Ignore the one 16bit master you found and see the ‘DXD’ options… 
Cheers!
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There were old jazz tracks that sounded weird to me (Miles Davis, Getz and Gilberto for examples) that I wondered what was up with. After checking I found that they were MQA and I hadn’t known. Switching to the originals on Qobuz the weirdly accentuated bass and loss of detail were no longer an issue.
Modern music is another issue. Jack Johnson sounds like it has been put through a 3D-type plug-in. The Beatles re-masters sound like they have been put through some more compression to bring up the quieter sounds. I can understand why that might sound better. Depending what DAC I use, it’s YMMV.
Classical that I’ve tried from TIDAL is ruined, with low-level information missing, possibly to try and give it a more fake “black” background.
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Read the 2L text above the table…
“All resolutions and encodings are derived from the same original DXD source files.”
I found that with Gets and Gilberto sounded very odd in MQA.
It’s really interesting reading a paper like this. It further reinforces the fact that the differences that “golden-eared” audiophiles with “highly-resolving” systems claim to hear are no doubt due to cognitive/expectation biases…
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Of course that by this, you mean that the result highlights the test subjects’ inferior systems, training, and, most importantly, genetics, right ?
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Absolutely! 
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This is great. Thanks for posting.
24 bit MQA files truncated to 16 bits (lower 8 bits removed) have certainly been reported to be still able to be decoded:
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/38608-truncating-mqa-files-to-16-bits-and-the-blue-light-still-shines/
I believe this is a feature, by design, to survive 16-bit transmission. And this is why 44.1kHz-based multiple of MQA on Tidal when truncated to 16 bit from 24 bit still activates MQA decoding in Roon.
Indeed. Just truncating the lower 8 bits of the 24 bit 48kHz based multiple MQA files should also still allow them to be decoded, but as you pointed out earlier, the additional downsampling of those files to 44.1kHz by TIDAL’s HiFi quality connection mangler would prevent any possibility of that as that action would destroy the embedded MQA watermark.
I just moved over to Qobuz. Why settle for semi-hires, when you can have the real deal. Most of the music I like is there. The thing missing is rap which for me is not a problem.
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I don’t have a single RAP album in my Roon Library, but out of 550 odd albums I have added to my library from Tidal, more than 80 of them don’t exist in Qobuz. Too many for me to consider losing.
Most of these albums come from Blues or Jazz genres. No Hip Hop, House or RAP in my house!
Hi-res from Qobuz sounds good as does Hi-res (MQA) from Tidal on my systems!.
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I think it works both ways. If you’ve started with Tidal and then try Qobuz, then the only outcomes are that Qobuz has all of your favourites or is missing a few.
Likewise if you’d had Qobuz for some time then were to try Tidal, I’m sure Tidal would be missing some of the albums Qobuz has.
The albums you mark as favourite is driven by what’s available on the service(s) you have at that point and time. I guess it all suggests there’s still some value in having a personal local library as a base that’s supplimented by a streaming service. None are quite there yet for me to abandon local copies.
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I agree!
My ROON Music Library comprises around 2,200 locally stored albums (on a NAS) and by now around 575 added from Tidal. Many of the Tidal entries I have added have been identified for me by ROON Radio, and quite a large percentage of these are by artists I had never heard of previously.
I do also have a login id for Qobuz, courtesy of the fact that I buy downloads from them ocassionally. This allows me to keep an eye in ROON on what’s available on Qobuz but not on Tidal, although I cannot play the Qobuz content. So far, I haven’t found many on Qobuz that interest me, and that are not available on Tidal. However, as you point out, over time ROON Radio would no doubt find for me albums that would be available exclusively on Qobuz.
Still, what you don’t know you don’t miss, and what’s important to me is that I still have access to the 80 to 90 albums that I would most definitely miss were I to switch from Tidal to Qobuz!
Oh that’s interesting that you can still see what Qobuz offers. I’m like you and use Tidal, but am trying Qobuz for the free month though I likely won’t continue with it.
Bonus of Qobuz, more money to buy records not available on Qobuz…
All these shenanigans from Tidal got me to cancel. Just when hi-res streaming was gaining ground, new audiophiles get more fud to muck through. I am also concerned what f*ckery Spotify will pull.
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I could not “ditto” this more.
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Do Qobuz offer a family plan yet?
