Lossless? Don’t know don’t care. Sounds good to me.
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Hi Garye,
Good question.
I do know (now), and still I can’t say that I have noticed any difference.
Tom
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Don’t trust Computer Audiophile. All formats are a little lossy. MQA is lossy in the amplitude domain (a little), and it’s perfectly linear. Please don’t think MQA = MP3. MP3 is lossy in frequency and “selective” to make it sound extra weird.
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Good post.
This is pure Milton Freidman “shareholder-value” economics.
Square bought Tidal and Jack Dorsey said the deal would bring greater benefit to artists. So, begins deceptively giggering around with the pricing model.
Consumers of hi-res media and rendering through hi-res gear are paying more, and may be thrust into the arms of worthy competitors (of Tidal), especially one who viscerally detest Dorsey.
In the meantime, Tidal customers (we who pay) should demand clear and unambiguous explanations of what each pricing tear provides users, and what it does not, I suggest tarting with:
Tidal ‘HiFi’ is NOT lossless.
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Wish people would listen more and worry less about the formats. Ive heard MP3 that sound as good as any lossless format. If the master is crap no amount of oversampling is going to make it better. If you want to hear how the original really sounded in the times of analog masters you need to spend some dough on a decent phonograph a great cartridge and a system that can actually resolve all the subtleties, nevermind real good vinyl. Lastly you can buy the worlds best most expensive headphones and you will still be missing half the “music”. Ergo stop sweating about the tech and start listening to the music!
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Yeh, it matters only when you can actually feel the difference.
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I always come back to simply listening when I find myself in the weeds chasing specs and numbers. Generally leads me in the right direction!
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One under used property of specs and numbers is that they can tell you when to stop worrying and enjoy. It doesn’t have to be an arms race…
TIDAL can be lossless and your comment is both unsupported and very off topic. That said, if Square really bought Roon, I’m completely out of here and I write for a true non-profit audio journal, so the world will soon know, as I have been recently very jerked around by the Roon millenials who are literally afraid to talk on the phone.
How droll.
I was talking about Tidal and interposed Roon in error. You’re are quite right to call me out on it, and I apologize. I stand corrected and amended my post accordingly.
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I hear you, but what I said about Roon, after the loss of Steve Silberman, is completely true and I’m about done with it.
Hi all,
Just compared sound quality of a CD ripped content (Diana Krall / Wallflower) with the one available on Tidal FLAC 48kHz/24 Bit via MQA 48kHz. The CD sounds much better, you’ll notice the difference immediately, at least on my setup.It’s more brilliant and sharper then the MQA version with more room created by the speakers.
So MQA is just marketing. We have great codecs which fits to all our needs, so no need to add proprietary stuff. But I could imagine, that there is a business reason for TIDAL behind this, because you support some marketing stuff and gain less disk space and less network bandwith. I will not use Tidal for home use anymore.
Cheers,
Stefan
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Is your CD side the same as your streaming side? Are you comparing like for like? What part converts the MQA?
I’m not really bothered either way but when people are telling me it’s easy to hear and their systems are that resolving I’m just seeing if the have their ‘ducks in a row’.
Stefan,
It’s been observed by many people here and in other forums that files played from local storage can often sound better, or even much better, than the streamed versions. Nothing to do with the exact format. There can be many reasons for it, including technical ones (e.g. use of memory play or not for stored files, buffer size and push/pull data requests for streamed ones) and the always problematic question of whether the two files come from anything like the same master. It’s possible to set up valid comparisons but really difficult if you’re just choosing a CD at random.
Recently I saw someone on AS talking about a newly released CD and that the difference to the Tidal MQA version was blindingly obvious. So I bought the CD, ripped it to internal storage on my server, and compared to the Tidal version with my home system. Being a new release, it’s much more likely to be close to the same master, if not identical. I found the two practically indistinguishable, with the streamed MQA (44.1kHz) being just a hair more detailed if listened to very closely with matched loudness.
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Just compared sound quality of a CD ripped content (Diana Krall / Wallflower) with the one available on Tidal FLAC 48kHz/24 Bit via MQA 48kHz. The CD sounds much better, you’ll notice the difference immediately, at least on my setup.It’s more brilliant and sharper then the MQA version with more room created by the speakers.
So MQA is just marketing.
I’m by no means a supporter of MQA, and you’re certainly welcome to your opinions, but your methods and sample count of one are not enough to support your conclusions as factual.
For me it is…
and I never said that it is factual. But I compared meanwhile other sources, and also CD Ripping and e.g. Qobuz do sound exactly the same. So what would your conclusions be? You have three sources, two sounds the same, and third one sounds worse then the other? In my opinion I would avoid using the third choice.
Are your various sources loudness matched? If you play the streamed files without checking, they’re probably not. For valid comparative listening, files need to be matched to within 0.1 dB.
Well, that’s just my experience and very subjective. If you made different experience and don’t agree with my observations that’s fine to me. I would not post such a statement without proving it.