TIDAL to add 'millions' of Master Quality (MQA) Tracks

Tidal shows only one of the tracks labelled as Master (the 6th, Heartland) and it doesn’t play as a master, it’s 44.1 PCM.
So the Master label on the track is a mistake.

May I remind you of the BMG rootkit scandal, or others’ degradation of RedBook in the name of DRM (remind you of something ?), which prevented some of the better players of the era of playing some of the better music ?

(those schemes had two qualities to them: they didn’t work, AND they angered customers. Yet it took years for them to be taken off the market…)

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I contacted Tidal but never received a response. I’m assuming it was a tagging mistake. The question is why, and how many more albums are being tagged incorrectly.

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Why does MQA run a PKI infrastructure from Utimaco then?

Why does Utimaco proudly present MQA as a showcase?

About Utimaco

Utimaco is a leading manufacturer of hardware security modules (HSMs) that provide the Root of Trust to the IoT. We keep your cryptographic keys and digital identities safe to protect critical digital infrastructures and high value data assets. Utimaco delivers a general purpose HSM as a customizable platform to easily integrate into existing software solutions or enable the development of new ones. With professional services, we also support our partners in the implementation of their solutions. Put your trust in Utimaco – today and in the future. For more information, visit hsm.utimaco.com

Another question remains open. Even if the patent was abandoned, it is playing chess. “Oh, no, we thought about it, but we are not going to do it”. Now you calm down the masses. Once the time is ready, you do it. Because the idea is now registered, it is prior art. Nobody else can apply for this patent anymore.

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“Draconian scenarios” are exactly what we face these days with the COVID-19 debacle, and they were all unfathomable just a year or so ago. Fast forward to now, and you see that governments have learned to love the level of social control they have over the complacent masses, all in the name of “science”.

Now just translate that into a scenario where ALL major music labels (i.e. IPR owners) decide to jump on the MQA bandwagon and activate the patented MQA DRM aspects in stricter terms: what can consumers do? Pretty much nothing, since EVERY label would require MQA as the adopted format. This is fundamentally different from the failed attempts at imposing copy protection in CDs, since their implementation was kludgy at best, and faced immediate backlash from a market that was far from consolidated.

But now that almost everything is streamed and people are used to it (like a good ol’ addictive drug), consumers will not see the difference until it is too late.

So no, such a “draconian” scenario is not absurd at all; and why? Because “draconian” is the new normal.

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Tidal it is still Master.

Screenshot 2021-01-26 at 13.47.46

If I check it in Roon it appears as 44/24 FLAC.

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Peter,
As I noted above, the one ‘master’ labelled track plays as 44.1 PCM on an MQA DAC. It’s just a labelling mistake. Roon picks up whatever is in Tidal’s data base.

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The procedure of software and hardware encryption keys plus hash codes in MQA was described long ago by one of the trolls on CA/AS who hacked MQA’s code (or at least it’s a guess by him, I doubt anyone else cares). It’s just the method used to ensure the input stream is intact before the blue or green lights are allowed to show.

Computer Audiophile/Absolute Sound?

Quite some overhead for a green or a blue light.

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CA/AS Computer Audiophile aka AudiophileStyle

Encryption keys, hash codes and the like are a standard part of digital. Used with many variations in computing just to make sure the data stream hasn’t been corrupted.

That’s true but it’s unlikely you’d need an industrial-strength PKI infrastructure to simply check for corruption.

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Presumably it’s also to prevent theft. Piracy is a recent and very sore point in the music industry, which has only in the last ~ 6 years emerged from the Napster era. There are still a lot of sources of it and it hurts artists, labels, publishers, and everyone else.

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Oh, you mean by putting in place copy-control mechanisms like those described right here ?

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Do not underestimate the risk of evil-doers man-in-the-middling the New Kids on the Block’s Funky, Funky, Xmas, and replacing it by The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire).

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If it’s NKOTB replace away :joy:

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Does it matter, you can tell in the signal path if it’s MQA or not. Mistakes happen and I’m sure they clean them up as and when. Why wouldn’t they?

I really do not understand what the argument is supposed to be. You can always own music by buying CDs, Blu-rays, or downloads. Music has moved to streaming but it’s hardly true that the labels don’t want you to own music, it just means you paying for it. If you rip off and collect Tidal/Qobuz streams, you’re taking music offered on an all-you-can-eat basis for 10-20 $/EU/pounds per month, and paying almost nothing per album. This means you ripping off the artists (for example) who have a hard enough time making a living on a per stream contract basis.

You clearly haven’t been introduced to the joyous displays of musical brilliance of such luminaries as BTS or Arashi, who would probably never exist without the trailblazing of the New Kids.

(and for those who don’t know, BTS and Arashi were #1 and #3 on the global top 10 albums of 2019 according to IFPI (Tay-tay’s Lover was #2). They’re who the bulk of your streaming service subscriptions conceivably went to. This said, I do wonder if they sound better in MQA, maybe Team MQA would be kind enough to do an in-depth study of the question…)

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Well, ripping off artists was invented by the record companies itself.

Do you know that stereo microphones were invented to pay musicians less? If it was a mono recording the musicians got less money then for a stereo recording. They were told, it is only in mono. One microphone. Unfortunately it was a stereo microphone. So the musicians were payed for mono, the record was sold in stereo. Good old times!

I’m not the one calling “the draconian scenario” “absurd” one minute and then defending it the next.

We both agree that piracy is bad, so don’t try to make it about others defending it by not embracing a wasteful scheme.

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