It’s amazing how some worry about the future of the industry and in the next breath it’s, well Apple don’t use MQA.
There are choices out there and MQA is a great one.
If Roon don’t offer enough choices, well let’s help them get more on board. I’m sure they are open to it and active in the area although I have no inside knowledge.
It is pretty sad that the industry, as some see it, are determined to stay stuck in the past as if we all should still be speaking Latin…
As I see it. MQA is a thing, it’s the future for progress in streaming audio and there will always be competition in the market. I mean, look at Vinyl, I cannot see that ever dying whilst people are passionate. So instead of constantly knocking and moaning about MQA, a more positive approach of the formats you do champion whole be more helpful and beneficial.
There will always be choice as business aim to make money from their market…
The problem is not the SQ or lack of SQ, it is MQA as a closed format with debatable use case.
Here in the thread you see there is a lot of discussion on what is actualy delivered when you use Tidal.
As a customer i do not know what i am buying and can be fooled with fony filters that «enhance» the signal.
Thus calling it Authenticated because that is what it should sound like, but without any proof.
You fan boys and girls only trust the light , the MQA light.
Maybe as much placebo as the rest of the snakeoil, until PROVEN otherwise.
Which is never going to happen, because MQA is closed technology.
MQA, Tidal and transparancy, not a happy combination
I have posted above about why knock MQA? You don’t like it, I get that… But you cannot make a small building taller by tearing a tall building down. Champion the formats you do like. Get a group together to promote the formats you want companies to stream. Be positive
Uh, yeah… It is very much true. Tidal in general sounds slightly thin and gritty compared to Qobuz. When comparing Tidal MQA to Qobuz, it’s even worse as MQA just sounds “off” compared to the original recording.
Tidal has damaged their brand with MQA and now they are trying to fix it.
First they created confusion about what players, decoders and dacs you need. Then they tried to force it on their customers, taking away choice. As a result, many are switching to services that offer industry standard formats.
Going forward, there will be FUD associated with their CD quality tier. They will have to overcome this and gain back people’s trust.
They could have avoided all this, but they outsmarted themselves by creating problems and complexity where non existed. Sort of like MQA itself.
Although I cannot stand the sound of MQA, I very much agree with you about the absurdity of anti-MQA people claiming MQA is monopolistic, and takes away their choices. People on the anti-MQA side, listen to me…MQA is not trying to take away any choices, but many of you are by clamoring “DO AWAY WITH MQA!” Isn’t that trying to take away a huge choice from the proMQA side?? Stop making this totally false claim. We on the true-lossless side will ALWAYS have more choices than the MQA people.
So why are Sony and Warner involved? Why is mqa a cuckoo which keeps kicking the PCM chicks out of the Tidal nest? Why does mqa demand end-to-end control of the chain to be its best self?
There is choice today, but left unchecked, there will be less choice tomorrow.
Their business plan is to make as much money as they can off people that like MQA or have no preference. They, imho, are in no way going out after those who do not like MQA. They are smart enough to know a lost cause when they see it.
It would be suicidal to ignore people who do not like MQA. If Sony, WB or whoever decides not to offer true lossless, guess what? People like me that dislike MQA (And there are a ton of us) will not buy their musical offerings.
If I was MQA, I would want MQA as the only method of 1411kbps + music delivery. I could sell it to content providers as a slight cost savings on format delivery, I could sell it to music labels as a way to keep the source master in the vault. Give them a share of pie with the end to end licensing and you have reason for labels to want MQA and MQA only.
I enjoy both Tidal MQA and Qobuz High-Res, so I will stick with both for now. If Roon integrates with Apple lossless, that will present another opportunity. My understanding is Apple will offer lossless for the same price as their current plan. I get that for free from Verizon Wireless, so if that continues for lossless, I can drop both Tidal and Qobuz. I’ve already paid for Roon lifetime.
I have a lot of playlists in Roon built with Tidal songs. In that regard, I am “locked in” to the Tidal/Roon combo. Going forward i will just make playlists on the service itself which other tools can migrate. Play counts are another thing lost when moving services. I hope Roon puts more priority on service migration with all these changes a foot. Roon is also more at risk of people leaving Tidal-Qobuz for Spotify - Apple Hifi and leaving the platform. I say this having a lifetime sub.
Honestly i am not sure how Roon handles playlist entries when the quality version changes, so if I had a Tidal FLAC version and it is replaced by MQA version only on Tidal, I think Roon looses that playlist entry and the album is no longer Tagged.
