Easily done. Do a flac to flac batch convert with the right program and it will ruin the mqa detection, actually it will ruin the file completely.
Whatever the argument for the quality of the file Tidal doesn’t deliver what they say hifi is not lossless CD quality, if they change that to 16 bit MQA on the software and stop marketing it as PCM then I’m sure everyone will be able to make a un biased decision on what they are buying into
Waitrose mp3 is still mp3.
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“The only one that works is Qobuz and that has a limited library”
I would phrase it differently: not limited compared to Tidal, but with a different genre focus and limited regional availability.
Therefore, many currently have no choice if they want to stream music in “lossless” quality, but possibly with Spotify HiFi or Apple Music HiFi the market situation will change fundamentally.
If you want to stream “real High-Res” music across different genres, you still have to use Qobuz.com or Highresaudio.com, unfortunately with some regional restrictions.
This is the greatest time in the history of recorded music and finally someone (MQA) is even doing things to raise the quality across the board. The cost of enjoying great music has never been lower and all people seem to do is bicker and quibble.
Well, we are in a period of transition and as good as it is, it’s bloody good, we cannot have it all.
That’s a shame but you’ll have to suck it up and appreciate what we do have.
You can now buy CD’s for next to nothing pre owned, Vinyl is on the resurge. Spotify and the like will be ditching MP3 anytime soon. The other streaming libraries are growing larger all the time and all the music ever released is still out there…
The equipment to enjoy all this wonder has never been as good as it is today and it has never been better value for money too.
It’s a great time to be alive with or without MQA on a separate Tidal tier and I am happier it’s there for those of us who love it to choose…
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[EDIT: I apologize to the community]
Thanks for your work here. It clearly shows, and reinforces the evidence to, what should be obvious when reading in-between the MQA / Tidal marketing fluff (to those who understand how digital encoding works) and previous work by others who have uncovered details about this CODEC.
Now we just need to wait and see if Tidal actually makes a change to their service. Maybe the rate plan was released early? Or if this is truly what they are trying to pass to customers as “lossless”. Time to give it some time.
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Just so you know, I am not sponsored in any way by MQA. I do however have ears to hear and a great sound system…
I just saw your system in your profile and this I can agree with you 
I’d love to hear MQA on such a system. I don’t have access to truly achieve the “benefit” of MQA like your system does. This is why I own the opinion that stealing bits from PCM, just to shove MQA where it shouldn’t be, is just noise.
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Take a proper listen and you will realise that’s just not true. Not true at all…
No amount of money or excellent gear can buy immunity from placebo and expectation bias.
We are all susceptible to it regardless of experience or equipment
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I agree that music and the way we listen to it now is vastly better in quality, convenience and affordability than it was 10 years ago.
But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be angry about a company lying about their product for which people are paying.
If a car manufacturer advertised a car as ‘turbocharged’ but sealed the hood so no one could check the engine. And when someone managed to find out later that it never had a turbo in it, would you be angry that they’d lied about the product being sold?
Or would you say that people shouldn’t bicker and quibble because cars are so much better now than they were 10 years ago anyway and so you shouldn’t be upset about being sold something based on a lie.
It is a great time for music listeners yes, but people still have every right to be angry about false advertising.
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I asked for my coffee with sugar. It turned out that whilst it was sweet, it just didn’t seem right. They said it was sugary and that I should be happy. It transpired that they had used saccharine…
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Stop, your making too much sense!
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wow.
I’ll believe him if he showed data of ALL files (16/44.1) are like this (MQA infected). I mean if you do an analysis you should put up numbers.
I’m an Australia TIDAL user. I am on the Master Tier and went into the Roon services TIDAL settings and selected HiFi instead of Master.
This is an MQA album that I am listening to:
With TIDAL HIFi selected this is what the signal path shows:
And with Master selected in the Roon Services TIDAL settings we have this as the signal path and I now have a little green light showing on my Explorer²
Sorry if this information has already been posted further up the thread, I didn’t want to read the last twenty or so posts. I also tried the same with an MQA 192kHz album by Coldplay. The effect was the same.
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You’re still getting a clipped MQA stream when it is showing “TIDAL FLAC 44.1kHz 16bit 2ch”.
In this link, Tidal “HiFi Plus” Introduced - #16 by Terry_Stone, read the post and the one immediately following the findings I published that @wklie was kind enough to explain. That should marry with what you’re seeing.
There are further tests ongoing to try to get a definitive position for the new Tidal hi-fi tier, but essentially, you’ll not be getting what many people had hoped for or thought they might be buying.
It’s starting to become moot now for people like us in Oz as Qobuz has launched and is offering std and hi-res PCM.
You have an Australian account that can be tested?
I would like to test it myself.
No worries Terry.
I’ll be honest I don’t really care. I use TIDAL for music discovery and then I will purchase an album that I like in the the best possible format I can get. I don’t particularly care about the format unless the album sounds rubbish to my ears. I don’t have time to worry about this kind of thing now that I am in my fifties, I’d rather just enjoy my limited time on this planet.
I just thought that the information may be of some use, if it isn’t then the moderators can delete my post.
ATB.
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I don’t have a Tidal account anymore. The tests were done by a user from stereo.net.au that I worked with to get to the bottom of this. I gave suggestions of tracks to try based on my familiarity of what formats I knew were solely mqa on Tidal (and ultimately part of the reason I terminated my account due to lack of choice).
If there is no Hifi 16/44.1 equivalent of the album then it is likely you get the CD quality of the MQA (96kHz and higher) source when you set it to HiFi setting.