If Tidal has marked a CD as an MQA Master version, then clearly that is a HUGE issue, early stages or not. It shows how easy it is to mislead customers and if it wasn’t for Roon, I would of had no idea this album marked as “MASTER” was in fact just a CD.
I’m not sure why you don’t think this is potentially a huge MQA/TIDAL issue.
Although…MQA files may come in 44/16 versions.
Are you sure about this? I was to understand all MQA files are either 24/44.1 or 24/48.
I believe that MQA can encapsulate anything from 16/44 up to 24/192. What you actually get out depends on what the producer folded in and what your software/hardware configuration can extract.
I am not an expert by any means though and someone will correct me if I am wrong I’m sure!
It just isn’t a huge issue, sure we want the MQA tag on the file, we all agree here but if you have an MQA DAC then it will be authenticated.
This will be resolved soon and I don’t see any intension to mislead.
I am sure they will be 24 bit files.
Yes, I know it unfolds all kinds of bit rates, but my understanding was that the folded size would always be 24/44.1 or 24/48 even if the master they used to make the MQA file was in fact a 16/44.1 master… I could be wrong but that was always my impression.
If anyone here who has a MQA dac can you please play this Gene Clark album from the Tidal Masters catergory and let me know if the MQA authentic light comes on.
I can confirm an MQA light at 44.1 16bit with this album.
Well, that’s the 24 bit theory done. But most have been so far.
The best bit… I’m now listening to something I wouldn’t have done otherwise!
Very interesting. Personally, I have a hard time with this and that anything was done other than run the existing cd version through the MQA codec. I find it hard to believe the best master of an album recorded in 1974 is 16/44.1… but I understand it, if they just want to rush to market MQA albums, but personally I’m not falling for the upsampled cd to hi-res which is what the labels were guilty of in the early days of hi-res.
That’s a great thing. As it’s such a fantastic album.
Expect to find MQA files in 24bit for the most part, but I expect to find a few 16 bit ones as well. I don’t believe MQA has a native 24 bit depth. I think other bit depth options are possible.
Ah, and Chris confirms it as does this article:
I find one MQA album in a 16/44 container, The BNB “Ein song fra det utsungne stunder” on the 2L label.
Originally released in 2005.
4 posts were split to a new topic: Sooloos referenced in the TidalTrackCopyright section of an album
On another note, I just loaded Jo Harman’s new Album ‘People We Become’ which is due for official release on Feb 10th. We saw her last night on a pre release gig at The New Crawdaddy blues club in Billericay Essex UK.
The album is on Tidal but unavailable until release except the Bonus track which is not on the CD. (I have a voucher to download it)
I was able to merge this Tidal track with the original album in Roon and it now says CD+1 on the cover.
That is cool.
Chris
I have read many articles about MQA since last year. Finally I am quite confused. I use the following chain Tidal -> Roon (RAAT) -> AURALiC Aries (AES) -> Avantgarde Acoustic Zero 1 (24/192 non-MQA DAC + amps in a horn speaker)
Since AURALiC gave up supporting software MQA decoding about a year ago (it was ready but not allowed by Meridian) and my Zeros will most probably not support MQA in future, software decoded MQA by roon would be my only option for now.
What I have understood ist that roon supports MQA from Tidal. But is this more than just bypassing the stream and let the DAC do the job? Do I have any advantages listening to Tidal MQA albums vs. the redbook version?
The Tidal Desktop App currently decodes MQA (Check settings) to 24/96 with a generic DAC profile. So you would get some of the MQA benefits.
Roon just passes the un decoded MQA stream which should still be better than CD quality.
We are told that Roon will decode MQA in a similar manner to Tidal in a future update.
Roon 1.3 is just around the corner as well. But we don’t know of this will enable MQA decoding from the outset.
Chris