New(est) MQA Rumors

The May 2018 Stereophile arrived today with a review of LG’s V30 Hi- Res smart phone by Jason Victor Serinus. (Sorry no on-line link I can find yet.)

It includes this under “MQA Downloads and Streaming”:

“(I was told that by publication time, Roon will likely be able to unfold MQA in systems with non-MQA-decoding DACS.) While the Tidal app for Android and iOS devices did not yet support MQA at press time, I was told that MQA streaming via the Tidal app would be available by the time this was printed.”

I wonder who he was talking to and when any of the above might really happen. Can anyone from Roon speak to this?

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Understood. My point is that Serinus is a well known writer for one of the best known audiophile magazines. Certainly he is as familiar as we are with the “stock” answer. Someone led him to report something different. In view of Roon’s consistency in refusing to set a date – and I understand the reasons for that policy and they are understandable – again, I wonder who he spoke to, and who led him to believe – and report – otherwise.

Your could try asking Stereophile but I suspect you’d not get a worthwhile answer.
No point asking Roon, we already have the ‘stock’ answer.

Yes, of course. But I still wonder.:thinking:

Serinus, and most of the writers for Stereophile have said all sorts of things about MQA that have no basis in fact whatsoever. I suspect that there is a wee bit of “translation” going on between the ears :wink:

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Of the many DACs I own, only my portable Dragonfly Red is MQA ready with Tidal directly. The Dragonfly is excellent for what it is, but by no means the best DAC I own. I THINK I might have heard a slight improvement in some MQA files, but I’m not going to lose any sleep if MQA never comes to Roon. On the other hand, if it does, I will enjoy the reduction in the number of posters asking when it will arrive :slight_smile:

Some interesting chatter over on CA Forum, especially some comments by CA Forum owner, Chris. He’s a pretty straight shooter and I don’t think he’d make these comments unless he really has heard something from a credible source.

It’s still gossip at the end of the day but maybe with a splash of credibility? Maybe, maybe not.

Read for yourself at the links below but to me it reads like he’s heard whispers that there is a rather large and wealthy company planning to give MQA to it’s customer base of 10’s of millions (!!), apparently at no extra charge.

Spotify? Amazon? Google? Samsung? Can’t imagine it’s Apple !?

Interesting…

  1. https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30381-mqa-is-vaporware/?page=330&tab=comments#comment-816823

  2. https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30381-mqa-is-vaporware/?page=330&tab=comments#comment-816824

  3. https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30381-mqa-is-vaporware/?page=330&tab=comments#comment-816963

In the 2nd link above:

Q: But maybe you know something we don’t know? I hope not!
A: I believe I do.

Again, I don’t believe Chris would drop these hints unless he really has heard something from a credible source.

Thanks. Kind of fascinating how worked up some folks can get about rumors concerning a musical file type they don’t want to listen to.

As long as it doesn’t drive the price of streaming up too much, anything that gets us more albums in MQA is good with me.

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Well there were rumours a while back that Apple were going to buy Tidal so you never know…

Not a rumour, but news:

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For ESS Mobile DAC. Let’s see if a new LG smartphone in the future uses it.

Edit: LG V35 uses ES9228, while the previous V30 uses ES9218P.

7 posts were split to a new topic: The new LG 35 phone sounds like it’s downsampling to 48k 16bit

Interesting that Newest Rumors show nothing in the last 8 months. MQA is supposed to be a fast developing project yet nothing new this year. Am I just ignorant of where to go for NEW news?

MQA.co.uk but I am sure you were aware of that?

Yes and I’m encouraged but the web and audio press/reviews seemed to peak in 2017.

I guessed it ran off stream… No new announcement on manufacturers and streaming providers on CES 2019. Sounds like Qobuz lossless Hi-Res streaming got everyone too excited?

There are still new MQA capable products coming to market, and MQA available even on Qobuz so I don’t think it is in terminal decline just yet. Let’s see how the Qobuz launch in the US goes.

MQA appeared on some selected 2L catalogs which is brought up to the attention in another thread. Roon is aware of the issue. I’m sure Qobuz is working with the affected albums with 2L. Qobuz stands by its clause that they only provide lossless Hi-Res streaming.

MQA is essentially ‘stagnant’ since middle of 2017 and have gone quiet since then. MQA has been around for 4 years now and none of streaming partners are supporting it other than Tidal. The confusion is due to bad marketing and claims not technically justifiable.

There may be an issue here, because MQA is still a FLAC file, regardless of the way it is to be processed down stream. Any provider could choose to supply their files in MQA encoded form and the only issue for Qobuz is how they declare them. High Res equivalents, CD equivalent or somewhere below CD because they are lossy. And the problem here is that historically, format wars prove a couple of things. The “best” format doesn’t always win. And throwing your weight firmly behind one can be messy if you’ve backed the loser. So Qobuz need to tread carefully here because I don’t think they see MQA as the biggest differentiator between them and Tidal. Their stance on it won’t win or lose the day. Neutrality might be their better option.

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