MQA tracks and decided to do a search on Tidal. Notice the MQA text by the speaker. However, Iām not seeing bit rate past 44.1 in MIDI setting.
Found one that changed bit rate to 48K and the album does sound better than the HIFI version. The piano is noticeably better where you hear more of the reverb, echo, or whatever you call it. Just sounds more natural. The is Stone Rose by Ola Gjeilo. Seems all the albums on 2l that have MQA downloads are already setup on Tidal. Iām hoping to find one with a higher resolution though.
Seems so far all of the 2L albums in their music store are showing as MQA even thought they donāt even sell that download yet.
Depending on the original source MQA will be either 44.1 or 48. The MQA decoder (when it is available) will put it back to the original master rate which will be integer mutiples of either 44.1 or 48 (or the maximum your DAC can handle if that is less).
I agree with your listening impressions. I find even the unencoded MQA files sound better in the kind of ways you describe than the CD rate files.
MQA will only appear as 44.1 or 48 nothing higher from what I understand.
Oh ok, but even with just that, I can hear a difference in the tracks. The MQA seems clearer. I assume itās because these 2L albums were actually remastered.
So is that Tidal is passing the real MQA info thru and not unfolding it. So big difference would be with a MQA dac. I thought they were going to have software decoder to unlock higher quality. Thought any player can still play MQA file as regular file.