Tidal False advertising?

Much appreciated

It is a little bit more than MQA processing. Since these albums “authenticate” as MQA, some of the data is being used for authentication, which means the data available to audio is LESS than 16bit/44.1KHz.

I do think (and I presume you implied) that these are MQA processed, meaning they have gone through “MQA seasoning”. I get the impression, not backed by anything other than my listening, that there’s some seasoning applied to all MQA files. Oftentimes I like the seasoning, sometimes I don’t, it always sounds different than what “the artist intended or heard”

I have. I greatly prefer the DSD version.

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Thanks. This was my full statement not the truncated version that you attributed to me into your reply:

“Check out Magnificat by Trondheim Soloists, which is available as 24/44/352 MQA on Tidal”

I was referring to the availability of hi-res MQA albums on Tidal in answer to a point about anything above 88 not being possible.

PS. I also have the 352 stereo FLAC version of this album from 2L, but have not listened to any of the other multiple versions they sell.

Remember when they said the MQA albums would be totally remastered by human beings, that seems to have gone away.

The Q in MQA stands for quality, but the label “master” obscures significant differences.

The long and short of it was that the original specification of DAC indicators made sure Master Quality was differentiated from ordinary MQA encoding by different coloured indicator lights.

Yes, both my Meridian DAC at home and Astell and Kern DAP do that, but the labelling of albums on Tidal as “masters” does not

Shudders

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Norman, please stop with the misinformation. Your understanding of MQA is only superficial. Your screenshots do not prove anything. Authentication does not equal unfolding. Authentication is identification of MQA and the original sampling rate. Base encoded rates remain 44.1/48 kHz, while unfolded rates are 88.2/96 kHz. MQA hardware decoders then may use leaky upsampling to increase the sampling rate up to the original sampling rate.

All of this was reverse engineered and documented years ago.

AJ

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except it wasn’t.

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Misinformation? Not sure why you’re being so aggressive, but I’ll leave it to others to decide whether to believe you or to believe an Astell & Kern DAP, a Meridian DAC and Meridian speakers and Roon. cc @noris @mike @danny

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Norman, whether or not one is concerned about MQA or other sound quality descriptors, it is a very good idea to check out Magnificat by Nidarosdomensgentekor (the girls choir of Nidaros cathedral) in Trondheim, accompanied by the Soloists. Talk about sublime music.

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Indeed. One of my favourites.

Sorry to sound stupid, but leaky upsampling isn’t a term I’ve heard before. Can you elaborate?

This was all analysed and discussed years ago.

I would recommend people going to the links below for all the info you could possibly need and asking questions on that forum, under those articles.

MQA has been discussed to death on thousands of threads. Everything that could have been said and asked and argued has been done already, thousands of times.

There is literally nothing new to the discussion.

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A “leaky filter” is a filter that rolls off too slowly and thus does not adequately attenuate image frequencies that appear during up-sampling.

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This point about Tidal has been said in other forums? “The Q in MQA stands for quality, but the label “master” obscures significant differences.”

Literally everything has been asked & discussed in those articles, the comments sections of the articles and thousands of MQA threads on the internet.

There is literally nothing new to add to the discussion, after you read those articles and the comments, including this thread also:

Please provide quote alleging Tidal is engaged in dubious marketing to consumers with its “Master” label