I’ve long had Natalie Merchant’s “Motherland” in my CD collection, but recently noticed that Tidal featured it in Master quality along with her “Tigerlilly” album that’s in hi-res quality and so added it to my Astell & Kern DAP where it played in CD [16/44] quality. I then added it to Roon and found the same. After several exchanges with Tidal Support over a couple of weeks, I received this reply yesterday:
“We’ve confirmed that unfortunately, that album is only available in 16 bit. Some MQA uploads can be in 16 bit as it depends on what the record company provides”
What is the alleged “False advertising”? Setting aside any inherent issues with MQA, the album in question is not misrepresented. Many, many MQA albums on Tidal are 16 bit, 44.1 kHz. MQA processing has been applied simply to a CD quality master.
I have a full Meridian system and was an early adopter of MQA but also a large library of my own. I did not know that all MQA albums were labelled Master on Tidal [as most of them in my library are hi-res] Also, bote this in their publicity:
“a third plan called Tidal HiFi Plus. It costs $19.99 monthly and will be home to Tidal’s most premium audio content. You’ll need HiFi Plus for “best-in-class immersive sound formats” including Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Audio tracks. Tidal’s Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) recordings are also reserved exclusively for the higher HiFi tier.”
To clarify the above, Tidal has no lossless high resolution, only MQA. Any high resolution on Tidal is MQA. If you consider MQA to be high resolution. Some do not because it is not lossless, and Tidal MQA encoded base rates max out at 24 bit, 48 kHz.
Interesting to compare Natalie Merchant’s Tigerlilly [24/96 MQA] to her Motherland [16/44 MQA] on Tidal. I find the former much better and as good as my own 24/96 hi-res Flac version of Tigerlily. As you note, however, it’s all pretty subjective.
This does not need to turn into another MQA debate thread. That has been done to death. But, Norman, you do seem to lack understanding in several respects. The 2L recording you cite is not 352.8 kHz on Tidal. That is a mirage. It is the 2L master recording original sampling rate. On Tidal, the base encoded rate is MQA 24 bit, 44.1 kHz, which unfolds once to 88.2 kHz. Anything greater is just short impulse response, weak digital filter upsampling.
When played via Roon on my Meridian System and on my Astell & Kern DAP [both of which do full MQA unfolds] the album is shown as 352 KHz Studio Authenticated–same as when I play the Flac version that I bought from 2L [other than the authenticated part]
In MQA, anything greater than 88.2/96 kHz is accomplished through upsampling, not unfolding. That is an established fact. Regardless of any MQA Studio tags/labels.
