We’ll have to wait and see exactly what Tidal does in regards to the source files. But it LOOKS like this is simply a pricing structure change, not actually offering the lossless files again.
There are some instances where an album is shown on Tidal twice, one in MQA and one without. And in these instances, you USUALLY can pick the non-master one and stream lossless.
But so far in every instance i’ve tested, any track/album marked as “Master”, you CANNOT stream a lossless version no matter what.
This includes the tracks I published, as well as a few artists I’ve spoken to that have provided me with masters for their tracks.
In most cases, they match the ones on qobuz/amazon HD/Deezer (though deezer has no exclusive mode and requires third party tweaks to get bitperfect output), but they do NOT match the ones on Tidal that are marked “Master”.
Let’s take Biffy clyro’s “Many of Horror” as a quick test here.
First, we compare the tracks streamed from the “Hifi” tier and “Master” tier:
Absolutely bitperfect. They are the same file.
Then let’s compare the “Hifi” version which is supposedly lossless, to the Qobuz version:
nope!
Ok, let’s check one where I have the original master: Suijin - Zenso
Original master vs Tidal “Master”:
No, not the same.
What about the Hifi version?
No, not the same. So you cannot actually stream this track losslessly from Tidal!
Lastly let’s again check the MQA vs Hifi version:
Not identical, but VERY close, differences here are most likely just the result of dithering/truncation from 24 to 16 bit.
(Oh and by the way MQA still “unfolds” this track even though the master was 44.1khz)
And for both of these tracks/albums, there is no non-master version on Tidal. Meaning you have absolutely no way of streaming lossless and are forced to use MQA whether you like it or not.
I REALLY hope Tidal changes this because right now this description in various places in their marketing is a straight up lie:
